canon formation
Definition
Canon formation is the historical and theological process by which the community of believers — in the OT the Jewish people, in the NT the early church — reached agreement on which books constitute the authoritative Scripture. The term encompasses both the criteria for canonicity (apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy) and the historical recognition of the closed canon.
In this corpus, canon formation is treated primarily by Bullinger, who uses the numerical structure of the OT canon as an apologetic argument. The other authors presuppose the canon as given; a systematic doctrine of canon is absent from them.
Author Usage Variants
E.W. Bullinger
Bullinger discusses canon formation in Number in Scripture (1921) through the Hebrew counting of OT books. He takes the Hebrew manuscripts as the sole authoritative standard:
“But all these calculations are of no value, because none of them is based on any authority, and all of them are contrary to the authority of the Hebrew manuscripts, which is all we have to guide us. In other words, the number and order of the books of the Bible come to us on the same authority as its facts and doctrines.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, 4th ed., 1921, ch. II, section ‘The Books of the Bible’)
The Hebrew counting yields 24 OT books, and Bullinger reads the number symbolically:
“In the Hebrew manuscripts, Ezra and Nehemiah are always reckoned as one book, with the one name of Ezra. Each of the double books is counted as one (e.g., 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles), and all the Minor Prophets are counted as one book. This makes 24 books in all. This is 8 × 3, both factors stamping it with the seal of Divine perfection.”
(ibid.)
Notably, Bullinger uses gematria as an argument for the canonicity of Hebrews as a Pauline epistle: without Hebrews, Paul’s letters number thirteen; with Hebrews they become 14 (= 2 × 7), which in his system marks “completion.”