Somewhat Abnormal: The New Testament Canon

Questioning the Canon

Robert Oerter

How were the books of the New Testament chosen?

It was the duty of the bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in the 4^th century AD to determine the correct date for the Easter celebration each year and announce it to the Christian churches throughout the Roman Empire. Because the date depended on both the spring equinox and the full moon, the calculation was not simple and Alexandria, the intellectual center of the empire, was the logical place for it. The date of Easter had been a source of controversy much earlier in the church’s history, and after the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD, adopting it as his own religion, the need was increasingly felt for uniformity of practice. In the festal letter that announced the date, the bishop would address any other issues he believed relevant to the wider Christian community. In 367 AD, Bishop Athanasius included in his letter a list of the books of the Old and New Testaments, declaring “In these alone the teachings of godliness is proclaimed. Let no one add to these; let no one take away from them….”[1] Here for the first time, more than 300 years after Jesus’s death, we find the complete list of the New Testament books as we define that collection today. How did the New Testament come into being, and why did the process last for centuries?

Growing up as a Christian, I never thought to ask how we knew the books of the Bible were authentic. It did seem strange that the gospels of Mark and Luke were included in the New Testament. After all, according to what I had been taught, these two books were not written by apostles, while all the other New Testament books were. I was told that, according to other early Christian writers, Mark and Luke were closely connected with apostles, and that was the end of the matter as far as my teachers were concerned.

If we look at all the writings from the first few centuries of Christianity, we find many texts whose authors were purportedly apostles, but which nevertheless are not included in the New Testament. There are gospels attributed to Peter, Philip, and Thomas, additional letters of Paul, revelations to Peter and to Paul, and many others. Why should the New Testament include the gospel according to Mark, but not the gospel according to Thomas? Why should some of Paul’s letters be included and not others? On what basis did the early churches discriminate between these writings? Why were some judged authentic and some inauthentic? And how do the judgments of modern scholars compare to those of the early church?

The Earliest Christian Writings

No one knows who was the first to put in writing the words or deeds of Jesus. It is highly likely that the first such writing has not been passed down to us. Scholars believe that the books of the New Testament were written between about 50 AD and 120 AD.[2] During the same time period, Christians wrote many other works that are not included in the New Testament of today. Of these, a few have survived (1 Clement, the Didache, the letter of Barnabas, several letters of Ignatius, and probably the Gospel of Thomas and the Shepherd of Hermas all come from about the same period), and a few more we know of because they are referred to by other writers, though no copies exist today (for example, Papias’s Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord). Others have most likely vanished without a trace. In no case has the original manuscript survived; all we have are copies, or, more likely, copies of copies of copies, that were written 100 years or more after the originals.

Those books that later became part of the New Testament are called “canonical.” The remainder are called “extra-canonical” (or sometimes “non-canonical”). From the vantage point of the early second century AD, however, there is little to distinguish the two groups. With the exception of Revelation, none of the New Testament books claims to be divinely inspired or revealed. Indeed, Paul is careful to distinguish his own opinions from “the Lord’s” in 1 Corinthians 7:12. Some of the extra-canonical literature is more forthright in claiming inspiration. The Shepherd of Hermas, like canonical Revelation, purports to be a series of heavenly visions. Clement says his letter was “prompted by the Holy Spirit”,[3] and Ignatius writes, “Jesus Christ will show you that I speak the truth…. I have not written you according to the flesh but according to the mind of God.”[4]

Of the extra-canonical writings listed earlier, only one (Papias) mentions any New Testament books by name. Sometimes, though, an author will quote a phrase, sentence, or a whole passage from previous book. Scholars have examined the extra-canonical writings closely to see if the authors quoted from the canonical books. Establishing the dependence of one text on another is a tricky thing. How much material must be quoted for us to be sure that one author copied another? Is the use of a few characteristic words and phrases enough to be convincing, or do we require extensive verbal agreement in many places? If we can establish that one author copied from another, a new question springs up: who copied from whom? Of course, the earlier author could not have copied from the later author, but most of the dates of these early documents are so uncertain that this principle is of little help. Another possibility must be kept in mind: that both of the authors are quoting from a third source. Not only written documents but oral traditions, too, are a possible source of similarities. The complexity increases still more when we realize that some of these documents may have been added to, edited, and rearranged in various ways by several different authors and the document we actually have in hand gives only the endpoint of this process. Not surprisingly, in view of all the uncertainties, questions of dependence are still a matter of scholarly debate.

With all this uncertainty it might be a good idea to start off with something definite. The so-called first letter of Clement (1 Clement) is a letter from one of the church leaders in Rome to the Corinthian church. The author does not give us his name; there is no way of knowing whether the traditional ascription to Clement of Rome is correct. (Clement later became a popular subject of legend: a sermon from around 150 AD, clearly not written by the author of 1 Clement, was ascribed to him (2 Clement), and an even later body of writings, the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, was forged in his name.[5]) The letter is one of the earliest extant Christian writings outside of the New Testament; as such, it is an important testimony to Christian attitudes in the late first century.[6] The author definitely knew at least one of Paul’s letters; he writes, “Take up the epistle of that blessed apostle, Paul.” Presumably, he means 1 Corinthians; his next paragraph alludes to 1 Corinthians 1:12. Other phrases seem to reflect a knowledge of Romans and Hebrews. The author does not, however, refer to Paul’s letters as “scripture,” a term he reserves for the Old Testament. He uses some phrases that are reminiscent of the Gospels, but they are not exact quotes, and when he describes the apostles traveling and preaching he makes no mention of anything they wrote.[7]

Ignatius, writing sometime before 117 AD, also seems to know Paul’s letters, and possibly the Gospels, too, though he doesn’t mention any New Testament writings by name. In Ignatius’s case the absence of direct quotations may be due to the fact that he was under arrest and was being taken to his execution;[8] probably he didn’t have access to written copies of these texts. When he speaks of “the gospel,” it seems to be a reference to the teaching of Jesus in the abstract, rather than to any specific writing. But whether oral or written, he declares this teaching to be of equal importance (at least) to the Old Testament scriptures. Nowhere, though, does he refer to any Christian writings as “scripture.”

