Canonicity… What It Meant to the Early Church

Today, we’re going to spend some time on the criteria and process that the early church used to determine if a book is canon or not, and how they came up with our current Bible, paying special attention to the New Testament. Hopefully it can help us understand the importance of the books of the Bible and appreciate both the Bible and the people who put it together.

I. Old Testament

But first, a few words about the Old Testament: pretty much from the beginning, the Church adopted the Old Testament as it was translated into Greek in the Septuagint translation, rather than Hebrew, since Greek was the most used language in the Church. The Septuagint list, which doesn’t quite follow our current order, and includes some books that we now call the Apocrypha, goes like this:

The Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy)

History (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-4 Kingdoms[1]; 1-2 Chronicles, 1-2 Esdras[2] Esther[3], Judith, Tobit)

Poems and Wisdom (Psalms[4], Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, Wisdom, Ecclestiasticus)

Prophets (the twelve “minor prophet” books as we have them, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Daniel[5])

“Appendix” (1-4 Maccabees)

However, ever starting from the time the Septuagint was translated (which is about 200 B.C.), there were doubts in the Jewish community about the authorship of many of the books and their authenticity. The Church inherited those doubts, and this led to Jerome (whom we’ll talk about below) to label the books that the Church (and the Jews) had doubts on as the Apocrypha and put them at the end of the Old Testament. None of the questionable books were cited by the Lord or his Apostles, as far as we know, which creates further doubt on their canonicity. The Protestant denominations generally consider them not canon but possibly edifying, while the Catholic church consider them part of the canon but do also consider them to be of lesser value.

II. Precursor to the New Testament Canon – the Diatesseron and Pauline Collection

We don’t exactly when they were written down, but pretty early, even before the Church had the mind to consider compiling a canon, the Church had already, in general, accepted the canonicity of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) – they were all considered to be correct by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis (~125) and probable disciple of John.[6] The other church fathers of the time of whom we know anything about their writing also seem to accept the four gospels. Tatian (late 2^nd century) produced an interesting work, the Diatessaron, which tries to make a continuous narrative edition of the four gospels, by using John as a framework and pasting passages from the other three gospels into it. The Diatessaron was very popular in Syria and Asia, and continued to be used for several centuries as the sacred text there.

Paul’s letters were also considered authoritative pretty early. The earliest manuscript that we have of his letters, however, do not include the three Pastoral Epistles (1-2 Timothy and Titus) but include Hebrews, which the eastern Church considered to be written by him starting from very early times but which the western Church never recognized his authorship and in fact for a while did not recognize as canon. Apparently at time churches had already been collecting Paul’s letters, perhaps even in Paul’s own lifetime, as education for their people.

III. Marcion

As we mentioned last week, Marcion, the leader of a radical Gnostic movement, was the first person to try to create a canon. He disavowed any connection between Jesus and the Jews, and he considered Paul the only faithful Apostle – all other Apostles perverted Jesus’ words and were apostates -- however, so he created a collection that was designed to allow people to see no connection between Jesus and the Jews. His canon had two components – Gospel and Apostle. His Gospel was Luke, but with all references to Jesus’ birth and his connection to Judaism deleted. His Apostle included most of the Pauline letters that we have now, except he labelled Ephesians as “Laodiceans,” but again with all references to Israel deleted.

Marcion was, of course, a heretic, whose “canon” was nothing short of a whimsical mutilation of existing canonical works (and we can see this from extant Marcionite texts – the way he edited the texts made them make no sense in many cases, even if you accept Marcionism as such). But the contribution he made to the Church is that he spurred the movement for local churches and orthodox Christian fathers to begin to collect works that they would consider canon.

IV. The Church’s Response to Marcion

In response to Marcion, the churches everywhere apparently began to think harder on what was canon and what was not, and also, the Church felt that its canon needs to be catholic (that is, inclusive), not only in response to Marcion’s anti-Hebrew doctrines but also to other heretical teachers, some of which argued that James or Peter was the only true Apostle and that Paul was in fact an enemy of Christ. We don’t have much documentation of the process they went through, but it is clear that in this endeavor they paid attention to these factors:

Apostolicity (whether the work was written by a recognizable Apostle)

Edification (whether the work was edifying)

Authenticity (whether the work can be traced to the apostolic era)

The Church also showed plenty of evidence that they, while not confident that they made the right selections in all cases in their human frailty, believed that the Holy Spirit would guide them in this process and ensure that the right books are included; the Church viewed the difference between it and heresies was the correct use of Scripture.

A. The Muratorian List

In 1740 a Latin list, dated to about the 7^th century, of Biblical books was discovered and published by the scholar Lodovico Antonio Muratori. Upon examination, most scholars of today concur that the list, while there might have been errors in transmission, reflect the language of the Church from the late 2^nd century – around the start of the canonicity movement.

