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
Authorship of the Bible Authorship of the Bible Table I gives an overview of the periods and dates ascribed to the various books of the Bible. Tables II, III and IV outline the conclusions of the majority of contemporary scholars on the composition of the Hebrew Bible (the Protestant Old Testament), the deuterocanonical works (also called the apocrypha), and the New Testament. This table summarises the chronology of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament; the deuteroncanonical works date from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE (see Table III), and the New Testament writings from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE (see Table IV).