6 Shepherd of Hernias.
The earliest catalogue which we possess of the books Scripture is that of Melito, bishop of Sardis, pre- rved by Ensebins. From his statement, written in e year 170, it seems evident that there had then been ) catalogue authorized by the Church or any public »dy. He enumerates the books of the Jewish Canon ily, from which, however, he omits tlie book of Es- er (q. v.). The first catalogue o^ the Holy Scriptures, drawn
7 by any pvblic body in the Christian Church, which IS cdme down to us, is that of the Council of Laodi- ia, in Phrygia, supposed to bp held about the year 35. In the last two canons of this council, as we ow have tbem, there is an enumeration of the Ijooks f Scripture nearly conformable, in the Old Testament, 3 the Jewish Canon. The canons are in these words :
•*ThM private pBalmi onghk not to be said in the charch. or Any bocdcs not canonical, bat only tbe canonical books of he Old and New TesUment The books of the Old Testa- lent which ought to be read are these: 1. Genesis; 2. Ex- dus ; 3. Leviticus ; 4 Numbers ; S. Deuteronomy ; 6. Joshua, on of Nun; T. Judges, with Ruth; 8. Esther; 0. 1 and 2 kingdoms ; 10. 3 and 4 Kingdoms; 11. 1 and 2 Remains; 19.
and 2 Eadras; 18. the book of ISO Fsahns; 14. Proverbs; &. Eccleaiastes ; 16. Canticles; 17. Job; IS. the Twelve i^pheta ; 19. Isaiah ; 20. Jeremiah and Barueh^ the Lam- intationa and the Epistles; 2L Ezekiel; 22. Daniel.**
This catalogue is not, however, universally acknowl- idged to be genuine. ^* Possibly learned men," says Lardner, '* according to the diffbrent notions t)f the party they have been engaged in, have been led to dis- regiu4 the last canon ; some because of its omitting the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, and others because it has not the book of Revelation." Basnage, in his History of the Church, observes that "Protes- tants and Catholics have equally disparaged this syn- od." ** It is said," remarks Lardner, ** that the can- ons of tliia council were received and adopted by some General Councils in after times; nevertheless perhaps it would be difficult to show that those "General Coun- cils received the last canon, and exactly approved the catalogue of said books therein contained, without any addition or diminution, as we now have it" (see Mansi's Conciiioy ii, 674).
But, besides the Hebrew canon, the reader will have observed that there were certain other books publicly read in the primitive Church, and treated with a high degree of respect, although not considered by the He- brews, from whom they were derived (see the passage above dted from Josephus), as of equal authority with the former. Tliese books seem to have been included in the copies of the Septuagint, which was generally nxade use of by the sacred writers of the New Testa- ment It does diot appear whether the apostles gave any cautions against the reading of these books, and it has even been supposed that they have referred to them. Others, however, have maintained that the principal passages to which they have referred (for it is not pretended that they have cited them) are fh)m the canonical books. The following are tbe passages here alloded to ;
Rom. xi, 24, comp. with Heb. 1, 13, "
- xiX Rom. xiii, 1
" il,ll Gal. 11,6 Eph vi, 9 CoLili,23 IPet 1,24 James 1, 10 , 1 Cor. X, 10, James ii, 28, Luke X, 41, 1 Theas. Iv, 8, Matt, vii, 12, 1 Car. X, 20, John X, 22, Heb. xl, 8S, Matt, ix, 18,
Wisdom ix, 18, see Isa. xl, 13. " vii, 20.
" iv, 10, see Gen. v, 24. " vi, 8, see Prov. vlil, 16, 10.
" vi, 7, see Dent x, IT.
2 Cor. xiil, ^
Ecdus. xiT, 17, see Isa. xl, 6.
Judith viii, 26, (Ut) Num. xlv, 15w
" V, 22. Toblt iv, 7.
" iv, 17.
" iv.lBi Baruch iv, 7.
1 Mace, iv, 60.
2 Maco. vi, 7, see Rodns. xlv, 1& Prayer of Manaases. 8 Esdras iii, 12.
Some of the uncanonical boolcs, however, had not been extant more than a hundred and thirty years at most at the Christian era, and could only have ob- tained a place in the Greek Scriptures a short time before this period ; but the only copies of the Scrip- tures in existence for the first three hundred years aif- ter Christ, either among the Jews or Christians of Greece, Italy, or Africa, contained these books witliout any mark of distinction that we luiow of. The He« brew Bible and language were quite unknown to them during this period, and the most learned were, proba- bly, but ill informed on the subject, at least before Je- rome's translation of the Scriptures from the original Hebrew. The Latin versions before his time were all made from the Septuagint We do not, indeed, find any catalogue of these writings before the Council of Hippo, but only individual notices of separate boolc^. Thus Clement of Alexandria {Stromata, A.D. 211) cites the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, and Origen refers to several of these books, treating them with a high degree of veneration. "There is,'* says Eusebius, "an epistle of Africanus, addressed to Ori- gen, in which he intimates his doubt on the history of Susannah in Daniel, as if it were a spurious and ficti- tious composition ; to which Origin wrote a very frill answer." These epistles are both extant. Origen, at great length, vindicates these parts of the Greek ver- sion— for he acluiowledges that they were not in the Hebrew — ^frt>m the objections of Africanus, asserting tliat they were true and genuine, and made use of in Greek among all the churches of the Gentiles, and that we should not attend to the fraudulent comments of the Jews, but take that only for true in the holy Scriptures which the seventy had translated, for that this only was confirmed by apostolic authority. In the same letter he cites the book of Tobit, and in his second book, De Principiis, he even spealcs of the Shep- herd of Hermas as divinely inspireid. Origen, how- ever, uses very diffsrent language in regard to the book of Enoch, the Testament of the Twelve Patri- archs, and the Assumption of Mooes.