Athanasius was probably the first
to use the term canon (κανών) in reference to a closed body of sacred
literature, and he also appears to be the first to list the twenty-seven books
of our current NT canon, though in a different order (the Catholic Epistles
follow Acts and precede Paul). As he indicated in the closing comments, one
should not conclude from the use of the verb κανονιζομένων (“canonized” or
“listed”) in Athanasius’s letter that all current and subsequent church leaders
agreed fully with his catalogue of sacred texts. He unhesitatingly accepted
the book of Revelation as a part of his biblical canon, but several other churches
in the East did not agree with him. Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory of
Nazianzus, for example, left it out, and even today, as we saw above, the Greek
Orthodox lectionary does not include readings from Revelation. While the
canon set forth by Athanasius ultimately prevailed in the majority of the
churches in succeeding centuries – it was adopted with the help of Augustine at
the church councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 416) – there is no
evidence, however, that Athanasius’ letter had a determining impact on all
of the churches of his day whether in the east or even in his own region of
Egypt, but it is likely that his list was reflective of the majority of
churches with which he was acquainted in his generation. Certainly the list
was not something that he himself created, but it reflected the books that
most, not all, of the Christians acknowledged as Scripture. The multiple
manuscript discoveries in Egypt from this time and later periods do not support
the pervasive influence of Athanasius’ list even in Egypt, but as in most
cases, there was considerable overlap. Not until almost seven hundred years
later was the book of Revelation universally accepted into the NT canon of most
churches, though many churches appear to have simply ignored it if we consider
the content of the surviving manuscripts. We saw above the considerable
difference in the number of manuscripts containing the Gospels, Acts, Paul, and
the Catholic Epistles compared to Revelation. (Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the
Biblical Canon, 2 vols. [London: T&T Clark, 2017], 2:306-7, emphasis in
bold added)
