I Googled Byzantine Rite, wikipedia says that it is the same liturgical rite used by the Easter Orthodox Church. Is this true and does this mean that the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't use the book known as Revelation?
The Apocalypse of St. John (the Revelation) isn't used in the Eastern lectionary (the regular Scripture readings that form a fundamental portion of the Liturgy). But it is still accepted as Holy Scripture.
The reason for this goes back to antiquity. In the Western Church the Apocalypse of St. John has been widely accepted, the Latin Fathers widely speak favorably on it and emphasize its position as Holy Scripture. The Eastern Church was very slow to accept this book, and the Greek and other Eastern Fathers do not speak of it very often. It really isn't until the 8th century that the Eastern Church came to embrace it more fully, in part because of the influence of St. John of Damascus, one of the most important Eastern theologians of that period, who argued strongly for its full acceptance.
The Canon of the New Testament evolved rather slowly, and was not in every place uniformly accepted at the same time. The Armenian Church for many years included a book known as III Corinthians, though it does so no longer. Biblical codices from the 5th century, namely Sinaiticus, includes 1 Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas.
The New Testament can largely be divided into two categories:
1) Those books which were very nearly and universally accepted from very early on, most prominently the Four Gospels, and the Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul. Also here we can place 1 John and 1 Peter.
2) Those books which were known as Antilegomena, meaning "Disputed Books", these include 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, James, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse of St. John. But it also included works that are now no longer accepted by anyone, the Didache, 1 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and sometimes also the Apocalypse of Peter.
A late 2nd century/early 3rd century manuscript known as the Muratorian Fragment lists those books which were most widely accepted, while also mentioning those that were disputed.
In the West, as late as the 14th century, John Wycliffe in his English translation includes the spurious Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans, which was never widely accepted and in most places widely regarded as a spurious forgery. That means that Wycliffe's New Testament contains 28 rather than 27 books.
Luther very nearly removed four books from his German translation of the Bible, specifically Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse of John. Though he was convinced to keep them by others, though he placed them last; thus they were treated only slightly better than the Old Testament Deuterocanonicals, which Luther placed in a separate appendix. Though in some ways Luther speaks more favorably of these Deuterocanonicals than he does of those four NT texts, in particular he took issue with James early on, calling it an "Epistle of Straw" and "having no Gospel in it whatsoever".
The history of the Biblical Canon is two thousand years old, and it's clear that we are still debating it even today; one need only consult the differences in Canon between Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Bibles; having 66, 73, and ~76 books respectively. And further differences among these three even when dealing with accepted books, such as Esther, Daniel, and the Psalms (the Eastern Orthodox accept 151st Psalm as canonical, Roman Catholics and Protestants do not).
As such we must understand that the Biblical Canon is not something given by Divine Fiat, but is the resulting evolution of within Christian Church through general consensus of that Christian Church--and even then there still does not remain perfect and universal consensus.
This should not be regarded as a problem for the divine integrity and authority of Scripture, as long as we approach Scripture rightly and not make assumptions about Scripture that are neither themselves Scriptural nor in keeping with the rather plain history of the Canon of Scripture.
This isn't a problem for an historical understanding of Sola Scriptura, as understood by the Reformers who readily and enthusiastically allowed history and tradition to inform their reading of Scripture (but not lord over it). But it may be a problem for certain "Bible onlyists" whose unwillingness to read the Scriptures within the confessional and believing communion of saints throughout history might find the history and lack of rigidity of the Canon's history troublesome--and the Canon's dependence upon the history and tradition of the Christian Church a stumbling block.
-CryptoLutheran
