Which Biblical Canon Is Correct?

Across the centuries, different branches of Christianity have preserved different canons of Scripture. The Roman Catholic Bible includes books that Protestants reject. The Eastern Orthodox canon adds still more, and the Ethiopian Church holds one of the largest collections of all — with books almost no other tradition recognizes. In light of these different renderings of the Bible, the first question that naturally arises is: Do these differences matter? And if the answer is yes, then the next question must be: Which biblical canon is correct?

These questions strike at the very heart of biblical authority. The answer to the first question is yes — these differences do matter. The Bible was never meant to be a patchwork of loosely assembled writings. The Bible is the testimony of Jesus Christ — unified from beginning to end, every book intentionally placed, every piece of the puzzle designed to fit exactly where He intended. It is not only a question of which books are divinely inspired and to be included within the canon, but also how they are arranged. If even one book were added or taken away (Rev 22:18-19; Deut. 4:2), or even if any two books were to swap places within the canon, the divine seal upon that testimony would be broken.

The answer to the second question is provided by a divinely designed framework embedded within the Bible itself, which I first discovered back in 2009. I call this framework the Canonical Column.¹ This remarkable mystery bears witness that heaven has stamped its seal of approval on a canon of precisely sixty-six books, arranged in the exact order found in the Protestant Bible.

In this article, I want to walk you through the major biblical canons that Christians have preserved throughout history. We’ll look at exactly how many books each contains, the order in which they appear, and how they differ. I will then show how the Canonical Column reveals which of these canons is the correct one. By the end, you’ll see how this divinely embedded framework within the Bible stands as heaven’s own testimony that the Protestant biblical canon is not merely one rendering of the Bible among many. Rather, it is the proverbial rod of Levi which blooms blossoms and yields almonds (Num. 17) — the unmistakable sign of God’s chosen, divinely sanctioned canon.

The Major Biblical Canons

The Jewish canon (TaNaKh)

Alongside the various Christian canons, it’s important to understand the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures — the TaNaKh — as preserved within Judaism. The word TaNaKh is an acronym formed from its three traditional divisions: the Torah (Law), the Nevi’im (Prophets), and the Ketuvim (Writings).

The TaNaKh contains exactly the same inspired writings that make up the Protestant Old Testament, but the books are divided, arranged, and grouped differently. For example, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles are each counted as single books. The twelve Minor Prophets are combined into one book as well. This brings the total count to 24 instead of 39 (as rendered in the Protestant Old Testament).

The books are also grouped differently in the TaNaKh than in the Protestant OT—following the threefold sectional division of Law-Prophets-Writings in the former—in contrast to the fourfold sectional division of Law-History-Wisdom-Prophets of the latter. This inevitably means that the individual books are sequenced differently in the TaNaKh.

Books of the TaNaKh listed in order

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Samuel (1 & 2 Samuel)
9. Kings (1 & 2 Kings)
10. Isaiah
11. Jeremiah
12. Ezekiel
13. The Twelve (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi)
14. Psalms
15. Proverbs
16. Job
17. Song of Songs
18. Ruth
19. Lamentations
20. Ecclesiastes
21. Esther
22. Daniel
23. Ezra-Nehemiah
24. Chronicles (1 & 2 Chronicles)

The Roman Catholic Canon

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes a larger canon than the Protestant Bible, containing seven additional Old Testament books known as the Deuterocanonical books, along with certain additions to Esther and Daniel that Protestants do not include. This brings the Catholic Old Testament to 46 books, with the same 27 books in the New Testament, for a total of 73 books.

Books of the Roman Catholic canon listed in order

Below is the full list in the traditional order used by Catholics:

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Ruth
9. 1 Samuel
10. 2 Samuel
11. 1 Kings
12. 2 Kings
13. 1 Chronicles
14. 2 Chronicles
15. Ezra
16. Nehemiah
17. Tobit
18. Judith
19. Esther (includes Greek additions)
20. 1 Maccabees
21. 2 Maccabees
22. Job
23. Psalms
24. Proverbs
25. Ecclesiastes
26. Song of Songs
27. Wisdom of Solomon
28. Sirach [Ecclesiasticus]
29. Isaiah
30. Jeremiah
31. Lamentations
32. Baruch
33. Ezekiel
34. Daniel (includes Greek additions)
35. Hosea
36. Joel
37. Amos
38. Obadiah
39. Jonah
40. Micah
41. Nahum
42. Habakkuk
43. Zephaniah
44. Haggai
45. Zechariah
46. Malachi
47. Matthew
48. Mark
49. Luke
50. John
51. Acts
52. Romans
53. 1 Corinthians
54. 2 Corinthians
55. Galatians
56. Ephesians
57. Philippians
58. Colossians
59. 1 Thessalonians
60. 2 Thessalonians
61. 1 Timothy
62. 2 Timothy
63. Titus
64. Philemon
65. Hebrews
66. James
67. 1 Peter
68. 2 Peter
69. 1 John
70. 2 John
71. 3 John
72. Jude
73. Revelation

