Bart D. Ehrman
Lost Christianities
Succession of Apostles:
Claims of apostolic connections or succession have a central role in the facts of what is or isn’t heretical. The proto-orthodox strategies to connect a link from their doctrine to those of the apostles known as the “apostolic succession” shown prior in the writings 1 Clement. The Roman church insisted the Corinthians reinstated their deposed presbyters because the leaders of the church (including these presbyters) were appointed by bishops, hand picked by the apostles who were chosen by Christ sent by God. (1Clement 42-44).
According to Tertullian the apostle succession developed not simple by the authorization of the church offices but also by the church teachings. As Tertullian believes, Christ commands the apostles after the resurrection to preach his gospel to all the nations. So, they did establishing major churches throughout the world based on the same preaching of the same gospel in every place. These churches the apostles founded sent forth missionaries to form more churches. Although the churches became great in number they were as the prime church, as one unit spread across the world, being many branches. In Tertullian’s opinion all were apostolic, (Prescription 21). Tertullian’s conclusion, then:
From this, therefore, do we draw up our rule. Since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, our rule is that no others to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed. If then, these things are so, it is in the same degree manifest that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches must be seen as truth. And undoubtedly containing that which the said churches received from the apostles, the apostles, from Christ from God. (Prescription 21)
He goes on to name churches that can trace their direct lineage to the apostles. Although it is surprising and telling that he names only two: Smyrna (whose bishop is Polycarp was appointed by the apostle John) and Rome (whose bishop Clement was appointed by Peter). Still, he challenges the “heretics” to come up with any proof that could be shown to be the same. He is confident that none will be able to do so. (ch. 32).
It appears to be an effective argument. But it’s worth noting that other groups other than the proto-orthodox churches could show a lineage back to the apostles. We understand Clement of Alexandria is one example and Valentines was a disciple of Theudas was a supposed follower of Paul and the Gnostic Basilides studied under Glaukia a supposed disciple of Peter counted by non, of the proto-orthodox. (Miscellanus 7,17, 106). For these connections are simple discounted by the proto-orthodox.
Rules of Creeds and Faith:
The proto-orthodox claims of representing apostolic teachings eventually produced a set of documents affirming for them the true nature of the religion. By the second century, before universal creeds of all Christians beliefs everywhere. These beliefs became known as the “regula fidei” “the rule of faith” The regula included the basic and fundamental beliefs, according to the proto-orthodox, all Christians were to subscribe to. These had been taught by the apostles themselves. There a number of proto-orthodox authors who advocate the regula fidei, including Irenaeus and Tertullian but never achieved any set format. But clearly it was clearly used directly against those of who opposed any aspect of it. Included in the various formulations of the regula was the steed fast belief in only one God, creator of the world, creator of everything from nothing: and also, belief in his Son, Jesus Christ, Predicted by the prophets and born of the Virgin Mary. In his miraculous life, death, resurrection, and ascension; and belief in the Holy Spirit, who remains present on earth until the end. When a final judgment in which the righteous will be rewarded and the unrighteous condemned to eternal torment. (thus e.g., Tertullia, Prescription 13).
In the interim development of Proto-Orthodox Christianity the regula fidei was followed by more creeds to be recited, possibly at the outset by converts who had undergone a program in Christian Education (catechesis), at the point and time of Baptism. The creeds may well have begun as a series of questions delivered and answered in three parts, in conformity with the three fold emersion under the water as suggested by Matthew 28:19-20: “Make disciples of all nations, teaching all that I have commanded you and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The creeds then became tripartite, stressing proper doctrines about the Father, Son, and Spirit. Like the regula fidei, they were directed against the improper doctrines espoused by other groups.
Eventually, by the fourth century, the creeds familiar to Christians still today had been developed in rudimentary form, most notably the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. It is worth emphasizing that these are formulated against specific heretical views. Take the opening of the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.” Throughout the history of Christian thought, such words have been not just meaningful but also deeply generative of serious theological reflection. At the same time we should recognize that they represent reactions against doctrinal claims made by groups of Christians who disagreed with them, Christians, for example, who believed there was more than one God, or that the true God was not the creator, or that Jesus was not the creator’s son, or that Jesus Christ was not one but two. It is especially worth noting that, as a result of the context of their formulation, many to the views espoused in these creeds are profoundly paradoxical. Is Christ God or Man? He is both. If he is both, is he two persons? No, he is the “one” Lord Jesus Christ. If Christ is God and his Father is God, are there two Gods? No. “We believe in one God.”
The reason for the paradoxes should be clear from what we have seen. Proto-Orthodox Christians were compelled to fight adoptionist on one side and docetists on the other. Marcion on the one side and various kinds of Gnostics on the other. When one affirms that Jesus is divine, against the adoptionist, there is the problem of appearing to be a docetist. But that could make one to appear to be an adoptionist. The only solution then is to affirm bothe views at once: Jesus is divine and Jesus is human. And one must deny the potentially heretical implications of both affirmations: Jesus is divine, but that doesn’t not mean he is not also human; Jesus is human but that does not mean he is not divine. And so, he is divine and human, at one and the same time.
And thus, the proto-orthodox paradoxical affirmations embodied in the creeds, about God who is the creator of all things, but not of the evil and suffering found in his creation; about Jesus who is both completely human and completely divine and not half of one or the other but both at once. Who is nonetheless one being not two; about the Father, the Son and the Spirit as three separate persons and yet comprising only one God.
Interpretation of Scripture:
A significant aspect of the proto-orthodox polemic against various heretics involved not just stressing the doctrines that were to be affirmed, but the interpretation of sacred text on which these doctrines were based. There were, to be sure disagreements over which books should be accepted as sacred. An issue we addressed later in his book. But there was also the matter of how to interpret the texts that had been accepted. This had been an issue from the beginning of Christianity, since Jesus and his followers, like Paul, quoted the Scriptures extensively and interpreted them in their teachings.
I the ancient world there was no more unanimity about how to interpret a text than there is today. Indeed, if the meaning of texts were self-evident, we would have no need of commentators, legal experts, literary critics, or theories of interpretation. We could all just read and understand. People may think that there is a commonsensical way to construe a text. But put a dozen people in a room with a text of Scripture, or of Shakespeare, or of the American Constitution, and see how many interpretations they produce.
