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
Dating the Bible for each. The tables are in chronological order in reference to how they read in the Bible. This table summarises the chronology of the main tables and serves as a guide to the historical periods mentioned. Much of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament may have been assembled in the 5th century BCE. The New Testament books were composed largely in the second half of the 1st century CE. The Deuterocanonical books fall largely in between. Dating the Bible The four tables give the most commonly accepted dates or ranges of dates for the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Deuterocanonical books (included in