Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ATHANASIUS AND AFTER
ATHANASIUS ON THE NEW TESTAMENT
As we have seen, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, devoted most of his thirty-ninth festal letter, announcing the date of Easter in ad 367, to a statement about the canon of scripture and its limits. After his list of Old Testament books, which has been quoted above, he continues:
Again, we must not hesitate to name the books of the New Testament. They are as follows:
Four gospels—according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John.
Then after these the Acts of the Apostles and the seven so-called catholic epistles of the apostles, as follows: one of James, two of Peter, three of John and, after these, one of Jude.
Next to these are fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul, written in order as follows: First to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians, and after these to the Galatians and next that to the Ephesians; then to the Philippians; then to the Colossians and two to the Thessalonians and that to the Hebrews. Next are two to Timothy, one to Titus, and last the one to Philemon.
Moreover, John’s Apocalypse.
These are the ‘springs of salvation’, so that one who is thirsty may be satisfied with the oracles which are in them. In these alone is the teaching of true religion proclaimed as good news. Let no one add to these or take anything from them. For concerning these our Lord confounded the Sadducees when he said, ‘You are wrong because you do not know the scriptures.’ And he reproved the Jews, saying, ‘You search the scriptures, because … it is they that bear witness to me.’
But for the sake of greater accuracy I must needs, as I write, add this: there are other books outside these, which are not indeed included in the canon, but have been appointed from the time of the fathers to be read to those who are recent converts to our company and wish to be instructed in the word of true religion. These are … the so-called Teaching of the Apostles and the Shepherd. But while the former are included in the canon and the latter are read [in church], no mention is to be made of the apocryphal works. They are the invention of heretics, who write according to their own will, and gratuitously assign and add to them dates so that, offering them as ancient writings, they may have an excuse for leading the simple astray.
Athanasius is the first writer known to us who listed exactly the twenty-seven books which traditionally make up the New Testament in catholic and orthodox Christianity, without making any distinction of status among them. His order of books, on the other hand, is not that which has become traditional: he follows the Alexandrian precedent of placing the Pauline epistles after Acts and the catholic epistles, and within the ‘Pauline’ epistles he places Hebrews between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy, as the great uncials do.
By the ‘apocryphal’ books, of which no mention is to be made, Athanasius means those which Origen stigmatizes as ‘false’ and Eusebius rejects as heterodox. The Didachē and the Shepherd, while not meeting the requirements for canonical recognition, were edifying works and might profitably be read as such. It was therefore not improper to bind such works together with the canonical books in copies of scripture, as in the Sinaitic and Alexandrine codices.
CANONS OF LAODICEA
The last of the sixty canons of the Council of Laodicea is probably an addition to the others, which were promulgated at the time of the Council itself (c 363); it may indeed reflect the influence of Athanasius’s list, except that it does not include the Apocalypse among the canonical books. After listing the books of the Old Testament, it continues thus:
Of the New Testament: Four gospels—according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Acts of the Apostles; seven catholic epistles, as follows: one of James, two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude. Fourteen epistles of Paul, as follows: one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Philippians, one to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, one to the Hebrews, two to Timothy, one to Titus, one to Philemon.
LATER GREEK FATHERS
Cyril of Jerusalem (died 386), in one of his catechetical lectures, deals with the ‘divinely inspired scriptures’ and admonishes his hearer (or render):
Learn diligently from the church what are the books of the Old Testament, and what are those of the New. But read none of the apocryphal writings, for if you do not know those which are universally acknowledged, why should you trouble yourself in vain about those which are disputed? …
Of the New Testament there are (only) four gospels: the Others are pseudepigraphical and harmful (the Manichaeans indeed have written a Gospel according to Thomas, which by the fragrance of its evangelical title corrupts the souls of the more simple sort). Receive also the Acts of the twelve Apostles, and in addition to these the seven catholic epistles of James and Peter, John and Jude. Then as a seal on them all, the last work of the disciples, receive the fourteen epistles of Paul. Let all the rest be set apart on a secondary level. As for the books which may not be read in churches, do not even read them by yourself, as you have heard me say.
The Manichaean Gospel of Thomas is apparently a different work from the Naassene Gospel of Thomas, denounced by Hippolytus. The authentic letters of Paul were in fact the first books of the New Testament to be written: it is odd to see them here referred to as a final ‘seal’ on all the others. The temptation to find theological significance in what was originally a fortuitous or mechanical arrangement of biblical books is one to which some readers yield even today. By ‘all the rest’ Cyril means edifying works like the Didachē or the Shepherd which were not admitted to the canon but permitted to be read in church. Those which were unfit for reading in church, and therefore unfit for a Christian’s private reading, were presumably what Athanasius called ‘the apocryphal works’, inculcating heresy.
Gregory Nazianzen’s metrical list of ‘the genuine books of inspired scripture’, after enumerating the Old Testament books, went on:
Now enumerate those of the new mystery:
Matthew wrote the wonderful works of Christ for the Hebrews,
Mark in Italy, Luke in Achaia.
John, who visited heaven, was a great herald to all.
Then come the Acts of the wise apostles,
and Paul’s fourteen epistles,
and seven catholic epistles, of which James’s is one,
two by Peter, three by John again,
and Jude’s is the seventh. There you have them all.
Any one outside of these is not among the genuine writings.
About the same time as Cyril and Gregory produced their lists Amphilochius of Iconium produced his—a metrical one like Gregory’s, but less concise:
But this especially for you to learn
is fitting: not every book is safe
which has acquired the holy name of scripture.