It was no difference in antiquity. Early on in the controversy over heresy and orthodoxy, people realized that having a sacred text is not the same thing as interpreting it. In order to each unanimity about what the text meant, there needed to be certain textual constraints imposed from the outside, rules for reading, accepting practices of interpretation, modes of legitimating, and the like. The matter became increasingly important as different teachers from different theological persuasions interpreted the same text in different ways, and the appealed to these texts in support of their points of view.
Marcion, to take a prominent example, insisted on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament, which led him to conclude that the God of the Old Testament was inferior to the true God. The Old Testament God, Marcion pointed out, did not know where to find Adam in the Garden of Eden, he was talked out of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah for a time, he ordered the destruction of all innocent men women and children in Jericho, and he promised harsh measures against anyone who breaks his law. In other words, simply reading the Jewish Scriptures literally, the Jewish God was occasionally ignorant, indecisive, wrathful, and vengeful. For Marion, this did not sound like the God of Jesus, and he could make the point simply by taking the text “at face value”.
Marcion’s proto-orthodox opponent, Tertullian, however, insisted that passages that speak of God’s ignorance and emotions were not to be taken literally but figuratively. Since God could not really be ignorant or indecisive or mean spirited, these passages needed to be interpreted in light of the full knowledge of what God really is like. Tertullian, in fact, interpreted a large number of passages in a figurative way, in order to illustrate his own understanding about God and Christ. To take just one example: There is an important passage in Leviticus 16 that describes two goats that are present by the Jewish priests on the Day of Atonement. According to the text, one of these goats is to be driven out into the wilderness and the other is to be offered up as a sacrifice. The two goats, Tertullian tells us, refer to the two advents (i.e., appearances on earth) of Christ- the first time coming as one who is cursed (cast off into the wilderness), the next time (in his “second coming”) providing salvation to those who belong to his spiritual temple (Against Marcion 3.7).
Or consider Irenaeus, who interprets the “clean and unclean” foods of the Law of Moses. The children of Israel are allowed to eat animals that have cloven hooves and that chew the cud, but not animals without cloven hooves of that do not chew the cud (Lev. 11:2; Deut. 14:3; etc.). What does this mean? From Irenaeus the passages indicate the kinds of people Christians are to associate with. Animals with cloven hooves are clean because they represent people who steadily advance toward God and his Son through faith (God + Son = cloven hoof). Animals who chew the cud but do not have cloven hoofs are unclean, representing the Jews who have the words of Scripture in their mouths but do not move steadily toward knowledge of God (Against Heresies 5.8.4).
By preferring a figurative interpretation in places, Tertullian and Irenaeus were following solid precedent among their proto-orthodox forebears. You may recall Barnabas’s extensive use of figurative interpretations in order to attack Jews for keeping the literal meaning of their law’s.
On the occasions, however, when proto-orthodox writers faced opponents like certain Gnostics, who interpreted Scripture figuratively, they vehemently insisted that only a literal interpretation of the text would do. Irenaeus in particular objects to Gnostic modes of figurative interpretation used to support their points of view and gives specific instances. For example, Gnostics who believed in thirty divine Aeons appealed to the claim of the Gospel of Luke that Jesus started his ministry when he was thirty years of age, and the parable of the vineyard, where the owner hired workers at the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour (which add up to thirty). They also maintained that these thirty Aeons were divided into three groups, the final one consisting of twelve Aeons, the twelfth of which was Sophia, the Aeon who fell from the divine realm, leading to the creation of the universe. This notion of Sophia (Greek for Wisdom), the twelfth Aeon, is evidenced in Jesus’ appearance in the Temple as a twelve-year-old confronting the teachers of the law (showing forth his “wisdom”), and by the fact that Judas Iscariot, the twelfth of the disciples, fell away to become a betrayer (see Against Heresies 2, 20-26).
Irenaeus considered these interpretations ludicrous. In his view, Gnostics were simply making texts mean what they wanted them to mean and ignoring the “clear and plain” teachings of the text, which, for Irenaeus, included the view that there is only one God. Who is the creator of good creation, which has been marred not by the fall of a divine Aeon but by the sin of a human. In a harsh but effective image, Irenaeus likened the capricious use of Scripture among the Gnostics to a person who, observing a beautiful mosaic of a king, decides to dismantle the precious stones and reassemble them in the likeness of a mongrel dog, claiming that this was the artist intended all along (Against Heresies 1.8).
To modern observers of these ancient debates, it may seem to be a problem that the proto-orthodox insisted on literal interpretations of the text. While appealing to figurative interpretations when it suited their own purposes. Still, it is probably fair to say for these proto-orthodox authors, literal interpretations of the text were to be primary, and figurative interpretation were to be used only to support views established on literal grounds. This was true even of the most famous proto-orthodox allegorist of them all. Origen of Alexandria, who was remarkably adept at supplying deep and rich figurative interpretations of Scripture, but who insisted that the methods were to be applied only when the literal meanings of the text appeared hopelessly contradictory or absurd (Origen, On First Principles, bk.4).
In any event whether or not the insistence on primacy of literal interpretation struck Gnostics as convincing, they did carry a kind of probative force for others in debates, especially proto-orthodox sympathizers. For them, Scripture was to be interpreted following literal methods of interpretation, that is to say, letting the words say what they normally mean, and following widely accepted practices of grammatical construction. When they are so interpreted, the words yield the meaning of the author. And since these authors were all thought to be apostles, this kind of interpretive practice can reveal the apostles teaching delivered once and for all the churches that stand within the orthodox tradition of Jesus.
The Formation of the
Proto-Orthodox New Testament
The victory of proto-orthodox Christianity in its quest for domination left a number of indelible marks on the history of Western civilization. Of these, none has proved more significant than the formation of the New Testament as a canon of Scripture.
To be sure, the development of a church hierarchy was important, but there are numerous denominations today, with a range of church structures. The formation of the orthodox creeds was significant as well, but in some churches new creeds have replaced the old, and almost no one has weekly Creedal Studies to discuss how the Nicene affirmations can make a difference in their lives. The New Testament is another matter: It is accepted and read by millions of people around the world and is understood by most Christians to be the word of God, the inspired Scriptures, the ultimate basis for faith and practice---even for Christians who stress “tradition” as well. In common Christian understanding, these are twenty -seven books given by God to his people to guide them in their lives and understanding.