The Eastern Orthodox Canon

The Eastern Orthodox Church preserves a slightly larger Old Testament than the Roman Catholic Church, with variations depending on the specific branch (Greek, Russian, Georgian, etc.). The Orthodox canon includes additional books such as 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, and Psalm 151, as well as expanded versions of Daniel and Esther. Some traditions also include 4 Maccabees as an appendix.

The New Testament remains the same 27 books found in the Protestant and Catholic Bibles.

Books of the Eastern Orthodox Canon listed in the order in which they appear in the Orthodox Study Bible

Below is a representative example based on the Greek Orthodox canon:

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Ruth
9. 1 Samuel
10. 2 Samuel
11. 1 Kings
12. 2 Kings
13. 1 Chronicles
14. 2 Chronicles
15. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra)
16. Ezra (2 Esdras)
17. Nehemiah
18. Tobit
19. Judith
20. Esther
21. 1 Maccabees
22. 2 Maccabees
23. 3 Maccabees
24. Psalm 151 (additional Psalm)
25. Job
26. Psalms
27. Proverbs
28. Ecclesiastes
29. Song of Songs
30. Wisdom of Solomon
31. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
32. Isaiah
33. Jeremiah
34. Lamentations
35. Epistle of Jeremiah (often counted within Baruch)
36. Baruch
37. Ezekiel
38. Daniel (expanded)
39. Hosea
40. Joel
41. Amos
42. Obadiah
43. Jonah
44. Micah
45. Nahum
46. Habakkuk
47. Zephaniah
48. Haggai
49. Zechariah
50. Malachi
51. Matthew
52. Mark
53. Luke
54. John
55. Acts
56. Romans
57. 1 Corinthians
58. 2 Corinthians
59. Galatians
60. Ephesians
61. Philippians
62. Colossians
63. 1 Thessalonians
64. 2 Thessalonians
65. 1 Timothy
66. 2 Timothy
67. Titus
68. Philemon
69. Hebrews
70. James
71. 1 Peter
72. 2 Peter
73. 1 John
74. 2 John
75. 3 John
76. Jude
77. Revelation

The Ethiopian Canon

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church preserves the largest biblical canon of any Christian tradition. Its canon includes all the books found in the Protestant Bible plus additional writings not accepted by other major churches, such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 1–3 Meqabyan (distinct from the Greek Maccabees), and other unique texts like the Shepherd of Hermas and Didascalia.

The Ethiopian canon is rooted in ancient Alexandrian and Jewish-Christian traditions and remains in use today, especially in Ge‘ez manuscripts.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s canon is primarily derived from the ancient Geʽez Bible tradition. The exact order can vary slightly between printed editions and handwritten manuscripts, but the traditional order (in Fetha Nagast manuscripts and Geʽez Bibles) generally looks like this:

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Ruth
9. 1 Samuel
10. 2 Samuel
11. 1 Kings
12. 2 Kings
13. 1 Chronicles
14. 2 Chronicles
15. Jubilees (sometimes after the Pentateuch)
16. 1 Enoch (sometimes after Jubilees)
17. Ezra
18. Nehemiah (sometimes combined as Ezra–Nehemiah)
19. Tobit
20. Judith
21. Esther
22. 1 Meqabyan (sometimes called Ethiopic Maccabees I)
23. 2 Meqabyan
24. 3 Meqabyan
25. Job
26. Psalms
27. Proverbs
28. Ecclesiastes
29. Song of Songs
30. Wisdom of Solomon
31. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
32. Isaiah
33. Jeremiah
34. Lamentations
35. Baruch (includes Epistle of Jeremiah)
36. Ezekiel
37. Daniel
38. Hosea
39. Amos
40. Micah
41. Joel
42. Obadiah
43. Jonah
44. Nahum
45. Habakkuk
46. Zephaniah
47. Haggai
48. Zechariah
49. Malachi
50. Matthew
51. Mark
52. Luke
53. John
54. Acts
55. Romans
56. 1 Corinthians
57. 2 Corinthians
58. Galatians
59. Ephesians
60. Philippians
61. Colossians
62. 1 Thessalonians
63. 2 Thessalonians
64. 1 Timothy
65. 2 Timothy
66. Titus
67. Philemon
68. Hebrews
69. James
70. 1 Peter
71. 2 Peter
72. 1 John
73. 2 John
74. 3 John
75. Jude
76. Revelation
77. The Synodos
78. The Books of the Covenant
79. The Didascalia
80. The Clementine Octateuch
81. The Shepherd of Hermas

The Protestant Canon

The Protestant biblical canon contains sixty-six books: thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New Testament. This canon stands apart for its simplicity and clarity — containing only the books that have been recognized as divinely inspired since the earliest centuries of the church and consistently affirmed by the Reformation.

