Council of Hippo: At the time of St. Augustine’s establishment, a canon was established for the books that should compose the Bible (46 books for the Old Testament and 27 for the New Testament). The oldest list corresponding to the current canon of the Christian Bible is found for the first time in a letter of Athanasius of Alexandria in 367, in accordance with the subsequent decree of Pope Damasus in 382. This canon has prevailed to this day through the mediation of the Vulgate, the translation of the Bible into Latin made by St. Jerome at the commission of Pope Damasus. A generation later, at the papal councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), the bishops and theologians formally canonized this list of recommendations which became the New Testament.
