No, the New Testament Canon Was Not Decided by Constantine I

Many people today, especially many freethinkers and atheists, wrongly believe that the Roman emperor Constantine I (lived 272 – 337 AD) was the one who decided which books would be included in the New Testament. This idea, despite its widespread popularity, is completely wrong.

The truth is that most of the Biblical canon was already decided long before Constantine I was even born. The remaining questions about the Biblical canon that still existed during Constantine I’s lifetime were not resolved until at least several decades after his death. As far as we know, Constantine I himself had no significant involvement whatsoever in the selection of texts to be included in the New Testament.

The misconception

This idea that the New Testament canon was determined by Constantine I has been popularized by the fictional mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code, which was written by the American thriller novelist Dan Brown and published in the United States by Doubleday in 2003. At one point in the novel, the following conversation occurs between the characters Leigh Teabing and Sophie Neveu:

“‘More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.’”

“‘Who chose which gospels to include?’ Sophie asked.”

“‘Aha!’ Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. ‘The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.’”

ABOVE: Image of the front cover of the fictional novel The Da Vinci Code, written by the American novelist Dan Brown

Most people know that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, but this idea that the New Testament canon was settled by the Roman emperor Constantine I, or by members of the First Council of Nicaea under Constantine’s direction, shows up routinely on various websites encouraging freethought. For instance, an article titled “The Bible’s Ungodly Origins” on the website deism.com claims the following:

“…the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), … who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered ‘holy’ and thus ‘the word of God’ and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God.”

“Emperor Constantine, who was Roman Emperor from 306 CE until his death in 337 CE, used what motivates many to action – MONEY! He offered the various Church leaders money to agree upon a single canon that would be used by all Christians as the word of God. The Church leaders gathered together at the Council of Nicaea and voted the “word of God” into existence. (I wish to thank Brian Show for pointing out in his rebuttal to this article that the final version of the Christian Bible was not voted on at the Council of Nicaea, per se. The Church leaders didn’t finish editing the “holy” scriptures until the Council of Trent when the Catholic Church pronounced the Canon closed. However, it seems the real approving editor of the Bible was not God but Constantine!”

Again, all of this is pure fantasy. There are no ancient sources that support this notion that Constantine I or anyone else paid early Christian leaders to come up with a set canon at the First Council of Nicaea or anywhere else. Instead, Christians came up with the canon on their own and which books were included in the canon was mostly decided long before Constantine I was even born.

Also, as I will explain in a moment, there is no reliable record of the New Testament canon having even been discussed at the First Council of Nicaea. The idea that the New Testament canon was determined at the First Council of Nicaea originates from a dubious anecdote recorded in a pseudohistorical source from the late ninth century AD, over five hundred years after the First Council of Nicaea took place.

The Markionite canon

The first recorded attempt at a canon for the New Testament was by the heretic Markion of Sinope (lived c. 85 – c. 160 AD). Markion taught that there is not one God, but two. According to Markion, the God of the Jews, whose deeds are described in the Hebrew Bible, and the God whose deeds were preached by Jesus are actually two totally different deities. Markion taught that the God of the Jews was a weaker, inferior deity who was overly concerned with rules and justice; whereas the God preached about by Jesus was a mightier, superior deity who understood the importance of love, compassion, and mercy.

Markion taught that, of all the apostles, Paul was the only one who truly understood Jesus’s teachings. He claimed that all the other apostles had been misled into thinking that Jesus was preaching about the Jewish God, when he was really preaching about another God entirely. Thus, according to Markion, only the writings of Paul were valid scriptures.