Taken together, the Gospel of Thomas, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache comprise as diverse a collection of literature as can be imagined. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus. Barnabas gives a detailed reinterpretation of the Old Testament in the light of Christian understanding. The Shepherd purports to be a series of allegorical visions of one Hermas. The Didache, whose full name in English is The Teachings of the 12 Apostles, is a church order, containing ethical instructions well as rules of procedure for dealing with baptisms, the Eucharist (or Lord’s Supper), wandering prophets, and so forth. (My favorite such rule states, “Let every apostle who comes to you be welcomed as the Lord. But he should not remain more than a day [or two]…. If he stays three days, he is a false prophet.” (Didache 11.4-5)) None of these four texts quotes or mentions Paul. Neither Barnabas nor the Shepherd has any explicit quotations from the Gospels, though both have a few suggestive phrases that are similar to Gospel language.[9] The relationship of the Didache to the canonical Gospels is still debated. Didache quotes the Lord’s Prayer, introducing it with the words “Do not pray as the hypocrites do, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel….” (Didache 8.2) Bruce Metzger notes, though, that it is the words of Jesus rather than any written document that have authority in the eyes of the Didache’s author.[10] Other scholars have argued that Didache is completely independent of the canonical gospels.[11] The Gospel of Thomas, too, has been much argued over. Many of the sayings have parallels in the canonical gospels, and while a few of them seem to be derived from the canonical gospels, the majority seem to be independent. The Thomas versions of some sayings may even be more original than the canonical versions.[12] We cannot be certain, then, that any of these authors knew any of the canonical New Testament books.

The five books of Papias’s Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord have not come down to us. Only a few scraps of Papias’s writings have been preserved, primarily in the Church History of Eusebius of Caesarea, the great fourth century Christian scholar. Papias is, famously, the earliest writer to mention any of the canonical gospels by name. From the scraps of information in the writings of Eusebius and others, Papias is thought to have lived from 70-140 AD. He did not know any of the apostles personally, but he says (according to Eusebius) that

… whenever anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I asked about their words: what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the older John, disciples of the Lord, were still saying. For I did not think that information from books would help me as much as the word of a living, surviving voice.[13]

Papias’s attitude here reflects what we have seen in other writers of the period: that written documents about Jesus were not held in as much esteem as the ongoing oral tradition. This preference is the more significant because, as we will see, the “books” Papias knew may have included two of the canonical gospels.

First, though, what of the oral tradition that Papias learned from the second generation of Christian leaders? Eusebius is none too impressed with it and provides only a few hints to the content of Papias’s five books. After mentioning with apparent approval two miracle stories that occurred in Papias’s own time, Eusebius goes on to say that

Papias supplies other stories that reached him by word of mouth, along with some strange parables and unknown teachings of the Savior, as well as other more legendary accounts. Among them, he says that after the resurrection of the dead there will be a thousand-year period when the kingdom of Christ will be established on this earth in material form. I suppose that he got these notions by misunderstanding the apostolic accounts, not realizing that they had used mystic and symbolic language. For he was a man of very limited intelligence, as is clear from his books.[14]

Be that as it may, Papias is the earliest writer we know of to mention any of the canonical gospels by name, so we need to consider what he has to say.

[John] the elder used to say this also: “Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote down accurately, but not in order, all that he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, a follower of Peter. Peter used to teach as the occasion demanded, without giving systematic arrangement to the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark did not err in writing down some things just as he recalled them. For he had one overriding purpose: to omit nothing that he had heard and to make no false statements in his accounts.”[15]

Papias mentions Matthew as well.

Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could.[16]

For most of Christian history, Papias’s comments (which are echoed by later writers) were taken at face value. They present a straightforward picture: Matthew, one of Jesus’s disciples, wrote a gospel in Hebrew, which was then translated into Greek. Mark was not a disciple of Jesus but got his information from Peter, who was. If Mark’s gospel tells the story in a different order than (presumably) Matthew, it is because of the occasional nature of Peter’s teaching, which was not organized chronologically.

Unfortunately, most of this picture has been called into question by modern New Testament scholarship. A detailed discussion may be found in the essay Gospel Truth, but for now, let’s note the following points:

· Matthew and Mark were not written independently, as Papias implies; on the contrary, they have a very close literary relationship.[17]

· Matthew was written in Greek, not in Hebrew.[18]

· Papias’s description of Matthew as “the sayings” is odd – it would be more appropriate for a book like the Gospel of Thomas than for canonical Matthew, which is a complete narrative.[19]

What to make of all this? On the one hand, it is possible to dismiss the whole story as another of Papias’s unreliable legends. On the other hand, his information may be accurate but refer to different books than our canonical gospels. It was not uncommon in antiquity for one book to go by different titles, or for two different books to have the same title. Indeed, Papias’s remark that “each interpreted [the sayings] as best he could” suggests that he knew more than one version of Matthew. There is no way to be sure Papias is referring to the same gospels we have today.

One further tantalizing bit of information is Papias’s failure to mention the gospels of Luke and John. The omission cannot be Eusebius’s fault: he was an avid scholar of the early documents of Christianity, and throughout the Church History he carefully records which documents were cited by which authors. If Papias had mentioned Luke or John, Eusebius would hardly have failed to pass the information along. Had these gospels not reached Papias’s town of Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the early second century, the time he was writing? Had they perhaps not been written yet? Or did Papias consider them inauthentic, or even heretical?