It comes as a bit of a shock to most people to realize that the church has not always had the New Testament. But the Christian Scriptures did not descend from heaven a few years after Jesus died. The books that eventually came to be collected into the sacred canon were written by a variety of authors over a period of sixty or seventy years, in different places for different audiences. Other books were written in the same period, some of them by the same authors. Soon thereafter the Church saw a flood of books also allegedly written by the earliest followers of Jesus, forgeries in the names of the apostles, produced for decades, centuries even, after the apostles themselves were long dead and buried. Virtually all of this other literature has been destroyed, forgotten, lost. Only a fraction of the early writings came to be immortalized by inclusion in the sacred canon.
But why were these twenty-seven books included, and not any others? Who decided which books to include? On what basis? And when? It is one thing for believers to affirm, on theological grounds, that the decisions about the canon, likely the books themselves, were divinely inspired. But it is another thing to look at the actual history of the process and to ponder on the long, drawn-out arguments over which books to include and which to reject. The process did not take a few months or years. It took centuries. And even then, there was no unanimity.
The Canon after Three hundred Years
To begin our reflection on the formation of the New Testament canon, perhaps we would do well to set the context and then start at the end. Most of the books of the New Testament where written in the first century of the common era, from the earliest letters of Paul, written about 50ce, some twenty years after the death of Jesus Christ, to 2 Peter, widely thought to be the final New Testament book to be written around 120ce. The controversies we have been examining date, for the most part, to the two hundred yeas followed. But even at the end of this two-hundred-year period there was no fixed New Testament canon.
The first Christian author of any kind to advocate a New Testament canon of our twenty-seven books and no others was Athanasius, the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria. This comes in a letter that Athanasius wrote in 367ce over three centuries after the writings of Paul, our earliest Christian author. As the Alexandrian bishop, Athanasius sent an annual letter to the churches in Egypt under his jurisdiction. The purpose of these letters was to set the date of Easter, which was not established well in advance, as in our modern calendars, but was announced each year by the church authorities. Athanasius used these annual “Festal” letters to provide pastoral advice and counsel to his churches. In his famous thirty-ninth Festal letter of 367ce he indicates, as part of his advice, the books that his churches were to accept as canonical Scripture. He first lists the books of the “Old Testament,” including the Old Testament Apocrypha (which were to be read only as devotional literature, not as canonical authorities). Then he names exactly the twenty-seven books that we now have as the New Testament, including that “in these alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed. Let no one add to these; let nothing be taken away from them”
Numerous scholars have unreflectively claimed that this letter of Athanasius represents the “closing” of the canon, that from then on there no disputes about which books to include. But there continued to be debates and differences of opinion, even in Athanasius’ home church. For example, the famous teacher of the late-fourth-century Alexandria, Didymus the blind, claimed that 2 Peter was a “forgery” that was not to be included in the canon. Moreover. Didymus quoted other books, including the Shepherds of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, as scriptural authorities.
Going somewhat further afield, in the early fifth century, the church in Syria finalized its New Testament canon and excluded from it 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, making a canon of twenty-two books rather than twenty-seven. The church in Ethiopia eventually accepted the twenty-seven books named by Athanasius but added four others not otherwise known---named Sinodos, the book of Clement (which is not 1 or 2 Clement), the book of the covenant, and Didascalia---for thirty-one book canon. Other churches had yet other canons. And so, when we talk about the “final” version of the New Testament, we are doing so in (mental) quotation marks, for there never has been complete agreement on the canon throughout the Christian world.
There has been agreement throughout most of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. The twenty-seven books named by Athanasius are “the” New Testament. Even so, the process did not come to a definitive conclusion through an official ratification of Athanasius’s canon, say, at a church council called for the purpose. There was no official church wide pronouncement of the matter until the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century (which, as a Roman Catholic council, was binding only on Roman Catholics). But by then, the twenty-seven books were already “set” as Scripture.
In this manner the canon of the New Testament was ratified by widespread consensus rather than by official proclamation. Still, by the beginning of the fifth century, most churches in the Christian world agreed on its contours.
Beginning the Process
How did the process begin? Why did it take so long to get resolved (that is if indeed it is resolved)! We do at some level consider it resolved. But when and how did Christian leaders decide which books should be included? What motivated the impetus, bringing this New Testament to a conclusion and stamping it as approved.
We have seen and understood in some small part what motivated the formation of the canon. Considering the nature of Christianity from the beginning as a religion stressing proper belief and had need of authorities on which to base the belief system. Literary text soon took on importance for Christianity. The apostles of Jesus were seen as a source of authority, knowledge and how and what Jesus intended with the Gospels’ message. However, apostles couldn’t be everywhere at once in the churches scattered throughout the empire. Apostolic writings took the place of a personal apostolic presents in the churches. Therefore, the written word became a real important matter.
There was another motivation behind the formation of a sacred canon of Scripture, and it starts long before the Christian mission to establish churches. In some sense, the Christian movement had a canon of Scripture at its very beginning. Prior to the writing of any texts. Jesus and his earthly followers themselves had a collection of sacred writings. They were all Jewish and they fully accepted the authority of books that came to be included in what Christians later called the “Old Testament.”
There is no doubt that during his public ministry Jesus accepted and used interpretation of Hebrew Scripture, teaching his disciples from them. We cannot say the final Hebrew canon came to a final and complete form in and during Jesus’ day. But it appears that the twenty two book canon now accepted by Jews was itself in the process of development. Not completed until the early third century of the common era! Even so, virtually all Jews of Jesus’s day accepted the sacred authority of the first five books of what is now called the Hebrew Bible. Also known as the Torah of the Law of Moses and sometimes called the Pentateuch (which means “five scrolls). Many Jews, Jesus included, also accepted the sacred authority of the Hebrew prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the others) along with some of the other writings such as the Psalms.
