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The selection of the canon of The Bible (which books are included, which suppressed) together with their ordering, is a complex and fascinating history. The present form of the Bible was finally crystalised by Saint Jerome when he translated / collated what would become the definitive Latin text of the Bible (the Vulgate) in consultation with pope Damasus I from around 382 until the end of Jerome's life in 420.

There was general agreement about which texts were acceptable as part of the Christian Bible before Jerome (such works as the Acts of Peter and Thecla were already considered highly dubious) but it was Jerome's effort to produce a single authoritative text which finally established the canon as we know it today (together with fixing the order of the books). To simplify slightly (a full answer would need a book) the protocanonical books (the Bible) were what Jerome and Damasus agreed on; the deuterocanonical books (the Apocrypha) were books Jerome wanted to exclude but under persuasion agreed to accept as an add-on.

Damasus I as pope had the authority to both decide the composition and the sequence of the Bible, and also to delegate the translation into a common language of the source texts (in Hebrew, Greek, and in a few cases Aramaic) to Jerome. No pope since Damasus I has seen fit to revise the Bible (unless you count Pius XII's very limited instruction Divino Afflante Spiritu), so all subsequent translations derive directly (actual borrowed terminology or interpretation) or indirectly (choice of source texts and sequence) from Jerome.

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15y ago

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