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
New Testament not part of the "Corpus Paulinum" in which this order originated and were later inserted after 2 Thessalonians and before Philemon. Hebrews was variously incorporated into the "Corpus Paulinum" either after 2 Thessalonians, after Philemon (i.e. at the very end), or after Romans. The New Testament of the 16th-century Luther Bible continues, to this day, to place Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse last. This reflects the thoughts of the Reformer Martin Luther on the canonicity of these books. The books that eventually found a permanent place in the New Testament were not the only works of Christian literature produced