# Foundational Terminology

The terms “canon,” “scripture,” and “New Testament” are central to the volume’s argument and warrant clarification before the historical development can be followed precisely. Each has shifted in meaning across that development, and their relationships are addressed in subsequent sections.

## Canon

The English word “canon” derives from the Greek *kanōn*, itself formed on a Semitic root meaning “reed.” The base sense is therefore the straight rod used for measurement or alignment, and from this concrete meaning two distinct figurative senses developed. The first is “norm” or “standard”: a firm criterion against which something can be evaluated.[^1]

In the New Testament, Paul uses *kanōn* only in the first sense. In Galatians 6:16 he pronounces a benediction on those who walk by “this *kanōn*,” meaning the gospel itself as a standard of life. In 2 Corinthians 10:13–16 the term refers to the sphere or norm of his apostolic mission. Neither passage applies *kanōn* to a list of writings. By the late second century, Christian writers were using *kanōn* extensively in such phrases as *ho kanōn tēs alētheias* (*regula veritatis*, “rule of truth”) and *ho kanōn tēs pisteōs* (*regula fidei*, “rule of faith”), referring to summary formulations of essential Christian belief, not to a list of books. The application of “canon” to a list of Christian writings is not attested before the mid-fourth century. The earliest explicit uses are in Athanasius’s *Decrees of the Council of Nicaea* (composed after 350) and his *Festal Letter* 39 (367 AD), and in the canons of the Council of Laodicea (ca. 360). Theodor Zahn argued that “canon” in this fourth-century application carried the simple sense of “list,” specifically the list of writings publicly read in Christian worship, and did not by itself impute regulative authority; Gamble concludes that “the philological evidence decisively favors the view of Zahn.”[^2] The normative connotation of “canon” emerged secondarily, as the writings on the list came to be perceived as having authoritative status by virtue of their inclusion. The present study, following standard scholarly convention, uses “canon” in the modern list-of-books sense throughout, including when describing the second- and third-century emergence of such lists; this is retrospective terminology rather than the period’s own usage.

## Scripture

Modern canon-formation scholarship distinguishes between two concepts that early Christian writers did not name separately. Following the foundational work of Albert C. Sundberg Jr., this scholarship treats Scripture as any text a community receives as authoritative or inspired, and canon as a formally closed and bounded list from which nothing can be added or taken away. Books can function as Scripture for a community long before any such closed list exists. Harry Gamble formulates the same point sharply: “It is entirely possible to possess scriptures without also having a canon, and this was in fact the situation in the first several centuries of Christianity.”[^3] The distinction clarifies why patristic writers could cite a work as Scripture, complete with “it is written” formulae, while the collection to which that work belonged remained open. The *Epistle of Barnabas* (c. 70–135 AD) cites Matthew 22:14 as Scripture but also cites 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 2 Esdras with identical scriptural introductory formulae.[^4] Cyprian of Carthage, writing in the mid-third century, cites Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, and Bel and the Dragon as Scripture alongside Exodus and Revelation. Citation as Scripture in the patristic era is therefore evidence of a book’s authoritative use in a particular community, not proof of its place in a closed canon that did not yet exist.[^5]

The term “scripture” stands in close but distinct relation to “canon.” Scripture designates writings that a community treats as religiously authoritative, used and valued as such, without regard to their systematic enumeration or limitation. On Gamble’s account, none of the writings of the New Testament was composed as scripture. The earliest Christians used the term “the scriptures” almost exclusively to refer to the Jewish scriptures, and the documents that would later become distinctively Christian scriptures were composed for immediate practical purposes within particular communities. They came to be regarded as scripture only gradually. The decisive factor in this development was the utility of these writings within Christian communities, their effectiveness in sustaining, enriching, renewing, and directing the faith and life of the churches.[^6] Religious authority was therefore not intrinsic to the documents themselves; it was conferred by the community’s recognition that these writings sustained and shaped its life.

## New Testament

The phrase “New Testament” is a Latinized rendering of the Greek *kainē diathēkē*, “new covenant.” As employed in earliest Christianity, “new covenant” did not refer to a collection of writings. It characterized the new order of salvation inaugurated by the Christ event, in correlation and contrast with the “old covenant” of God with Israel. The concept originated in Israelite prophecy (Isa 55:3; 61:8; Jer 31:31; 32:40; Ezek 16:60) and was applied to Christian revelation in connection with the death of Jesus, understood as a sacrificial spilling of blood to seal a covenant relationship. The earliest eucharistic tradition cites Jesus’s words at the last supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor 11:25; cf. Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20). Paul also uses the phrase in 2 Corinthians 3:6, describing the apostles as “ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit.” The absence of any association between the idea of a new covenant and Christian writings persisted for a long time. Even in the late second century, Irenaeus, who made very full use of the covenant concept and had the highest appreciation of Christian scriptures, did not closely correlate the two. For Irenaeus, “covenant” remained a purely theological concept that could not be reduced to documents. The use of covenant terminology as a label for a fixed collection of Christian writings is first clearly attested in Eusebius of Caesarea in the early fourth century. Reporting on the lost *Hypotyposes* of Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius writes that Clement composed “abbreviated narratives of the whole testamentary Scripture,” where “testamentary” translates the Greek *endiathēkos*, an adjective derived from *diathēkē*, “covenant.”[^7] The works Eusebius lists Clement treating include disputed writings such as Jude, the Catholic Epistles, Barnabas, and the Revelation of Peter. Whether this covenant phrasing belongs to Clement himself or whether Eusebius has projected his own fourth-century canonical vocabulary onto Clement’s practice cannot be determined from the surviving evidence.[^8] Either way, the secure terminus for “covenant” as a label for a written collection remains Eusebius.