Jesus was well versed in these books of Scripture, and his teachings are in large measure based on his interpretation of these sacred books. In early tradition he is called “rabbi” (meaning “teacher” of Scripture). He entered into disputes with the Pharisees, over the proper interpretation of the law’s of Scripture, such as what it means to honor the Sabbath. When someone asks him how to have eternal life, he replies that he must keep the commandments and then lists some of the Ten Commandments to illustrate the point (see Matt. 19:17-19). When asked about the key commandments of the law, he responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:4, that “you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength,” and Leviticus 19:18, that “you should love your neighbor as yourself” (see Matt. 22: 34-40). These are not commandments that Jesus himself invented; he was quoting Scripture. Even when he appears to abrogate the Law of Moses in some of the so-called Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount, he does so in order to bring out what is in his judgment, their true meaning and intent: the, Law says not to commit murder, Jesus says not to be angry; the Law says not to commit adultery, Jesus says not to lust; the Law take an eye for an eye, Jesus says turn the other cheek (Matt. 5:21-48).
Matt. 5:21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
Matt. 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Matt. 5:23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
Matt. 5:24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
Matt. 5:25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Matt. 5:26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
Matt. 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
Matt. 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Matt. 5:28 thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Matt. 5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Matt. 5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
Matt. 5:32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Matt. 5:33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:
Matt. 5:34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:
Matt. 5:35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.
Matt. 5:36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.
Matt. 5:37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
Matt. 5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
Matt. 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matt. 5:40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
Matt. 5:41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Matt. 5:42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Matt. 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
Matt. 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
Matt. 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matt. 5:46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
Matt. 5:47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
Matt. 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
The deep intentions of these laws, for Jesus, are to be followed, not simply their surface meaning. Jesus saw the Law as a direction from God about how to live and worship.
His earliest followers did as well. Like him they were law-observant Jew’s already possessing a collection of Scripture at the beginning. This is also true of later Christian authors whose books eventually came to be included in the New Testament: Paul, Matthew, Luke, the author of Hebrews, and most of the rest quote the Jewish Scriptures as authority’s texts for the life and worship of the Christian communities they were addressing. These authors quote the Scripture in their Greek translation (called the Septuagint) because their readers spoke Greek. For most early Christians this translation had as much authority as the original Hebrew. Moreover, these Christians saw Jesus not as the founder of a new religion that cast aside the old. But as the fulfillment of the old, who brought something new to understanding of God that was already anticipated in the Hebrew Bible.
Most Jews, of course, rejected the notion that Jesus was the fulfillment of ancient prophecies concerning the Messiah, and they rejected the Christian message. This itself provided some motivation for early Christians to devise their own sacred authorities: to separate themselves from Jews, who refused to accept the “authoritative” interpretations of Jewish Scripture pronounced by Christians.
The movement toward establishing a distinctively Christian set of authorities can be seen already in the writings of the New Testament. Jesus himself, of course, presented his interpretations of Scripture as authoritative, meaning that they were to be accepted as normative for his followers, who thought of them not only as right and true but as divinely inspired. After Jesus’ death his teachings not just his interpretations of Scriptures per se, but everything he taught was granted sacred authority by his followers. It was not long before Jesus’ teachings were thought to be as authoritative as Jewish Scripture themselves. We see this movement already in the writings of Paul, who on several (thought rare) occasions quotes Jesus’ teachings to resolve ethical issues in his churches:
To those who are married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that a wife should not separate from her husband----and that the husband should not divorce his wife. (1 Cor. 7:10-11)
1 Cor. 7:10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:
1 Cor. 7:11 But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.
Jesus taught that married couples should not divorce, despite the fact the Law of Moses allowed for it. But Jesus maintained that Moses had made this allowance because of “the harness of your heart” (Mark 10:2-11).
Mark 10:2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him.
Mark 10:3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?
Mark 10:4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.
Mark 10:5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.
Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
Mark 10:7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;
Mark 10:8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
Mark 10:9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Mark 10:10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter.
Mark 10:11 And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.
For the Christians, Jesus’ teachings could trump the provisions of the Law.
Even more, by the end of the first century, Jesus’ words were being construed as Christian authors as “Scripture.” In a striking passage in 1 Tim. 5:18,
1 Tim. 5:18 For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.
the author (claiming to be Paul) urges his readers to pay double honor to the presbyters in the church, and he quotes two passages od “Scripture” to support his view. The first Deut. 25:4 (“Do not muzzle an ox that is treading the grain”),
Deut. 25:4 Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
but the other is a saying of Jesus, now found in Matt. 10:10 (“The worker is worthy of his hire”). Here Jesus’ own words are quoted with Scripture.
Matt. 10:10 Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.
In some circles, the teachings of Jesus were not simply on a par with Scripture; they far surpassed it. We have seen this already in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, the correct interpretation of which is said to bring eternal life. In proto-orthodox circles, however, it was not Jesus’ secret teachings but those found in apostolic authorities that were seen as authoritative. Just as important as his teachings were the events of his life. Accounts of Jesus’ life his words and deeds, his death and resurrection were eventually placed in circulation and accepted as sacred Scripture, at least as authoritative for most proto-othodox Christians as the texts of the Jewish Bible.
Along with these authoritative accounts of Jesus’ life were authoritative writings of his apostles, which were being granted sacred status before the end of the New Testament period. The final book of the New Testament to be written was probably 2 Peter. A book almost universally recognized by critical scholars to be pseudonymous, not actually written by Simon Peter but one of many Petrine forgeries from the second century (cf. the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, the letter from Peter to James, etc.). One of the striking features of this letter is that it discusses the writings of the apostle Paul and considers them, already, as scriptural authorities. In attaching those who misconstrue Pauls’ writings, twisting their meaning for their own purpose (some kinds of proto-Gnostics?), the author says:
Our beloved Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, saying such things as he does in all his letters. Some things in them are hard to understand, which the foolish and unstable pervert, leading to their own destruction, as they do with the rest of the Scriptures. (Pet. 3:16)
2 Peter 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
By grouping Paul’s writings with “the rest of the Scriptures,” this author has made a significant move. Apostolic writings are already being revered and placed into a collection as books of Scripture.
And so, by the end of the New Testament period, we have a movement toward a bipartite New Testament canon, consisting of the words (or accounts) of Jesus and the writings of the apostles. In so speaking of this as a “movement” we should guard against being overly anachronistic. It is not that Christians at this time were all in agreement on the matter, as we have seen time and time again and it is not that anyone thought they were in a “movement” that was heading somewhere else. These authors understood that there were certain authorities that were of equal weight to the teachings of (Jewish) Scripture. They had no idea that there would eventually be a twenty seven book canon. But looking back on the matter from the distance afforded by passage of time, we can see that their claims had a profound effect on the development of proto-orthodox Christianity, as eventually some of these written authorities came to be included in a canon of Scripture.