Because Markion believed that Jesus’s God and the God of the Jews were two totally different deities, he believed that Jesus’s God needed His own canon to replace the faulty canon made by the inferior Jewish God. Markion’s canon consisted of an edited version of the Gospel of Luke, which Markion claimed had been written by Paul the Apostle, and ten epistles attributed to the apostle Paul, nine of which are included in the current New Testament. The following are the works that were included in the Markionite canon:

• The Gospel of Markion (an edited version of the Gospel of Luke)
• The Epistle to the Galatians
• The First Epistle to the Corinthians
• The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
• The Epistle to the Romans
• The First Epistle to the Thessalonians
• The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
• The Epistle to the Laodiceans (possibly the same epistle known today as the Epistle to the Ephesians)
• The Epistle to the Colossians
• The Epistle to the Philippians
• The Epistle to Philemon

The proto-orthodox church condemned Markion as a heretic and developed its own New Testament canon in response. Because Markion had taught that the God of the Jews was not the same God preached about by Jesus, the proto-orthodox were keen to include works in their canon which emphasized the continuity between the Old Testament and the New and the sameness of the Jewish God and the Christian God.

For instance, the proto-orthodox included the Gospel of Matthew in their canon, which is a gospel that very much emphasizes the Jewish nature of Jesus’s teachings and affirms the continued relevance of the Old Testament. A version of the Gospel of Matthew without the birth narrative is known to have been used by a group of Jewish Christians known as the Ebionites, whom the proto-orthodox denounced as heretical Judaizers.

ABOVE: Modern illustration supposedly intended to represent the second-century AD Christian heretic Markion of Sinope. No one knows what Markion really looked like.

Ioustinos Martys

The early Christian apologist Ioustinos Martys (lived c. 100 – c. 165 AD) is known for three surviving works: The First Apology, The Second Apology, and the Dialogue with Trypho, all three of which were written in Greek. Ioustinos Martys mentions the gospels in his writings, calling them “memoirs of the apostles.”

Although Ioustinos Martys does not list the names of the gospels that he considered to be inspired, historians can deduce which gospels he was using based on what he says about them. Ioustinos Martys certainly relied on the three Synoptic Gospels (i.e. the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke), although it is still disputed whether or not he also relied on the Gospel of John.

Ioustinos Martys also references the Pauline Epistles, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and the First Epistle of Peter, treating them reverentially as inspired writings. Interestingly, at one point in his Dialogue with Trypho, Ioustinos Martys also refers to another source of some kind, possibly a gospel that has not survived, which contained a version of the baptism of Jesus not found in any of the surviving scriptures.

Ioustinos Martys’s writings tell us that, by the mid-second century AD, at least the Synoptic Gospels and the Pauline Epistles were already seen as inspired writings by proto-orthodox Christians.

ABOVE: Imaginative engraving intended to represent the second-century AD Christian apologist Ioustinos Martys, from the book Illvstree de diverses figvres des choses plvs remarqvables veves par l’auteur, & incogneues de noz anciens & modernes, published in 1575 with engravings by the French engraver André Thevet. No one knows what Ioustinos Martys really looked like.

Eirenaios of Lugdunum

The earliest Christian author to explicitly state that there are four canonical gospels is the Church Father Eirenaios of Lugdunum (lived c. 130 – c. 202 AD), who wrote in Greek and lived in what is now the city of Lyon, France in the late second century AD. Eirenaios writes in Book Three, chapter 11 of his apologetic work Against Heresies, as translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut:

“It is not possible that the Gospel can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.”

Eirenaios then goes on to name the four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, assigning symbols to each of them. Eirenaios may not have been the first person to consider these four gospels canonical, but he is the earliest known writer who is known to have explicitly stated in an extant work that these are the only canonical gospels.

If you desperately need to give a single name as an answer to Sophie Neveu’s question “Who chose which gospels to include?” then the most accurate answer to that question would be “Eirenaios of Lugdunum.” Eirenaios, of course, lived in the late second century AD and was writing around a century before Constantine I was born.

Obviously, then, if Eirenaios already considered the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to be the only canonical gospels in the late second century AD, then Constantine I, who ruled in the early fourth century AD, cannot have possibly been the one to select these gospels as canonical. The only way Constantine I could have done that would be if he built a time machine, went back to the time before Eirenaios, and chose them then.

ABOVE: Sculpture by Carl Rohl Smith from the Frederikskirken in Copenhagen intended to represent the second-century AD Christian Church Father Eirenaios of Lugdunum. No one knows what Eirenaios really looked like.

