{N}7,{/}1{N} BEGINNINGS OF THE BIBLE{/}
Several times in this chapter, Ezra is called a scribe {C}well educated in the Law{/}, which the Jews called the Law of Yahweh. The Persian government referred to it in an official letter as the Law of the God of Heaven, which is the name they gave to Yahweh. Ezra is usually credited as having gathered the first nucleus of books that today compose our Bible. Of these, the books of Moses, called the Law, form the essential part. It is at this time that the Law of God begins to designate a group of books considered as sacred or holy: see 2Mac 2,13 in this respect, which attributes this initiative to Nehemiah.
This development prompts us to ask how books become recognized as sacred. When we buy a Bible we believe it contains inspired books and is in fact the Word of God. But who determines that, what criteria are used, and which books are actually sacred or inspired? This question is fundamental to all Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant. No matter what church we belong to, all of us base our faith on these Scriptures. But how can we agree on this, unless we also recognize a common authority that decided which books are inspired and what credence we can give them? Without such an authority there is no Christian faith, but rather only a certain respect we give to the writings of wise men, holy persons, and prophetic individuals. What then, is the basis for our belief that biblical Scriptures give us the eternal truth, which came from God himself?
{N}THE CANON OF THE SCRIPTURES{/}
The official list of biblical books is called the "Canon," a Greek word meaning the guiding rule. This definitive catalogue specifies which books are sacred or "inspired by God," exclusive of all others. It is definitive because divine revelation culminated in Jesus Christ. Christians believe that the Sacred Scriptures provide the criteria for Christian faith and morals. That assurance rests on the certainty that God entrusted the special assistance of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles of Jesus, and through them to the Church, in order to determine without error the canon of sacred books. Let us investigate this in more detail, including those books called deuterocanonical.
{N}HEBREW CANON{/}
The development of the Israelite canon goes back to the teaching of the prophets and their disciples or of other sages and holy men and women, who proclaimed the will of God to the people. They spoke with authority, although some of them may not have been conscious of being inspired by God or aware that their teachings, preserved on scrolls, were the Word of God. However, prophets based their proclamations on Israel's traditions, convinced that they could interpret God's actions in the contemporary history of the people. How were their teachings preserved and passed on?
Considering Israel's tumultuous history of wars, infidelity, and repentance, we can only say that God's hand subtly guided the slow composition, preservation, editing, and designation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Disciples memorized the teaching of their prophet at a time of universal illiteracy; rulers had them preserved on precious parchment (skin) scrolls and may even have started small libraries, only to see them lost again perhaps in a fire. Sometimes a priest or rabbi pieced together the memories of the community, adding his own comments to update the message for a new generation. Perhaps a pious traveler memorized the contents in stories, poems, and songs, and taught other communities on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 
Many Jews never saw the scrolls until a time of religious revival when authorities collected them, perhaps rejecting parts that were not used in liturgies. As traditions stabilized, they were read and discussed weekly in the synagogues as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Jesus and the early Christians were immersed in this tradition. At the end of the first century, and during the fourth century, Jewish and Christian leaders respectively held councils to codify their Sacred Scriptures in the name of God. Today's believers, as the heirs of those authoritative pronouncements, make an act of faith that the Bible we hold in our hands contains the message that God wants to leave his people in all places and for all times.
How should we modern believers react to this very earthy process-with doubt and disdain or with wonder, gratitude, and confidence? From the time of Abraham, the experience of God's people has been constant: That God walks through the desert with the refugees; that God sings the psalms with David while fleeing from Saul; that God mourns with the exiles in Babylon-and all the time, nobody saw Him! Sometimes his voice is more evident in the leaders, sometimes in the people, at other times in the poets. Our conclusion is that we will never know how one or other book made its way into the Canon or catalogue of the Scriptures, but the fact is that it entered through the life and struggles of the community, both Jewish and Christian, and the people never rejected it. In keeping with the tradition of the Apostles and guided by the Spirit, faith is a decision by which we recognize and commit ourselves both to the People of God and to the Word of God.
{N}AFTER EZRA{/}
Most likely, Ezra already shaped his early collection of Scriptures into two categories: the Law and the Prophets. The Law included the five books attributed to Moses, and the Prophets included both the historical books of prophetic inspiration as well as the writings of the prophets. Only later did the third category, the "Writings," appear, all of which can be generally classified as "Wisdom Literature," although it contains a great variety of literature. The prologue of the Book of Sirach testifies to the creation of a whole wisdom culture that became dominant in Israel a century and a half before Christ.
The fact that Jews reverenced these three literary collections as sacred books did not impede respected authorities from revising and expanding them "in the name of the community", as was the practice for example in the Qumran community. Jewish leaders felt empowered as much to correct the activities of the People of God as to interpret and alter the Scriptures so that they better express the received faith. They added books both to the Hebrew version and to the Greek Septuagint collection, since both were equally accepted and used in Palestine and in the Diaspora. 
However this ambivalent situation could not last forever. At some point authorities were bound to step in to create a single canon of sacred books, even determining whether particular writings were complete or were still in the process of composition. The coming of Jesus and the establishment of the Church would hasten this process.