Authors of Authorities
Probably every Christian group of the second and third century ascribes authority to written texts, and each group came to locate that “authority” in the status of the “author” of the text. These authors were thought to be closely connected to the ultimate authority, Jesus himself, who was understood to represent God. Different groups tied their views to apostolic authorities in different ways.
The Ebionites, for example, claimed to present the views advocated by Peter, Jesus’ closest disciple, and James his brother; the Marcionites claimed to present the views of Paul, which he received via special revelation from Jesus; and Valentinians Gnostics also claimed to represent Paul’s teachings, as handed down to his disciples Theudas, the teacher of Valentinus.
The proto-orthodox claimed all these apostles as authorities, Peter, James, Paul, and may others. But not all the books used by the proto-orthodox churches were written by apostles---- or in some cases even claimed to be. The four Gospels that eventually made it into the New Testament, for example, are all anonymous, written in the third hand person about Jesus and his companions. None of them contains a first person narrative (“One day, when Jesus and I went into Capernaum …”), or claims to be written by an eyewitness of companion of an eyewitness. Why then do we call them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Because sometime in the second century, when proto-orthodox Christians recognized the for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke, the traveling companion of Paul). Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications and recognized that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.
Other books that came to be accepted as authorities were not anonymous but homonymous, that is, written by someone who had the same name as a person well known in Christian circles. Whoever wrote the New Testament book of James, for example, gives no indication that he is James, the brother of Jesus. Quite the contrary, he says nothing at all about a personal tie to Jesus. Moreover, the name James was very common in the first century---as many as seven men named James are found just within the New Testament. In any event, the book of James was later accepted as apostolic on the grounds that the author was the brother of Jesus, although he never claimed to be.
The name John was common as well. Even though the Gospel and Epistles of John do not claim to be written by someone of that name, the book of Revelations does (see Rev. 1:9).
Rev. 1:9 I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
But the author does not claim to be John son of Zebedee, one of Jesus’ apostles. In fact, in one scene “John” has a vision of the throne of God surrounded by twenty-four elders who worship forever (Revelation 4:4, 9-10).
Rev. 4:4 And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty
elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.
Rev. 4:9 And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever,
Rev. 4:10 The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
These twenty-four elders are usually taken to refer to the twelve patriarchs of Israel and the twelve apostles. But the author gives no indication he is seeing himself. Probably, then this was not the apostle. And so, the book is homonymous, later accepted by Christians as canonical because they believed the author was in fact Jesus’ earthly disciple.
Yet other books are pseudonymous---forgeries by people who explicitly claim to be someone else. Including in this group is almost certainly 2 Peter, probably the pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, quite likely the deuteron-Pauline Epistle of 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians, and possibly 1 Peter and Jude. But why would someone claim to be a famous person from the past? As we have seen, it was principally in order to get a hearing for his views. And these authors’ views were not merely heard; they were accepted, respected, granted authority, and included in sacred Scripture.
Were any of the books that made it into the New Testament actually written by apostles of Jesus? As we seen critical scholars are fairly unified today in thinking that Matthew did not write the first Gospel or John the Fourth, that Peter did not write 2 Peter and possibly not 1 Peter.
No other book of the New Testament claims to be written by one of Jesus disciples. These are books by the apostle Paul, of course. Thirteen go by his name in the New Testament, at least seven of which are accepted by nearly all scholars as authentic. If, then, by “apostolic book we mean “book” actually written by an apostle,” most of the books that came to be included in the New Testament are not apostolic. But if the term is taken in a broader sense to mean “book that contains apostolic teaching as defined by the emerging proto-orthodox church,” then all twenty-seven, pass muster.
Uncertain Steps Toward a Canon
We return to the question of how, when, and why the twenty-seven books of our New Testament became part of the canon. As we have seen, the process was already in motion by the end of the New Testament period, but it didn’t come to any kind of closure until the final part of the fourth century, nearly three hundred years later, at the earliest. Why did it take so long, and what drove the process?
It may seem od that Christians of earlier times, while recognizing the need for authoritative texts to provide guidance for what to believe and how to live, did not see the need to have a fixed number of apostolic writings, a closed canon. But there is no evidence of any concerted effort anywhere in proto-orthodox Christianity (or anywhere else, for that matter) to fix a canon of Scripture in the early second century, when Christian texts were being circulated and ascribed authority. In fact, there was a range of attitudes toward sacred texts among the proto-orthodox Christians of this early period.
I can illustrate the point by considering views found in three proto-orthodox authors from about the second quarter of the seconds century.14 It is difficult to assign dates to these writings with any precision, nut it appears that the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians was written by 130ce, the Shepherd of Hermas between 110 and 140ce, and the sermon known as 2 Clement sometime around 150ce.15 All three are proto-orthodox productions. The latter two, in fact, were occasionally accepted as canonical Scripture by orthodox Christians of later times (both are included in early manuscripts of the New Testament). But they represent widely disparate understandings of sacred textual authorities.
Polycarp’s letter is a virtual pastiche of citations and allusions drawn from the writings that eventually came to be included in the New Testament: nearly a hundred such quotations in a letter of fourteen relatively brief chapters, in contrast to only about a dozen from the Old Testament. On one occasion Polycarp mat actually refer to the book of Ephesians as “Scripture,” but the interpretation of the passage is debated. And sometimes he will refer to an explicit authority (e.g. “Remember what the Lord taught”). In most instances, however, Polycarp simply uses lines and phrases familiar from the New Testament writings without attribution, especially from the works of Paul, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and the Synoptic Gospels. Were his letter the only proto-orthodox text available to us from the period, we might think that here we could detect the steady movement toward ascribing authority to earlier writings, those that came to be included in the New Testament.