For the first hundred years of Christianity there is essentially no evidence of any writings that were universally revered or authoritative. As canon scholar Lee M. McDonald puts it, “If the earliest Christians ever intended for the church that followed them to have a closed canon of scriptures ... they leave no clear tradition to that effect.” Some Christians held Paul’s writings in high esteem, others ignored him. The use of the gospels during this time is uncertain; what is certain is that we find no claim for any special status of any of the writings about Jesus. Instead, these writers look primarily to the ongoing oral tradition for their knowledge of him. This attitude was about to undergo a dramatic change.

The Second Century

The second century saw a tremendous burst of Christian literary activity. Dozens of new books appeared: gospels, Acts of various individual apostles, letters and apocalypses purporting to have been written by apostles. Some of these have been preserved, others are known only from being mentioned, and sometimes quoted, by other writers. The treasury of early Christian writings was increased tremendously with the stunning discovery in the 1940s of a cache of papyrus documents that had lain buried at the base of a cliff in the Nag Hammadi region of Egypt for over 1500 years.[20] Most of these texts were previously unknown, or known only by their title, and they display an astonishing diversity of theological and philosophical viewpoints.

During the same time period, evidence of a new attitude toward the older texts appears. Starting around 140 AD, numerous writers begin inserting word-for-word quotations of the gospels and Paul’s letters, occasionally going so far as to call them “scripture.” One such writer, Justin, refers to “the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them.”[21] That he means the canonical gospels is clear from the quotes he provides: the passage just cited is followed by a quotation of Luke 22:44. Elsewhere, he quotes Matthew and refers to the “memoirs” of Peter, apparently meaning the gospel of Mark.[22] He may also have known the gospel of John.[23]

Justin also speaks of the book of Revelation as one of “our writings.” He makes no clear reference to Paul’s letters, however, and in two places, he cites sayings of Jesus that do not come from the canonical gospels.[24] Clearly, the writings that Justin considered authoritative do not coincide with our New Testament.

Neither Justin nor any other writers up to his time apart from Papias call any of the gospels by name. Many writers refer simply to “the gospel” as if there were only one such book. For example, the Apology of Aristides, written sometime in the middle of the second century, relates

And it is said that God came down from heaven, and from a Hebrew virgin assumed and clothed himself with flesh, and the Son of God lived in a daughter of a man. This is taught in the Gospel, as it is called, which a short time was preached among them, and also if you will read therein, may perceive the power which belongs to it.[25]

The term “gospel” still retains its earlier meaning of Christian teaching, but now it also means a book wherein one can read. Thus, for most of the second century the gospels were anonymous works with, at best, a vague tradition associating them with the “apostles and those who followed them.”

The first clear statement declaring which Christian writings were authoritative came from a contemporary of Justin named Marcion. He was a wealthy ship-owner and the son of the bishop of Sinope on the shore of the Black Sea. He arrived in Rome around 140 AD, made a large donation to the church, and attempted to introduce a radical interpretation of Christianity that distinguished the creator God of the Jewish scriptures from the true God revealed by Jesus. The Roman church leaders rejected his ideas and (supposedly) returned his money, and so he began to establish churches of his own. Marcionite Christianity was extremely successful and spread throughout Asia Minor and as far as Egypt, surviving into the fourth and fifth centuries.

Marcion considered the Jewish scriptures obsolete, superseded by the Christian ones. Of these, he accepted only Luke and a collection of Paul’s letters. Even these he considered corrupted, and he attempted to restore them, primarily by excising all the Old Testament quotations. Marcion’s heavily edited Luke plus Paul has been called the first New Testament.[26]

Faced with a growing number of texts claiming apostolic authority on one side, and the burgeoning Marcionite church with its pared-down collection of authoritative writings on the other, the mainstream Church needed to act. The strongest response came from Irenaeus of Lyons, writing around 180 AD. In his book Against Heresies, he mentions all four canonical gospels, giving a sufficiently detailed description of each to assure he had something very close to the gospels we know. He notes that even the heretics refer to these same gospels: the Ebionites use Matthew, Marcionites Luke, while those who say that Christ and Jesus were separate prefer Mark, and the Valentinians make use of John. He insists there must be four gospels:

The Gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than they are. Since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principle winds, while the Church is spread over all the earth…it [the Church] fittingly has four pillars [the Gospels]…[27]

Nowhere does he list the writings he considers scripture, but from scattered comments and quotations we deduce that these included Acts, Paul’s letters, Revelation, and the Shepherd of Hermas. He is the earliest writer known who uses the term “New Testament” to refer to Christian writings.

Irenaeus’s opinion of four authoritative and unalterable gospels foreshadows the eventual official opinion of the church; it would be a mistake, though, to take it as the typical opinion of late second century Christians. Around the same time, several different authors composed gospel harmonies, weaving together verses and phrases from several gospels. The most famous of those is the Diatessaron (Greek “Through the Four”), also known as the “Gospel of the Mixed.” According to Irenaeus, it was written by Tatian, a Syrian Christian who was a student of Justin.[28] From the fragments that still exist, it is clear that it employed all four canonical gospels and possibly some extra-canonical material as well. The Diatessaron spread throughout Syria, where it was referred to simply as “the Gospel.” It remained the sole gospel in many churches until the fifth century. Theodoret, bishop of the town of Cyrrhus from 423 AD to 457 AD, reports “I myself found more than 200 copies in reverential use in the churches of my diocese, all of which I removed, replacing them by the Gospels of the four Evangelists.”[29]

The content of the Diatessaron shows that the canonical gospels were considered the most authoritative sources, yet also reveals that the author did not consider them sacred books that could not be altered. The history of the Diatessaron proves that the canonical gospels were not yet so established that they could not be displaced. Thus, by the end of the second century, attitudes toward the Christian writings are diverse. Some Christians retain a flexible view, while others are beginning to treat them as sacred scripture on a par with the Jewish scriptures.

