HARMONY

  We find the first completed list of the 27 Books recorded from a letter in 367 C.E. titled;39th Festal Letter of Athanasius. Athanasius was a defender of orthodox Christian faith in the fourth century, regarded all Apocrypha letters as heresy. There is no doubt when comparing the 27 Books; Athanasius theology is implied to reject heresies in his view. Athanasius was a statesman, theologian, also young man during his attendance in the council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. He later became the Bishop of Alexandria. 

  The canon was not just dreamed up by the Bishop and his choice alone, but it was decades of long hard-fought debates. Marcion Canon was in circulation and the Ebionite Canon had other canons before orthodoxy. Ebionite accepted other authoritative scriptures such as "the Gospel of the Ebionites."
 
  Proto-Orthodox groups did not have a canon like other groups and used whatever gospel they had available to them. Books were used in their groups that are not included in the 27 book canon, but these excluded books are in our oldest complete manuscripts like the Epistle of Barnabas. Many within the proto-orthodox church wanted to include other letters into the canon like; the early Church father Irenaeus "Sheperd of Hermas."

  Jewdisum did not have a canon, other than the Torah and was developing their own canon at this time so therefore the proto-orthodoxy needed a canon of texts to keep themselves separated from the other groups.  There is no doubt the canon was to reject heresy and establish orthodoxy. 

 Marcion of Sinope had established a sealed canon, and it was not until then we see a shift in proto-orthodoxy moving towards a canon of their own, some regard this as an act to reject Marcionism. Athanasius canon rejected any opposing theological points made in other texts and counted them as forged and heretical. Athanasius canon became widely used and accepted throughout time and still used predominantly today.