But that there was not a steady movement in this direction is suggested by the Shepherd of Hermas, which probably reached its final form after Polycarp’ letter. This is a much larger book, longer than any book that made it into the New Testament. And so one might expect a correspondingly greater number of quotations and allusions. On the contrary, even though the book is filled with authoritative teachings and ethical exhortations, there is only one explicit quotation of any textual authority to be found. And that, as it turns out, is of a now-lost and unknown Jewish apocalypse called the Book of Eldad and Modat. Some readers have suspected that Hermas knew and was influenced by the book of James, and possibly Matthew and Ephesians, but the arguments are rather tenuous. In contrast to Polycarp, Hermas does not appear to have any investment at all in sacred textual authorities or an emerging canon of Scripture.16
With the third example we find yet another situation, neither Polycarp’s feast nor Hermas’s famine. The mid-second-century sermon know as 2 Clement make several statements that have verbal similarities to some of the New Testament Epistles (e.g., 1 Corinthians and Ephesians), but it does not quote these books as authorities. With relatively greater frequency it quotes the words of Jesus (“the Lord said”), but it does so without attributing these words to any of our written Gospels. What is possibly most remarkable is that of the eleven quotations of Jesus’ teachings, five do not occur in the canonical Gospels. One of the most interesting we have already considered.
For the Lord said, “You will be like sheep in the midst of wolves.” But Peter replied to him. “What if the wolves rip apart the sheep?” Jesus said to Peter, “after they are dead, the sheep should fear the wolves no longer. So too you: do not fear those who kill you and then can do nothing more to you; but fear the one who, after you die, has power to cast your body and soul into the hell of fire.” (2 Clement 5:2-4)
The source for this odd dialogue is unknown, although it may derive from the Gospel of Peter. Even more noteworthy for our purpose is the saying found in 2 Clement 12:2.
For when the Lord himself was asked by someone when his kingdom would come, he said, “When the two are one, and the outside like the inside, and the male and female is neither male nor female.”
This is very much like a saying found not in a canonical Gospel but in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (Saying 22):
They said to him, “Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?” Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female … then will you enter the kingdom.
Far from supporting Polycarp in showing a reliance exclusively on books that were to become part of the canon, then, and from supporting Hermas in overlooking earlier textual authorities, 2 Clement appears to accept a wide range of authorities, especially sayings of Jesus --- even some that were not finally sanctioned by being included within the canon of Scripture.
And so, by the mid-second century, the questions of the canon were still unresolved in proto-orthodox circles. This conclusion coincides nicely with other findings of other studies: Christians in Rhossus accept the Gospel of Peter, as does at first their bishop Serapion, only to reject it later;18 some Christians accept the Apocalypse of Peter or Paul’s letter of 3 Corinthians as Scripture, others do not; Revelation and the Epistle the Hebrews are matters of constant debate.
Motivations for Establishing the Canon
There can be little doubt that events of the second half of the second century created a demand for a proto-orthodox canon of Scripture. Chief among the motivating factors were prophetic movements such as Montanism from within proto-orthodox circles and opposition to heretical forces outside these circles.
The effect of Montanus we have already seen. So long as proto-orthodox Christians like Montanus and his female companions could claim to have direct revelations from God, there were no visible constraints to prevent heretical Christians from making comparable claims. Thus, even though the Montanists---Tertullian chief among them---were orthodox in their theology, their activities had to be proscribed. And so, the recognition of possible abuses (exacerbated, no doubt, by the failure of the Montanist prophecies of an imminent end of all things) led Christian leaders to more certain authorities. These were written authorities, solid and fixed, rather than inspired prophecies in the Spirit, fluctuating and impermanent. They were authorities grounded in the truth, transmitted from Jesus to his own apostles, and they were writings with permanent validity, not just for the moment.
More than anything, however, the interactions with heretical forma of Christianity forced the issue of canon. In this, no one was more important than Marcion, to our knowledge the first Christians of any kind to promote a fixed canon of Scripture, in his publication of modified versions of Luke and ten Pauline Epistles, It is possible to evaluate Marcion’s effect by considering the views of two of his proto-orthodox opponents, one writing just as he was beginning to make a large impact and one writing soon afterwards.
Justin Martyr was one of the most productive proto-orthodox authors of the second century. Still preserved are two “apologies” that he wrote, intellectual defenses of the faith against its pagan detractors, and a work called the “Dialogue with Trypho,” in which he tries to show the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, largely by appealing to a Christian interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures. His other writings were lost, however, including an attack on heresies of his day that was later used as a source by Irenaeus.
Despite his frequent appeals to authoritative texts, Justin shows no inclination toward a fixed canon of the New Testament Scripture in his surviving writings.20 He does quote the Gospel over a dozen times, but he typically refers to them as “Memoirs of the Apostles.” He does not name the authors of these books as authorities; the books appear to derive their authority from the fact to Justin it is a fact they accurately recall the words and deeds of Jesus. Moreover, it is not altogether clear whether these quotations derive from the separate Gospels as we have them or from some kind of Gospel harmony that Justin, or someone else in Rome, had created by splicing the available Gospels together into one long narrative.21 His quotations often use a phrase from Matthew and a phrase form Luke, combining them in a way not found in any surviving Gospel manuscript.22
Even more noteworthy than his loose use of the Gospel as authorities is the circumstance that Justin never quotes the apostle Paul. Is it because Marcion, who was active in Rome while Justin was there, used Paul almost exclusively, so that Justin associated him with the heretic?
Even though Justin speaks of Marcion’s influence already extending throughout the world (Apology I.26), his real impact did not come until later. And so it is interesting to contrast Justin’s relatively casual use of written authorities whit what one finds in Irenaeus, another well known proto-orthodox author who also opposed heresies by quoting authoritative texts. But now some thirty years after Justin there is a clear notion of a canon, at least so far as a canon of sacred Gospels is concerned. In a famous passage, Irenaeus laments the fact that heretics not only fabricate their own Gospels but rely on just one or the other of those in the canon to justify their aberrant views. Thus, he says, the Ebionites use only the Gospel of Matthew, those who “separate Jesus from the Christ” (i.e., most Gnostics) use only Mark, the Marcionites use only Luke, and the Valentinians Gnostics use only John. For Irenaeus, however, this curtailment of the Gospel is as bad as the forgery of false texts:
It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principle winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side. (Against Heresies 3.11.7)
And so, just as there are four corners of earth and four winds, there must be four Gospels, neither more nor fewer.
