Greek word kanōn came to be used of the series of such marks, and hence to be used in the general sense of ‘series’ or ‘list’. It is this last usage that underlies the term ‘the canon of Scripture’. Before the word ‘canon’ came to be used in the sense of ‘list’, it was used in another sense by the church—in the phrase ‘the rule of faith’ or ‘the rule of truth’.4 In the earlier Christian centuries this was a summary of Christian teaching, believed to reproduce what the apostles themselves taught,