A Growing Consensus

From the end of the second century and on into the third, Christian writings mention or quote from all 27 books of the New Testament. For the most part, mainstream Christians accept these books as authentic. There are some exceptions, though. Caius, a mainstream Christian who published a dispute with a member of the Montanist sect, rejects the gospel of John as being too different from the other three gospels. He believed it was not written by an apostle but by a heretic. He also rejects Hebrews and Revelation. Dionysus of Alexandria (died 264 AD) noted that Revelation is too different in literary style to have been written by the author of the gospel of John and that some reject it, though he himself considers it “the work of some holy and inspired man.”[30] Of the New Testament letters, 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John are rarely quoted. The prolific and highly educated Origen (185-254 AD) expresses what may have been a typical opinion when he writes, “Peter…left one authentic epistle and possibly a second, which is doubted…. [John] has left an epistle too, of very few lines, and perhaps a second and third, though these are disputed….”[31] Origen accepts Revelation as the work of the apostle John, but about Hebrews he says

The diction in Hebrews does not have the rough quality the apostle himself admitted having [2 Cor. 11:6], and its syntax is better Greek. The content of the epistle is excellent, however, and not inferior to the authentic writings of the apostle…. If I were to venture my own opinion, I would say that the thoughts are the apostle’s but the style and construction reflect someone who recalled the apostle’s teachings and interpreted them. If any church, then, regards this epistle as Paul’s, it should be commended, since men of old had good reason to hand it down as his. But who wrote the epistle only God knows. Traditions reaching us claim it was either Clement, Bishop of Rome, or Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the Acts.[32]

Origen is also the earliest writer to mention the letter of James.

In spite of the controversy over authenticity evident in these quotations, none of these authors seems to have compiled a complete list of the texts accepted as authentic.[33] Attitudes remained somewhat fluid, as evidenced by the fact that many of the same writers quoted extra-canonical texts on occasion, sometimes even referring to them as “scripture.” This term is not as unambiguous as it sounds in English, however. The Greek word (graphai) simply means “writings.” “Holy scripture” is, of course, less ambiguous, but it is not often used. Normally, quotations of the Jewish scriptures are introduced by the phrase “As it is written…,” and the books themselves are called “the writings (scriptures).” Christian writers use the same expressions to refer to the canonical New Testament books, but also, on occasion, for pagan writings. Bearing all this in mind, what follows is a partial list of such extra-canonical texts and the writers (all of whom were in the mainstream Christian tradition) who quote or refer to them.

Barnabas—Quoted by Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD), Hippolytus (died 235 AD), and Origen, who calls it “the catholic epistle of Barnabas.”

Didache—Quoted by Hippolytus, cited by Clement of Alexandria and Origen as “scripture.”

Shepherd of Hermas—Quoted by Hippolytus, cited as “scripture” by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, accepted by Tertullian (160-225 AD).

1 Clement—Quoted by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, read in the Corinthian church, according to Dionysius of Corinth and Hegesippus (around 170 AD).

Preaching of Peter—Clement of Alexandria considers it authentic.

Gospel of the Hebrews—Quoted by Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. Origen quotes it, saying “the Savior himself says…” but elsewhere he adds the caveat, “if anyone receives it.”

Gospel of Peter—Used in church by the Christians of Rhossus in Syria, quoted by Origen, approved in the Syrian document Didascalia.

Apocalypse of Peter—Quoted by Hippolytus, accepted as Peter’s writing and summarized alongside the other Christian writings by Clement of Alexandria.

This list demonstrates that alongside the narrowing focus on a set of “authentic” Christian writings there was still considerable flexibility. Origen exemplifies both aspects. He explicitly rejects as heretical the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel of Thomas, and the gospels of Matthias, Basilides, and the Twelve Apostles. He declares the four canonical gospels “the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven.”[34] These gospels, together with “the Apostles,” he calls the New Testament. Yet he also quotes the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of the Hebrews, as well as sayings of Jesus from other unknown writings.[35]

As the third century passed into the fourth, the flexibility would decrease and the focus narrow still more. Even at this late date, though, forgeries in the name of Paul and other apostles were being produced and, in some cases, treated as genuine. The letter known as 3 Corinthians is now universally regarded as a third-century forgery, yet Ephraem (360 AD) treated it as genuine in his commentary on Paul’s letters. A collection of fourteen letters supposedly exchanged between Paul and the Roman philosopher Seneca was accepted as genuine by Jerome (340-420 AD), who says they were “read by very many,”[36] by Augustine (354-430 AD), and by numerous other writers up to the 13^th century. Someone was so bold as to forge a letter from Jesus to King Abgar of Edessa, which Eusebius accepts as authentic.[37]

Sometime in the early fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine started writing his Church History. It would eventually run to ten books, covering the period from Jesus’s birth to 325 AD. Throughout this work, Eusebius paid careful attention to the basic writings of Christianity and the attitude of earlier authors toward those writings. For this reason, Eusebius has been an important source for the foregoing discussion, and this alone would make his opinion about sacred scripture worthy of careful attention. There are two other reasons why Eusebius is important, though: he seems to have been the first to have attempted to compile a complete list of which texts were, and which were not, accepted by the church,[38] and he was extremely influential in the creation of the first official Christian Bibles.

Under the Emperor Constantine (reigned 307-337 AD), Christianity was not only legalized, it became the quasi-official religion of the empire. Constantine took an active role in promoting it, and around 330 AD he asked Eusebius, by then in his seventies and a renowned scholar, to prepare fifty copes of the Christian scriptures to be placed in the new churches that Constantine was building in Constantinople. Unfortunately, it is not known which books were included in those Bibles. Certainly Eusebius’s selection must have exerted a powerful influence on subsequent Bible-makers.

Eusebius gives his view in the Church History (3.25).

