Development of the New Testament canon Development of the New Testament canon The canon of the New Testament is the set of books Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For most, it is an agreed-upon list of twenty-seven books that includes the Canonical Gospels, Acts, letters of the Apostles, and Revelation. The books of the canon of the New Testament were written before 120 AD. For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692. The Catholic Church made dogmatic definition upon its Biblical canon in 382 at
Twentieth Century New Testament Westcott and Hort text of the Greek New Testament, further adding to the accuracy of their rendering. In a break with most translations, the TCNT arranges the New Testament books in the order scholars believe they were written -- Mark comes before Matthew, for instance. They also include brief introductions before each book. Because of the translators' meticulous attention to the best scholarship of their day, Bruce Metzger concluded that their version still holds up remarkably well today, despite the lapse of over 100 years. A modern revision of the TCNT called the Open English Bible was released in 2010