Did Athanasius or Constantine influence the New Testament canon used by the King James Version?

1. The claim people repeat that settles the question—or sparks the myth

The core claim at issue is whether Athanasius or Constantine “decided” the New Testament that the King James Version later printed in 1611. Scholarship emphasizes that Athanasius’ 39th Festal Letter explicitly listed the 27 New Testament books and declared the canon closed, giving the first surviving authoritative match to the later Western New Testament ^{[1] [2]}. By contrast, the widely repeated claim that Constantine or the Council of Nicaea fixed the biblical canon is not supported by contemporary council records; the Council of Nicaea did not produce a canonical list, and the idea that Constantine set the canon originates in later, unreliable accounts ^{[3] [5]}.

2. What Athanasius actually did and why it mattered to later Bibles

Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367 AD presented a clear, explicit 27‑book New Testament list that excludes apocryphal works and insists that no additions or subtractions be made. This formulation circulated and was influential because it matched the already growing practical consensus in many Christian communities and was cited by later councils and ecclesiastical authorities as authoritative. The 27‑book list that Athanasius articulated became the standard reference point for what would be recognized in the Western church and eventually inherited by translations such as the KJV ^{[1] [6] [2]}.

3. Constantine’s commissioned Bibles and where the influence actually stops

Constantine commissioned the production of Bibles (the so‑called Fifty Bibles) around 331 AD and supported a more organized church structure, but there is no evidence that he or the Council of Nicaea promulgated a New Testament canon. Modern scholarship finds the Fifty Bibles relevant for textual transmission and clerical standardization, not for deciding the book list; the canonical decisions emerged through later synods and local practice, culminating in more formal ratifications at the end of the fourth century and beyond ^{[4] [3] [5]}. Constantine’s role was therefore administrative and patronal, not doctrinally canonical.

4. How the 4th‑century process led to the KJV’s contents by 1611

By the late fourth century the 27‑book New Testament list had strong ecclesiastical acceptance, with Athanasius’ letter and subsequent synods reinforcing that consensus; the Council of Carthage (397 AD) and later reaffirmations in both Eastern and Western churches contributed to closure. Over the medieval centuries that followed, that established canon became the default for Latin, Greek, and later vernacular traditions. When the translators of the King James Version worked in 1611, they inherited a New Testament canon long standardized in Western Christendom—the same 27 books that Athanasius had listed and that had been reaffirmed in subsequent councils and traditions ^{[2] [7]}.

5. Where historians disagree, and how misinformation spreads

Disagreement among writers often comes from conflating Constantine’s high‑profile support for Christianity with direct doctrinal authority; this conflation produces the enduring myth that Nicaea decided the Bible. Modern critical accounts trace that myth to late medieval and Enlightenment‑era sources rather than to contemporary fourth‑century records, and caution that the Council of Nicaea left no canonical list in its surviving acts. Some popular summaries underplay Athanasius’ explicit role or ignore the gradual, communal nature of canon formation; this leads to oversimplified narratives that credit a single emperor or council instead of a multi‑century ecclesiastical process ^{[3] [4] [1]}.

Conclusion: The balanced reading of available evidence assigns the decisive textual formulation of the New Testament canon used by the King James Version to Athanasius’ 39th Festal Letter and later fourth‑century consolidations, while attributing to Constantine political sponsorship and textual patronage without direct canon‑setting authority. This account reconciles the primary documentary record with the later ecclesiastical endorsements that made the KJV’s New Testament the widely accepted 27‑book corpus ^{[1] [2] [4]}.