When Christian writings began circulating in the Latin-speaking West, a single translation choice quietly reshaped how those scriptures would be understood. The Greek word *diathēkē* was translated as the Latin *testamentum*, and the phrase *novum testamentum* became the standard way of naming the Christian writings. Tertullian of Carthage, the first Latin Christian writer to use such terminology, used *testamentum* himself, though he often preferred *instrumentum*.

The choice of *testamentum* was not wrong in a strict dictionary sense. In ordinary Greek, *diathēkē* really did mean a person’s last will and testament, and *testamentum* is the right Latin word for that. The trouble is that the Bible does not use *diathēkē* in its ordinary Greek sense. In the Bible, *diathēkē* translates the Hebrew word *berith*, which means a covenant: a binding relationship between two parties, in this case between God and his people. A different Greek word, *synthēkē*, would have captured that sense more naturally. So when Latin readers began calling the Christian writings the new *testamentum*, the underlying idea quietly shifted. Instead of meaning “the writings that belong to a covenant relationship,” the phrase began to suggest something more like “God’s last will and testament”: a final, legally binding statement of the divine will, on the model of a will left behind by a person who has died.

That shift matters. A covenant is a living relationship; a testament is a sealed legal document. Once the scriptures came to be thought of as a testament rather than as the writings of a covenant, it became natural to treat them as the complete and definitive deposit of God’s revelation, a closed file rather than a witness to an ongoing relationship. This helps explain a long-running difference between Western and Eastern Christianity. The Western tradition, shaped by the Latin word, has tended to treat the Bible as a self-contained legal record of revelation, and has put much more weight on questions about exactly which books are in, whether the text is without error, and where its boundaries lie. The Eastern tradition, which kept the Greek *diathēkē*, has been less preoccupied with those questions. The English phrase “New Testament,” inherited from the Latin, still carries that subtle juridical coloring today.[^9]

[^1]: H. W. Beyer, “κανών,” in [Theological Dictionary of the New Testament](https://archive.org/details/theologicaldicti0000gerh_p5l1/page/n5/mode/2up), ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 3:596–602; Harry Y. Gamble, [The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning](https://archive.org/details/newtestamentcano0000gamb) (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 15.
[^2]: Harry Y. Gamble, [The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning](https://archive.org/details/newtestamentcano0000gamb) (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 17.
[^3]: Gamble, [The New Testament Canon](https://archive.org/details/newtestamentcano0000gamb), 18; see also Albert C. Sundberg Jr., “Towards a Revised History of the New Testament Canon,” [Studia Evangelica](https://archive.org/details/studiaevangelica0004unse/page/n13/mode/2up) 4, ed. F. L. Cross, TU 102 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968), 452–61; James Barr, [The Scope and Authority of the Bible](https://archive.org/details/20200410jamesbarr) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980), 120.
[^4]: [Epistle of Barnabas](https://archive.org/details/antenicenefather07robeuoft) 4.14 (Matt 22:14, introduced with “as it is written”); 16.5 (1 Enoch); 12.1, 11.9 (4 Ezra / 2 Esdras).
[^5]: Craig D. Allert, *A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon* (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), chs. 1–3.
[^6]: Gamble, [The New Testament Canon](https://archive.org/details/newtestamentcano0000gamb), 18.
[^7]: Eusebius, [Hist. eccl.](https://archive.org/details/eusebius-ecclesiastical-history-loeb) 6.14.1, on Clement’s lost *Hypotyposes*. Standard translations diverge: Roberts-Donaldson (ANF) renders the Greek *endiathēkou* as “testamentary,” while McGiffert (NPNF) and Deferrari (CUA) prefer “canonical.”
[^8]: On the broader question of when “new covenant” terminology was first applied to writings, see Gamble, [The New Testament Canon](https://archive.org/details/newtestamentcano0000gamb), 19–20, and W. C. van Unnik, “[Ἑ καινὴ διαθήκη — A Problem in the Early History of the Canon](https://brill.com/display/book/9789004266070/B9789004266070-s007.xml),” reprinted in Sparsa collecta, Part 2. I Peter, Canon, Corpus Hellenisticum, Generalia (Leiden: Brill, 1980). The [Stromata](https://archive.org/details/antenicenefather02robe) passages sometimes cited (1.9.44; 3.11.71; 4.21.134; 5.13.85) use “old and new testament” terminology but in contexts ambiguous between the two covenants as theological realities and as collections of texts.
[^9]: Gamble, [The New Testament Canon](https://archive.org/details/newtestamentcano0000gamb), 21. On Tertullian’s preference for *instrumentum*, see Adolf von Harnack, [The Origin of the New Testament](https://archive.org/details/originofnewtesta0000harn), trans. J. R. Wilkinson (London: Williams & Norgate, 1925), 209–17.