Did the Council of Nicaea Decide the Biblical Canon?

Few claims about early Christianity are repeated as confidently as the claim that the Council of Nicaea decided which books would go into the Bible. The usual version runs like this: in 325 the Emperor Constantine gathered the bishops, set competing Gospels before them, and had them vote. Books that suited an imperial Christianity were kept, and inconvenient "Gnostic" alternatives were burned. Some tellings add that the same bishops voted Jesus into divinity and then edited the Bible to match.

The question matters because it touches two things: whether the Scriptures were received from the apostles or manufactured by an emperor, and how the Church came to know which books were Scripture at all. The evidence answers the first plainly. The second answer is slower, and Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians give it in slightly different ways.

In brief

The Council of Nicaea produced a creed, twenty disciplinary canons and a synodal letter. None of them lists the books of the Bible, and no writer close to the council says it did. Christians were already reading the four Gospels, Acts and the letters of Paul as Scripture long before 325; Irenaeus defended a fourfold Gospel around 180, and Eusebius, who attended Nicaea, describes the accepted and disputed books of his day without mentioning any conciliar decision. Bishops who supported Nicaea went on producing lists that differed after the council: Cyril of Jerusalem omitted Revelation around 350, and Athanasius, in 367, gave the first surviving list of exactly the twenty-seven New Testament books. Old Testament lists differed even more. Three pieces of evidence do connect Constantine or Nicaea with books (the emperor's order for fifty copies of the Scriptures, his edict ordering a search for heretics' books, and Jerome's remark that Nicaea counted Judith among the Scriptures), and each is discussed below. The dramatic story of books sorting themselves on an altar first appears in a Byzantine text of the late ninth century and reached modern readers through early modern editors, Voltaire and later popular writers.

Thesis: The Council of Nicaea did not decide the biblical canon; the canon was received through the Church's long life of reading, worship and discernment, which councils later confirmed rather than created.

What the council actually produced

Constantine summoned the bishops to Nicaea in Bithynia (modern İznik, Turkey) in 325 to deal with the teaching of Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter who held that the Son of God had a beginning and was brought into being by the Father. The bishops answered with a creed confessing the Son as "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father," and anathematized those who said "there was a time when the Son of God was not."¹ For the historical setting, see our overview What Was the Council of Nicaea?

The council also issued twenty canons. Part of the modern confusion lies in that word. The Greek kanōn meant a measuring rod, a rule or a standard; the "canons of Nicaea" are church regulations. They forbid men who had castrated themselves from serving as clergy, regulate how bishops are ordained, require provincial synods twice a year, set penances for those who lapsed under persecution, forbid clergy to move from city to city, forbid clergy to lend money at interest, explain how Novatians ("Cathari") and followers of Paul of Samosata are to be received, and close with the rule that on Sundays and in the days of Pentecost "it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing."² None of the twenty concerns the contents of Scripture. Roukema and Heikens add that in 325 kanōn was not yet used for a list of inspired books; the earliest known writer to use it that way is Athanasius, around 350.³

The council's synodal letter to the church of Alexandria was written so the Egyptians "might have the means of knowing what has been mooted and investigated, and also what has been decreed and confirmed." It reports the condemnation of Arius, the settlement of the Meletian schism and the agreement on the date of Easter.⁴ It says nothing about books. {{very-strong: None of the surviving documents of Nicaea (the creed, the twenty canons and the synodal letter) contains a list of biblical books or a decision about one.}} One silent document would prove little; silence across all of them, and in the lists Nicene bishops wrote afterward, is a different matter. No full record of the debates survives, so bishops may well have quoted or discussed particular books in argument; what the surviving evidence rules out is a formal decision about the canon.

Scripture before Nicaea

The legend has an obvious chronological problem. Christians were reading the Gospels and the apostolic letters as authoritative long before Constantine was born. Around 180, Irenaeus of Lyons argued that there are exactly four Gospels: "It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are."⁵ His reasons (four zones of the world, four winds) seem odd to us, but he was defending a fourfold Gospel already settled in the churches he knew, nearly a century and a half before the council.