At this point it may be appropriate to list the New Testament writings already referred to. The holy quartet of the Gospels are first, followed by the Acts of the Apostles. Next are Paul’s epistles, 1 John, and 1 Peter. The Revelation of John may be added, the arguments regarding which I shall discuss at the proper time. These are the recognized books. Those that are disputed yet known to most are the epistles called James, Jude, 2 Peter, and the so-named 2 and 3 John, the work of the Evangelist or of someone else with the same name.

Among the spurious books are the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd [of Hermas], the Apocalypse of Peter, the alleged epistle of Barnabas, the so-called Teachings of the Apostles [Didache], as well as the Revelation of John, if appropriate here: some reject it, others accept it, as stated before. In addition, some have included the Gospel of the Hebrews in the list, for which those Hebrews who have accepted Christ have a special fondness. Those would all be classified with the disputed books, those not canonical yet familiar to most church writers, which I have listed separately in order to distinguish them from those writings that are true, genuine, and accepted in the tradition of the church.

Writings published by heretics under the names of the apostles, such as the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, Matthias, and others, or the Acts of Andrew, John, and other apostles have never been cited by any in the succession of church writers. The type of phraseology used contrasts with apostolic style, and the opinions and thrusts of their contents are so dissonant from true orthodoxy that they show themselves to be forgeries of heretics. Accordingly, they ought not to be reckoned even among the spurious books but discarded as impious and absurd.

The classification here is somewhat muddled, but one thing stands out clearly: the content of the New Testament is by no means a settled matter. Apparently Eusebius has sorted the books into four categories: recognized, disputed, spurious, and heretical. In the first category, “Paul’s epistles” means all 14 letters appearing in modern Bibles, although earlier Eusebius has noted that “some dispute the epistle to the Hebrews in view of the Roman church’s denial that it is the work of Paul.”[39] The second and third categories seem to involve books that are read in some churches and not in others. It is not clear why Eusebius distinguishes the two sets, although his use of the term “spurious” implies he has less confidence in these books than in those that are merely “disputed.” Eusebius first puts Revelation in the recognized books, then in the spurious books. This would seem to qualify it as disputed, but he does not mention it in that category. Perhaps Eusebius is recognizing a greater degree of controversy about Revelation than about the other books; at any rate it was destined to remain controversial for centuries. In Armenia, for example, Revelation was not officially canonized until the 12^th century.[40]

As far as the fourth category, the heretical works, Eusebius is mistaken when he claims that no church writers cite these. Earlier we saw that the Gospel of Peter was read in churches and quoted by Origen, and sayings very similar to those in the Gospel of Thomas also appear in earlier writers.[41] Eusebius’s final paragraph is revealing: doctrinal considerations, as much as historical pedigree, can determine whether a book is acceptable.

Until the fourth century, no church council had met to determine the boundaries of the New Testament; no person of authority had attempted to do so either. There was as yet no centralized structure for the church; no person or group had the authority to make decisions for Christians around the world. Eusebius doesn’t attempt to decide which of the “disputed” books are authentic; he merely describes the situation as he sees it. Later in the fourth century, documents appear that claim in no uncertain terms to be definitive lists of the accepted books. There is considerable variation in these lists, however: one omits Hebrews, James, and Jude, several leave out Revelation, and a Syrian catalogue leaves out all seven Catholic Epistles and Revelation. Another list includes Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul, and the Apocalypse of Peter, while the list in the Apostolic Constitutions includes 1 and 2 Clement and the Constitutions themselves.[42]

The earliest list that gives all 27 books of the modern New Testament (albeit not in the modern order) is Athanasius’s festal letter of 367 AD, as noted at the beginning of this essay. He mentions as well the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas, saying that, while they are not among the sacred books, they “were produced by our ancestors to be read by those who are just coming forward to receive oral instruction in the word of true religion.”[43] The same books (not including Didache and Shepherd) were confirmed as “divine scripture” by the third Synod of Carthage in 397 AD. This is the first time the current 27-book canon appears in the records of an official church council.[44] It was a local decision, affecting only the African bishops who attended the synod and their churches, as is clear from the remark that follows the list of Old and New Testament books: “Concerning the confirmation of this canon, the transmarine Church shall be consulted.”[45] This remark also shows that even at the end of the fourth century the canon was not a settled matter, a point confirmed by other writers. Toward the end of his life, Amphilochius (340-396 AD) compiled a catalogue of New Testament scriptures in which he says

Some maintain that the Epistle to the Hebrews is spurious…. Of the Catholic epistles some maintain that we ought to receive seven, and others three only [that is, James, 1 Peter, and 1 John]…. The Revelation of John again some reckon among the Scriptures; but still the majority say that it is spurious.[46]

Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386 AD) and Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389 AD), too, omit Revelation from their lists of the scriptures.

The confusion persisted for centuries. The Trullan Synod of 692 AD confirmed both the canon list of the Synod of Carthage and that in the Apostolic Constitutions, in spite of their contradictions. The official proclamations of church councils do not necessarily reflect what was actually being done in the churches, however. We can get a completely different perspective on the matter by looking at the ancient Bibles themselves.

The First Christian Bibles

Ancient manuscripts were written either on parchment, a sort of leather made from the skins of cattle, sheep, or other animals, or papyrus, made from the reedy papyrus plant. Parchment is heavier than papyrus but more durable. Oftentimes a parchment document would be scraped and re-used, with the new writing running perpendicular to the old. These overwritten documents are called palimpsests. With the help of chemicals and ultraviolet light, the underwriting can sometimes be recovered; some of the most important early New Testament documents have been reconstructed this way. Papyruses are much more fragile, but some have managed to survive for nearly two millennia.

