Canon

Canon.
1. Title of a member of the chapter of a cathedral or collegiate church.

2. (Gk., Kanon, ‘rule’). The determination of books which have authority in a religion, either because they are believed to be inspired or revealed, or because they have been so designated. In both Judaism (see BIBLE) and Christianity, the decision about which books were to be included or excluded was a long process—not leading to unanimity in Christianity, where Roman Catholics, relying on the Latin translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew, included additional books not recognized by Jews or other Christians (Apocrypha). The earliest witness to the present canon of the New Testament is the Festal Letter of Athanasius for 367 CE; and the canon of both Testaments was probably finally fixed in Rome in 382.

The term ‘canon’ is then frequently applied to collections of sacred or holy texts in other religions. For Hinduism, see ŚRUTI; SMṚTI; VEDA; VEDĀNTA; and further refs. ad loc. For Buddhism (Pāli canon, etc.), see BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES; TRIPIṬAKA. The term ‘canon’ has been applied to revered and authoritative Jain texts (e.g. ‘the 45 text canon’), but the term is particularly awkward in this case: see DIGAMBARA; AṄGA. For Sikhs, see ĀDI GRANTH. For the Taoist canon, see TAO-TSANG. In Japan, the Nihongi and Kojiki were given a status which made them effectively ‘canonical’.

3. The central prayer of consecration in the Roman mass, and in all eucharistic liturgies in different forms. It assumed its present form under Gregory the Great (590–604). Unlike the practice in Eastern churches (see ANAPHORA), the RC Church maintained a single invariable prayer until recent times. Applied to other liturgies, ‘canon’ is practically synonymous with the more usual term ‘eucharistic prayer’.

4. A type of hymn sung at the E. (Byzantine) Orthodox morning office.