Eusebius of Caesarea is an even more useful witness, because he attended Nicaea. In his Church History, written in stages in the early fourth century, he sorts the writings of the New Testament into groups. The accepted books are "the holy quaternion of the Gospels," Acts, the letters of Paul, 1 John and 1 Peter, and "if it really seem proper," Revelation. The disputed books, "which are nevertheless recognized by many," are James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John. He calls the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas and the Didache "rejected" (Greek nothoi, spurious), and places Revelation here too in the view of some. Finally he sets apart works such as "the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias," which "clearly show themselves to be the fictions of heretics."⁶

Eusebius describes a large core received everywhere, a few shorter letters and Revelation still under discussion, and books no one in the Church's mainstream treated as Scripture. The arguments at the edges were real and continued after Nicaea, but they were not about Thomas or Mary or Judas.

The lists after Nicaea

If an ecumenical council had fixed a binding list in 325, bishops who revered that council would have repeated it. They did not.

Cyril of Jerusalem

Around 350, Cyril of Jerusalem told candidates for baptism: "Learn also diligently, and from the Church, what are the books of the Old Testament, and what those of the New." His New Testament has the four Gospels, Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles and fourteen letters of Paul. Revelation is absent. He warns that a "Gospel according to Thomas" was written by the Manichaeans, and adds: "But let all the rest be put aside in a secondary rank."⁷ Cyril was later recognized as a firmly Nicene bishop (his loyalty was questioned until 381), yet his list is not the later twenty-seven-book collection.

Athanasius of Alexandria

In his Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter of 367, Athanasius, who had attended Nicaea himself, set out "the books included in the Canon, and handed down, and accredited as Divine." His New Testament lists the four Gospels, Acts, seven Catholic Epistles, fourteen letters of Paul and Revelation: {{very-strong: Athanasius's Festal Letter of 367 is the earliest surviving list of exactly the twenty-seven books of today's New Testament.}} He then names other books "not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us": the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Didache and the Shepherd.⁸ Athanasius was the great defender of Nicaea, and he never appeals to it here, although the letter was sent to the churches and monasteries of Egypt to warn them against apocryphal books that rival teachers set beside Scripture. David Brakke has published a new translation drawing on a newly identified Coptic fragment of the letter.⁹

The African councils

The North African councils produced the earliest conciliar list whose authenticity is secure (the list attached to the canons of Laodicea is of doubtful genuineness; see note 13). The Code of Canons of the African Church, compiled at Carthage in 419 from earlier African councils including Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), rules that "besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in church under the name of divine Scripture," and lists the books. Its Old Testament includes Tobit, Judith and two books of Maccabees; its New Testament has the twenty-seven books. The bishops close with a telling phrase: "for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church."¹⁰

The Syriac churches

Further east, the Peshitta, the standard Syriac version from the early fifth century, contains the New Testament without 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation. George Kiraz notes that readings from these books are still not used in the Syriac churches' worship.¹¹ Agreement at the edges came gradually, which is impossible to square with a universal decree in 325.

The Old Testament and the Septuagint

The Old Testament history is just as revealing, and it matters especially for Orthodox readers. The Church received the Scriptures of Israel mainly in their Greek form, the Septuagint, which the apostles quoted constantly (see Which Bible Did Paul Quote?). Cyril tells his catechumens to read "the twenty-two books of the Old Testament, these that have been translated by the Seventy-two Interpreters," and he counts Baruch, Lamentations and the Epistle of Jeremiah with Jeremiah.⁷ Athanasius also gives twenty-two books (including Baruch, but not Esther) and then the further books "to be read." The African list counts Tobit, Judith and Maccabees among the canonical books. The Apostolic Canons, an early collection of church rules attributed to the apostles, include three books of Maccabees, recommend Sirach for the young, and add to the New Testament two letters of Clement and the Apostolic Constitutions.¹²

