Itself to the minds of men. As regards a large portion of the writings of the New Testament, it is not too much to say that they claim an authority not lower, nay, even higher than the Old. That which had not been revealed to the "prophets" of the Old dispensa- tion is revealed to the prophets of the New (Eph. iii, 5). The apostles wrote as having the Spirit of Christ (1 Cor. vii, 40), as teaching and being taught " I y the revela- tion of Jesus Christ" (Gal. i, 12). Where they make no such direct claim their language is still that of men who teach as "having authority," and so far the old prophetic spirit is revived in them, and their teaching differs, as did that of their Master, from the traditions of the scribes. As the revelation of God through the Son was recognised as fuller and more perfect than that which had been made TroXvptpoJc, icai TroXvrpoirujr to the fathers (Heb. i, 1), the records of what He had done and said, when once recognised as authentic, could not be regarded as less sacred than the Scrip- tures of the Jews. Indications of this arc found even within the N. T. itself. Assuming the genuineness of the 2d Epistle of Peter, it shows that within the life- time of the apostles, the Epistles of Paul had come to be classed among the ypatyai of the Church (2 Pet. iii, 10). The language of the same Epistle in relation to the recorded teaching of prophets and apostles ( iii. 2 ; comp. Eph. ii, 20; iii, 5; iv, 11) shows that the Traaa irpixprirtia ypatpije. can hardly be limited to the writ- ings of the Old Testament. The command that the letter to the Colossians was to be read in the church of Laodicea (Col. iv, 16), though it does not prove that it was regarded as of equal authority with the ypayi) Oeutti'evgtoc,, indicates a practice which would natural- ly lead to its being so regarded. The writing of a man who spoke as inspired could not fail to be regarded a:'. participating in the inspiration. It is part of the de- velopment of the same feeling that the earliest records of the worship of the Christian Church indicate the liturgical use of some at least of the writings of the New, as well as of the Old Testament. Justin (Apol. i, GG) places rd (i7ropi'ijpovcvfiaTa tojv cnroaroXuiv as read in close connection with, or in the place of ra trvy- ypafifiara twp irpo<pi]Twv, and this juxtaposition cor- responds to the manner in which Ignatius had previ- ously spoken of ax Trpo<pi]Tiicu, vopoQ Mwnkoc, -<) ivayytXtov (Ep. ad Smym. c. 7). It is not meant, of course, that such phrases or such practices prove the existence of a recognised collection, but they show with what feelings individual writings were regarded. They prepare the way for the acceptance of the whole body of the N.-T. writings, as soon as the Canon is completed, as on a level with those of the Old. A lit- tle farther on and the recognition is complete. Thc- opfailus of Antioch (ad Autolyc. bk. iii), Irenams (ado. Hcer. ii, 27; iii, 1), Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, iii, 10; v, 5), Tertullian (adv. Prax. 15, 20), all speak of the New Testament writings (what writings they included under this title is of course a distinct question) as making up, with the Old, fit a yvcZmg (Clem. Al. I. c), "totum instrumentum utriusque test- amenti" (Tert. 1. c), universal scriptura. As this was in part a consequence of the liturgical usage referred to, so it reacted upon it, and influenced the transcribers and translators of the books which were needed for the instruction of the Church. The Syriac Peshito in the 3d, or at the close of the 2d century, includes (with the omission of some of the avriXsyopiva) the New Testa- ment as well as the Old. The Alexandrian Codex, presenting in the fullest sense of the word a complete Bible, may be taken as the representative of the full maturity of the feeling which we have seen in its ear- lier developments. The same ma}' lie said of the Co- dex Sinaiticus, lately brought to light by Prof. Tischen- dorf.
III. Order of the Books. — The existence of a collec- tion of sacred books recognised as authoritative lead.' naturally to a more or less systematic arrangement
The arrangement must rest upon rome principle of classification. The names given to the several 1 ooks will indicate in some instances the view taken of their contents, in others the kind of notation applied both to the greater and smaller divisions of the sacred vol- umes. The existence of a classification analogous to that adopted by the later Jews and still retained in the printed Hebrew Bibles, is indicated even before the completion of the O. T. Canon (Zech. vii, 12). When the Canon was looked upon as settled, in the period covered by the books of the Apocrypha, it took a more definite form. The Prologue to Ecclcsiasticus men- tions "the law and the prophets and the other books." In the N. T. there is the same kind of recognition. "The Law and the Prophets" is the shorter | Matt, xi, 13 ; xxii, 40; Acts xiii, 15, etc.) ; " the Law, the Proph- ets, and the Psalms" (Luke xxiv, 44), the fuller state- ment of the division popularly recognised. The ar- rangement of the books of the Heb. text under these three heads requires, however, a farther notice.