Muratorian canon

The earliest surviving list of most of the works included in the New Testament canon is the so-called “Muratorian canon,” which is though to have been originally written in Greek, but has survived through a poor-quality Latin translation dating to the seventh century AD. Most scholars agree that the original Greek version of Muratorian canon dates to around the late second century AD or thereabouts. If this dating is correct, this would mean that the Muratorian canon was originally written around a full century before the birth of Constantine I.

A few scholars have attempted to argue that the Muratorian canon may have been written in the fourth century AD, which would mean it was written during or after the lifetime of Constantine I. These arguments, however, have not won much favor and most scholars continue to favor the traditional date of the Muratorian canon having been originally written in the late second century.

Although the Muratorian canon does not match the present-day New Testament canon exactly, it is nonetheless very close to the present-day New Testament canon. Unfortunately, the very beginning of the Muratorian canon is missing. We know that the canon originally listed four gospels, but the names of the first two of these gospels have been left out of the surviving portion of the text. It is widely assumed that the first two gospels listed by the Muratorian canon must have been the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Here is a complete list of all the works listed as canonical scriptures in the Muratorian canon:

• The Gospel of Matthew (name missing, but widely assumed to be Matthew)
• The Gospel of Mark (name missing, but widely assumed to be Mark)
• The Gospel of Luke
• The Gospel of John
• The Book of the Acts of the Apostles
• The Epistle to the Romans
• The First Epistle to the Corinthians
• The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
• The Epistle to the Galatians
• The Epistle to the Ephesians
• The Epistle to the Philippians
• The Epistle to the Colossians
• The First Epistle to the Thessalonians
• The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
• The First Epistle to Timothy
• The Second Epistle to Timothy
• The Epistle to Titus
• The Epistle to Philemon
• The First Epistle of John
• The Second Epistle of John or the Third Epistle (The list only says “two of the epistles of John”; one of these is presumably 1 John, but it is unclear whether the other is 2 John or 3 John.)
• The Epistle of Jude
• The Book of Revelation (referred to as “The Apocalypse of John”)
• The Apocalypse of Peter
• The Wisdom of Solomon

As you can tell, the following works, which are now considered canonical, are missing from the Muratorian canon:

• The Epistle to the Hebrews
• The Epistle of James
• The First Epistle of Peter
• The Second Epistle of Peter
• Either the Second or the Third Epistle of John (Once again, it is unclear which of these epistles the list was meant to include.)

Furthermore, the Muratorian canon also includes two works that are not included in the present-day New Testament: the Apocalypse of Peter and the Wisdom of Solomon. The Wisdom of Solomon is part of the Deuterocanon, which is the set of books that are considered canonical by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians but are considered non-canonical by Protestants.

The Apocalypse of Peter is considered apocryphal by all present-day Christian denominations. The Muratorian canon itself mentions that some Christians at the time when the canon was written were opposed to the Apocalypse of Peter being read in church.

The Muratorian canon also mentions another work that is now considered apocryphal: the Shepherd of Hermas, which it states should be read, but not in church.

ABOVE: Photograph of the text of the Muratorian canon

Origenes of Alexandria

The Church Father Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD) refers to all twenty-seven of the books that are now included in the New Testament in his surviving writings. Like Eirenaios before him, Origenes explicitly states that there are four canonical gospels and that they are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In addition to the four gospels, Origenes also accepts all thirteen epistles included in the New Testament that claim to have been written by the apostle Paul as canonical without hesitation.

Origenes states in a passage from one of his writings that has been preserved through quotation by the later writer Eusebios of Kaisareia that the Epistle to the Hebrews cannot have been written by the apostle Paul. Nonetheless, Origenes accepts the epistle as canonical, saying that churches should be commended for reading it, since it is filled with good words. In another passage, he accepts the Epistle of Jude as canonical without hesitation, calling it “filled with healthful words of heavenly grace.” Origines also accepts the Epistle of James, the First Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John, and the Book of Revelation as canonical as well.

