New Testament

===4th century and later===
In his Easter letter of 367, [[Athanasius]], Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of the books that would become the twenty-seven-book NT canon,<ref name="LindbergCarter"/> and he used the word "canonized" (''kanonizomena'') in regards to them.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Brakke |first=David |date=October 1994 |title=Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty-Ninth ''Festal Letter'' |journal=Harvard Theological Review |volume=87 |issue=4 |pages=395–419 |doi=10.1017/S0017816000030200 |jstor=1509966|s2cid=161779697 }}</ref> The first council that accepted the present canon of the New Testament may have been the [[Synod of Hippo|Synod of Hippo Regius]] in North Africa (393 AD). The acts of this council are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the [[Council of Carthage (397)]] and the [[Council of Carthage (419)]].{{sfn|McDonald|Sanders|2002|loc=Appendix D-2, note 19|ps=: "Revelation was added later in 419 at the subsequent synod of Carthage."}} These councils were under the authority of [[Augustine of Hippo|St. Augustine]], who regarded the canon as already closed.{{sfn|Ferguson|2002|p=320}}{{sfn|Bruce|1988|p=280}}<ref>Augustine. ''De Civitate Dei''. 22.8.</ref>

[[Pope Damasus I]]'s [[Council of Rome]] in 382, if the ''[[Decretum Gelasianum]]'' is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above,<ref name="LindbergCarter" /> or, if not, the list is at least a 6th-century compilation.{{sfn|Bruce|1988|p=234}} Likewise, Damasus' commissioning of the Latin [[Vulgate]] edition of the Bible, {{circa|383}}, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.{{sfn|Bruce|1988|p=225}} In {{circa|405}}, [[Pope Innocent I]] sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, [[Exuperius|Exsuperius of Toulouse]]. Christian scholars assert that, when these [[bishops]] and councils spoke on the matter, they were not defining something new but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church."{{sfn|Ferguson|2002|p=320}}{{sfn|Metzger|1987|pp=237–238}}{{sfn|Bruce|1988|p=97}}

The New Testament canon as it is now was first listed by [[Athanasius of Alexandria|St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria]], in 367, in a letter written to his churches in Egypt, [http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-04/Npnf2-04-93.htm Festal Letter 39]. Also cited is the [[Council of Rome]], but not without controversy. That canon gained wider and wider recognition until it was accepted at the [[Third Council of Carthage]] in 397 and 419. The [[Book of Revelation]] was not added till the [[Council of Carthage (419)]].<ref>{{harvnb|McDonald|Sanders|2002|loc=Appendix D-2, note 19}}</ref>

Even this council did not settle the matter. Certain books, referred to as [[Antilegomena]], continued to be questioned, especially [[Epistle of James|James]] and [[Book of Revelation|Revelation]]. Even as late as the 16th century, the Reformer [[Martin Luther]] questioned (but in the end did not reject) the [[Epistle of James]], the [[Epistle of Jude]], the [[Epistle to the Hebrews]] and the [[Book of Revelation]]. To this day, German-language [[Luther Bible]]s are printed with these four books at the end of the canon, rather than in their traditional order as in other editions of the Bible.

In light of this questioning of the canon of Scripture by Protestants in the 16th century, the (Roman Catholic) [[Council of Trent]] reaffirmed the traditional western canon (i.e., the canon accepted at the 4th-century [[Council of Rome]] and [[Council of Carthage]]), thus making the [[Canon of Trent]] and the [[Vulgate]] Bible [[Roman Catholic Dogma|dogma]] in the Catholic Church. Later, [[Pope Pius XI]] on 2 June 1927 decreed the [[Comma Johanneum]] was open to dispute and [[Pope Pius XII]] on 3 September 1943 issued the encyclical ''[[Divino afflante Spiritu]]'', which allowed translations based on other versions than just the Latin [[Vulgate]], notably in English the [[New American Bible]].

Thus, some claim that, from the [[Christianity in the 4th century#Defining scripture|4th century]], there existed unanimity in the [[Western Church|West]] concerning the New Testament canon (as it is today),{{sfn|Bruce|1988|p=215}} and that, by the [[Christianity in the 5th century|5th century]], the [[Eastern Church]], with a few exceptions, had come to accept the [[Book of Revelation]] and thus had come into harmony on the matter of the canon.{{sfn|Ackroyd|Evans|1970|p=305}} Nonetheless, full dogmatic articulations of the canon were not made until the [[Canon of Trent]] of 1546 for [[Roman Catholicism]], the [[Thirty-Nine Articles]] of 1563 for the [[Church of England]], the [[Westminster Confession of Faith]] of 1647 for [[Calvinism]], and the [[Synod of Jerusalem (1672)|Synod of Jerusalem]] of 1672 for the [[Greek Orthodox]].

On the question of NT Canon formation generally, New Testament scholar Lee Martin McDonald has written that:<ref>McDonald, Lee M. (1995). ''The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon''. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson. p. 116.</ref>
{{blockquote|
Although a number of Christians have thought that [[church council]]s determined what books were to be included in the biblical canons, a more accurate reflection of the matter is that the councils recognized or acknowledged those books that had already obtained prominence from usage among the various early Christian communities.}}

According to the ''[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]'' article on the Canon of the New Testament: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the [[Council of Trent|Tridentine Council]]."<ref>{{cite book |last=Reid |first=George |year=1908 |chapter-url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm |chapter=Canon of the New Testament |title=The Catholic Encyclopedia |location=New York |publisher=Robert Appleton Company}}</ref>

In 331, [[Constantine I and Christianity|Constantine I]] commissioned Eusebius to deliver [[Fifty Bibles of Constantine|fifty Bibles]] for the [[Church of Constantinople]]. [[Athanasius]] (''Apol. Const. 4'') recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for [[Constans]]. Little else is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that [[Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209|Codex Vaticanus]] and [[Codex Sinaiticus]] may be examples of these Bibles. Together with the [[Peshitta]] and [[Codex Alexandrinus]], these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.{{sfn|McDonald|Sanders|2002|pp=414–415}} There is no evidence among the [[First Council of Nicaea#Biblical canon|canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on the canon]].