Although the letters of Paul were written to special groups of Christians they were welcomed and read by churches everywhere. Paul’s letters and the Gospels soon were deemed worthy of a place in a new collection of sacred writings. With them were other documents that received the ultimate approval of the Christian people including the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke to explain the beginnings of the church; a number of brief letters from key Christian leaders; the anonymous letter to the Hebrews; and the Apocalypse written by the Apostle John. Writings like Acts and the letters to Timothy and Titus received immediate acceptance, but less known documents such as the general epistles were slower to receive recognition. Some of them were esteemed in the East and others in the West, as shown by two documentary evidence, one the Syriac Bible of the East, an early version, and the other the Muratorian Fragment, a list discovered in the eighteenth century. In the fourth-century official sanction was given by synods in North Africa.
Impact: The Festal Letter of Athanasius in 367 contains the names of twenty-six books of the New Testament, the same as now. The establishment of the canon set the foundation upon which the Church was built.