Origines states that many people considered the Second Epistle of John, the Third Epistle of John, and the Second Epistle of Peter to be forgeries and expresses doubt as to their authenticity himself. In a preserved apssage, he calls the First Epistle of Peter the only epistle Peter wrote that is “of acknowledge genuineness.” Origenes also refers to the Epistle of Barnabas, the First Epistle of Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas in his surviving writings and it is possible he may have considered these works canonical.

In any case, Origenes was certainly using something very close to the New Testament canon that we know today. Origenes’s canon certainly included all four canonical gospels, all of the canonical Pauline Epistles, at least most of the General Epistles, and the Book of Revelation. The fact that Origenes was working with something very close to the New Testament canon that we know today over half a century before the birth of Constantine I demonstrates that Constantine I clearly did not collate the New Testament as we know it.

ABOVE: Illustration from a manuscript dating to c. 1160 instended to represent the Christian Church Father Origenes of Alexandria. No one knows what Origenes really looked like.

Eusebios of Kaisareia

Now that we have established that Christians were already using something close to the New Testament canon we know today over half a century before Constantine was even born, we can look at what sorts of questions remained about the New Testament canon during Constantine I’s lifetime.

The early Christian historian Eusebios of Kaisareia (lived c. 260 – c. 340 AD) was a contemporary Constantine I. Eusebios provides a list of works that were generally accepted as canonical during his lifetime in his book Ecclesiastic History, which was probably written in around 330 AD. These are the works he lists as undisputedly canonical:

• The Gospel of Matthew
• The Gospel of Mark
• The Gospel of Luke
• The Gospel of John
• The Book of the Acts of the Apostles
• The Epistle to the Romans
• The First Epistle to the Corinthians
• The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
• The Epistle to the Galatians
• The Epistle to the Ephesians
• The Epistle to the Philippians
• The Epistle to the Colossians
• The First Epistle to the Thessalonians
• The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
• The First Epistle to Timothy
• The Second Epistle to Timothy
• The Epistle to Titus
• The Epistle to Philemon
• The First Epistle of Peter
• The First Epistle of John

In addition to these works, however, Eusebios also lists other writings that some people considered canonical, but others considered apocryphal. These were known as the Antilegomena, which means “disputed writings.” The Antilegomena were:

• The Epistle to the Hebrews
• The Epistle of James
• The Epistle of Jude
• The Second Epistle of Peter
• The Second Epistle of John
• The Third Epistle of John
• The Book of Revelation (“The Apocalypse of John”)

Eusebios also lists a number of other works that some people considered canonical that he believed were to be rejected as apocryphal. The works he lists as apocryphal include the following:

• The Acts of Paul
• The Shepherd of Hermas
• The Apocalypse of Peter
• The Epistle of Barnabas
• The Didache
• The Gospel of the Hebrews
• The Gospel of Peter
• The Gospel of Thomas
• The Gospel of Matthias
• The Acts of Andrew
• The Acts of John

ABOVE: Fifteenth-century engraving by the French engraver André Thevet intended to represent Eusebios of Kaisareia. No one knows what Eusebios really looked like.

Codex Sinaiticus

The earliest surviving complete text of the entire Bible, including the entire New Testament, is the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates to between c. 330 and c. 360 AD. (Please note that there are many surviving fragments of New Testament texts dating much earlier than the Codex Sinaiticus. For instance, the earliest surviving fragment of a New Testament text is Rylands Library Papyrus P52, a small papyrus fragment containing a portion of the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, which dates to sometime roughly between c. 125 and c. 175 AD.)

ABOVE: Photograph taken from Wikimedia Commons of the recto side of the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, the earliest surviving fragment of a New Testament text, which contains a portion of chapter eighteen of the Gospel of John and is dated to sometime roughly between c. 125 and c. 175 AD

It was once widely thought among scholars that the Codex Sinaiticus was one of the so-called “Fifty Bibles of Constantine”—a set of fifty copies of the complete Bible that were supposedly commissioned to be copied by the emperor Constantine I himself in 331 AD. Nowadays, however, most historians tend to doubt this notion, since there is no evidence to support it other than the fact that the Codex Sinaiticus is a complete copy of the Bible dating to around the time when Constantine I was emperor.

