By F. F. Bruce

• How did the books of the Bible come to be recognized as Holy Scripture?
• Who decided what the shape of the canon should be?
• What were the criteria that influenced these decisions?

After nearly nineteen centuries the canon of Scripture still remains an issue of debate for Christians and scholars. Protestant Bibles exclude the Apocrypha while Catholic Bibles include them. On the other hand, Martin Luther, a father of the Reformation, expressed his reservations about James being in the canon. And many Christians today, while confessing the authority of all Scripture, tend to rely on only a few books and particular themes, essentially ignoring the rest.

Critical issues have been raised by scholarship. Today the discovery of Gnostic-Christian gospels and tractates has caused some to argue that ecclesiastical parties and politics played a significant role in the formation of the Christian canon. Biblical criticism asks which form of any given biblical text is canonical. And proponents of canonical criticism call interpreters to a new commitment to the unifying principle of the canon.

These are crucial issues for both the church and scholarship. Once raised, they cannot be ignored.

Hard Cover, 349 pages
Published, 1988