Chapter XXV.--The Divine Scriptures that are accepted and those that are not. [778]
1. Since we are dealing with this subject it is proper to sum up the writings of the New Testament which have been already mentioned. First then must be put the holy quaternion of the Gospels; [779] following them the Acts of the Apostles. [780]
2. After this must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; [781] next in order the extant former epistle of John, [782] and likewise the epistle of Peter, [783] must be maintained. [784] After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, [785] concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. [786] These then belong among the accepted writings. [787]
3. Among the disputed writings, [788] which are nevertheless recognized [789] by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James [790] and that of Jude, [791] also the second epistle of Peter, [792] and those that are called the second and third of John, [793] whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name.
4. Among the rejected writings [794] must be reckoned also the Acts of Paul, [795] and the so-called Shepherd, [796] and the Apocalypse of Peter, [797] and in addition to these the extant epistle of Barnabas, [798] and the so-called Teachings of the Apostles; [799] and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, [800] but which others class with the accepted books.
5. And among these some have placed also the Gospel according to the Hebrews, [802] with which those of the Hebrews that have accepted Christ are especially delighted. And all these may be reckoned among the disputed books. [803]
6. But we have nevertheless felt compelled to give a catalogue of these also, distinguishing those works which according to ecclesiastical tradition are true and genuine and commonly accepted, [804] from those others which, although not canonical but disputed, [805] are yet at the same time known to most ecclesiastical writers--we have felt compelled to give this catalogue in order that we might be able to know both these works and those that are cited by the heretics under the name of the apostles, including, for instance, such books as the Gospels of Peter, [806] of Thomas, [807] of Matthias, [808] or of any others besides them, and the Acts of Andrew [809] and John [810] and the other apostles, which no one belonging to the succession of ecclesiastical writers has deemed worthy of mention in his writings.
7. And further, the character of the style is at variance with apostolic usage, and both the thoughts and the purpose of the things that are related in them are so completely out of accord with true orthodoxy that they clearly show themselves to be the fictions of heretics. [811] Wherefore they are not to be placed even among the rejected [812] writings, but are all of them to be cast aside as absurd and impious.
Let us now proceed with our history.
[778] This chapter is the only place in which Eusebius attempts to treat the canon systematically, and in it he is speaking purely as an historian, not as a critic. He is endeavoring to give an accurate statement of the general opinion of the orthodox Church of his day in regard to the number and names of its sacred books. He does not, in this passage, apply to the various works any criterion of canonicity further than their acceptance as canonical by the orthodox Church. He simply records the state of the canon; he does not endeavor to form a canon. He has nothing to do, therefore, with the nature and origin of the books which the church accepts. As remarked by Weiss (Einleitung in das N. T., p. 96), the influence of Eusebius in the formation of the canon is very commonly overestimated. He contributed himself very little; his office was to record the usage of the church of his age, not to mould it. The church whose judgment he takes is, in the main, the church of the Orient, and in that church at this time all the works which we now call canonical (and only those) were already commonly accepted, or were becoming more and more widely accepted as such. From the standpoint, then, of canonicity, Eusebius divided the works which he mentions in this chapter into two classes: the canonical (including the Homologoumena and the Antilogomena) and the uncanonical (including the nothoi and the anapl?smata airetikon andron). But the nothoi he connects much more closely with the Homologoumena and Antilegomena than with the heretical works, which are, in fact, separated from all the rest and placed in a class by themselves. What, then, is the relation of the Homologoumena, Antilegomena, and nothoi to each other, as Eusebius classifies them? The crucial point is the relation of the nothoi to the antilegomena. Lücke (Ueber den N. T. Kanon des Eusebius, p. 11 sq.) identified the two, but such identification is impossible in this passage. The passages which he cites to confirm his view prove only that the word Antilegomena is commonly employed by Eusebius in a general sense to include all disputed works, and therefore, of course, the nothoi also; that is, the term Antilegomena is ordinarily used, not as identical with nothoi, but as inclusive of it. This, however, establishes nothing as to Eusebius' technical use of the words in the present passage, where he is endeavoring to draw close distinctions. Various views have been taken since Lücke's time upon the relation of these terms to each other in this connection; but, to me at least, none of them seem satisfactory, and I have been led to adopt the following simple explanation. The Antilegomena, in the narrower sense peculiar to this summary, were works which, in Eusebius' day, were, as he believed, commonly accepted by the Eastern Church as canonical, but which, nevertheless, as he well knew, had not always been thus accepted, and, indeed, were not even then universally accepted as such. The tendency, however, was distinctly in the direction of their ever-wider acceptance. On the other hand, the nothoi were works which, although they had been used by the Fathers and were quoted as graphe by some of them, were, at this time, not acknowledged as canonical. Although perhaps not universally rejected from the canon, yet they were commonly so rejected, and the tendency was distinctly in the direction of their ever-wider rejection. Whatever their merit, and whatever their antiquity and their claims to authenticity, Eusebius could not place them among the canonical