What is worth observing here is that whereas Justin had a very loose notion of sacred authority, rooted in unnamed, unspecified, and unenumerated “Memoirs” produced by Jesus’ apostles, in Irenaeus, writing thirty years later, we have a fixed set of named, specified and enumerated Gospels. What separates Irenaeus and Justin? One thing that separates them is thirty years of Marcionites Christianity, thirty years of a brand of Christianity proposing a canon of just eleven edited books.23
It is also worth noting that whereas Justin never quotes Paul, Irenaeus does so extensively. Some scholars have thought that this was an attempt on Irenaeus’s part to reclaim Paul from the heretics, as he was a favorite not only of Marion but also of Gnostics.24 If this view is right, it might make sense that the proto-orthodox canon included 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus along with the ten letters known to Marcion, for nowhere in the New Testament is there a more proto-orthodox Paul than in these Pastoral Epistles, with their stress on the election of worthy men as bishops and deacons and their opposition to false “gnosis” and baseless “mythological speculation” (cf. 1 Tim. 1:4, 6:20). Here is a forged Paul for a proto-orthodoxy forging ahead, seeking to overcome all heretical opposition.25
The Muratorian Canon and
The Criteria of Canonicity
Given these motivations for forming a set canon of Scripture, how did proto-orthodox Christians go about deciding which books to include and which to exclude? One of the best ways to follow their line of reasoning is to consider the earliest surviving canonical list, the Muratorian canon, a fragment text that has been subject to considerable debate in recent years.
This “canon” is a list of books that its anonymous author considered to be part of the New Testament Scriptures. It is named for the eighteenth-century scholar L. A. Muratori, who discovered it in library in Milan. In 1740 Muratori published the manuscript that contained the list, not so much to provide access to the various documents that it contains --- which are principally treatises of several fourth-century and fifth-century church fathers --- but in order to show how sloppy copyist in the Middle Ages could be. In a treatise of Ambrose, for example, the scribe inadvertently copied the same thirty lines twice. What is worse, the second copy of these lines differs from the first in about thirty places --- at least one mistake per line. Who knows how poorly the scribe worked when we don’t have his own copy with which to correct him?
In any event, the Muratorian canon is part of this poorly transcribed manuscript. Most scholars date the manuscript and its ill-suited scribe to the eight- century. The text is in Latin, truly awful Latin, but is a translation of a Greek original. The debates of recent years concern the date and location of the original. The common view of the matter since the days of Muratori has been that it was written somewhere in the vicinity of Rome in the second half of the second century, possibly during the time of Hippolytus, Recent scholars have tried to argue that the text is better located in the fourth century, somewhere in the eastern part of the empire. But the arguments have not proved altogether compelling. The beginning of the text is lost. There can be little doubt, however, about the books it initially described, given the way the fragment itself starts:
…at which nevertheless he was present, and so he placed [them in his narrative]. The third book of the Gospel is that according to Luke.
The author goes on to describe who Luke was, and then to speak of the “fourth of the Gospels” which “is that of John.” This list, in other words, begins by discussing the four Gospels, the third and fourth of which are Luke and John. It is fairly clear that it began by mentioning Matthew and Mark, the latter of which is only allusively referred to in the partial sentence that begins the fragment.
Thus, the Muratorian canon includes the four Gospels that eventually made it into the New Testament, and so no others. After discussing John, the canon names the Acts of the Apostles and then the Epistles of Paul, mentioning seven to seven churches (Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, Thessalonians and Romans), two of which (Corinthians and Thessalonians), the author tells us, Paul wrote twice, and then four individuals (Philemon, Titus, and two to Timothy). This canon, in other words, includes all thirteen Pauline epistles. It explicitly rejects, however, the epistle “to the Laodiceans” and the one “to the Alexandrians,” both of which, it claims, were ‘forged in Paul’s name to further the heresy of Marcion.” These, it indicated in a memorable image, “cannot be received into the Catholic Church, for it is not fitting that gall be mixed with honey.”
The list proceeds to list as acceptable the epistle of Jude, two epistles of John, the Wisdom of Solomon (a book that obviously did not make it into the New Testament), the Apocalypse of John, and the Apocalypse of Peter, indicating that some Christians are not willing to have the latter read in church. It maintains that the Shepherd of Hermas should be read, but not in church as Scripture, since
Hermas wrote [it] very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of the city of Rome. (lines 73-76)
In other words, the Shepherd is a recent production (near to “our times”) and is not by an apostle (but the brother of a recent bishop). Hence it cannot be included in the canon. The list concludes by mentioning other rejected books:
We accept nothing whatever of Arsinous or Valentinus or Miltades, who also composed a new book of psalms for Marcion, together with Basilides, the Asian founder of the Cataphrygians. (i.e. Montanus) ---
There the list ends as it began, in midsentence.
When the totals are added up, this proto-orthodox author accepted twenty-two of the twenty-seven books that eventually made it into the New Testament. Not included are Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and one of the Johannine Epistles (he accepts two of the three that we have, but does not indicate which two). In addition, he accepts the Wisdom of Solomon and, provisionally, the Apocalypse of Peter. Finally, he rejects some books, either because they are heretical --- the Marcionite forgeries of Paul’s letter to the Alexandrians and the Laodiceans and other forgeries attributed to Gnostics and Montanists --- or because they do not pass his criteria for canonicity.
What are those criteria? As it turns out, they are the same four criteria used across a broad spectrum of proto-orthodox authors of the second and third centuries. For these authors, a book was to be admitted into the proto-orthodox canon of Scripture only if it was:
(a) Ancient: Proto-orthodox authors maintained that a canonical authority had to have been written near the time of Jesus. Part of the reasoning is that which we have seen throughout our study: the suspicion of anything new and recent in ancient religion, where antiquity rather than novelty was respected. To be sure, Jesus himself was not “ancient,” even from the perspective of the second or third centuries. But part of the value of antiquity is that it took one back to the point of origins, and since this religion originated with Jesus, for a sacred text to be accepted as authoritive it had to date close to his day. And so the Shepherd of Hermas could not pass muster in the Muratorian canon because it was, relatively speaking, a recent production.