Furthermore, the very existence of the supposed Fifty Bible of Constantine is now seriously doubted by some historians, since the only source that mentions Constantine as having commissioned the production of fifty copies of the Bible is Eusebios’s hagiographic Life of Constantine and it is possible that Eusebios simply made up the whole story about the Fifty Bibles to make Constantine seem more devout.

In any case, the Codex Sinaiticus dates to around the time of Constantine I or shortly thereafter and the works that are included in it can therefore tell us a lot of information about what the state of the New Testament canon was in the fourth century AD. The Codex Sinaiticus contains all twenty-seven books that are included in the current New Testament as well as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. This clearly indicates that many people at the time when the Codex Sinaiticus was copied still considered these works canonical.

ABOVE: Photograph of a page from the Codex Sinaiticus with the text of Matthew 6:4–32 in the original Greek

The First Council of Nicaea

Now I think we have clearly established what the state of the New Testament canon was at the time when Constantine I became emperor of the whole Roman Empire in 324 AD. The canon was already mostly agreed upon and no one doubted the canonicity of the four gospels or the Pauline Epistles. Nonetheless, people were still debating the canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of John, the Book of Revelation, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas.

The novel The Da Vinci Code gives its readers the impression that the canon of the New Testament was officially decided at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and that the decision of the council was heavily influenced by Constantine I. This is far from the truth.

First of all, the New Testament canon was not even one of the issues that was discussed at the First Council of Nicaea. In fact, the First Council of Nicaea was actually primarily concerned with the theological controversy over the nature of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

You see, while the New Testament mentions “the Father,” “the Son,” and “the Holy Spirit,” it never clearly explains how they are related; in the New Testament itself, the whole relationship between these three entities is left confusing and ambiguous. At times, they seem to be the same, but at other times they seem to be distinct. Consequently, early Christians spent a lot of time arguing about exactly how these three entities were related.

The two main perspectives on this issue at the time of the First Council of Nicaea were Trinitarianism and Arianism. These were not the only perspectives that existed, but they were the most popular ones at the time when the First Council of Nicaea was convened. According to the Trinitarians, there is only one God who exists in three homousian and coeternal hypostases: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The most prominent defender of Trinitarianism at the First Council of Nicaea was the bishop Athanasios of Alexandria (lived c. 296 – 373 AD).

ABOVE: The “Shield of the Trinity,” a diagram illustrating the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit according to Trinitarian Christians

The Arians, on the other hand, believed that the Son is distinct from and subordinate to God the Father and that he was begotten at the beginning of time before creation. This view received its name because the foremost proponent of it was the presbyter Areios of Ptolemais (lived c. 256 – c. 336 AD).

The controversy between Arianism and Trinitarianism mainly had to do with how the scriptures were interpreted—not which scriptures were correct. The Arians and Trinitarians were both relying on basically the same scriptures, but they were arguing for different interpretations of those scriptures.

Second of all, although Constantine I was indeed the one who called the First Council of Nicaea, he actually played very little role in the proceeding of the council. In fact, he did not even get a vote; he was present solely as an observer. All of the decisions were made by the bishops who came to the council, not by the emperor.

Constantine watched and listened to the bishops’ arguments and let the bishops vote on the issues. Then, once the bishops had voted and made their decision to excommunicate Areios, Constantine sentenced Areios and his two remaining loyal followers to exile. As far as the historical records go, that seems to have been pretty much the full extent on Constantine’s influence on the council.

ABOVE: The First Council of Nicaea, painted in either 1876 or 1877 by the Russian Realist painter Vasily Surikov

The finalization of the Biblical canon

The actual finalization of the Biblical canon came much later than the First Council of Nicaea. Athanasios of Alexandria, the same bishop who had been the foremost defender of the Holy Trinity at the First Council of Nicaea, issued a letter for Easter in 367 AD that listed all twenty-seven books of the New Testament, referring to them as being “canonized.” This was forty-two years after the First Council of Nicaea and thirty years after the death of Constantine I, which occurred on 22 May 337 AD.

