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
Historicity of the Bible Historicity of the Bible The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's "acceptability as a history", in the words of Thomas L. Thompson, a scholar who has written widely on this topic as it relates to the Old Testament. This can be extended to the question of the Christian New Testament as an accurate record of the historical Jesus and the Apostolic Age. Many fields of study span the Bible and history; such fields range from archeology and astronomy to linguistics and comparative literature. Scholars also examine the historical context of Bible passages, the importance ascribed to