(b) Apostolic: An authority had to be written by an apostle or at least by a companion of the apostles. And so the Muratorian canon accepts the Gospels of Luke (written by Paul’s companion) and John, along with the writings of Paul. But it rejects the forgeries in Paul’s name by the Marcionites. We saw a similar criterion in the case of the Gospel of Peter: Initially it was accepted by the Christians of Rhossus because of its apostolic pedigree. Once it was decided Peter could not have written it, however, it was ruled out of court. Similar arguments transpired over books that did make it into the New Testament. The Apocalypse (or Revelation) of John, for example, was widely rejected by proto-orthodox Christians in the eastern part of the empire during the first four centuries, who argue that it was not written by the apostle. The book of Hebrews, on the other hand, was not accepted by most western churches because they did not think it was written by Paul. Eventually each side persuaded the other that the books were written by apostles (in both cases, it turns out, the skeptics were right), and both books came to be included.
(c) Catholic: Books had enjoyed widespread usage “established” churches to be accepted into proto-orthodox canon. In other words, canonical books needed to be catholic, the Greek term for “universal.” Hence the waffling in the Muratorian canon over the status of the Apocalypse of Peter. This author appears to favor the book, but he recognizes that others in the proto-orthodox community do not accept it for “reading in the church” (i.e., as scriptural authority, as opposed to devotional material). One of the reasons that some of the shorter “catholic” epistles had such difficulty making it into the New Testament --- 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude --- simply because they were not widely used. But eventually they were judged to have been written by apostles and the difficulty caused by their disuse was overcome.
(d) Orthodox: The most important criterion for proto-orthodox Christians deciding on the canon had to do with a book’s theological character. To some extent, in fact, the other criteria were handmaidens to this one. If a book was not orthodox, it obviously was not apostolic (“obviously,” that is, to the one making the judgement) or ancient (it must have been forged recently) or catholic (in that most of the other “orthodox” churches would have had nothing to do with it). To return to Serapion’s evaluation of the Gospel of Peter: How did he know that Peter had not written It? It was because the book contained something that looked like a docetic Christology, and obviously Peter could not have written such a thing. This may not be how issues of authorship are decided by historical scholars today, but it proved to be a significant factor among the proto-orthodox. And so, the criterion of orthodoxy is clearly in the foreground in the Muratorian canon, where Gnostic and Montanist forgeries are excluded, as are Marcionite forgeries in the name of paul, since one cannot “mix gall with honey.”
Eusebius and the Canon in
the Early Fourth Century
The debates over the contour of the canon raged long after the creation of the Muratorian list in the late second century. Almost all proto-orthodox eventually agreed that four Gospels, Ats, the thirteen Pauline Epistles, 1 Peter, and 1 John should be included. But there were extensive disagreements about other books. For some of the books (the shorter catholic epistles) the debates were relatively muted, as not many people were concerned. But other books, such as the Letter to the Hebrews and the Revelation of John, generated considerable disagreement; these were large books, and it mattered whether they were to be considered canonical or not. Was Hebrews’ apparent claim that those who had fallen from grace had no chance of restitution to be accepted as a divinely inspired teaching (Heb. 6:1-6)? Was Revelation’s teaching that Christ reign here on earth for one thousand years (Rev. 20:1-3) to be taken seriously? The public debates over these books tended to focus on authorship: Did Paul write Hebrews? Did John the son of Zebedee write Revelation? But the Substance of the debates was over doctrine: Can we accept such a stringent ethical view as Hebrews’ or such a potentially crass millenarian view as Revelation’s? And what about the Apocalypse of Peter of the Epistl of Barnabas?
That the issues were not quickly resolved is evidence by later writers standing in the proto-orthodox tradition. Writing a century and a half after the Muratorian canon, for example, Eusebius shows how debated over canon were still very much alive. At one point of his ten-volume work, Eusebius states his intention is “to summarize the writings of the New Testament” (Church History 3.25.1). To do so, he sets forth fur categories of books. The first he calls “acknowledge” books, meaning those books accepted by all sides within the orthodox tradition (the only one he is concerned with at this point): the four Gospels, Acts, the (fourteen) Epistles of Paul (he includes Hebrews). Here, some scholars have noted, Eusebius undercuts his own categories, since the Apocalypse, one of his “acknowledged” books, is not universally acknowledged; Eusebius goes on to say that “we shall give the different opinions [about the Apocalypse of John] at the proper time.”
His second category involves books that are “disputed,” meaning writings that may be considered canonical but whose status is debated. He includes in ths group James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John.
Eusebius then names books he considers “spurious,” a word that typically means “forged,” but that in this context appears to mean “inauthentic, although sometimes considered canonical.” These include the Acts of Paul (recall what Tertullian said about Paul and Thecla), the shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache of the Apostles, and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Somewhat oddly, Eusebius also includes in this group, “if it seems right.” The Apocalypse of John --- odd because one might expect it to be listed as “disputed” rather than “spurious.”
Finally, Eusebius provides a list of books that are heretical: the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew and John. With regard to the books of this category, Eusebius comments,
To none of these has any who belong to the succession of ecclesiastical writers ever thought it right to refer in his writings. Moreover, the character of the style also is far from apostolic usage, and the thought and purport of their contents are completely out of harmony with true orthodoxy and clearly show themselves that they are the forgeries of heretics.
These books are not, in other words, catholic, apostolic, or orthodox.
These excerpts are taken from a book called: “Lost Christianities” The Battles for Scripture and The Faiths We Never Knew!
By: Bart D. Ehrman: Also know for religious educational programing through National Geographic, Scholar and teacher of no agendas of faith, just of truth.
ISBN 0-19-514183-0
Oxford University Press
Bart D. Ehrman,
This is a book about the wide diversity of early Christianity and its sacred texts. Some of these texts came to be included in the New Testament. Others came to be rejected, attacked, suppressed, and destroyed. My goals are to examine some of these noncanonical writings, see what they can tell us about the various forms of Christian faith and practice in the second and third centuries, and consider how one early Christian group established itself as dominant in the religion, determining for ages to come what Christians would believe, practice, and read as sacred Scripture. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of texts are my own.
It is my sincere belief this book will enlighten your understanding of theological history, our modern faith today and how we got to where we are today.
Sincerely,
Rev. Joseph Esquivel
God’s Faith in Man Church ULC