Canonization of the New Testament

It appears from what evidence is available, that the Early Church rejected the books of the Apocrypha refusing to recognise their authority.
Interestingly, at no point did any of the Apostles, or Jesus himself ever quote from the Apocrypha.

In time, Christians in the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, nearest Palestine, tended to agree with most Jews in rejecting the Apocrypha, however the Western empire, under the influence of Augustine, embraced it.
Albeit, it wasn’t until the Council of Trent on April 8th 1546, under Pope Paul III, where it was declared that both “Tradition and the Apocrypha” were to be Canonical and authoritative.
The Roman Catholic Church today continues to uphold its validity, however the sixteenth century Reformation saw the Protestants begin to accept the view of the early eastern Christians and reject their Canonical status, claiming the following reasons:

1. The books teach several false doctrines and contain many inaccurate historical facts.
2. The books themselves do not claim inspiration. There are no “Thus saith the Lord’s”.
Although the New Testament has 263 direct quotations from, and 370 allusions to, the Old
Testament, there is not a single reference to the books of the Apocrypha.
3. Some of their teaching was considered immoral.
4. Most of it was written between the two Testaments, during the “intertestamental period”.

Miles Coverdale, Tyndale’s assistant, (picture) removed the Apocrypha books in 1535, although many subsequent translations included them for some time to come, albeit in a section of their own. Protestants eventually rejected them in entirety in 1885, and the Church of England and the Eastern Orthodox Church have given them a status between the positions of Protestant rejection and

Catholic acceptance.

With the Apocrypha aside;
In the initial stages of recognising divinely inspired writings, the Apostle Paul's letters were read in Churches and recognised as inspired and therefore accepted as authoritative. In fact Paul recognised Lukes’ letters as inspired, and Peter recognised Pauls’. (1Tim 5:18, 2Pt 3:15).

The early Church, in around 90AD, was believed to have received from Peter, aspects of what was later referred to as the “Rules of Faith”. This was used as early criteria to prove and protect doctrine, and to rebuke and reprove against the heresies of the day.
In the age of Catholic Christianity (between Apostolic and Christian Roman Empire), ancient theologians like Clement of Rome recognised as many as eight of the 27 NT books (or letters), Ignatius (115AD) about seven, and Polycarp (115AD) about fifteen.

Much of the early Christian theology derived from these letters was aimed at the refutation of heresy.
Later in the second century, attack came from two angles.
1. From Marcion’s heresy who denied the incarnation and removed Scripture, and
2. From Montanus who said the era of centering in Jesus had ended, and tried to add his own scripture. He said “the development of the Canon of the New Testament should never be closed”.

The Marcion attack inspired Tertullian, a father of Latin Theology, (picture) to write about Christian doctrine in defence against Marcion, and forced the early church to formulate and officially recognise a ‘Canon of Scripture’. He later converted to Montanism and then accused the Church of “chasing the Holy Spirit into a book”.
In opposition to the Marcionic heresy, Ireneus, late in the second century, affirmed the four Gospels as authentic, amongst approximately seventeen other letters, mostly Pauline.

Around 170AD, the ‘Muritorian Canon’ was compiled as the then recognised inspired word of God (author unknown, but published in 1740 by L.A.Muritori). It excluded some N.T books because of ongoing disputes. Numbered amongst those disputed were the epistles of Hebrews, James, both I and II Peter, and 3 John. Even as early as 230AD, Origen was quoted as saying “Only God knows the author of the book of Hebrews”. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Apocalypse of Peter, however were included, only to be later rejected.

Judgements of respected theologians of their day, like Origen and Athanasius in the East, and Jerome and Augustine in the West were influential, especially for the fates of particular books. It was Origen 185–254, an early Alexandrian theologian, (picture) who was the first to set forth theology from an intellectual framework of the Christian faith. He felt that if Christianity was to succeed, it must justify itself to the intellect as well as to the heart. He produced a vast study guide of six versions of the entire Old Testament, (all written by hand), titled the Hexapla.
He was only 18 when his father was martyred, and within the year Origen was thrown into being a teacher of the scriptures and soon rose to be the president of the Catechetical School (oral instruction).
Being motivated by his fathers’ death and in commitment to his theological demands, Origen chose to become a eunuch; an error for which he later regretted and repented of.

Origen was determined that the Bible should interpret itself and was vehemently opposed to sects making erroneous interpretations from single texts (“A text taken out of context is a pretext” - Dr Derek Prince). His work in the Scriptures was immensely important. He interpreted the bible rationally, and fed the mind of the developing Christian thought against heresies and Greek philosophical influence (especially Platonic idealism). Primarily, Origen’s teaching on doctrine for the Church further established the preservation of God’s Word and its theology. During the Decian persecution Origen was cast into a dungeon at Tyre and strung with chains. His death, hastened by such tortures, is believed to have occurred in the year 254.

In the procedure thereafter of establishing the Orthodox Canon, certain criteria were used to authenticate what was and what wasn’t inspired from God.
Early writers indicate the criteria implemented were:

1. Every book had to have been written by an Apostle or someone close to an Apostle, e.g. Luke.
2. Accepted and used by the Church at large.
3. The doctrine had to be consistent with that of the Old Testament and the apostolic teachings.
(The Gospel of Peter was rejected on this basis.)
4. The book was to reflect inspiration and witness of the Holy Spirit.
5. Carry a self-evidencing quality of godly fruitfulness in men’s lives.
6. And had to bear evidence of a high moral standard.

The fourth and fifth centuries were the periods of Canon formation proper, when the actual lists of books were drawn up. In 302AD, during the final empire wide persecution, Diocletian recognised the importance of the Scripture to the Christian faith and ordered the burning of all text. However some remained unharmed and within 25 years, were restored by Constantine I. He commissioned Eusebius the historian to prepare fifty copies of the Scriptures known as The Codex at Imperial expense.

Subsequently, Christianity made use of the codex (leaf book) for the first time, rather than the ‘role’ in transcribing Scripture. It was not until later in the 4th century that they were large enough to encompass all of the Scripture into a single book. Interestingly, it was only then that the Canon acquired a relatively fixed content.

The first list of books as we have them today was agreed upon at the Council of Laodicea in 363AD, where it was stated that only the 27 New Testament books and the Old Testament were to be read in the Churches. In 367AD Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria, also listed all 27 books in an Easter letter.
(Picture: Original text portion from The Revelations of St John.)

It was not until the Council of Hippo (393AD) and the Council of Carthage (397AD) that the 27 books (as outlined at Laodicea), were affirmed - along with the entire Old Testament. The Council of Chalcedon (451) validated the final judgement, and thereby established these books as the Holy Bible, which is what we have today.

In summary.
While the New Testament was written between 40AD and 90AD, the history of the development of the Canon of Scripture was not an isolated event at one point of time. Rather, its acceptance and theology developed slowly, largely in response to heresies and opposition to Gods Church rising at various times between 40AD and 451AD.