Unlike the Roman Catholic and Orthodox canons, the Protestant Bible excludes the Deuterocanonical (or Apocryphal) books and other additions that appeared in the Septuagint and later traditions. It follows the traditional order used by the Western church since the early printed Bibles, an order that has become standard for Protestant believers worldwide.

Books of the Protestant biblical canon listed in the exact order in which they appear

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Ruth
9. 1 Samuel
10. 2 Samuel
11. 1 Kings
12. 2 Kings
13. 1 Chronicles
14. 2 Chronicles
15. Ezra
16. Nehemiah
17. Esther
18. Job
19. Psalms
20. Proverbs
21. Ecclesiastes
22. Song of Solomon
23. Isaiah
24. Jeremiah
25. Lamentations
26. Ezekiel
27. Daniel
28. Hosea
29. Joel
30. Amos
31. Obadiah
32. Jonah
33. Micah
34. Nahum
35. Habakkuk
36. Zephaniah
37. Haggai
38. Zechariah
39. Malachi
40. Matthew
41. Mark
42. Luke
43. John
44. Acts
45. Romans
46. 1 Corinthians
47. 2 Corinthians
48. Galatians
49. Ephesians
50. Philippians
51. Colossians
52. 1 Thessalonians
53. 2 Thessalonians
54. 1 Timothy
55. 2 Timothy
56. Titus
57. Philemon
58. Hebrews
59. James
60. 1 Peter
61. 2 Peter
62. 1 John
63. 2 John
64. 3 John
65. Jude
66. Revelation

How the Canonical Column works

For those of you who haven’t read my previous posts and are unfamiliar with the Canonical Column, I feel compelled to briefly explain how this works. The Canonical Column is a framework embedded within the Bible which is comprised of two miniature “Bibles within the Bible.” Genesis 12–50 (referred to within the framework as “The Circumcision”) and Leviticus (“An Holy Priesthood”) make up one of these miniature Bibles — while the entire book of Isaiah comprises the other.²

Both of these miniature “Bibles within the Bible” consist of exactly sixty-six chapters, divided into two sections: thirty-nine chapters (Genesis 12–50 & Isaiah 1–39) and twenty-seven chapters (Leviticus & Isaiah 40–66) — mirroring the sectional division of the Protestant biblical canon. And the similarities don’t stop there. In both sections, the sixty-six chapters have been divinely designed with the sixty-six books of the biblical canon in mind and have been deliberately embedded with textual allusions and structural echoes of various kinds to their corresponding biblical books.

Thus every book of the canon has two specific witnessing chapters from these two different sections of the Canonical Column assigned to it. The allusions within them confirm the canonicity of each book and its proper placement within the canon. By this dual-witness design, the Canonical Column proves objectively which books belong in the canon, how many there are, and the exact order in which they must appear.

For a more in-depth discussion, I highly recommend reading my full introduction to the Canonical Column, or even the shorter summary version here.

Major Canons summary table

I have created the following table which summarizes the scope of the major canons we have just covered.

Tradition	Total Books	OT Books	NT Books
Protestant	66	39	27
TaNaKh	24	24	—
Roman Catholic	73	46	27
Eastern Orthodox	76-79	~49	27
Ethiopian Orthodox	81	~46–54	~35

Only one Canon fulfills the testimony of the Canonical Column

When you compare the major biblical canons side by side, it becomes clear that each tradition has preserved the Word of God in its own way — yet no two canons are exactly alike in both content and order. For many, this has been taken to mean that the shape of the canon is simply a matter of tradition and human decision. But the Canonical Column testifies otherwise.

Hidden within the structure of the Bible itself is a second witness — a divinely crafted internal measuring line which objectively identifies which canon is the correct one. The Canonical Column bears witness that the true biblical canon contains exactly 66 books, divided into 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament — the very sectional structure preserved in the Protestant Bible alone.

