The etymology of "Canon", whether anyone likes it or not, is Biblical.
So in the early 1500's, a thing called The Protestant Movement began.
You see, back then, the Orthodox Christians had up to 81 books in their Bible and the Catholics 73.
The Protestant Movement determined that there were only 66 books that originated as written by "The Canaanites". So they developed a word for those books that they determined were not: Non-Canaan Scripture.
Over time, this morphed into Non-Canon. The 7+ books deemed Non-Canon (Which they called Apocrypha and the Orthodoxy called Deuterocanonical).
To wrap all of this up, 7+ books of The Bible were deemed Non-Canon because:
1. They were not written by the same people as the orginal scriptures.
2. They came later.
THAT is where the term Non-Canon comes from.
So whenever I personally speak on what is or isn't canon, I use this etymology to define my criteria for what canonicity is in the first place.
It really makes some otherwise difficult debates quite open-and-shut.
So in the early 1500's, a thing called The Protestant Movement began.
You see, back then, the Orthodox Christians had up to 81 books in their Bible and the Catholics 73.
The Protestant Movement determined that there were only 66 books that originated as written by "The Canaanites". So they developed a word for those books that they determined were not: Non-Canaan Scripture.
Over time, this morphed into Non-Canon. The 7+ books deemed Non-Canon (Which they called Apocrypha and the Orthodoxy called Deuterocanonical).
To wrap all of this up, 7+ books of The Bible were deemed Non-Canon because:
1. They were not written by the same people as the orginal scriptures.
2. They came later.
THAT is where the term Non-Canon comes from.
So whenever I personally speak on what is or isn't canon, I use this etymology to define my criteria for what canonicity is in the first place.
It really makes some otherwise difficult debates quite open-and-shut.
