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Course 17 · Lesson 2.4

Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox canons compared

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 17 outline

Module 1: What Christians Mean by Scripture

  1. Revelation and inspiration: two different ideas
  2. Models of inspiration across the traditions
  3. Inerrancy and infallibility: what each term claims
  4. Reading in historical and literary context

Module 2: How the Canon Was Formed

  1. The formation of the Old Testament canon
  2. The formation of the New Testament canon
  3. The Apocrypha and the deuterocanonical books
  4. Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox canons compared

Module 3: The Text and Its Transmission

  1. How manuscripts were copied
  2. Variants and how scholars weigh them
  3. The Old Testament text: Masoretic text, Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint
  4. What the manuscript evidence shows and does not show

Module 4: Apparent Contradictions

  1. A method for testing a claimed contradiction
  2. Numbers, names and parallel accounts
  3. Differences among the Gospel accounts
  4. Tensions that remain and how traditions handle them

Module 5: Difficult Old Testament Passages

  1. Reading difficult passages honestly
  2. The conquest narratives and the question of violence
  3. Slavery in the ancient world and in the Bible
  4. How Christians have read hard texts: the church fathers to today

Module 6: Archaeology and Chronology

  1. What archaeology can show
  2. The limits of archaeological evidence
  3. Dating events: kings, exile and the exodus debate
  4. Genealogies, ages and calculations

Module 7: Scripture and Science

  1. Ancient cosmology and the opening chapters of Genesis
  2. Approaches to Genesis and science among Christians
  3. Augustine, accommodation and caution in interpretation

Module 8: Writing a Response

  1. Choosing and framing a problem
  2. Building a response from context and tradition
  3. Admitting what remains unresolved

All courses

Program / Course 17: Defending Scripture / Lesson 2.4

What you will learn

  • Compare the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox lists of biblical books and note where they differ.
  • Explain the different principles each tradition uses to decide what counts as Scripture.
  • Describe the existence of wider canons in other ancient churches.
  • Say what the three traditions share in spite of the differences.

The big idea

The three largest Christian traditions agree on all 27 books of the New Testament and on the core of the Old Testament, but they do not hold the same list. Protestants count 66 books, Catholics 73, and the Orthodox churches somewhat more, with differences among them. Behind the lists lie three different answers to a question of authority: is the canon determined by the Hebrew Bible, by the early church’s use of the Greek Bible, or by the church’s decisions? The disagreement is real, and it is smaller than it looks to those who have only heard about it.

Key terms

Protestant canon
The 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, divided and ordered differently, plus the 27 books of the New Testament: 66 in all.
Catholic canon
The 66 books together with the deuterocanonical books, which gives 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books: 73 in all.
Orthodox canon
The Septuagint-based Old Testament, which includes the Catholic list and some further books, with the same New Testament. The exact list varies among Orthodox churches.
Tewahedo
The name of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches. They use a wider canon that includes books such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees.
Sola scriptura
A Reformation principle that Scripture alone is the final authority for doctrine. It does not mean that the interpreter is alone.
Sacred Tradition
In Catholic and Orthodox teaching, the apostolic faith handed on by the church, which includes the canon of Scripture.
Peshitta
The standard Bible of the Syriac-speaking churches. Its New Testament historically lacked some of the shorter disputed books.

Background

In the first four centuries the Christian world had no single authority to publish an official Bible. Churches received lists from their teachers and local councils. As the church divided, first after the councils of the fifth century and then in 1054 between East and West, and again in the sixteenth century between Catholics and Protestants, each group kept its own list or made it more exact.

The result is that today there are several canons in use in the churches. This lesson sets them side by side. It is important to keep three questions apart: what the lists are, why each tradition holds its list, and how serious the difference is. Failing to separate them leads to the claim that one Bible is correct and the others are corrupted, which no tradition’s best scholars make without argument.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The lists

The Old Testament in a Protestant Bible has 39 books, the same as the Hebrew Bible, though the Hebrew counts 24 by combining some, such as the twelve minor prophets into one book, and arranges them differently. The Protestant order follows the Greek and Latin tradition: law, history, poetry and wisdom, prophets. A Jewish Bible ends with Chronicles. A Christian Old Testament ends with Malachi, leading into the Gospels.

