The DaVinci Myth vs. The Gospel Truth - Online Christian Library

THE GOSPEL TRUTH
canon at work. This included the four Gospels.
Garlow and Jones say this of the four canonical
Gospels:
A Greek manuscript known as P45 and dated
around A.D. 200, has all four Gospels together.
The Magdelen College Greek Fragments of
Matthew’s Gospel is an early book that contains
only the four biblical Gospels. One scholar
argues that this collection comes from the first
half of the second century. Another, basing his
arguments on ancient writing forms, dates it as
early as the first century. Whatever the case,
some solid recent scholarship pushes the four
Gospels much further back than what many
had previously believed. 112
The first complete canonical list of the 27 books of
the New Testament appeared in 367 A.D. in the Festal letter
of Athanasius of Alexandria. At that time, there was
no correct order for the arrangement of the New
Testament books. The order we have today was borrowed
from the Latin Vulgate, the official publication of the
Roman Catholic Church.
The late Dr. F. F. Bruce, a first-rate New Testament
scholar and author of the book, The New Testament
Documents: Are They Reliable?, underscored the point that
the canon was more discovered to be divine than merely
decreed as such:
One thing must be emphatically stated. The
New Testament books did not become
authoritative for the Church because they were
103