In 692 the Council in Trullo, which called itself "holy and ecumenical" and whose canons remain foundational in Orthodox church law, did something revealing. Its second canon confirmed the eighty-five Apostolic Canons (while rejecting the Constitutions as corrupted), the canons of Laodicea, Carthage and other councils, and the canonical letters of Athanasius and other Fathers.¹³ Several of these texts contain lists of biblical books (the Apostolic Canons, Carthage, Athanasius, and a list attached to Laodicea), and the lists do not entirely agree. The Eastern Church endorsed a family of ancient witnesses rather than issuing a new table of contents. When the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, a local council under Patriarch Dositheus, answered a Calvinist-leaning confession attributed to Cyril Lucaris, it defended Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, the additions to Daniel, Maccabees and Sirach: "For we judge these also to be with the other genuine Books of Divine Scripture genuine parts of Scripture."¹⁴ The Orthodox Church in America sums up the present teaching: these books, the "longer canon," "are accepted by Orthodox Christianity as canonical scripture."¹⁵

None of this was settled at Nicaea, and the fuller Old Testament is not a later addition to some original Protestant Bible. Both the shorter and the longer lists are ancient, and the Church went on reading the Septuagint books. (The site's article Did Martin Luther Remove Books From the Bible? takes up the sixteenth-century side of this story.)

Three things that do connect Nicaea and Constantine with books

Constantine's fifty Bibles

Eusebius preserves a letter in which Constantine asks him to order "fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church," for the new churches in "the city which is called by my name."¹⁶ The letter is undated, but it comes after the founding of Constantinople, some years after the council. It was a commission to produce books, and the choice of contents was left to Eusebius, who had already written about which books the churches accepted. The letter contains no list, no reference to Nicaea, and no instruction to suppress anything.¹⁷ Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus have sometimes been linked with this order; Roukema and Heikens report that the idea that Sinaiticus was one of the fifty is no longer maintained.

Constantine's edict against heretics

Eusebius also records an edict, probably from soon after the council, addressed to "Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians," and Montanists, forbidding their assemblies and confiscating their meeting places. He adds that "the law directed that search should be made for their books."¹⁸ This is real coercion, and Christians need not defend it. But it was a police measure against dissenting groups, some of which (the Novatians, for example) were divided from the Church over discipline rather than over which books to read. It was not a council deciding which books were inspired, and the Gnostic books it may have touched were already outside every list we have.

Jerome on Judith

Around 400, Jerome began his preface to his Latin translation of Judith by noting the book's lower standing among the Jews, and continued: "But since the Nicene Council is considered to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request."¹⁹ The remark is genuine, and it is the only known ancient statement linking Nicaea to the status of a particular book. The Latin legitur can mean "is read" or "is considered," which suggests Jerome is reporting something he had heard or read rather than citing a decree. No Nicene canon mentions Judith, and Athanasius, who was at the council, placed Judith among the books to be read, not within his canon. Roukema and Heikens suggest that Jerome may simply reflect an appeal to Judith during the debates.²⁰ On the prefaces more broadly, see Edmon Gallagher's study of why Jerome translated Tobit and Judith.²¹ {{debated: Whether Jerome's remark reflects some lost record of Nicaea using or approving Judith cannot be decided from the surviving evidence.}} What it cannot do is show that Nicaea drew up a canon of either Testament.

Where the legend came from

The story of a miraculous sorting first appears in the Synodicon Vetus, a short Greek summary of church councils written in the late ninth century, more than five hundred years after Nicaea. In its section on Nicaea it says the council placed the canonical and apocryphal books by the holy altar and prayed that the inspired books would be found on top and the spurious ones below, which is what happened. Its modern editors, John Duffy and John Parker, note that the story is found only in this text, so "it is not possible to know if it belongs to an older tradition."²²

Roukema and Heikens trace how the story reached the modern West. Cardinal Caesar Baronius, in 1598, argued from Jerome's remark that Nicaea must have issued a lost canon of Scripture. In 1601 the Lutheran scholar Johannes Pappus published the Synodicon under the title Libellus Synodicus. Later collections of council documents reprinted it, Dumarsais quoted it in 1745, and later editions of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary retold it with heavy irony. Helena Blavatsky used it in Isis Unveiled (1877), and esoteric writers have repeated versions of it since.²³ Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003) then gave the theme its widest audience, with a character declaring that "The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great."²⁴ Brown inherited a legend with a long paper trail and no fourth-century source. Our article Did Constantine Invent Christianity or Choose the Bible? looks at the wider claims about Constantine.

