the danger of downplaying the authoritative nature of these books during this period, as the exclusive definition does. In addition, this definition seems less prone to unduly inflate the role of official church declarations about the canon—as if those declarations somehow “created” or “established” the authority of these books.128 Even with these positives, however, the functional definition of canon suffers from one of the same weaknesses as the exclusive definition. Whether one defines canon as
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