Two formats were employed for these manuscripts: the scroll and the codex. A scroll was wound around a stick and unwound as it was read. A codex was what we would consider the normal form for a book: numerous leaves bound together along one edge. The scroll was the normal form for literary works in the Greco-Roman world. It was also the standard for Jewish scriptures, as evidenced by the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. For reasons that are unclear, Christians began using codices instead of scrolls for both Old Testament and New Testament books at a very early date. “Of the approximately 172 Biblical manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts written before 400 AD or not long thereafter, it appears that 158 come from codices and only 14 from rolls,” writes Bruce Metzger.[47]

Manuscripts are dated paleographically, that is, by analysis of the handwriting. Each scribe has his own handwriting, of course, but there are overall trends in the writing style that change over the years. By comparing the style of a document with that of other documents whose dates are known, it is possible to assign a date within a range of 50 years or so.

The earliest existing manuscript of the New Testament is a papyrus fragment known as P⁵². Only about three inches wide, it contains a portion of the Gospel of John and is dated to 100-150 AD. The earliest manuscripts that are reasonably complete are papyruses that date to the late second or third century. Many contain just a single book, but a few show that Christians had begun to create larger collections of books: the first New Testaments. One important papyrus from 200-250 AD, known as P⁴⁵, contains all four gospels and Acts. This document shows that Irenaeus’s idea of four and only four authoritative gospels was beginning to catch on. Also from around 200 AD is P⁴⁶, containing Romans, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and at least one more book that has been lost, proving that collections of Paul’s letters had begun to circulate. Some codices combined canonical and extra-canonical books in one volume: the third-century P⁷⁵ contains the earliest manuscripts of Jude and 1 and 2 Peter, but also an apocryphal letter of Paul, the Nativity of Mary, the 11^th Ode of Solomon, and several other books.

Given the size and heft of a codex that contained the entire New Testament, to say nothing of a complete Bible, such volumes must have been rare. Christianity was still outlawed during the third century, and while this didn’t mean that all Christians were in imminent danger at every time and place, severe persecutions did occur from time to time. Eusebius tells us,

I saw with my own eyes the houses of worship demolished to their foundations, the inspired and sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the middle of the public squares, and the pastors of the churches hiding shamefully in one place or another, or arrested and held up to ridicule by their enemies.[48]

Between official persecutions and the depredations of time, no New Testament from the third century has survived. We know they must have existed already in Tertullian’s time (160-225 AD), though, for he writes of the Christian scriptures as an “entire volume.”[49] He neglects, unfortunately, to mention which books were included.

The first manuscript evidence of a larger collection, including the gospels and epistles in a single volume, comes only from the fourth-century parchment codices known as Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Some scholars have suggested that one or both of these may belong to the 50 Bibles that Constantine asked Eusebius to prepare. They contain both the Old and New Testaments. Codex Sinaiticus does not stop with the 27 canonical New Testament books but includes Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas as well. The earliest Bibles thus reflect something of the confusion about the New Testament canon expressed by Eusebius.

It is more surprising that confusion still persisted in the fifth century and beyond, long after the Synod of Carthage had established the official canon. The important fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus includes as part of the New Testament 1 and 2 Clement and, oddly, the Psalms of Solomon. Two copies of the Latin translation of the New Testament known as the Vulgate contain 3 Corinthians, and over 100 copies include another forgery, the letter of Paul to the Laodiceans. A Bible from 12^th-century Edessa in Macedonia not only omits Revelation, it includes 1 and 2 Clement. The Syriac translation known as the Peshitta omits 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Even today the official lectionary of the Syrian Orthodox church doesn’t make use of these five books. The Ethiopian church, on the other hand, continued to add to its scriptural canon and today accepts such works as Sinodos, a book of church order, the Book of Clement, different from either 1 or 2 Clement, and the Book of the Covenant.

“At no time in history has the whole church agreed completely on what literature should make up its canon of scripture,” writes McDonald.[50] The Renaissance brought a resurgence of interest in early church history, and church leaders took another look at the canon. The Roman Catholic church reaffirmed its canon in 1443 AD at the Council of Florence. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther eliminated the Old Testament Apocrypha from his canon. He also expressed doubts about some of the books of the New Testament, calling James “an epistle of straw.”[51] The table of contents of his 1522 German translation of the Bible listed 23 numbered books followed by a blank space, and then, unnumbered, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation, whose apostolic credentials he found questionable. The 1596 Jacob Lucius Bible and the 1618 Gustavus Adolphus Bible go even further and label these books “apocrypha,” though most later Protestant Bibles returned to the 27-book canon.

Forgeries in the New Testament

Having investigated the chaotic processes that led to the collection we know as the New Testament, it is time to ask, how successful was the result? Are the 27 books of the New Testament truly authentic? Of the scores of Christian writings that survive, are there other authentic texts that were excluded from the New Testament?

Forgery was exceedingly common in New Testament times. Upon learning that others were forging works in his name, the Roman physician Galen even wrote a book explaining how to distinguish his authentic writings from the forgeries.[52] Forgers might have hoped to make money off a famous person’s name, or they might only have wished for a larger audience for their ideas. But there can be no doubt that they intended to fool people and often succeeded.

Nor is there any doubt that Christians participated in the practice, and participated enthusiastically. Dozens of books were produced that purport to be written y one apostle or another, or all twelve disciples together. Tertullian, writing around 200 AD, mentions one forger who was caught in the act.

But if certain Acts of Paul, which are falsely so named, claim the example of Thecla for allowing women to teach and to baptize, let men know that in Asia the presbyter who compiled that document, thinking to add of his own to Paul’s reputation, was found out, and though he professed he had done it for love of Paul, was deposed from his position.

Often, the purpose of these forgeries was to promote a particular theological view by attributing that view to one of the apostles. The Nag Hammadi documents, for example, include apocalypses supposedly written by Paul, James, and Peter, all of which espouse a Gnostic outlook. Other writings, like the Acts of Paul mentioned by Tertullian, promote the “orthodox” views of the mainstream church.[53]

How can we tell which documents are authentic and which are not? Modern scholars use many of the same criteria that the leaders of the ancient church used. Are the views expressed the same as the views in other writings of that author, if any? Are the vocabulary and writing style consistent with what is known about the purported author? Is the text mentioned or quoted in other early writings? The results of these studies for the New Testament are a pretty mixed bag.