A Catholic Old Testament has 46 books. It adds Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with the longer forms of Esther and Daniel. The Orthodox Old Testament has these and in many editions also 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151 and the Prayer of Manasseh. The New Testament has the same 27 books in all three, though the order of some books differs in the East, and the Orthodox lectionary does not read Revelation in the regular cycle of services.

Step 2: The principle behind each list

Protestants hold that the Old Testament canon is the one the Jewish people received, which Jesus and the apostles used. They treat the New Testament canon as a recognition by the church of books that already carried apostolic authority. Sola scriptura then means that the church’s later teaching is measured by these books. The list rests on the evidence of history and on the witness of the Spirit.

Catholics hold that Christ gave authority to the apostles and their successors, and that the church, guided by the Spirit, has the authority to discern and define the canon. The Old Testament list follows the Greek Bible of the early church, and the definition came at Trent. Orthodox Christians stress the continuity of the Greek-speaking church, the Septuagint as its Bible, and the acceptance of the canon through use in worship, without insisting on a single point of definition. Each of these is a way of saying who has the right to recognize Scripture.

Step 3: Other ancient churches

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has a wide canon with books such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees, and it differs on the number of books in the New Testament depending on how they are counted. The Syriac Peshitta originally omitted 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation, and the Armenian and Coptic churches also have their own histories. These cases show that the question of the canon was not settled uniformly even among churches that trace themselves to the apostles.

Jude 14-15 quotes the book of Enoch, which the Ethiopian church accepts and almost all others do not. This is sometimes used to show that a New Testament author could cite a work without making it Scripture, and sometimes to argue that the line is less sharp than later traditions suppose.

Step 4: What the traditions share

All three accept the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, Acts, the letters and Revelation. All treat the New Testament as the record of the apostolic witness to Christ. No doctrine in the creeds that all three confess depends on the books they differ about. Differences show up in a few doctrinal points, such as prayer for the dead, where the deuterocanonical books are cited by Catholics and Orthodox, and in some of the liturgical readings.

Many Protestants read the Apocrypha with profit, and many Catholics and Orthodox read the common books without any dispute. In practice, translation committees from different churches have produced ecumenical editions of the Bible with or without the extra books, so that the disagreement affects the shelf more than the center of the faith.

  1. Which question is the basic one in this dispute: the history of the list, or the authority to decide it?
  2. What does it mean that no creed depends on the books under dispute?
  3. How would the Ethiopian canon challenge the idea of a single Christian Bible?
  4. Why might the order of the books matter, and what does the order of a Jewish Bible versus a Christian Old Testament suggest?
  5. What are the risks of saying that a tradition added books or took books away?
  6. How would you describe the dispute to a friend using only fair language?

Examples

Counting the books

A Jewish Bible counts 24 books, a Protestant Old Testament 39, a Catholic Old Testament 46. The difference between the first two is only in counting and order. The difference between the second and third is in content. Seeing these numbers side by side prevents confusion about what is in dispute.

Two kinds of Bible on a shelf

A study Bible edited by Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox scholars together exists in some English translations, such as the New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. It puts the extra books in a separate section, labeled so that each reader can follow their own tradition’s usage.

A funeral reading

A Catholic funeral may include a reading from Wisdom 3, which speaks of the souls of the righteous being in the hand of God. A Protestant funeral may use Psalm 23 or Romans 8. The difference reflects the lists, but the message of hope in both is similar.

Different perspectives

Protestant

The Bible consists of 66 books. The ground is the Hebrew canon for the Old Testament and apostolic origin for the New. The church is subject to Scripture and must measure its teaching by it. Protestants hold that the Spirit confirms the canon to the believer, and many are glad to read the Apocrypha for history and devotion.

