Let me rephrase that. Latin speaking church and Greek speaking church.
The CHURCH was not homogeneous on what was the canon of Scripture.
According to THE FORMATION OF THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE CANON by Lee McDonald, the only accepted books without question were the four Gospels, Acts, Paul's letters (except Hebrews) 1 Peter, 1 John and were accepted without council decisions.
“It might be said that this collection of twenty NT writings was widely recognized from the ‘grass roots’ of the church, but that later the remaining seven were determined largely by the hierarchy of the church through council decisions. Only these last seven continued to be questioned in the churches after Eusebius......”
Athanasius accepted both Hebrews and Revelation, but Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory of Nazianzus did not accept Revelation as did not several other Eastern Church leaders.
In my personal hand written notes I mention that “ 340 AD, Athanasius convinces Rome to accept Hebrews.” I did not place a page note as I should have.
The author also shows some of the other accepted books in
Ethiopia, the Eastern Churches and how even the Roman Church never achieved unity on what the canon was until Trent.
The only books of our modern NT that still are distrusted by some are Hebrews (A very well written and logical book, one of my favorites) James, 2 Peter, 2&3 John, Jude and Revelation. And even if we allowed the spurious books in, they would STILL prove the Mormons to be without foundation!
Very interesting. Why was Hebrews not trusted? And what about the book on Enoch? Why was that taken out?
thanks for the clarification on the different languages, but same Catholic Church.
the Church did not need to dogmatically declare the canon before Trent, since there was no controversy. only after some reformers questioned some books in the OT, did Trent formally declare once and for all the canon. up until then, the Vulgate and it’s 73 books was the Bible for around 1,200 years.