{N}THE JEWISH CANON OF JAMNIA{/}
The Romans began a military campaign against Jewish independence forces in 66 A.D. Many Christians, feeling cut off from the synagogue, fled Jerusalem in 68 A.D. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D., regional Jewish resistance forces continued until their defeat in 74 A.D. After those four intervening years, the Pharisees were the only surviving party capable of restoring institutional religion without a priesthood, sacrificial worship, or a Temple. Rabbis came together to define the major Jewish link to their ancient past-namely, to their Sacred Scriptures.
Although facts about the codification of the Hebrew Canon are scarce and controverted, it is generally suggested that rabbis of the synagogue school of Jamnia agreed upon what has been called, "The Palestinian Canon," sometime between (80?) 90 and 100 A.D. What criteria they used in their choice is not clear, but incorporation of texts into the liturgy is a strong possibility. Language and place of composition: Hebrew (not Greek) and Palestine (not in the Diaspora) may be others. 
The Jamnia Canon was not proposed as a law, but by way of moral persuasion in a time of crisis, insisting that no doubt existed any longer regarding the content of Hebrew Sacred Scriptures as the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nebiim), and the Writings (Ketubim) -abbreviated TaNaK). Considering the fluidity of so many other essentials of Jewish religion, clarity about Scripture became an imperative. 
{N}THE CANON OF THE CHURCH{/}
Early Christians did not involve themselves in the Jewish Canon controversy, since they had already broken off from the synagogue and because they continued the traditional use of the Greek Septuagint books. Rather, their energy went into rapid expansion throughout the Empire, sometimes amid persecution, at the same time that the Apostles and other official witnesses of the oral traditions were suffering martyrdom and exile. Oral traditions about Jesus' life and teachings were added to a growing number of letters being written by the Apostles or by their disciples in their name. 
Christian communities around the Mediterranean Sea frequently shared their traditions and experiences with one another. The community in Rome shared the Gospel according to Mark, the major letters of Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles. Syria was probably the place of origin of the Gospel according to Matthew and the letter from James. Asia Minor and Greek cities added their own contributions. A phrase from Peter's second letter, written around the year 125, indicates that Paul's letters were already considered to be inspired texts equal to the Old Testament, "the same as the rest of the Scriptures" (2P 3,16).
Not everything was received with the same acceptance. During the second century of the Christian era, some Gospels and Acts written much later than the canonical ones were rejected because they seemed to depart from the apostolic faith or to express fantasies. However a few, such as the Gospel of Thomas, may actually have preserved authentic words of Jesus which have not come to us in any other way. Another reason for rejection would be if a text had not been used in the liturgy, as was the case with the Jewish Canon. Lack of apostolic authorship would have been a further reason. This explains why the so called Catholic Epistles, written mainly by second and third generation Christians, were presented as letters from Peter, Jude, and James.
By the end of the second century there was widespread agreement about the NT canon, although only in the third century did two councils and Pope Damasus (280) officially designate the list as we have it today. Disputes about two books continued into the fourth century. Christians in the East rejected the Letter to the Hebrews because they saw clearly that it was not from Paul, and the church of Rome did not recognize the Book of Revelation as written by John the Apostle.
{N}DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS{/}
At the same time that the NT Canon was being fixed, doubts about the Jamnia Canon were arising. Were the reasons for rejecting the longer Greek Septuagint list valid? Eastern Christians as a whole were inclined towards the shorter Jewish list. The West, with Augustine at the head, favored the longer canon. Ironically, Augustine's efforts prevailed thanks to Jerome's earlier contribution of the Vulgate Old Testament, although he himself opposed the longer list because of his preference for the Hebrew sources.
Jerome, as had Origen before him, wanted the church to base its Scriptures on the original language, so he translated the OT into Latin directly from Hebrew manuscripts, instead of relying on Greek Septuagint texts as was customary from the time of the Apostles. Jerome held books originally in Greek in such disregard that he translated the whole book of Tobit rapidly in a single night (and without a computer). Nevertheless, Jerome included this and other Greek texts in his Latin Vulgate to the frustration of some later critics. In contrast, the Book of Sirach (called Ecclesiasticus in Latin texts--"the Book of the Congregation or of the Church") enjoyed great prestige. Second Maccabees and the Book of Wisdom were also favorite sources for early expressions of faith in the resurrection of the faithful.
Consequently, when bishops gathered at the Council of Trent in the 16th century to consider the proclamation of an irreversible biblical canon with the whole authority of the Church, the majority followed the thousand year Christian tradition established by St. Jerome's Vulgate, without distinguishing whether the books were of Hebrew or Greek origin. The seven Greek books in question are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, plus parts of Esther and Daniel. These are called "Deuterocanonical Books," meaning books of the second list.
{N}PROTESTANT QUESTIONING{/}
The infallible decree of the Council of Trent ended all discussion in the Catholic Church regarding the canonicity of the deuteronical texts, despite the objections of many Catholic experts versed in biblical cultures and languages. The discussion continued, however, in Reformation Churches. They placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of their Bibles as "useful," but not as authoritative literature. Later, Protestants excluded the Deuterocanonicals, only to include them again separately after the II Vatican Council as ecumenical collaboration increased. Protestants refer to these seven books as the "Apocryphal Books."
These last developments mark the end of an arbitrary theological prejudice, which has been supported during four centuries. Then many among them placed, between the times of the Old Testament, during which God could only speak in Hebrew, and the times of the New Testament, when he spoke Greek, a period of three centuries called {N}Intertestamentary{/}, during which the divine inspiration and the progress of the faith were excluded.

