Timeline of development of the Bible

Septuagint (LXX)
The translation of the Old Testament books from Hebrew to Greek known as Septuagint (LXX) by the 70 Jewish scholars for the Jews in Diaspora in Alexandria. This is the Old Testament version used by the apostles and early Christians.

Clement I
Some letters of Paul were known to Clement I, bishop of Rome, together with some form of the 'words of Jesus'; but while Clement valued these highly, he did not regard them as Scripture ('graphe'), a term he reserved for the Septuagint

Council of Jamnia
The Council of Jamnia, held in Yavneh, was a Jewish council at which the canon of the Hebrew Bible had been finalized. It excluded the seven books of the Old Testament which are part of its Greek version, the Septuagint. These books are regarded by the Church as inspired and are known as the deuterocanonical.

Marcion of Sinope
Marcion of Sinope, a bishop of Asia Minor who went to Rome and was later excommunicated for his views, was the first of record to propose a definitive, exclusive, unique canon of Christian scriptures. He taught that there were two Gods: Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke’s gospel (he deleted references to Jesus’ Jewishness). His gospel is called the Gospel of the Lord.

New Testament Bible
Final writings of the New Testament books and the circulation of other apocryphal documents

Tatian the Assyrian
Tatian the Assyrian, an early Christian theologian, composed a single harmonized Gospel by weaving the contents of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together along with events present in none of these texts. The narrative mainly follows the chronology of John. This is called the Diatessaron [(Harmony) Through Four] and it became the official Gospel text of the Syriac church, centered in Edessa. He rejected Pauls Letters and Acts of the Apostles.

Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist, mentioned the 'memoirs of the apostles', which Christians called gospels and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament. In his works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus and 1 Timothy.

Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum
Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, in his Adversus Haereses, denounced various early Christian groups that used only one gospel, such as Marcionism which used only Marcion’s version of Luke, or the Ebionites which seem to have used an Aramaic version of Matthew, as well as groups that used more than four gospels, such as the Valentinians (A.H. 1.11). Irenaeus declared that there can’t be either more or fewer than four, presenting as logic the analogy of the four corners of the earth and the four winds (3.11.8).

Origen Adamantius
Origen Adamantius, early Christian theologian, accepted 22 canonical books of the Hebrews plus Maccabees plus the four Gospels but Paul did not so much as write to all the churches that he taught; and even to those to which he wrote he sent but a few lines.

Muratorian Canon
The periphery of the canon was not yet determined as of this time. According to one list, the Muratorian Canon (named after Fr. Ludovico Antonio Muratori who discovered it at the Ambrosian Library in Milan in the 18th century), which was compiled at Rome, the New Testament was comprised of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter. Each “city-church” (region) still has its own Canon, which is a list of books approved for reading at Mass (Liturgy).

Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens (Clement of Alexandria), an early Christian theologian, made use of an open canon. In addition to books that did not make it into the final 27-book New Testament but which had local canonicity (Barnabas, Didache, I Clement, Revelation of Peter, the Shepherd, the Gospel according to the Hebrews), he also used the Gospel of the Egyptians, Preaching of Peter, Traditions of Matthias, Sibylline Oracles, and the Oral Gospel. He did, however, prefer the four church gospels to all others, although he supplemented them freely with apocryphal gospels. He was the first to treat non-Pauline letters of the apostles (other than II Peter) as scripture-he accepted I Peter, I and II John, and Jude as scripture.

The Alogi
The Alogi, an early Christian group, rejected the Gospel of John (and possibly also Revelation and the Epistles of John) as either not apostolic or as written by the Gnostic Cerinthus or as not compatible with the Synoptic Gospels.

The Old Syriac
The Old Syriac was a translation of the New Testament documents from the Greek into Syriac. In the Coptic Versions, Coptic was spoken in four dialects in Egypt and the materials were translated into each of these four dialects.

Codex Claromontanus canon
The making of what is currently known Codex Claromontanus canon (named after the town of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis in France from where it was procured by the Calvinist scholar Theodore Bezza in the late 16th century), a page found inserted into a copy of the Epistles of Paul and Hebrews, has the Old Testament, plus Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, 1–2,4 Maccabees, and the New Testament, plus 3rd Corinthians, Acts of Paul, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and Hermas, but missing Philippians, 1–2 Thessalonians, and Hebrews.

Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, recorded his own New Testament canon which includes the holy quaternion of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of Paul, the epistle of John, the epistle of Peter, the Apocalypse of John, the epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and the second and third epistles of John.

Emperor Constantine I
Roman Emperor Constantine I commissioned Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, to deliver fifty compiled Scriptures for the Church of Constantinople. Athanasius (Apostolic Constitution 4) recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 AD preparing the Canon for Constans. Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are among of these ancient compilations together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus.

Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem
Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, included in his Catechetical Lectures (4.36) the Gospels (4), Acts, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, and Paul’s epistles (14), but listed the Gospel of Thomas as pseudepigrapha.

Cheltenham/Mommsen Canon
The making of the so-called Cheltenham/Mommsen Canon (named after German classical scholar Theodor Mommsen who discovered it in 1886 from a 10th-century manuscript belonging to the library of Thomas Phillips at Cheltenham, England), which contains the 24-book Old Testament and 24-book New Testament that provides syllable and line counts but omits Hebrews, Jude and James, and questions the epistles of John and Peter.

