The term ‘canon’ is almost certainly of Semitic origin: it probably derives from the Akkadian qanū, Hebrew qāneh, which means ‘measuring rod’: in Greek we have the term kanōn, which generally means ‘measure’ and in philosophy ‘norm’. Philo of Alexandria seems to have been the first to use the term to indicate the collection of books normative for faith, in contrast to other works which may be useful for edification but are not considered normative