RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Canon of Scripture
// Clem., viii. 5; Ignatius, Smyrna, v. 1; Philadelphia, viii. 2). That " Gospel " was the authoritative document. The general knowl- 2. The edge of its contents involves its
"Gospel." regular use in public service. It was cited with the formula " the Lord says," with or without the addition " in the Gospel," and with the formula (used with Old Testament citations) " it is written." But what was this " Gospel "? A clear understanding of what it was existed between the writers of the period 90-140 and their readers. Papias declared that during the lifetime of John in the vicinity of Ephesus a Gospel of Mark was used, and Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, preferred it to the others (Irenseus, Hoer., III. xi. 7, cf. I. xxvi. 1). Papias asserted that the Hebrew Matthew was long used in the province of Asia with the aid of oral interpretation until a Greek version superseded it. Even the Fourth Gospel recalls the very words of Mark and Luke (T. Zahn, Einleitung, Leipsic, 1900, pp. 505- 506, 520). The spurious passage Mark xvi. 9-20 is derived from Luke, John, and Papias. The earliest Gospels of the Infancy and the Gospels of Peter and Marcion go back to the canonical Gospels. In the literature of 95-140 among a mass of ordinances for ecclesiastical direction only four gospel -citations are not traceable to the four Gospels (// Clem., v. 2, 4, viii. 5, xii. 2-6; Ignatius, Smyrna, iii. 2). Such uncanonical sayings as these four were circulated orally as well as in writing; Papias about 125 collected many of them. Of the origin of the making of the Gospel canon there is no trustworthy report, nor can it be said where it took form.
Other writings which are found afterward assigned to the New Testament were not unified in any one collection as were the Gos-
3. Other pels and the Pauline Epistles. They
Writings, appeared first either as indisputable or as debated parts of the New Testament in the stage it then had reached. A very wide use in extended circles of the Church during public service is provable for I Pet., I John, Rev., and the Shepherd, none of which was originally addressed to a single community.
5. Origen and His School: During the third century the New Testament underwent no essential change. The achievement of Origen was the comparison of the content of the traditional possession of various communities. His varied life and travels gave him the opportunity to learn through observation existing variations; his philological training and his decided vocation for learned work in the service of the Church qualified him to pronounce a discreet judgment. Before 217 he was welcomed at Rome as one of the rising stars of the Church; his travels took him to Athens, Antioch, and Caesarea in Cappadocia, while his later years were spent in Palestine. Students flocked to him both in Alexandria and in Palestine. But Bible student though he was, he was no thoroughgoing critic. He quoted Prov. xxii. 28 in reference to discussion of the canon; tradition spoke for him the last word, though indeed that tradition was to be investigated. Hence he voiced the distinction between the homo- '-ogoumena, the writings universally recognized as
scripture, and the antilegomena, or those more or less opposed. To the former, according to Origen, belonged the four Gospels, thirteen Pauline Epistles, I Pet., I John, Acts, and Rev., the last the closing book of the New Testament. To the latter belonged Heb., II Pet., II and III John, Jas., Jude, Barnabas, the Shepherd, the Didache, and the Gospel of the Hebrews. Hebrews was frequently cited by him as though Pauline and canonical, especially in his earlier writings; and he defended its Paulinity rather as coming through a member of Paul's school than from Paul himself. II Pet. was also frequently cited by him as scripture, in which his scholar Firmilian followed him. Jas. was also frequently cited both as scripture and as " the apostle James." Jude appears to have been valued by him, though not often appearing in his writings. Barnabas is called a Catholic Epistle and in the Onomasticon is put with the other Catholic Epistles. He regarded the Shepherd as an inspired work and useful. He appears also to have cited the Didache as scripture. The Gospel of the Hebrews is not mentioned in his list of the apocryphal gospels; on the other hand, it is often cited with the formula he used when citing from such writings. He sharply discriminated the Jewish-Christian communities, whose one gospel this was, from the heretical Ebionites on the ground that the former held fast the ecclesiastical rule of faith.
The allegorical interpretation by means of which Origen undertook to reconcile the most divergent materials and the most varied writings and to unite them thus in one Bible found opposition. The composition of Nepos, bishop of Arsinoe, " Against the Allegorists " advanced and spread a chiliasm which to Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria about 260 appeared unendurable. To Origen it appeared that Rev. was written by an inspired man of the apostolic age named John, but the difference in style and conception from the Fourth Gospel did not allow its ascription to the apostle. It was especially a book for the application of the allegorical method.
6. The Original New Testament of the Syrians: On the beginnings of the church in Edessa there is a legendary report in Syriac, The Doctrine of Addai, ed. Phillips, London, 1876, which contains some significant words about the books introduced there for use in the service. Addai, the founder of the church of Edessa, is made to say expressly that beside the Old Testament no other scriptures shall be read than the Gospel, the Epistles of Paul, and the Acts. And by the Gospel is doubtless meant the Diatessaron of Tatian. On the other hand, Ephraem knew well the four Gospels, and a Syrian canon contained not the Diatessaron but the four Gospels in our order. The Syrian collection of the Pauline letters embraced, about 330-370, according to the commentaries of Aphraates and Ephraem, Heb. and the apocryphal III Cor., but not Philem. The last-named book failed to appear in the otherwise complete commentary of Ephraem. A summary from Sinai gives Philem. at the end and does not contain III Cor.; on the other hand, it has a II Phil., which may be another name for
Canon of Scripture