For the Roman Catholic Church, the canon was finalized by the Council of Rome in 382 AD. For Eastern Orthodox Christians, it was finalized by the Second Council of Trullan in 692 AD. For the Anglican Church, the New Testament canon was proclaimed dogma in 1563 with the Thirty-Nine Articles. For Calvinists, the New Testament canon was finalized in 1647 by the Westminster Confession of Faith.

ABOVE: Greek icon intended to represent Athanasios of Alexandria. No one knows what Athanasios really looked like.

Where does this notion come from, then?

The popular notion that the New Testament canon was decided at the Council of Nicaea seems to stem from a story recounted in an anonymous pseudohistorical source written in around 887 AD, over five hundred years after the First Council of Nicaea took place, known as the Synodicon Vetus. The Synodicon Vetus is about the most unreliable source on the ecumenical councils you could possibly find. It is full of bizarre and certainly fictional anecdotes not found in any other sources.

One of these weird anecdotes found in the Synodicon Vetus is the claim that, at the First Council of Nicaea, the bishops in attendance stacked all the books that claimed to have been written by apostles on the edge of an altar and declared that the ones that fell off were apocryphal and the ones that stayed on top were canonical. Miraculously, according to the Synodicon Vetus, the genuine books stayed atop the altar, while all the apocryphal books fell to the floor.

This story obviously is not true. Not only is it patently silly, but it is only recorded in a source from over five hundred years after the First Council of Nicaea took place and is never even hinted at in any earlier sources. No historian in their right mind would ever consider this anecdote factual.

In spite of this, however, the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (lived 1694 – 1778) repeated the story on multiple occasions in several different works. Voltaire really should have known better than to trust the story, but it confirmed his preconceived belief that the Church Fathers were a bunch of gullible and superstitious idiots, so he believed it.

Voltaire has historically been a very popular writer with freethinkers and critics of Christianity, so many people read the story in Voltaire’s writings and came to believe it, since, obviously, if Voltaire believed it, it had to be true. Thus the idea that the books of the New Testament were decided at the Council of Nicaea was popularized.

ABOVE: Portrait of the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, who helped popularize the fictional story that the bishops at the First Council of Nicaea decided which books to include in the New Testament based on which books stayed or fell off the edge of an altar

The idea that the books of the New Testament were decided by Constantine I is a more recent development. Constantine has long been a bogeyman for Protestants and opponents of Catholicism. For the past two centuries at least, many Protestant writers have blamed Constantine I for corrupting the true, pure faith and perverting it into the corrupt and evil Roman Catholic Church.

Nowadays, Protestants are not the only ones criticizing the Catholic Church. Constantine I, that perennial bogeyman for Protestants, has now become a bogeyman for atheists and freethinkers as well. The false idea has now become quite popular among many atheists and freethinkers that Constantine did more than just corrupt Christianity; many have come to wrongly believe that Constantine outright invented Christianity himself.

This is, of course, far from the truth; Christianity was around long before Constantine, as evidenced by the surviving writings and archaeological evidence. Christians were even using mostly the same books as they do today long before Constantine. Unfortunately, the truth has never been a match for a falsehood when that falsehood happens to confirm a person’s pre-held beliefs. The Da Vinci Code has only capitalized on an existing mindset.

Conclusion

The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. The New Testament canon was not decided by Constantine I at the First Council of Nicaea, nor by anyone else at the Council of Nicaea. Most of the books that make up the New Testament were already considered canonical by most proto-orthodox Christians by the late second century AD, around a century before Constantine I was even born.

Although there were certainly still lingering questions during Constantine I’s lifetime about the canonicity of certain books, these questions were not resolved until at least several decades after Constantine I’s death. Furthermore, the canon of the New Testament was not even discussed at the First Council of Nicaea, which was primarily dedicated to debate over the controversy over the nature of the relationship between the Father and the Son.

Of course, I should point out that, just because Constantine I did not choose which books belonged in the New Testament, that does not necessarily mean that Christianity is true, that Jesus was really God Incarnate, that Jesus really died for the sins of the world and rose again after three days, or anything like that. All it means is that Constantine I did not pick which books belonged in the Bible.