Canon vs. Canon vs. Canon

Perhaps in today’s society we cannot differentiate between canon and scripture because the use of the word canon has changed so much throughout time and has had so many different meanings and contexts, as described by Dungan. Originally, there were simply many different texts, or scripture, that were floating around the ancient world. Bringing together Dungan’s many different attempts to describe canonization, it is my understanding that for a document to truly be a canon, in the author’s opinion, the texts within the work must 1) be sacred, as most scripture of the time were, 2) be set in stone; unchanging and set in place without being removed or replaced by another text, and 3) be set in place for a specific need or purpose of the time. That, however, is in the modern context of the word ‘canon.’ Before this, while there were many different spellings and forms of the original word, canon would mean a ruler, a judicial ruling, or just simply a metaphor for accuracy. Either way, canon has always referred to a unit that brings order to the chaos, and consists of a set of established rules. In this view, it is easy to understand the confusion between canon and scripture; a lot of scripture that has not been canonized is assumed to somehow support a belief or ideal, which in turn comes with its own restrictions. This begs the question; why were some of these authoritative scriptures, although similar to the works chosen and put in the popular biblical canon today, chosen to be left behind? How did these particular documents get weeded out while others were chosen to go down in history forever?