Synod of Laodicea
The Synod of Laodicea was one of the first synods that set out to judge which books were to be read aloud in churches. It canonized 22-book Old Testament and 26-book New Testament (excludes Revelation).

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria
In his Festal letter, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books as what would become the 27-book New Testament canon, and he used the word 'canonized' (kanonizomena) in regards to them. He also listed a 22-book Old Testament and 7 books not in the canon but to be read: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas.

Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis
Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, listed the following canon in his Panarion 76.5: Gospels (4), Paul’s epistles (13), Acts, James, Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, Revelation, Wisdom, Sirach.

Apostolic Constitutions
The redactor of the Apostolic Constitutions attributed a canon to the Twelve Apostles themselves as the 85th of his list of such apostolic decrees: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the fourteen Epistles of Paul; two Epistles of Peter; three of John; one of James; one of Jude; two Epistles of Clement; and the Acts of the Apostles.

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (Jerome)
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (Jerome), a Roman presbyter, was commissioned by Damasus I, bishop of Rome, to revise the Vetus Latina (Old Latin) collection of Biblical texts in Latin then in use by the Church. Once published, it was widely adopted and eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina and, by the 13th century, was known as the 'versio vulgata' (the version commonly-used) or, more simply, in Latin as vulgata or in Greek as ???????? ('Vulgate').

Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop of Constantinople, produced a canon in verse which agreed with that of his contemporary Athanasius, other than placing the 'Catholic Epistles' after the Pauline Epistles and omitting Revelation. This list was ratified by the Synod of Trullo of 692 AD.

John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, was the first (in his Homilies on Matthew) to use the Greek phrase 'ta biblia' (the books) to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.

Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium
Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, in his poem Iambics for Seleucus, nephew of St. Olympias, discussed debate over the canonical inclusion of a number of books, and almost certainly rejects the later Epistles of Peter and John, Jude, and Revelation.

Innocent I, bishop of Rome
Innocent I, bishop of Rome, in ratification of the canon defined by the Synod of Carthage, sent the list of the sacred books to Exsuperius, Gallic bishop of Toulouse, which was identical with that of the Ecumenical Council of Trent.

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, Roman statesman and writer, in his Institutiones Divinarum et Saecularium Litterarum, omitted 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude and Hebrews.

Innocent III, bishop of Rome
Innocent III, bishop of Rome, banned unauthorized versions of the Bible as a reaction to the Cathar and Waldensian heresies. The synods of Toulouse and Tarragona (in 1234 AD) outlawed possession of such renderings. But there is evidence of some vernacular translations still being permitted while others were being scrutinized.

Archbishop Langton
Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and Hugo Cardinal de Sancto-Caro, dominican titular bishop of Santa Sabina, developed different schemas for systematic division of the Bible. It was the system of Archbishop Langton on which the modern chapter divisions are based.

John Wycliffe - First Bible in English
The first English translation of the Bible was by John Wycliffe, the founder of the anti-Catholic group named Lollardy. He translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. This was a translation from a translation and not a translation from the original Hebrew and Greek. Wycliffe was forced to translate from the Latin Vulgate because he did not know Hebrew or Greek.

Mordacai Nathan
The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by a French Jewish philosopher and controversialist by the name of Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus (Mordacai Nathan).

Johannes Gensfleisch - Bible printing
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, a German publisher and inventor of a movable type printing, produced the first printed Bible in Latin. Printing revolutionized the way books were made. From now on books could be published in great numbers and at a lower cost.

Santi Pagnini
The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was an Italian Dominican biblical scholar Santi Pagnini, but his system was never widely adopted.

Erasmus - Textus Receptus
The Greek New Testament was printed for the first time by Erasmus. He based his Greek New Testament from only five Greek manuscripts, the oldest of which dated only as far back as the twelfth century. With minor revisions, Erasmus' Greek New Testament came to be known as the Textus Receptus or the received texts.

Polyglot Bible
Polyglot Bible, in which group of editors was led by Diego López de Zúñiga and funded by Jiménez Cardinal de Cisneros, was published. The Old Testament was in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin and the New Testament in Latin and Greek. Erasmus used the Polyglot to revise later editions of his New Testament. Tyndale made use of the Polyglot in his translation on the Old Testament into English which he did not complete because he died in 1534 AD.

Martin Luther
In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Martin Luther, a former Catholic monk and priest who became the primary figure of the Protestant Reformation, removed four New Testament books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix treating them as less than canonical as well as the seven Old Testament books (Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch plus the additional texts in Esther and Daniel) labelling them as apocryphal.

Robert Estienne
Robert Estienne, a French printer and classical scholar, created an alternate numbering in his edition of the Greek New Testament which was also used in his 1553 publication of the Bible in French. Estienne's system of division was widely adopted, and it is this system which is found in almost all modern Bibles.

Sixtus of Siena
Sixtus of Siena, a dominican theologian, coined the term 'deuterocanonical' to describe the seven Old Testament books that had not been accepted as canonical by the Protestants but which appeared in the Septuagint; and defined for the Roman Catholics of the terms 'protocanonical' and the ancient term 'apocryphal' in his work Bibliotheca Sancta ex Præcipuis Catholicæ Ecclesiæ Auctoribus Collecta (Venice 1566).