14 January 2026

Assembling the New Testament in Ancient Rome



An autistic fever came over me while reading Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament (Oxford) so I created this table (click on the image to enlarge). It only includes canonical lists for which I was able to find reliable references. I nearly included books cited by Justin Martyr (mid 2nd century) but the lists I was able to find were slightly too ambiguous. For reference, they included the Gospels (possibly all four, but possibly not), Acts, Letters by Paul (including Hebrews) and I Peter. An honourable mention of the following early books should be made, despite them quite clearly not being canonical: