THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
III Cor. It is now known that this apocryphal writing is but a section out of the Acts of Paul wliich belongs to the period about 170 at the earliest. It could, therefore, not have belonged to the original Syrian Canon. Tatian became a Christian at Rome, and, according to the legend, the canon of the Epistles was received from Rome. Eusebius (Hist, eccl., IV xxix. 6) heard an obscure report that there was a recension of the Pauline Epistles by Tatian. The oldest Syrian text both of Epistles and of Gospels has a relationship to the Western text. The Sinai summary throws new light on the subject. The order of the Epistles there is Gal., I and
II Cor., Rom., Heb., and so on, and just this is the order in which Ephraem commented upon them and it is the order of Marcion, and no one was more likely to follow in the footsteps of Marcion than Tatian. It is very remarkable too that in the Syriac summary II Tim. is mentioned, but I Tim. is omitted. The Syrian Church could not maintain its original individuality. While before the time of Aphraates and in the third century it received Heb. and I Tim., it could not exclude all the Catholic Epistles. The Syriac translation of Eusebius's Church History, wliich Ephraem had diligently read, acquainted the Syrians with the older history of the New Testament. Intercourse sprang up in the fourth century between Greek and Syrian Christians, and Greeks and Greek Bibles appeared in Edessa; it is, therefore, no wonder that Ephraem was familiar with all the Catholic Epistles. In the Peshito a selection was made of Jas., I Pet., I John, while II Pet., II and III John, Jude, and Rev. were excluded.
7. Lucian and Eusebius: While the New Testament of the early Church in Antioch had its individuality, the canon of Chrysostom was exactly that of the Peshito and carried the exclusion of II and
III John back to the decision of the Fathers. This can not be due to the efforts of Eusebius, since he would set aside the Apocalypse, but would recognize the seven Catholic Epistles; to reach the roots of the matter, one must go back to the beginning of the exegetical school, to Lucian. Report says that Lucian was born in Samosata and that he labored in Edessa before he became a priest and the founder of the school in Antioch. It is doubtless true that he extended his text-critical work to uhe New Testament, and that his recension of that as well as of the Septuagint was diffused as far as Constantinople. So that the Antiochean school's text of about 380-450 probably goes back to Lucian and was a compromise between the Edessan and the Antiochean traditions. Rev. was excluded while Jas., I Pet., and I John of the Catholic Epistles were taken in. This doubtless influenced the Peshito.
In Palestine the Bible-studies of Origen were continued by Pamphilus and Eusebius. But Eusebius was affected both by the Origenistic tradition and by the Antiochean school, with representatives of which he was connected in the debate over the Trinity. In his Church History according to his promise he has diligently given the pronouncements of earlier writers about the antikgomena of the New Testament, and also in-
teresting information about both acknowledged and doubtful writings. With Origen, he found two classes, homologoumena and antilegomena ; but the second he divided into two subclasses, the one containing the books he would have acknowledged and the other the notha or " spurious." His table then is: (1) Homologoumena, the Gospels, Acts, fourteen Pauline Epistles, I Pet., I John, and Rev.; (2) Antilegomena, (a) the better sort, Jas., Jude, II and III John, and (b) the notha, Acts of Paul, Shepherd, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and the Didache. But Eusebius's treatment is not always either clear or consistent. He uses a term endiathekos, " within-the-New-Testament," as a synonym of homologoumenos and appears thereby to exclude from the New Testament the first class of the antilegomena. On the other hand, in naming the second subdivision of the antilegomena " spurious " he seems to argue the genuineness of the first subdivision. But for him the seven Catholic Epistles are a closed collection. It was about Rev. that Eusebius found it hard to come to a decision. Many times he cites it and adduces the strongest testimony for its ecclesiastical importance (HUt. eccl., IV. xviii. 8, xxiv. 1, xxvi. 2, V. viii. 5, xviii. 14, VI. xxv. 9). But when in III. xxiv. 18 he reports the vacillation of opinion about the book, he calls attention to the influence of the Lucian school. He cites it as " the so-called Apocalypse of John " (III. xviii. 2, cf. xxxix. 6), briefly refers to the vituperation of Caius (III. xxviii.), and notes the more cautious criticism of Dionysius (VII. xxiv. 5). His conjecture that another John wrote it he follows out with diligence, and in the interest of this hypothesis seeks to prove the existence of a presbyter John as distinct from the apostle. He would disrobe the book of its apostolic dress and remove it from the New Testament, though he never expressly utters this decision. On account of its quite universal recognition in the Church he leaves open the choice between placing it among the homologoumena or among the notha. Apart from this book, however, his New Testament is the same as ours. The making of fifty copies of the New Testament on parchment for Constantine gave him an opportunity to diffuse his opinions, and the result snowed that he inclined to the Lucian form of text rather than to the Origenistic, though including therein the lesser Catholic Epistles.
8. Athanasius: According to the Easter Letter of 367, recently recovered through a Coptic translation, in which is given a view of the continuous undiscriminating usage of all kinds of Apocrypha as scripture in the ecclesiastical province where Athanasius was, there was afforded him the opportunity of setting forth a definitely limited canon arranged in order of books and in groups. He was the first to name the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as exclusively canonical. He ignored the opposition to which several of them had so long been subjected, notably II Pet., which Didymus continued to oppose. But not to break completely with the Alexandrian tradition, he placed in sharp distinction from the " canonized " books and equally from the apocryphal ones a class of anagignoskomena . The Fathers had designated these