The companion claim, that Nicaea voted Jesus into divinity, fares no better. Long before Constantine, Ignatius of Antioch could call Christ "God existing in flesh."²⁵ The dispute with Arius was whether the Son is eternal God or the highest creature, and Nicaea defended an existing faith against a new interpretation (see Christ's Divinity Did Not Begin at Nicaea).

The Orthodox position

For the Orthodox Church, the question "who decided the canon?" is slightly misplaced. Scripture is neither a book standing outside the Church and later certified by it nor something the Church invented. It is the written heart of the Tradition the Church received from the apostles, recognized by the Church because the Church already lived by it: it was read at the Eucharist, prayed in the services, expounded by the Fathers and confessed in the rule of faith. The councils that spoke about the canon confirmed this reading, and their own lists were in turn received by the whole Church. That is the same pattern by which the Church recognized its councils, which our article How Does the Orthodox Church Know Which Councils Are Ecumenical? describes.

It helps to separate three levels. As a matter of dogma, Orthodox Christians confess that the Scriptures of both Testaments are inspired and belong to the Church's Tradition. As a matter of the Church's settled common practice, the twenty-seven-book New Testament and the Septuagint Old Testament, with its fuller set of books, are the Bible of the Orthodox Church. At the level of detail, no council of the whole Orthodox Church has issued a book-by-book list (the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 was a local council), the ancient lists Trullo endorsed do not all agree, and printed Orthodox Bibles differ slightly at the margins, for example in whether 4 Maccabees appears and where.²⁶ The Church has lived with that small variation for centuries, which itself suggests the canon was received rather than legislated. For a fuller account of the process, see How Was the Biblical Canon Actually Formed?

Objections and responses

"Even if Nicaea did not vote, Constantine's power shaped the canon."

Some scholars, such as David Dungan, have argued that Constantine had a large influence on the New Testament's final form. Roukema and Heikens grant that the emperor's drive for church unity "may indirectly have accelerated the already existing process," but conclude that "there is no reason to maintain that the Nicene Council decided which early Christian books were to be considered canonical."²⁷ That is the fair verdict: bishops loyal to Nicaea still disagreed about Revelation and the shorter letters for generations, and the Syriac churches kept a shorter New Testament.

A Protestant concern: "If the Church recognized the canon, isn't the Church set above Scripture?"

Reformed Christians state their view clearly. The Westminster Confession teaches that the authority of Scripture "dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God," while allowing that the Church's testimony may move believers to esteem it; it also holds that the books "commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture."²⁸ Pappus himself, who published the altar legend, insisted that books "are not canonical because the Councils decide so, but the Councils decided so because the books contain the infallible truth."²⁹ Orthodox Christians agree that the Church did not give Scripture its authority. The Church recognized an authority that came from God. Where Orthodoxy differs is in denying that recognition can happen apart from the Church: the same community that received the Gospels also received the Septuagint books, and Dositheus made exactly this point in 1672.

A Catholic concern: "Without a dogmatic definition, isn't the Orthodox canon left open?"

The Catholic Church teaches that "It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books," and lists forty-six Old Testament and twenty-seven New Testament books.³⁰ Orthodox and Catholics largely agree on the principle. The Orthodox reply is that a received tradition, confirmed by Trullo's endorsement of the ancient lists and by continuous liturgical use, is not the same as an open question, even if the edges have never been fixed by a single decree.

"The lost Gospels were equal rivals."

The Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary and Judas are worth studying, but the fourth-century witnesses treat them as outside Scripture: Eusebius calls such books "fictions of heretics," and Cyril warns against Thomas. Nor did they need a council to exclude them, since the Church had not been reading them in its worship.

