CASTOR
CENCHRE^
171
he was marched into the barracks. Fort Antonia was for some days his place of confinement. Hither came his nephew with a message which saved him from falling into the hands of fanatical conspirators (23^*), and here Christ Himself seemed to stand by him with words of good cheer (v."). From the castle he was taken by night to Antipatris, and thence to Caesarea (23*^"^).
Literature. — T. Lewin, Life and Epistles of St. PaitlS, 1875, ii. 135 ff. ; Conybeare-Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, 1856, ii. 311 ff. ; H.A. A. Kennedy, Sources of NT Greek, 1895, p. 15 ; artt. ' Castle ' and ' Jerusalem 'Jn EBi, ' Castle ' in EDB.
' James Stkahan. CASTOR.— See Dioscuri.
CATECHUMEN.— See Baptism.
CATHOLIC EPISTLES.— The title 'Catholic Epistles,' as applied to a group of seven Epistles in the NT, viz. those of James, Peter (two), John (three), and Jude, is first met with in Eusebius (HE II. xxiii. 25[6is]and VI. xiv. 1), and, somewhat later, in Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheseis, iv. 36) and the original 'Euthalius' (ed. Zaccagni, 1698, i. 405, 409). We can thus trace the title in the above sense as far back as c. A.D. 310, and even then it conies before us as a long-established and familiar designation, the origin of which we may therefore assign to the 3rd century. As regards its usage by Eusebius, the conte.xt of the first passage cited (II. xxiii. 25) shows us that it cannot bear the meaning of ' canonical ' or ' apostolic,' since he there employs it simply in the sense of Epistles not addressed to a definite and relatively narrow circle of readers. With this usage we may compare his application of the term ' catholic ' to the Epistles of Dionysius of Corinth in HE IV. xxiii. 1, where he presumably makes use of an already current desig- nation of that group of seven (!) Epistles, which, though directed to particular communities, might nevertheless, so far as their character and contents are concerned, have been addressed to any com- munity in Christendom. The title 'Catholic Epistle,' again, as applied to a particular letter, is used, c. 260, by Dionysius of Alexandria {ap. Eus. HE Vil. XXV. 7, 10) of 1 John — in contradistinction to the other two Epistles of John, which are not addressed to the Church at large ; the term is used more frequently by Origen of 1 John, Jude, and 1 Peter, as also, in a single instance, of the Epistle of Bar- nabas (c. Cels. i. 63). The letter of the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem (Ac 15'^''^^) is referred to as 'catholic' by Clement of Alexandria {Strom. IV. XV. 97) c. 205, and he applies the same attribute to Jude in his Hypotyposeis (T. Zahn, Forschungen i.'(r Gesch. des NT Kanons, pt. iii. [1884] 83, Gesch. des NT Kanons, i. [1888] 319 f.). The anti-Mon- tanist Apollonius speaks ( 197) of a ' Catholic Epistle' which the INIontanist Themiso had composed in imitation of the Apostle (ap. Eus. HE V. xviii. 5) — pi^obably St. John in his First Epistle.
We may therefore assume that, by the end of the 2nd century, the title 'catholic' was applied to certain Epistles which, as contrasted above all with the Epistles of Paul, were not explicitly addressed to particular churches, and that it was likewise used on similar grounds of 1 John as contrasted with 2 and 3 John. From this point, again, a further step was taken, probably in the first half of the 3rd century, in applying the attribute ' catholic ' to all thie non-Pauline Epistles in the sacred collection, even although the term as hither- to used was not appropriate to 2 and 3 John. These, however, were by that time closely linked with 1 John. The usage of the term as equivalent to 'general' or 'encyclical' was still recognized by Leontius of Byzantium (de Sectis, ii. 4) and CEcume- nius {Com. in Ep. Cath. Jacobi). The change by
which the attribute ' catholic ' came to signify the opposite of ' non-apostolic ' or ' uncanonical ' took place in the West, and it was there also that this group of seven Epistles in the NT came to be known generally as the Canonical Epistles (cf. Council of Daraasus of 382 ; see C. H. Turner, JThSt i. [1899- 1900] 554, and E. V. Dobschiltz, jDecre^. Gelasiamum, 1912, p. 28 ; Pseudo-Didymus, in Ep. Can. [in the Latin version], and Cassiodorus, de Instit. Div. Lit., 8). It would thus appear that these terms were resorted to as a mere makeshift, and that they are of very little service to us either as regards the history of the canon or from the literary point of view.
LrrERATtTRE. — Histories of the KT Canon, and Introductions to the NT, esp. H. A. Schott, Isayoge hist.-crit. in libros jVoot Foederis, Jena., 1830, pp. 371-5, and E. Reuss, Gesch. derheiligen Schriften Neuen Testaments^, Brunswiclv, 1800, § 3U1 (Eng. tr., Edinburgh, 1884); E. T. Mayerhoff, 'Cberdie Bedeutungdes Naniens €ni<TTokaX Ka6o\iKaiC' in Hist.-krit. Einleitumj in die petriniscfien Schriften, Hamburg, 1835, pp. 31-42 ; A. Deiss- mann, Biljelstudie7i,'Ma.rhuTg, 1895, p. 243 f. (Eng. tr., Edinburgh, 1901, p. 50 ff.); the relevant excursuses of Jan van Gilse and W. C. L. Ziegler (' Animadversiones in sensum nominis epist. eathol.') in J. Dahl, Cominentatio exegetico-critica de av6evTC(f epist, petr., Rostock, 1807. H. JORDAN.