What a Canon Actually Is

It helps to define the word before arguing about it. A canon is "the closed list of books that was officially accepted retrospectively by a community as supremely authoritative and binding for religious practice and doctrine."
Retrospectively is the key word. A community does not vote a book into usefulness. It looks back at what has functioned as authoritative - read in worship, taught, relied on - and draws a line around it.
That definition also explains something people find unsettling. Different communities hold different canons. Jews, Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants differ in ordering, and in whether certain books are included. Catholic Old Testaments carry books from the Greek tradition that Protestants class as apocrypha.
Those differences are real. They are also about the edges of a list that agrees overwhelmingly in the middle.
Scripture links:
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 - "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable."
- Luke 24:44 - "the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms."
- Romans 3:2 - "the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God."
Recognised, not manufactured.