What we can say confidently

• The surviving creed, canons and synodal letter of Nicaea contain no list of biblical books, and no fourth-century writer says the council made one.
• The four Gospels, Acts and Paul's letters were read as Scripture long before 325, as Irenaeus and Eusebius show.
• Nicene bishops after 325 gave different lists: Cyril omitted Revelation; Athanasius in 367 gave the first surviving list of exactly the twenty-seven New Testament books.
• Old Testament lists varied more; the longer, Septuagint-based canon is ancient, and the Orthodox Church receives it today.
• Constantine paid for fifty copies of the Scriptures and ordered a search for heretics' books, but neither act was a decision about which books were inspired.
• The altar-sorting story first appears in the ninth-century Synodicon Vetus and reached modern readers through early modern editors, Voltaire, Blavatsky and popular fiction.

What remains disputed

• What lies behind Jerome's remark about Nicaea and Judith.
• How much Constantine's patronage sped up agreement on the canon's edges.
• The exact date and contents of Constantine's fifty copies; none is known to survive.
• How the small differences between ancient lists, and between printed Orthodox Bibles today, should be weighed, since no pan-Orthodox council has issued a book-by-book list.
• Whether the Synodicon Vetus drew on an older (now lost) story or created its own.

Conclusion

The legend of Nicaea choosing the Bible is attractive because it is simple, but the real history is more humane. The apostles' writings were copied by hand, carried across the Mediterranean, read aloud at the Eucharist, quoted by bishops, guarded through persecution and argued over at the edges, and only after centuries did councils write down lists that confirmed what the churches already read. Constantine enters the story late, as a patron, not as an editor.

Orthodox Christians do not need to defend bad history to trust their Scriptures. The canon came to us the way the faith itself came: handed down, prayed, tested and received by the whole Church. The bishops who confessed the Son "of one substance with the Father" at Nicaea had long been reading the Gospels that taught them to say so. The books were kept because they bear witness to Christ, the Word made flesh, and the Church still opens them in the Liturgy to hear Him.

Notes

1. The Ecthesis (creed) of Nicaea, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm).
2. Nicaea, canons 1, 4, 5, 8, 11-14, 15-16, 17, 19 and 20, NPNF2 vol. 14 (same page). Canon 17 forbids clergy to "receive usury" at all, not only at excessive rates.
3. Riemer Roukema and Christoph B. Heikens, "The First Nicene Council and the New Testament Canon," International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 86 (2025): 220-21, citing Athanasius, On the Decrees of the Nicene Synod 18.
4. Synodal Letter of the Council of Nicaea, NPNF2 vol. 14 (New Advent 3801).
5. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8, ANF vol. 1 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103311.htm).
6. Eusebius, Church History 3.25.1-7, trans. A. C. McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm). On the dating, Roukema and Heikens, 222-23.
7. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 4.33-36, trans. E. H. Gifford, NPNF2 vol. 7 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310104.htm); c. 350 per Roukema and Heikens, 224.
8. Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.3-7, trans. R. Payne-Smith, NPNF2 vol. 4 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm).
9. David Brakke, "A New Fragment of Athanasius's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon," Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010): 47-66 (abstract consulted). On the letter's audience and purpose, Roukema and Heikens, 225.
10. Code of Canons of the African Church (Carthage, 419), canon 24 (Greek 27), with the introductory note listing Hippo 393 and Carthage 397, NPNF2 vol. 14 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3816.htm).
11. George Kiraz, "The Peshitto," Syriac Orthodox Resources (https://syriacorthodoxresources.org/Bible/Peshitto.html).
12. Apostolic Canons, canon 85, NPNF2 vol. 14 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm). Some texts also include Judith.
13. Council in Trullo, canon 2 (and canon 3, where it calls itself "this holy and ecumenical council"), NPNF2 vol. 14 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm). Laodicea's canon 60, which gives a list, is marked by the NPNF editor as "of most questionable genuineness" (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm).
14. Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672), Question 3, trans. J. N. W. B. Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (1899), chapter VI, as reproduced at http://catholicity.elcore.net/ConfessionOfDositheus.html and https://www.bombaxo.com/on-the-biblical-canon/.
15. Orthodox Church in America, "Canon of Scripture," Questions and Answers (https://www.oca.org/questions/scripture/canon-of-scripture).
16. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.36, trans. E. C. Richardson, NPNF2 vol. 1 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25024.htm).
17. Roukema and Heikens, 221-24.
18. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.64-66 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/25023.htm); Roukema and Heikens, 220-21, date the edict to late 325.
19. Jerome, Preface to Judith, trans. Andrew S. Jacobs (public domain), with the Latin of PL 29:37-39 (https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_preface_judith.htm). Kevin P. Edgecomb's translation renders the phrase "is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted" (https://tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_preface_judith_e.htm).
20. Roukema and Heikens, 221.
21. Edmon L. Gallagher, "Why Did Jerome Translate Tobit and Judith?" Harvard Theological Review 108 (2015): 356-75.
22. The Synodicon Vetus, sec. 35, ed. and trans. John Duffy and John Parker (Dumbarton Oaks, 1979), 28-29, as quoted and discussed in Roukema and Heikens, 226 and 228.
23. Roukema and Heikens, 227-29. They note that the story is not in the first (1764) edition of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique and quote a 1789 edition.
24. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (2003), as quoted in Roukema and Heikens, 219.
25. Ignatius, To the Ephesians 7, ANF vol. 1 (New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0104.htm).
26. On the 1672 synod as a local council, see the introduction to the Dositheus excerpt at https://www.bombaxo.com/on-the-biblical-canon/; on the placement of 4 Maccabees and the lack of a pan-Orthodox list, OrthodoxWiki, "Old Testament Canon" (https://orthodoxwiki.org/Old_Testament_Canon), a reference source that should be read with caution.
27. Roukema and Heikens, 224 (on Dungan) and 229.
28. Westminster Confession of Faith 1.3-5 (CCEL: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/anonymous/westminster3.i.i.html).
29. Johannes Pappus, Disputatio theologica prior, as translated in Roukema and Heikens, 228 and n. 66.
30. Catechism of the Catholic Church 120 (https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PR.HTM).