The manuscript itself was missing its start – since it mentioned Luke as the third book of the Gospel, it was probably the case that Matthew and Mark were the first two but ripped off the manuscript during the years. The list goes, following that:

Luke, John, Acts, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, Thessalonians, Romans, Philemon, Titus, 1-2 Timothy, Jude, 1-2 John, Wisdom[7], Apocalypse of John[8], Apocalypse of Peter[9], Shepherd of Hermas

As can be seen, it doesn’t include 3 John, James, or Hebrews, or either of the Petrine letters, and includes the Apocalypse of Peter and Shepherd of Hermas, the former of which we consider totally non-canon and the latter we consider edifying but not part of the canon. Since, although we have a good idea of the timing of the Muratorian list but don’t know whether if it represented an accepted list in the Church, it is but one piece of data we can look at.

B. References by Church Fathers

By contrast, for reason we don’t understand, a lot of the church fathers of the time and a bit later didn’t actually give a list of canon, per se; nevertheless, what they considered canon might be gleaned from the books that they cited as canon and the books they rejected as part of their argument. Below are some charts of books that they made reference to, whether approvingly as canon (+), disapprovingly or condemning (-), expressed doubt on (?), or said nothing on the works that we have from them (blank). Books that we consider canon are in regular type and listed first, while books that we don’t consider canon are in italics and listed following.

1 Irenaeus of Lyons (became bishop in 177)

2 Tertullian of Carthage (wrote ~196-212)

3 Cyprian of Carthage (became bishop in 248, martyred in 258)

4 Clement of Alexandria (arrived in Alexandria ~202)

5 Origen of Alexandria (185-254)

6 Eusebius of Caesaria (became bishop ~314, died in 339)

	1	2	3	4	5	6
Matthew	+	+	+	+	+	+
Mark	+	+	+	+	+	+
Luke	+	+	+	+	+	+
John	+	+	+	+	+	+
Acts	+	+	+	+	+	+
Romans	+	+	+	+	+	+
1 Corinthians	+	+	+	+	+	+
2 Corinthians	+	+	+	+	+	+
Galatians	+	+	+	+	+	+
Ephesians	+	+	+	+	+	+
Philippians	+	+	+	+	+	+
Colossians	+	+	+	+	+	+
1 Thessalonians	+	+	+	+	+	+
2 Thessalonians	+	+	+	+	+	+
1 Timothy	+	+	+	+	+	+
2 Timothy	+	+	+	+	+	+
Titus	+	+	+	+	+	+
Philemon	+	+		+	+	+
Hebrews[10]	+		+[11]	+	+?	+
James	+[12]				+?	+?
1 Peter	+	+	+	+?	+	+
2 Peter					+?	+?
1 John	+	+	+	+?	+	+
2 John	+			+?	+?	+?
3 John					+?	+?
Jude		+[13]		+?	+?	+?
Revelations	+	+	+	+	+	+[14]
Shepherd of Hermas[15]	+	-[16]	+[17]	+?	+?	?
Wisdom	+
Didache[18]			+[19]	+?	+?	?
The Gospel Acc. to Egyptians[20]				+?	-
Letter of Barnabas[21]				+?	+?	?
Apocalypse of Peter[22]				+?		?
The Gospel Acc. to Hebrews[23]				+?	?
Clement[24]				+?	?[25]
Preaching of Peter				+?	?
Traditions of Matthias				+?
Sibylline Oracles				+?
Acts of Paul[26]		-			?	-

(Some other works explicitly rejected by Eusebius include the Gospel of Peter (for its docetism), Gospel of Thomas (a work that Gnostics based many of their doctrines on; it was probably written by a Gnostic); Acts of Peter (as fiction), Acts of John, of Andrew, of John (as Gnostic works), and Acts of Thomas (as fantastical).[27]

V. Finalization of Canon

Even with some doubts, the Church eventually began to form a consensus to what canon is. By the time of Jerome, who composed the Latin translation of the Bible (known to us now as the Vulgate – not because it was vulgar, in our sense of the word – but because it tried to use Latin understandable to the people of the time rather than the best literary Latin), canon was pretty much set. Although Jerome himself professed some doubts about some of the books, he felt that they were established canon and that he had no liberty to choose to include or exclude them.[28] His list of books is the same as the one we have today.

VI. Later Developments

Martin Luther accepted all established New Testament books as canon, but he regarded the “disputed” books, if he felt that they did not promote Christ enough, he considered them “secondary canon.” In this category he considered Hebrews (since its authorship is unknown), James (since it conflicted, to him, the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith), Jude (since it contained a reference to an apocryphal book), and Revelations (since it was difficult to decipher). Later Protestants, however, accepted all of the books as canon with equal status (e.g., theThirty-Nine Articles (Anglicans); the Westminster Confession (Calvinists)).

Conclusion/Discussion Questions

We might or might not have time to get to these – but basically, I want this to be a time of reflection on the unit, discussion (if we have time), and evaluation. If we have time, please discuss these questions and have one person jot down some summaries for the group and give a copy to me. If we don’t have time for discussion, please complete it on your own and give it to a deacon or to me next week.

1. What do you think you learned from this class, if anything, that is useful in your Christian walk? Is this “dead history,” or are there lessons that you learned from the Christians of the past?

