Illustr., ii.: “Jacobus qui appellatur frater Domini . . . unam tantum scripsit epistolam, quae de septem Catholicis est, quae et ipsa ab alio quodam sub nomine ejus edita asseritur, licet paulatim tempore procedente obtinuerit auctoritatem’’ (quoted by Westcott, Canon of the N.T., p. 452); elsewhere, however, Jerome quotes from the Epistle as from Scripture. This evidence, therefore, runs on somewhat the same lines as that of Eusebius; and when it is remembered that these two writers stand out as the two greatest authorities of antiquity on the subject of the Canon, it must be con- ceded that their witness ought almost to be regarded as final. It is worth recalling that recently Jerome’s status as a reliable witness has been greatly strengthened by the discovery of a gospel-fragment! which in the MS. in which it has been discovered forms a part of the Longer Ending of the canonical Gospel of St. Mark. “ Writing against the Pelagians in 415-416 (C. Pelag., ti. 15), Jerome quoted a passage which ‘in some copies [of the Latin Gospels] and especi- ally in Greek codices’ followed immediately after St. Mark xvi. 14 [the words are then given]; hitherto Jerome’s statement has been entirely without support; now at length it has been recovered in the Greek... .”2 Three other facts of importance must be recorded regarding the external data as to authorship; they concern the question of canonicity, and therefore indirectly that of authorship. The Muratorian Fragment, which ‘may be regarded on the whole as a summary of the opinion of the Western Church on the Canon shortly after the middle of the second century’ (Westcott, op. οἱέ., p. 212), omits St. fames in its list of canonical writings. Secondly, our Epistle is not included in the Syriac version of the N.T. brought to the Syrian Church by Palit, bishop of Edessa, at the beginning of the third century; “the Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse formed no part of the old Syriac version. In the Peshitta this defect is partially supplied by a translation of James, 1 Peter and 1 John, in agreement with the usage of Antioch as represented by Chry- sostom” (Burkitt in Encycl. Bibl. iv. col. 5004); Prof. Burkitt quotes Addai, 46; “The Law and the Prophets and the Gospel . . .-and the Epistles of Paul... and the Acts of the Twelve Apostles— these writings shall ye read in the Churches of Christ, and besides these ye shall read nothing else’’; and adds, “ Neither in Aphraates nor in the genuine works of Ephraim are there any quotations from the Apocalypse or the Catholic Epistles.” And thirdly, our Epistle
1See the Biblical World, pp. 138 ff. (1908). 2 Swete in the Guardian, 1st April, 1908; see also Swete, Zwei neue Evangelien— Sragmente, p. 9 (1908); Gregory, Das Freer-Logion, pp. 25 ff. (1908).