books. The term nothoi, then, in this passage, must not be taken, as it commonly is, to mean spurious or unauthentic, but to mean uncanonical. It is in this sense, as against the canonical Homologoumena and Antilegomena, that Eusebius, as I believe, uses it here, and his use of it in this sense is perfectly legitimate. In using it he passes no judgment upon the authenticity of the works referred to; that, in the present case, is not his concern. As an historian he observed tendencies, and judged accordingly. He saw that the authority of the Antilegomena was on the increase, that of the nothoi on the decrease, and already he could draw a sharp distinction between them, as Clement of Alexandria could not do a century before. The distinction drawn has no relation to the authenticity or original authority of the works of the two classes, but only to their canonicity or uncanonicity at the time Eusebius wrote. This interpretation will help us to understand the peculiar way in which Eusebius treats the Apocalypse, and thus his treatment of it becomes an argument in favor of the interpretation. He puts it, first among the Homologoumena with an eige phaneie, and then among the nothoi with an ei phaneie. No one, so far as I know, has explained why it should be put among the nothoi as an alternative to the Homologoumena, instead of among the Antilegomena, which, on the common interpretation of the relation of the classes, might be naturally expected. If the view presented is correct, the reason is clear. The Antilegomena were those works which had been disputed, but were becoming more and more widely accepted as canonical. The Apocalypse could not under any circumstances fall into this class, for the doubts raised against it in the orthodox Church were of recent date. It occupied, in fact, a peculiar position, for there was no other work which, while accepted as canonical, was doubted in the present more than in the past. Eusebius then must either put it into a special class or put it conditionally into two different classes, as he does. If the doubts should become so widespread as to destroy its canonicity, it would fall naturally into the nothoi, for then it would hold the same position as the other works of that class. As an historian, Eusebius sees the tendency and undoubtedly has the idea that the Apocalypse may eventually, like the other Christian works of the same class (the Shepherd, the Apocalypse of Peter, etc.), become one of the nothoi, one of the works which, formerly accepted, is at length commonly denied to be canonical: and so, as an historian, he presents the alternative. The Apocalypse was the only work in regard to which any doubt could exist. Eusebius' failure to mention explicitly in this passage the Epistle to the Hebrews, has caused considerable misunderstanding. The explanation, if the view presented be adopted, is simple. Eusebius included it, I believe, among the epistles of Paul, and did not especially mention it, simply because there was no dispute about its canonicity. Its Pauline authorship had been widely disputed as Eusebius informs us elsewhere, and various theories had been proposed to account for it; but its canonicity had not been doubted in the orthodox Church, and therefore doubts as to the authorship of it did not in the least endanger its place among the Homologoumena, as used here in a technical sense; and since Eusebius was simply stating the works of each class, not discussing the nature and origin of those works, he could, in perfect fairness, include it in Paul's epistles (where he himself believed it belonged) without entering upon any discussion of it. Another noticeable omission is that of the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. All efforts to find a satisfactory reason for this are fruitless. It should have been placed among the nothoi with the Epistle of Barnabas, etc., as Eusebius' treatment of it in other passages shows. It must be assumed, with Holtzmann, that the omission of it was nothing more nor less than an oversight. Eusebius, then, classifies the works mentioned in this chapter upon two principles: first, in relation to canonicity, into the canonical and the uncanonical; and secondly, in relation to character, into the orthodox (Homologoumena, Antilegomena, which are canonical, and nothoi, which are uncanonical), and heterodox (which are not, and never have been, canonical, never have been accepted as of use or authority). The Homologoumena and Antilegomena, then, are both canonical and orthodox, the anapl?smata hairetikon andron are neither canonical nor orthodox, while the nothoi occupy a peculiar position, being orthodox but not canonical. The last-named are much more closely related to the canonical than to the heterodox works, because when the canon was a less concrete and exact thing than it had at length become, they were associated with the other orthodox works as, like them, useful for edification and instruction. With the heretical works they had never been associated, and possessed in common with them only the negative characteristic of non-canonicity. Eusebius naturally connects them closely with the former, and severs them completely from the latter. The only reason for mentioning the latter at all was the fact that they bore the names of apostles, and thus might be supposed, as they often had been--by Christians, as well as by unbelievers--to be sacred books like the rest. The statement of the canon gives Eusebius an opportunity to warn his readers against them. Upon Eusebius' New Testament Canon, see especially the work of Lücke referred to above, also Westcott's Canon of the New Testament, 5th ed., p. 414 sq., Harnack's Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, p. 6 sq., Holtzmann's Einleitung in das N.T., p. 154 sq., and Weiss' Einleitung, p. 92 sq. The greater part of the present note was read before the American Society of Church History in December, 1888, and is printed in Vol. I. of that Society's papers, New York, 1889, p. 251 sq.
[779] On Matthew, see the previous chapter, note 5; on Mark, Bk. II. chap. 15, note 4; on Luke, Bk. III. chap. 4, notes 12 and 15; on John, the previous chapter, note 1.
[780] See above, chap. 4, note 14.
[781] See chap. 3, note 16. Eusebius evidently means to include the Epistle to the Hebrews among Paul's epistles at this point, for he mentions it nowhere else in this chapter (see above, note 1).
[782] See the previous chapter, note 18.