In 367, by the date Dr. Jarvis Williams gives, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, sent an Easter letter to the churches in his care. In it he listed the twenty-seven books Christians now call the New Testament. The wording of the letter matters as much as the list. Williams, who was associate professor of New Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville when he spoke with the Jude 3 Project, stresses what Athanasius claimed for himself: “He wrote a letter suggesting that these are the 27 books that are recognized by the churches.” The bishop was describing what congregations already read, not announcing a decision.
Thirty years later, in 397, a regional council at Carthage in North Africa did the same thing, and Williams argues that by then the New Testament collection was already established. Those two dates are where the canon finally appears in writing as a list. They are also the end of a much longer process. Israel’s scriptures had been written, guarded and gathered over many centuries before that, and the apostles’ letters had circulated among the churches for three hundred years. Meanwhile, the Bible was reaching Ethiopia, whose church still reads a larger canon than most Protestants do. In both halves of the Bible, the decisive work happened long before anyone made a list.
Several scholars who have spoken with the Jude 3 Project cover different stretches of that history: