The Jewish Annotated New Testament (159 page)

Collections or even clear references to the Gospels begin to appear somewhat later. Nevertheless, our earliest actual fragment of New Testament writing is a small papyrus (P.52), dated ca. 125–150, containing John 18.31–33,37–38. Papias (fl. ca. 125–150), an early bishop of Hierapolis, mentions Mark and Matthew in what the church historian Eusebius (ca. 325 CE) says is a reference to the Gospels (
Hist. eccl
. 3.39.15–16). But Papias also says that he regards the authority of the words of Jesus as transmitted by the elders from the apostles themselves to be greater than that of any information from books (
Hist. eccl
. 3.39.4). Eusebius further tells us unambiguously that Papias “used quotations” from 1 John and 1 Peter (
Hist. eccl
. 3.39.17).

Ignatius of Antioch may show some familiarity with the same tradition that generated Matthew (compare his letter to Polycarp [Ignatius,
Pol
.] 2.2 with Mt 10.16 and Ignatius,
Eph
. 14.2 with Mt. 12.33) but shows no evidence of familiarity with the Gospel itself, and he is much more likely to have used a collection of the sayings of Jesus in much the same way that the authors of the Gospels themselves did. Similarly, Polycarp of Smyrna, in his
Epistle to the Philippians
(ca. 117–140), may allude to passages in Matthew and Luke, but as with Ignatius, it is possible that he too used a collection of Jesus’ sayings. Nevertheless, it is after Polycarp that we begin to see introductory formulae like “as it is written,” which heretofore had been used to introduce passages from the Tanakh (see “The New Testament between the Hebrew Bible [Tanakh] and Rabbinic Literature,” p.
504
), now being used to introduce quotations from Christian documents.

The earliest direct evidence for a collection of the Gospels comes from Justin Martyr (also the first to mention the Revelation of John, see
Dial
. 81.15), ca. 160, who makes direct reference to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and possibly John, and says that he permits the reading of “memoirs of the apostles or apostolic men” (
1 Apol
. 66–67) in worship, one sign that the Gospels too might now be considered Christian scripture. If Justin did in fact have John, this is also the first indication of a collection of the
four
Gospels. But the multiplicity of Gospels is now itself a problem for the church. Justin’s student Tatian (ca. 175) attempted to solve this problem by combining the four Gospels into a single narrative that we call the
Diatessaron
(literally, “through the four”), a text used as scripture by the Syrian church into the fifth century.

The first Christian to argue for
limiting
the number of Gospels to four was Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 180). Irenaeus argues further that certain other accounts may
not
be read because they are heretical. His implied “New Testament” (a term that he uses, but not clearly referring to texts) includes the four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles (the first evidence of its use), the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul, 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, the Revelation of John, and also the
Shepherd of Hermas
, a work no longer part of the New Testament canon (see, e.g.,
Adv. Haer
. 3.21.3–4.).

By the beginning of the third century, the contours of a “New Testament” as we know it begin to emerge. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian in Carthage treat as authoritative a collection of Christian documents similar to that of Irenaeus. Both approve of Hebrews (Eusebius says that Irenaeus also used Hebrews, but that cannot be demonstrated from his surviving work) and both use the epistle of Jude. Tertullian treats as scripture both the
Shepherd of Hermas
and the
Epistle of Barnabas
, another work no longer part of the New Testament. He is, furthermore, the first to use the term “New Testament” in a clear reference to a collection of texts (
Prax
. 15). Clement of Alexandria includes the
Revelation of Peter
and calls
1 Clement
, the
Shepherd of Hermas
, the
Epistle of Barnabas
, and a late first/early second century work called the
Didache
“inspired.” Furthermore, the Muratorian Fragment (some time between the second and fourth centuries CE), includes four Gospels (Matthew and Mark are missing, but this is a clear defect in the text), Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, 1 and 2 John, Jude, the Revelation of John, and curiously, the Wisdom of Solomon. The author also hesitatingly accepts the
Revelation (Apocalypse) of Peter
. The Muratorian author rejects the
Shepherd of Hermas
as being too recent and epistles to the Laodiceans and Alexandrians as forgeries in the name of Paul. Hebrews is absent as is the otherwise early attested 1 Peter. While this list of documents is roughly congruent to usage at the end of the second century, and the heresies that it mentions are second-century heresies, it is, in form, somewhat similar to fourth-century canon lists.

Origen (ca. 185–254), whose words are preserved by Eusebius, stated that there are “four Gospels, which alone are unquestionable” (
Hist. eccl
. 6.25.4): Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Eusebius also says that Origen stated that Peter “left one acknowledged epistle, and it may be, a second also, for it is doubted,” and that the author of the Fourth Gospel also wrote Revelation and at least one epistle (
Hist. eccl
. 6.25.8–10). Origen considers Acts and Hebrews to be scripture, although by this time the authorship of the latter was a matter of debate within in the church; Origen, though usually content to attribute it to Paul, at one point says, “But who the writer of the epistle was: in truth, God knows” (
Hist. eccl
. 25.14, citing Origen’s
Homilies
). Origen is unclear, apparently deliberately so, concerning the status of James and Jude.

By the fourth century, the accepted list of books that were treated as the New Testament had not changed much, as we can see from Eusebius’s
Ecclesiastical History
. Eusebius lists those books that everyone recognizes as scripture (
homologoumena
): four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, fourteen epistles of Paul (the thirteen ascribed to him as well as Hebrews), 1 John, 1 Peter, and Revelation. Of the latter, he acknowledges that “some reject it, but others count it among the recognized books.” Next are the “disputed books” (
antilegomena
): the epistles of James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, and 2 Peter (which he elsewhere rejects as not genuine [
Hist. eccl
. 3.3.4]). Next are the “illegitimate” or “not recognized” books: the
Acts of Paul
, the
Shepherd of Hermas
, the
Revelation of Peter
, the
Epistle of Barnabas
, the
Didache
, and perhaps also the Revelation of John, which he now says that some count among the recognized books. He then makes an additional, rather confusing comment that all of these books “according to the tradition of the church, are true, genuine, and recognized, and those which differ from them in that they are not in the testament, but rather are disputed, albeit known to most of the churches.” Finally, he lists those works that he considers “entirely wicked and impious” because they are “forgeries of heretics.” Among these he includes gospels under the names of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias, and Acts under the names of “Andrew, John, and the other apostle” (
Hist. eccl
. 3.25.1–7).

The emperor Constantine asked Eusebius to produce fifty copies of the Christian Bible. Unfortunately, none of these copies has survived, but Eusebius must have made decisions as to which texts to include. Two biblical codices (singular “codex”) from the fourth century have survived. One of these, called
Sinaiticus
because it was discovered in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, is the oldest complete Old (Greek only) and New Testament. Its New Testament contains all the books of the modern New Testament plus the
Shepherd of Hermas
and the
Epistle of Barnabas
. The second codex, called
Vaticanus
because it was discovered in the library of the Vatican, is of nearly equal age, but it is complete only through Hebrews 9.14 (the epistles of Paul come at the end). The remainder of Hebrews is missing, as are Philemon, the Pastoral Epistles, and Revelation.

After Eusebius, canon lists, some using the term “canon,” are drawn up in various places by various bishops or church synods. These list the books of the New Testament for the express purpose of saying “these books and no others.” One of these, the Thirty-ninth Festal Letter of Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, presents in 367, for the first time, a list of the twenty-seven books that are included in the modern New Testament. Many of the canon lists drawn up after that of Athanasius do not follow his list, and into the fifth century the Western churches still continued to challenge the canonicity of Hebrews, and the Eastern churches continued to challenge James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation. Yet, late in the fourth century Augustine of Hippo accepted the canon list of Athanasius and, save for occasional challenges to Hebrews or the minor catholic epistles, or rare attempts to add the
Epistle to the Laodiceans
, the list of Athanasius and Augustine would—in the Western church and a century later in the Eastern churches—stand as the canon of the New Testament until the Protestant Reformation a thousand years later.

Yet through this entire period, the church never adopted a set of criteria by which to determine canonicity. Although unstated, the most significant criterion for inclusion was usage and dissemination. Colossians 4.16, for example, speaks of forwarding letters from church to church. The earliest of the church fathers, the aforementioned Clement of Rome (fl. 90–100), by referring to 1 Corinthians in his letter to the church at Corinth, shows that he has in Rome a copy of a letter that Paul had originally sent to Corinth.

Also important was the criterion of apostolicity, that is, whether the document emanated from an apostle or was connected to an apostolic authority (e.g., Luke and Acts were associated with Paul, Mark with Peter). On the other hand, many of the now noncanonical documents were written in the names of apostles and yet were not cited as scripture by any church father: usage (or lack of it) thus took priority over ascription to an apostle.

A third criterion was conformity to the proper understanding of Christianity (the
regula fidei
or “rule of faith”) as the majority church (and certainly the majority of those in power in the church) saw it. The
Gospel of Peter
had failed on this point, possibly because it could be read to support a Gnostic view that the divine aspect of Jesus abandoned him before death (v. 19), and so permission to use it was withdrawn. Such was the fate of numerous other gospels, apocryphal acts, and pseudepigraphic epistles.

Finally, the document had to be sufficiently “catholic,” meaning that it had to be understood as applying to the church as a whole. This was most problematic for the so-called catholic epistles (that is, general letters, not sent to specific Christian communities or individuals: the letters of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude) and the epistles of Paul (which had been sent to specific communities or individuals). The former, though not identified with one recipient or community, may have been seen as overly specific; the latter were obviously intended to address specific problems or situations. These documents therefore were reinterpreted so that their message was seen as applying to the entire Christian world.

“Divine inspiration” was not a criterion for acknowledging a document as scripture. The concept itself was developing only during the second century and worked, rather, the other way around. All works of scripture were understood to be divinely inspired, but divine inspiration was never a
limiting
factor in the establishment of the New Testament. Many documents were thought to be inspired without simultaneously being considered scripture. Thus acknowledgement by Clement of Alexandria that the
Shepherd of Hermas
or the
Epistle of Barnabas
were inspired cannot be taken further to demonstrate that he also considered them to be scripture.

Early reformers, particularly Martin Luther (1483–1546), one of those who led what came to be the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, began to challenge those very books that had been questioned in the last decades of the formation of the canon. The issue finally came to a head in 1522 when Luther relegated Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation to the end of the New Testament and left them without a sequence number as he had given to the other twenty-three books. He thereby implied that these books ought to have a lower status. Luther’s practice was followed by William Tyndale’s first English translation in 1525. In response, in 1546 at the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church for the first time formally declared as an article of faith “all of the books the Old and New Testament … with an equal sense” to be “canonical” and that anyone who said otherwise was to “be anathema.” As far as the New Testament canon was concerned, over the next decades several Protestant churches, including the Church of England and the French and Belgic Confessions, followed suit. The Presbyterians followed nearly a century later in the Westminster Confession. But some Protestants, most notably the Lutherans, have never declared the canon closed, and thus the question of the canon persists to this day.