But its testimony goes further still. Through its elaborate, intricate network of witnessing chapters — divinely arranged and sequenced with the sanctioned canon in mind — it identifies each of the sixty-six books individually, revealing the precise order in which they are to be arranged. In doing so, the Canonical Column establishes an unyielding standard: any biblical canon that does not align perfectly with this internal blueprint stands as illegitimate. The Protestant biblical canon alone aligns perfectly with this divine pattern, bearing heaven’s unmistakable stamp of approval.

Just as Eve was taken out of Adam’s side, and Israel was brought out of Egypt, so too the Protestant biblical canon was taken out of the Roman Catholic canon. It was then purified, thoroughly purged of all corruption, and perfectly joined together as one beaten work of pure gold. What lay hidden within a larger, mixed collection was called out in its pure form, with every human addition cast aside.

This hidden framework’s very existence is all the more remarkable when one considers that the chapter divisions which make the Canonical Column possible were devised in the thirteenth century — hundreds of years before the Protestant biblical canon, which the framework testifies of, ever formally existed. It was not until the Apocrypha was removed from the Bible by the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century that the canon revealed by the Canonical Column suddenly came into being, fulfilling its testimony. The Canonical Column reveals that the shape of the Bible was not determined by councils of men, but was foreordained by God long before any human hand arranged it.

None of the other major canons line up with the Canonical Column, because these canons:

• Contain too many (or too few) books,
• Do not feature the 39–27 sectional division testified by the Canonical Column,
• Or arrange even the correct books in the wrong order, assigning them to ordinal positions within the canon that are incongruent with the meticulous arrangement attested by the Canonical Column.

Only the Protestant biblical canon perfectly fulfills the Canonical Column’s witness, as the referencing table provided here demonstrates. The canonicity of all 66 books of the Bible is established by its two witnessing chapters.

Books not witnessed by the Canonical Column

The Canonical Column boldly declares that none of the following books are part of the sacred canon of Scripture:

1. Tobit
2. Judith
3. Wisdom of Solomon
4. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
5. Baruch (including the Epistle of Jeremiah)
6. 1 Maccabees
7. 2 Maccabees
8. 3 Maccabees
9. 1 Meqabyan (distinct from Maccabees)
10. 2 Meqabyan
11. 3 Meqabyan
12. 1 Enoch
13. Jubilees
14. The Synodos
15. The Didascalia
16. The Clementine Octateuch
17. The Shepherd of Hermas
18. 1 Clement
19. The Gospel of Thomas
20. The Gospel of Judas
21. The Apocalypse of Peter
22. The Book of Jasher (modern forgeries or expansions)
23. The Book of Jashar (pseudo works)
24. Any other pseudepigrapha or Gnostic gospels that have circulated in speculation.
    

None of these books is witnessed by the Canonical Column. Not a single chapter within the framework alludes to or testifies of their inclusion. Any so-called ‘canon’ that contains them — whether by addition, rearrangement, or substitution — does not bear heaven’s stamp of approval.

Conclusion: The Protestant Biblical Canon is the correct biblical canon.

God never leaves Himself without witness (Acts 14:17; cf. John 14:29; Matt. 24:25). The Canonical Column stands as an unshakable witness that the Bible’s final shape was not determined by man. It functions as a divinely devised canonical blueprint embedded within the Word itself, declaring that the same God who inspired every word of Scripture also selected the books, preserved them, and arranged them all in the correct order which he had long before foreordained.

The Canonical Column is nothing short of a divinely designed internal measuring line that allows us to determine objectively which biblical canon is the correct one. And the only canon that aligns perfectly with that measuring line — in its number of books, its sectional division, and the precise sequencing of all sixty-six books — is the Protestant biblical canon. No other canon fulfills its witness. In short, if it does not line up with the Canonical Column, then it is not the Word of God.

I invite you to explore the Canonical Column in greater depth and see how it bears witness that the Bible you hold is exactly as heaven intended.

1. When I say discovered, I mean that it was revealed to me by the Holy Spirit. ↩︎
2. Although it is one unified book, the book of Isaiah has long been recognized to consist of two distinct “sections,” differing in style, historical setting, prophetic focus, and so forth. The first thirty-nine chapters comprise the first section, while the latter twenty-seven chapters (40–66) comprise the second. The Protestant Reformer Martin Luther noted these differences so clearly that he divided his commentaries on Isaiah into two separate volumes: one covering what he termed “the First Book of Isaiah” (chapters 1–39), and the other covering “the Second Book of Isaiah” (chapters 40–66). In his honor, I refer to these two branches of the Canonical Column as “First Isaiah” and “Second Isaiah.” ↩︎

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