ANTILEGOMENA
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ANTILEGOMENA
considered as the compositions of orthodox men, writ- ten with good intentions, but calculated by their titles to mislead the ignorant, who might be disposed to ac- count them as apostolical productions, to which honor they had not even a dubious claim. (See Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii, 5, 25.) The same historian has also preserved the testimony of Origen, who, in his Com- mentary on John (cited by Eusebius), observes : " Pe- ter, upon whom the Church of Christ is built, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, has left one epistle undisputed ; it majr be, also, a second, but of this there is some doubt. What shall we say of him who reclined on the breast of Jesus, John, who has left one Gospel, in which he confesses that he could write so many that the whole world could not contain them ? He also wrote the Apocalypse, being commanded to conceal, and not to write, the voices of the seven thunders. He has also left us an epistle consisting of very few lines (gtixoi) ; it may be also a second and third are from him, but all do not concur in their genuineness; both together do not contain a hundred stichi" (for the signification of this word, see Chris- tian Remembrancer, iii, 4G5 sq.). And again, in his Homilies, " The epistle with the title ' To the Hebrews'' has not that peculiar style which belongs to an apostle who confesses that he is but rude in speech, that is, in Lis phraseology. But that this epistle is more pure Greek in the composition of its phrases, every one will confess who is able to discern the difference of style. Again, it will be obvious that the ideas of the apostle are admirable, and not inferior to any of the books ac- knowledged to be apostolic. Every one will confess the truth of this who attentively reads the apostle's
writings I would say, that the thoughts are the
apostle's, but that the diction and phraseology belong to some one who has recorded what the apostle has said, and as one who has noted down at his leisure what his master dictated. If, then, any Church con- siders this epistle as coming from Paul, let him be commended for this, for neither did these eminent men deliver it for this without cause : but who it was that really wrote the epistle God only knows. The ac- count, however, that has been current before our time is, according to some, that Clement, who was bishop of Rome, wrote the epistle ; according to others, that it was written by Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the Acts" (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi, 25).
Upon other occasions Origen expresses his doubts in regard to the antilegomena, as, where, in his com- mentary on John's Gospel, he speaks of the reputed (^ipofiivn) Epistle of James, and in his commentary on Matthew, where he uses the phrase, " If we ac- knowledge the Epistle of Jude ;" and of the Second and Third Epistles of John he observes, that '"all do not acknowledge them as genuine ;" by which epi- thet, we presume, he means written by the person to whom they are ascribed. It is remarkable that Eu- sebius (ii, 23; iii, 25) classes the Epistle of James, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas, at one time with the spurious, and at an- other witli the antilegomena. By the word spurious, in this instance at least, he can mean no more than that the genuineness of such books was disputed ; as, for instance, the (ii>s/,< I of ike Hebrews, which was re- ceived by the Ebionites as a genuine production of the Evangelist .Matthew. This is the work of which Je- rome made a transcript, as he himself informs us, from the copy preserved by the zeal of Paniphilns in the ( Isesarean Library. He also informs us that he trans- lated it into Greek, and that it was considered by most persons as the original Gospel of Matthew (Dialog, contra Pelag. iii. 2. and Comment, in Matt. xii ). Whether the Shepherd of Hermas was ever in- cluded among the antilegomena seems doubtful. Eu- sebius informs us that " it was disputed, and conse- quently not placed among the homologoumena. By others, however, it is judged most necessary, espe-