2. This is really the first time in a long time that we offered an “extra-Biblical” unit; usually, our Sunday School is based directly on the Scriptures. Do you consider this format appropriate? Would you consider attending units with extra-Biblical material in the future? Why or why not?

3. Are there things that you learned about Christians of the past that you feel are uplifting, upsetting, or created other emotions in you? Why did they, after more than a thousand years, still evoke these emotions in you? What does that say about the studying of history, in general, and the history of the Church, specifically?

4. If/when this class is repeated, what material would you like to see included that was not a part of this class? What material would you like to see excluded, if any? What material do you think needs to be emphasized more?

5. What are other thoughts that you have about the class?

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[1] These correspond to what we now have as I-II Samuel and I-II Kings.

[2] 1 Esdras (“Esdras” being the Greek equivalent for Ezra) is a book that we now consider part of the Apocrypha and not a part of our Bible; it restates history as stated in 2 Chornicles and Nehemiah. 2 Esdras corresponds to what we now have as Ezra and Nehemiah but combine them into one book.

[3] The Septuagint Esther is considerably longer than the Hebrew Esther (which we use now) and contains many things that we don’t have, such as some acts by Esther and Mordecai.

[4] Psalm 151, not in Hebrew, is in the Septuagint.

[5] The Septuagint Daniel includes two stories and one poem/song that are not in Hebrew that we now consider part of the Apocrypha as Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and the Praise of the Three Children (Daniel’s friends).

[6] Papias did express that some people in the Church had reservations about Mark, given that events in Mark are sometimes described differently than the orders given in the other gospels; his defense of Mark was that Mark was writing down things that Peter passed to him, and that Mark wrote them down for their truth, not for chronological purposes.

[7] This is the same book that is part of the Old Testament Apocrypha – it makes a rather odd appearance here, but the Muratorian list is not unique in list; some early New Testament canon lists apparently consider Wisdom, which was attributed to people paying tribute to Solomon’s wisdom, part of the New Testament.

[8] That is, Revelations. “Apocalypse of John” is used here since there are other Apocalypses (which the Church eventually considered non-canon).

[9] However, some scholars believe that this is not a reference to the non-canonical Apocalypse of Peter at all, but was in fact a scribe’s error in referring to 1 Peter.

[10] There is, to this day, a dispute about the authorship of Hebrews. The eastern fathers generally considered it as written by Paul, arguing the inconsistency in style with other Pauline letters is a result of Paul having written it in Hebrew or Aramaic and then translating it himself or having Luke translate it into Greek. The western fathers generally rejected Paul as the author, and this in turn led to some doubt to its canonicity, but later on they generally considered it canon but non-Pauline.

[11] Cyprian did not cite Hebrews by name but did refer to it.

[12] Irenaeus quoted James approvingly but gave no indication on whether he considered it authentically written by James.

[13] Because Tertullian approved of Jude, he apparently also advocated the inclusion of the book Enoch into the Old Testament – however, he was in the extreme minority on this, and Enoch is not even part of the “accepted” Apocrypha today.

[14] In a rather odd situation, Eusebius showed that he disliked Revelations, but nevertheless had to concede it as canon, but he was quick to ad that some churches still didn’t.

[15] The Shepherd of Hermas was basically an exhortation for Christians to live holy lives; some people have compared it to Pilgrim’s Progress.

[16] Tertullian disliked the Shpherd of Hermas, but did not per se consider it non-authentic; rather, he rejected its canonicity based on its non-apostolic origin and its “moral laxity."

[17] There is a work attributed to Cyprian but probably actually written by another bishop of Carthage which cited the Shepherd as scripture.

[18] The Didache (also known as the Teachings of the Twelve Apostles) claims to contain moral and ethical teachings from the Apostles, but does not specify an authorship.

[19] The same work (see above) also cited the as scripture.

[20] It’s a Gnostic interpretation of the gospels, but otherwise I don’t know much about its contents.

[21] It is a letter purportedly from Barnabas that encourages the readers in face of persecution.

[22] It is considered to be “Christian fiction,” containing elements about Peter’s martyrdom and the visions he saw before then. Some of its elements may very well be true, but we have no independent verification.

[23] Also a Gnostic interpretation of the gospels, I believe, but I also don’t know much about it.

[24] An exhortation from Clement of Rome.

[25] Origen cited Clement approvingly but did not seemingly treat it as scripture.

[26] It’s also “Christian fiction,” and while we don’t know the name of its author, he was a presbyter in an Asian church who was fired because he wrote it.

[27] Acts of Thomas, however, while its actual contents can be doubted, is a good indication that Christianity spread to India around that time, and contains the beautiful poem Hymn of the Pearl, which has been called by a number of Christian scholars to be “the most noble poem of Christian Antiquity.”

[28] While considering them as canon, Jerome felt that 2 and 3 John were written by another John (whom he called “John the Presbyter”) rather than John the Apostle. He also had some doubts about the authenticity of James and Jude. Also, he regarded the Letter of Barnabas very highly, but felt that he was not entitled to include it into canon based on his own likes and dislikes.