upon them as of doubtful authority Euse-
bius Pamphilus, in his Ecclesiastical History, says that at Ephesus there are two monuments, one of John the Evangelist, and another of John, an elder, who wrote two of the Catholic epistles, the second and third inscribed after this manner, ' The elder to the elect lady,' and ' The elder to the beloved Gaius,' and both he and Irenoeus say that but two are written by the apostles, the first of Peter, and the first of John.
Among the Syrians are found only the three
before mentioned, viz., the Epistle of James, the Epis- tle of Peter, and the Epistle of John ; they have not the rest. It does not become a perfect Christian to confirm any thing by doubtful books, when the books in the Testament acknowledged by all (homologoumena) have sufficiently declared all things to be known about the heavens, and the: earth, and the elements, and all Christian doctrine."
The most ancient Greek manuscripts which have come down to our times contain the Antilegomena. From this circumstance it is extremely probable that the copies from which they were transcribed were written after the controversies respecting their canon- icity had subsided. The Alexandrian manuscript in the British Museum (now generally admitted to have been written in the fourth or early in the fifth cen- tury) contains all the books now commonly received, together with some others, with a table of contents, in which they are cited in the following order : " Sev- en Catholic "epistles, fourteen of Paul, the Revelation of John, the First Epistle of Clement, the Second Epis- tle of Clement, and the Psalms of Solomon (which lat- ter have, however, been lost from the MS.)." (It ia
ANTILIBANUS
264
ANTINOMIANS
observable that Eusebius classes the First Epistle of Clement among the Homologoumena, or universally- received books; but by this he probably meant no more than that it was acknowledged by all to be the genuine work of Clement.) The order of all the epis- tles is the same as in our modern Bibles, except that the Epistle to the Hebrews is placed after the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. In the Vatican manuscript 13, which, in respect of antiquity, disputes the precedence with the Alexandrian, the Apocalypse is wanting, but it contains the remaining antilegomena. (The omis- sion of this last book ma}' be owing simply to the loss of the last part of the codex, in consequence of which the concluding chapters of the Hebrews, and the whole of 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon are likewise missing.) The Syrian canon of the New Testament did not include all the antilegomena. All the manuscripts of the Syrian version (the Peshito, a work of the second century) which have come down to us omit the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third of John, that of Jade, and the Apocalypse. Nor are these books received to this day either bj- the Jacobite or Nesto- rian Christians. These are all wanting in the Vati- can and Medicean copies, written in the years 548 and 586, and in the beautiful manuscript of the Peshito, preserved in the British Museum, and the writing of which was concluded at the monastery of Bethkoki, A.D. 768, on 197 leaves of vellum, in the Estrangelo character.
In the inquiring age immediately preceding the Reformation the controversy respecting the antilego- mena was revived, especially by Erasmus and Cardi- nal Cajetan ; by the latter, however, upon principles so questionable as to expose him to the charge of as- sailing the authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews with the same weapons which the Emperor Julian had employed to impugn the authority of Matthew's Gos- pel. . The doubts thus raised were in a great measure silenced by the decree of the council of Trent, al- though there have not been wanting learned Roman Catholic divines since this period who have ventured to question at least the Pauline authorship of the Epis- tle to the Hebrews. It is well known that Luther, influenced in this instance not so much by historieo- critical as by dogmatical views, called the Epistle of James " an epistle of straw" (epistola straminea). He also wished the antilegomena to be distinguished from the other books in his translation of the Bible. In consequence of this, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, and the Apocalypse have no numbers attached to them in the German copies of the Bible up to the middle of the seventeenth century ; and it is observed by Tholuck {Commentary on He- brews, in Biblical Cabinet') that " the same plan should have been adopted with respect to second Peter and second and third John, but it did not seem proper to detach them from the Homologonmena which belonged to them. Thus he wished at the same time to point out what were the "right noble chief books of Scrip- ture." We are informed by Father Paul Sarpi {Hist, of the Council of Trent, bk. ii, ch. xliii, t. i, p. 235; and ch. xlvii, p. 240) that one of the charges collected from the writings of Luther in this council was "that no books should be admitted into the canon of the Old Testament which were not in the canon of the Jews, and that from the New should be excluded the Epis- tle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third of John, and the Apocalypse." Tholuck states that the " Evan- gelical Churches, both Lutheran and Reformed, adopt- ed the same canon with respect to the New Testament as that of the council of Trent" {Comment, on Jleb. vol. i, Introd., ch. i, § 3, note b). Some, or all, of the antilegomena have been again impugned in recent times, especially in Germany. See each in its place. — Kitto, s. v. Compare Can-on (of Scripture).