For much of the second century, the canonical gospels apparently circulated without names attached to them, as we have seen. By the later part of the century the traditional names, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were firmly attached. Papias claimed that Mark was someone who had never met Jesus, but who got his information from Peter, the disciple of Jesus. We have no way of knowing how accurate this information is, or whether our Gospel of Mark is the same book Papias had in mind. Certainly there is no reason to connect the gospel with the John Mark mentioned in Acts 12, as some later writers do.[54] These claims are pure speculation based on the name “Mark”, which was not an unusual name. According to Irenaeus, the author of the third gospel was Luke, a follower of Paul. Irenaeus, writing perhaps a century after the gospel was written, doesn’t say how he knows this information.[55] Irenaeus also claims that Matthew and John were written by the disciples of those names. In the essay Gospel Truth we will learn the reasons this cannot be correct. Thus, in the view of modern New Testament scholarship, none of the canonical gospels were written by disciples who knew Jesus.

This doesn’t mean that the gospels are forgeries, of course. Nothing in the Gospel of Matthew, to take one example, would lead one to believe that the gospel was written by a disciple. Only the title identifies the author, and the title, we have seen, was added to the gospel much later. The gospel was, as far as we can tell, originally anonymous: recall the many second-century writers like Aristides who simply referred to “the Gospel.” Later, the gospel was misattributed to the disciple Matthew.

Much the same can be said for the other canonical gospels. If we are correct in thinking that they all originally circulated as anonymous documents, then the attributions to Mark, Luke, and John are just as uncertain as the case of Matthew. Nonetheless, following common scholarly practice, I will in these essays refer to the authors as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is much simpler than saying “the author of the gospel known as the Gospel of Matthew” every time I need to refer to this author. This usage is purely a matter of convenience; it doesn’t imply (here or in scholarly works) the acceptance of the traditional identities of these authors.[56] To distinguish the book from its author, I use italics when referring to the book: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.[57]

The titles of several other New Testament books are also due to mistaken attribution. “Paul’s letter to the Hebrews,” for example, makes no claim to have been written by Paul. Already in the third century Origen noticed that the style of the epistle was very different from the style of Paul’s other letters, and concluded that Hebrews was not written by Paul. Modern scholars are generally in agreement with Origen,[58] and in many modern Bibles there is no longer any mention of Paul in the title. The letters known as 1, 2, and 3 John are similarly anonymous. As we have seen, they were controversial in the early church. Modern scholars, too, doubt they were written by John the apostle.[59]

The case of Revelation is different in that the author identifies himself by the name John. But nowhere does this John claim to have been a disciple of Jesus. The author’s writing style and terminology are so different from those of the Gospel of John that already in the third century Dionysius of Alexandria decided the two works could not have the same author, and here, too, modern scholars agree.[60] The author’s name led to confusion with the disciple of the same name, John son of Zebedee, who was commonly assumed to have written the gospel. Thus the early church came to consider Revelation the work of an apostle, and the true identity of the author was forgotten. Revelation is not a forgery, it is a homonymy: a book which has been misattributed due to a confusion of names.

The same may have happened with the letters of James and Jude. The authors do not claim to be Jesus’s brothers. Jude identifies himself as the brother of James: certainly we would expect him to mention if he was a brother of Jesus, too! Most likely these letters were included in the New Testament as a result of homonymy.

Excluding Hebrews, there are thirteen letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament. Of these, scholars generally agree that seven are genuine: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The authenticity of Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians is still debated, but there is a fairly wide consensus that the Pastoral epistles, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, are pseudonymous: they were written by someone other than Paul who wrote as the apostle Paul. In short, they are forgeries.[61] This conclusion is based on several considerations, all of which point to someone other than Paul as the author.

· Vocabulary: Of 848 distinct words occurring in these three letters, fully 306 are not found in the other letters attributed to Paul.

· Style: The salutation of 1 Timothy 1:2 and 2 Timothy 1:2 is quite different from the salutation Paul uses in his letters.

· Church structure: The letters refer to “bishops” and “elders” who play clearly defined roles in church governance. In Paul’s letters, these titles do not have the same significance.

· Christian scripture: 1 Timothy 5:18 refers to a saying of Jesus as “scripture.” Scholars generally concur that Christian writings were not considered on a level with Old Testament scripture until long after Paul’s time.

If we judge the canon formation process strictly according to apostolicity, it must be judged a failure. Many New Testament books that were once though to be apostolic, from Matthew at one end to Revelation at the other, are not. Of the 27 New Testament books, only seven epistles of Paul are considered authentic beyond doubt – and these only by a generous application of the criterion of apostolicity, for Paul was not one of those who knew Jesus when he was alive.

But perhaps apostolicity is the wrong standard. If we consider all the other gospels that circulated among Christians in the first centuries – the gospels of Peter, of Philip, of Mary, of Thomas, of the Hebrews, of the Egyptians – none are thought to apostolic, either. Moreover, all of these are much later writings, with the sole possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas.[62] All of these books were written in the second century or later, while all four canonical gospels were written in the first, or, at the latest, early second century. In terms of selecting the gospels that were closest to Jesus – in time, at least – the canonization process scores quite well. Many other New Testament books are probably from the first century, too, even if not apostolic, including Hebrews, Revelation, and the disputed letters of Paul. First-century writings that were excluded from the canon are few: 1 Clement, and possibly the Didache and the Gospel of Thomas are among the only candidates. The number of late writings that were included in the canon is also small: only 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Peter for sure.[63] Judged on the basis of how well it preserved the earliest writings and excluded later forgeries, the canonization process was remarkably successful.[64]

Creating the Christian Canon

The New Testament didn’t fall out of the sky on tablets of stone. At this point it should be clear that the canon was not the result of a one-time decision by a single person or by a small group of church leaders, either. It was not formed by a committee. Nor is it true that the books are those that were universally accepted by all Christians from the earliest times. The formation of the canon was a complex process that lasted for centuries. In some sense, it continues even today.