Catholic

The Bible consists of 73 books. The ground is the church’s authority, given by Christ, to discern the canon. Scripture and Tradition together form the deposit of faith, and the church’s list was received from the apostles’ time. Catholics note that Protestants themselves accept the New Testament canon on the basis of the church’s historical judgment.

Orthodox

The Bible is the Scripture of the church in the Septuagint tradition. The ground is the continuous life and worship of the church. Orthodox writers differ on the exact boundary, and they usually say that the Spirit has guided the church in practice rather than by a single decree.

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo

The Ethiopian church holds a broad canon with 81 books by one common count, including Enoch and Jubilees. It is one of the oldest Christian churches, and its canon is rooted in its own tradition and in its translation history, though counts vary.

Scholarly

Historians treat the lists as the result of different historical paths. They note that the New Testament lists were remarkably stable, while the Old Testament edges stayed fluid. They tend to caution against reading the later confessional divisions back into the first centuries.

Why it matters

A student who knows the three lists can read a Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant author without surprise, and can explain a disagreement without turning it into a scandal. The comparison also exposes the question beneath the lists. If one asks what makes a book Scripture, the answers the traditions give say a great deal about how they understand the church and the Bible. This lesson prepares you to take that question into Module 3, where the text itself is examined.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Protestants have a smaller Bible, so Catholics and Orthodox have the full Bible.

Correction: This is how each side may be tempted to describe it. The more accurate description is that the traditions have different canons for the Old Testament, each defended by argument, and all share the same New Testament.

Misunderstanding: The Orthodox canon is the same as the Catholic one.

Correction: It includes the Catholic list and some further books, and it varies among Orthodox churches. The Orthodox themselves note that the matter was not defined as at Trent.

Misunderstanding: Christians who differ on the canon follow different religions.

Correction: They share the creeds, the Gospels and the great majority of the Bible. The disagreement over the canon is real, but it sits within a large area of agreement.

Misunderstanding: The Ethiopian canon proves that the church added books freely.

Correction: The Ethiopian canon grew from a different history and is accepted by that church as received. It shows that the lists differed, not that any one list was arbitrary.

Knowledge check

How many books are in the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox canons?

The Protestant canon has 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. The Catholic canon has 73: 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. The Orthodox canon is larger than the Catholic one, with a number that varies among the churches, and the same 27 New Testament books. Counts also depend on how books are divided.

What is the main principle behind the Protestant Old Testament canon?

Protestants follow the Hebrew Bible, which they take to be the Scripture of Jesus and the apostles and of the Jews to whom the oracles of God were committed. They hold that the church recognizes the canon but does not create it. Their principle is that the church’s teaching is to be measured by Scripture, and the list is defended by history and the witness of the Spirit.

What principle supports the Catholic and Orthodox lists?

Catholics and Orthodox appeal to the practice of the early church, which used the Greek Bible containing the additional books, and to the authority of the church to discern the canon. Catholics add the definition at Trent, while the Orthodox usually stress continuity and liturgical use. Both argue that the Hebrew list was fixed by Jewish teachers after Christianity began.

What do all three traditions share on the canon?

They share the same 27 New Testament books and the core of the Old Testament: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. No article of the common creeds depends on the disputed books. They differ on a small number of books and on who has the authority to decide, but they agree on most of what they read.

Think it through

  1. Which principle for deciding the canon makes the most sense to you, and what would be its weakest point?
  2. How could Christians of different traditions read together without settling this question?
  3. What is lost if the differences are minimized, and what is lost if they are exaggerated?

Independent assignment

A side by side table

In your own notebook, make a table comparing the Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Ethiopian lists for the Old Testament, and the New Testament lists. Then write 250 to 350 words explaining, in neutral language, the reasons each tradition gives for its list. Mark any point where you are unsure. Do not send this to anyone or post it anywhere.

Further study