Stop 3. The trunk: one list of New Testament books

Now move up from the roots to the trunk. This is the fourth century, the 300s.

By then, most churches had used nearly the same New Testament books for generations. In the year 367, a bishop named Athanasius wrote a letter that named exactly 27 books. They are the same 27 in your Bible today. Later in the century, church councils in North Africa, at Hippo in 393 and at Carthage in 397 and 419, agreed on the same 27 for the western church.

Nobody voted the Bible into existence at one meeting. The church named a list it was already using. The word for that official list of books is the canon.

The Old Testament list was not settled so neatly. A scholar named Jerome made a famous Latin Bible around the year 400. He said Christians should use the books in the Hebrew Bible. A bishop named Augustine said the church should keep a longer list. That disagreement is why the branches split.

So nearly every Christian Bible today has the same 27 New Testament books. The Old Testament is where they differ.

On the tree, this is box 1.