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Council of Nicaea: Creed, Canons and Synodal Letter; the Apostolic Canons; the Code of Canons of the African Church (419); the Council in Trullo (692). Trans. Henry Percival. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1900.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. Trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert. NPNF2 vol. 1. 1890.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Life of Constantine. Trans. Ernest Cushing Richardson. NPNF2 vol. 1. 1890.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885.
• Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Ephesians. Trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885.
• Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures. Trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford. NPNF2 vol. 7. 1894.
• Athanasius of Alexandria. Festal Letter 39. Trans. R. Payne-Smith. NPNF2 vol. 4. 1892.
• Jerome. Preface to the Book of Judith. Trans. Andrew S. Jacobs. Latin text PL 29:37-39. https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_preface_judith.htm
• Duffy, John, and John Parker, eds. and trans. The Synodicon Vetus: Text, Translation, and Notes. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 15. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1979.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Dositheus of Jerusalem. Confession (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672). In J. N. W. B. Robertson, trans., The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem. 1899.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Canon of Scripture." Questions and Answers. https://www.oca.org/questions/scripture/canon-of-scripture
• OrthodoxWiki. "Old Testament Canon." https://orthodoxwiki.org/Old_Testament_Canon

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Roukema, Riemer, and Christoph B. Heikens. "The First Nicene Council and the New Testament Canon: In Search of the Origin of an Invented Tradition and Its Consequences for the Church's Spirituality." International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 86, nos. 2-4 (2025): 218-237. doi:10.1080/21692327.2025.2564797.
• Brakke, David. "A New Fragment of Athanasius's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon." Harvard Theological Review 103, no. 1 (2010): 47-66.
• Gallagher, Edmon L. "Why Did Jerome Translate Tobit and Judith?" Harvard Theological Review 108, no. 3 (2015): 356-375.
• Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Kiraz, George. "The Peshitto." Syriac Orthodox Resources. https://syriacorthodoxresources.org/Bible/Peshitto.html

Sources from the traditions discussed (Catholic, Protestant and popular)

• Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 120. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PR.HTM
• Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/anonymous/westminster3.i.i.html
• Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. First published 2003; quoted from the London: Bantam Press, 2004 edition as cited by Roukema and Heikens.