"In the 59th Canon of the Synod of Laodicea (A.D. 363) the term canon was definitely applied to the normative Scriptures. But the idea of a canon is much older than the use of the word in that sense. Previous to that time the words Old and New Covenant were used to express the idea of authoritative documents of a divine revelation. The former was not called antiquated, but old, for it was still valuable, and the latter was not called new in the sense of the Greek word nea, youthful, young in age, but in that of kaine, fresh, i.e., in the sense of quality. The term Scripture in the sense of a passage of Scripture was already in vogue when the New Testament was written, and the term the Scriptures, with or without the epithets holy, sacred, or divine, was applied to the whole Old Testament at the same time. Sometimes the singular, Scripture, was applied to the whole Old Testament by the writers of the New; but this usage was commoner in later times."

Henry Clarence Thiessen, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 4