On Christian Doctrine

Augustine began De doctrina christiana in his first years as a bishop and left it unfinished partway through the third book. In the Retractations (2.4) he says that he found it incomplete when he was reviewing his works, finished the third book and added a fourth.

The list of Scripture stands in the part written first (2.8.12–13). Augustine gives a rule, that a reader should prefer the books received by all the Catholic churches, and among the rest those received by the greater number and the more authoritative churches, and then names the books: forty-four of the Old Testament, including Tobit, Judith, two books of Maccabees, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and twenty-seven of the New. It is evidence for what an African bishop who took part in the councils held the canon to be. In the Retractations he corrects one detail, saying that he had since learned that Wisdom was probably not written by Jesus son of Sirach.