For the first hundred years of Christianity there is no evidence of a collection of writings considered authentic and accepted by all. Some authors quote Paul; some show no knowledge of him. Some authors may have known the canonical gospels; others give no hint that they have ever seen a gospel. Writers in this period seem to rely on oral tradition more than written tradition.

It is not until the mid-second century that Christian authors begin to treat New Testament books as scripture, quoting passages exactly and at length from the gospels. Around the same time, Marcion made the first attempt to define the “authentic” writings. Around this time, too, began the great proliferation of Christian writing. Many documents were forged in the name of the apostles, by both mainstream and non-mainstream writers. By the close of the second century, numerous writers consider the canonical gospels as the only authentic ones, and most of the remainder of the New Testament, though by no means universally accepted, has at least been mentioned by some author.

The third century sees more discussion of which books are authentic, but there is as yet no attempt by mainstream Christians to define that collection in any precise manner. While a wide variety of books are still read in the churches, there is an increasing recognition that only a small group ought to be considered authoritative. Many books hovered around the edges of the canon for a long time. Some of these (Didache, Barnabas, and 1 Clement, for example) were eventually excluded while others (James, 2 Peter, and Revelation, among others) were eventually included.

This situation persisted into the fourth century, as witnessed by Eusebius. Only when Christianity was adopted by the emperor Constantine were church leaders able to begin the discussions to more clearly define their faith. By the end of the fourth century these discussions had produced the canon of the Council of Carthage, which agrees with that of the majority of Christians today. Even at this late date, extra-canonical books like 3 Corinthians and Laodiceans could be introduced and gain a measure of acceptance, as evidenced by some of the early Bibles. Some branches of the church that remained politically isolated were left with a smaller canon (the Syrian church), others continued to add to the canon (the Ethiopian church).

The process that resulted in the New Testament canon involved an interplay between what was actually being done in the various churches and what church leaders said should be done. Official decisions of church councils only played a role late in the process, in the fourth century, by which time there was a fairly wide consensus for the acceptance of most of the canonical books. This complex history makes it difficult to pinpoint the reasons for acceptance or rejection of a book. The official reasons cited for acceptance of a given book are sometimes of little help in understanding the process. For example, Irenaeus’s reasoning that there must be four gospels because there are four principal winds sounds more like an attempt to justify a situation that already exists than a well thought-out theological argument. Still, we can attempt to identify some of the major factors that influenced canon formation.

Popularity – The acceptance of a book was closely connected to its usage in the churches. Most of the canonical books had a long history of being read in church. The (probably fourth century) Muratorian canon makes the connection explicit: “We receive only the apocalypses of John [Revelation] and Peter, though some of us are not willing that the latter be read in church.”[65] Church usage was not completely determinative, however. Some books, like 1 Clement, that were widely read in the churches did not become canonical.
Apostolicity – With many books purporting to have been written by apostles, an important issue was the genuineness of such claims. In evaluating these claims, though, there was little information for early Christians to go on. Nor was apostolicity decisive. Origen accepts Hebrews even though he recognizes that it could not have been written by Paul, and Dionysus of Alexandria, writing around 230 AD, likewise accepted Revelation although he did not believe it was written by the apostle John. The gospels of Mark and Luke were accepted even though they were known not to be apostolic.
Orthodoxy – Theological considerations rather than history often played an important role in a book’s acceptance or rejection. Around 200 AD Bishop Serapion of Antioch gave permission for the church at Rhossus to use the Gospel of Peter. Later, after reading it carefully, he decided that while “most of it accords with the genuine teaching of the Savior,” other portions were heretical and so it should be rejected. Eusebius, in the passage quoted earlier, says the contents of some books “are so dissonant from true orthodoxy that they show themselves to be forgeries of heretics.” Origen’s remarks on Hebrews show that the influence can work the other direction, too. Although he doesn’t believe that Paul wrote the letter, he says “the thoughts of the epistle are admirable” and concludes it was likely written by “one who called to mind the apostle’s teachings….”[66]

One issue that, surprisingly, does not enter into these early comments on Christian scriptures is that of inspiration by God. Apart from Revelation, none of the canonical books claims such inspiration, and many writings that did claim inspiration were not accepted into the canon. According to New Testament scholar Arthur G. Patzia, it was only after the canon was settled that the issue of inspiration became important.[67] The late fourth-century canon of Amphilochius, for example, concludes with the claim that “this is perhaps the most reliable canon of the divinely inspired Scriptures.”[68]

The canon debate hasn’t ended. Modern scholarship has led to the conclusion that some New Testament books could not have been written by their purported authors. Some may be cases of mistaken identity: Revelation, for example, was written by someone named John,[69] but the author gives no indication that he is the disciple John. 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Peter are almost certainly forgeries by later writers. By the criterion of apostolicity, then, many of the books of the current New Testament do not belong there.

There is an increasing recognition by scholars of the value of extra-canonical works, both from the mainstream tradition (the Didache, for example) and outside it (the Gospel of Thomas). There is no individual or group that speaks for all Christians today, so there is no way that books can be officially added to or excluded from the Bible. Publishers want to print books that people want to read, though: if there is a demand, we may find Bibles having a different content than we are used to. (There is already a book called The Five Gospels[70] that includes the Gospel of Thomas alongside the canonical gospels.) But then, that’s the way it’s always been.

Somewhat Abnormal

Pages

The New Testament Canon

Questioning the Canon

The Earliest Christian Writings

The Second Century

A Growing Consensus

The First Christian Bibles

Forgeries in the New Testament

Creating the Christian Canon

Further Reading

No comments:

Post a Comment

Labels

My Books