Purpose and Scope

This controlled timeline places major events in the history of canon, transmission, printed editions, confessional doctrine, and textual criticism in chronological relation. It is an orientation tool, not a substitute for a source record or a full historical argument.

Dates marked c. are approximate. The date of a surviving manuscript is not automatically the date of its reading, and the first surviving citation is not automatically the first use of a text. Each research page must still state the evidence appropriate to its particular claim.

Revelation, Canon, and Early Reception

• Second millennium–first millennium BC: The books of the Old Testament are written and received over the course of Israel’s history. Individual dates remain questions of biblical introduction; the theological point is that the canon is given by God rather than created by a later catalogue.
• Third–second centuries BC: Greek translations of books of the Hebrew Scriptures circulate in forms now grouped under the name Septuagint. The surviving Greek tradition is textually diverse and must not be treated as one uniform edition.
• First century AD: The books of the New Testament are written and received in the apostolic churches.
• Second–fourth centuries: Christian writers, translations, lectionary practice, and canon lists bear witness to the Church’s recognition and use of the biblical books. Dispute about some books does not mean that the Church possessed no canon.
• AD 367: Athanasius’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter supplies the earliest surviving list that names the twenty-seven New Testament books together.
• Late fourth–early fifth centuries: Jerome’s Latin translation and revision work contributes to the form later known as the Vulgate. Debates over the Hebrew canon and the ecclesiastical use of other books remain historically important.

Hebrew Transmission and Medieval Witnesses

• c. sixth–tenth centuries: Masoretic scholars preserve and annotate the consonantal Hebrew text with vocalization, accentuation, and marginal notes. The traditions associated with Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali become especially important for later discussion.
• c. AD 930: The Aleppo Codex represents a major Ben Asher Masoretic witness, though portions of the codex are now missing.
• AD 1008/1009: The Leningrad Codex provides the earliest complete surviving codex of the Hebrew Bible in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition.

Printing, Reformation, and Confession

• 1516: Erasmus publishes the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament available for general circulation.
• 1518: The first Bomberg Rabbinic Bible appears in Venice.
• 1524–1525: Daniel Bomberg publishes the second Rabbinic Bible, edited by Jacob ben Chayyim. Its Hebrew text and Masoretic apparatus become highly influential in Protestant printing.
• 1522–1534: Luther’s German Bible appears in stages and then as a complete Bible, illustrating the Reformation’s return to the original languages and vernacular translation.
• 1526–1537: Tyndale’s English New Testament and subsequent English Bible work establish a major line of English translation from the Hebrew and Greek.
• 1550: Robert Estienne (Stephanus) publishes his third major Greek New Testament, later influential in received-text printing.
• 1551: Stephanus’s next edition introduces the New Testament verse-numbering system that becomes standard.
• 1565–1604: Theodore Beza publishes successive Greek New Testament editions with Latin translation and annotations.
• 1568: The Bishops’ Bible is published and later serves as the formal base text for the Authorized Version revision.
• 1611: The Authorized Version is first published.
• 1633: The Elzevir Greek New Testament preface uses the phrase from which “Textus Receptus” is later derived.
• 1646: The Westminster Assembly completes the Westminster Confession of Faith. Chapter 1 confesses the inspiration, authority, sufficiency, clarity, preservation, and authenticity of Scripture.
• 1657: Brian Walton’s London Polyglot is published with extensive Prolegomena and textual materials.
• 1659: John Owen publishes Of the Divine Original, defending the divine authority, self-evidencing power, and purity and integrity of the Hebrew and Greek texts while responding to the Polyglot’s Prolegomena.
• 1677/1689: The Second London Baptist Confession adopts the Westminster doctrine of Scripture with its confession that the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek were kept pure in all ages and are therefore authentic.

The Rise of Modern Critical Editions

• 1707: John Mill’s Greek New Testament publishes an extensive collection of variants while retaining the received text in the main text.
• 1775–1777: Johann Jakob Griesbach’s Greek New Testament advances an editorial text and influential principles for weighing readings and text types.
• 1831: Karl Lachmann publishes a text deliberately constructed without treating the received text as the editorial base.
• 1844: Constantin von Tischendorf encounters leaves of Codex Sinaiticus at St. Catherine’s Monastery; additional portions become known through later visits and publication.
• 1857–1872: Samuel Prideaux Tregelles publishes his critical Greek New Testament in parts.
• 1869–1872: Tischendorf’s eighth major edition presents an extensive critical apparatus and gives great weight to ancient uncial witnesses.
• 1881: Westcott and Hort publish The New Testament in the Original Greek; the English Revised Version appears in the same year. Their genealogical theory and preference for the “Neutral” text profoundly shape subsequent criticism.
• 1898: Eberhard Nestle publishes the first edition of the Greek New Testament that develops into the Nestle-Aland tradition.
• 1966: The first United Bible Societies Greek New Testament is published for translators, with a selective apparatus and editorial confidence ratings.
• 1982: Zane Hodges and Arthur Farstad publish The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text, representing a majority-text method distinct from both received-text and eclectic positions.
• 2005: The second Robinson–Pierpont Byzantine text is published, providing a major modern Byzantine-priority edition.
• 2012: The Nestle-Aland twenty-eighth edition is published; its Catholic Epistles reflect decisions associated with the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method.

Confessional Bibliology Publication Milestones

• December 15, 2015: Confessional Bibliology begins public publication.
• 2015–2025: The site develops an extensive archive of doctrinal articles, textual studies, reviews, analyses, and controversies.
• December 15, 2025: The project reaches its tenth anniversary.
• July 2026: The research-library rebuild establishes a controlled navigation, managed page architecture, source-library standards, editorial safeguards, structured passage dossiers, and a formal content reconciliation.
• October 31, 2026: Target date for the John Owen 1659 Source Library pilot, conditional upon all acquisition, verification, rights, and review gates.
• January 1, 2027: Target public launch for Foundations of Confessional Bibliology and the wider Confessional Bible Society program, subject to completion of the stated production gates.

How to Use This Timeline

Use the date links supplied by individual Research Center records for exact sources. When a historical conclusion depends upon dating, provenance, textual affiliation, or a claim of first occurrence, consult the Primary Source Catalogue, Editions and Textual History, Reformed Witnesses, and the relevant Textual Issue.

Future additions should include a source locator and should distinguish the date of composition, the date of the surviving artifact, the date of discovery, and the date of publication.

Source Record

• Confessional Bibliology published archive and publication registry
• Historical articles and research packets in the master corpus
• Confessional Bibliology Source Library records
• Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1
• John Owen, Of the Divine Original (1659)