For there appear from time to time pseudonymous
books, some of which are intermediate or neighbours,
as one might say, to the words of truth,
while others are spurious and utterly unsafe,
like counterfeit and spurious coins,
which bear the king’s inscription
but as regards their material are base forgeries.
For this reason I will state for you the divinely inspired
books one by one, so that you may learn them clearly.
He proceeds to enumerate the Old Testament books, and then goes on:
It is time for me to state the books of the New Testament.
Receive only four evangelists:
Matthew, then Mark, to whom Luke as third
count in addition, and John, in time
the fourth, but first in the sublimity of his doctrines,
for rightly do I call him the son of thunder
who sounded forth most loudly with the word of God.
Receive also Luke’s second book,
that of the Acts of the universal apostles.
Next add the ‘chosen vessel’,
the herald to the Gentiles, the apostle
Paul, who wrote in wisdom to the churches
twice seven books: to the Romans one,
to which must be added two to the Corinthians,
that to the Galatians, that to the Ephesians, after them
that in Philippi; then the one written
to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians,
two to Timothy, and to Titus and Philemon
one each, and one to the Hebrews.
But some say the epistle to the Hebrews is spurious;
they say not well, for its grace is genuine.
So be it. What remains? Of the catholic epistles
some say there are seven, others that three only
are to be received: one of James,
one of Peter and one of John.
Some receive the three of John and in addition to them the two
of Peter, with Jude’s as the seventh.
The Revelation of John, again,
some include, but the majority
say it is spurious. This is the most unerring
canon of the divinely inspired scriptures.
Evidently Athanasius’s unquestioning inclusion of the Apocalypse among the canonical books carried little weight among many eastern churchmen. Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory Nazianzen leave it out of the canon, and while Amphilochius mentions it, he says that the majority reject it.
EPIPHANIUS
Epiphanius of Salamis in Cyprus gives a summary of canonical books in his treatise against heresies:
If you had been begotten by the Holy Spirit and instructed in the prophets and apostles, you must have gone through (the record) from the beginning of the genesis of the world until the times of Esther in twenty-seven books of the Old Testament, which are (also) numbered as twenty-two, also in the four holy gospels, and in fourteen epistles of the holy apostle Paul, and in the writings which come before these, including the Acts of the Apostles in their times and the catholic epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude, and in the Revelation of John, and in the Wisdom books, I mean those of Solomon and of the son of Sirach—in short, all the divine writings. Having gone through all these, I say, you should have condemned yourself for bringing forward as not unfitting for God but actually pious towards God a name which is nowhere listed, the name of a spurious book, nowhere mentioned in holy scripture.
Epiphanius’s curious appending of the wisdom books of Solomon and Ben Sira to his New Testament list has been noted already. He appears to include the Apocalypse without hesitation. He knows that some have doubts about it, but he himself does not share them: ‘St John through his gospel and epistles and Apocalypse has imparted the same holy spiritual gift.’
CHRYSOSTOM
‘John of the golden mouth’ (Chrysostom), bishop of Constantinople from 397 to 407, quotes copiously from the New Testament books apart from the four controverted catholic epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude) and the Apocalypse. A Synopsis of Sacred Scriptures, sometimes (but on doubtful grounds) attributed to him, follows a list of the Old Testament books with the fourteen epistles of Paul, the four gospels, the book of the Acts (ascribed to Luke) and the three catholic epistles. For the rest, it is noteworthy that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the phrase ‘the books’ (Gk ta biblia) of the two Testaments together; in Christian usage the phrase had previously been restricted to the Old Testament writings. Chrysostom’s usage is the origin of our word ‘Bible’; while biblia (‘books’) is a plural word in Greek, it was taken over into Latin as a singular, Biblia, ‘the Bible’.
THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA AND THE SYRIAC CANON
It had been thought by a number of scholars that Theodore of Mopsuestia (died 428) rejected the Apocalypse and all the catholic epistles except 1 Peter and 1 John, but it is more likely that he rejected these also. This is the most natural sense of the statement of Leontius of Byzantium (6th century) that he rejected the epistle of James and the catholic epistles that followed next to it. Of the three major catholic epistles (James, 1 Peter, 1 John), the Syriac writer Isho ’dad of Merv (9th century) says that ‘Theodore, the Interpreter, does not even mention them in a single place, not does he bring an illustration from them in any one of the writings he made’.
The earliest New Testament in the Syriac churches comprised the four gospels (either the Diatessaron or the ‘separated gospels’), Acts and the Pauline epistles (evidently including the Pastoral Epistles and Hebrews). From the early part of the fifth century the common Syriac version, the Peshiṭta, included the three major catholic epistles as well. Not until 508 were 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation included in a Syriac edition of the New Testament (the Philoxenian version). Even then, this enlarged New Testament was accepted only by the Jacobite (Monophysite) branch of the Syriac church; the Nestorians to this day acknowledge a canon of only twenty-two books.
EASTERN DIVERSITY
Eastern Christendom thus cannot match the unanimity with which the New Testament canon of twenty-seven books has been accepted in the west from the end of the fourth century onward. The Greek Orthodox Church accepts the twenty-seven books as listed by Athanasius, but there are no readings from the Apocalypse in its lectionary.
See pp. 78f.
A quotation from Is. 12:3.
See p. 23 with n. 20.
Mt. 22:29.
Jn 5:39.
For the Old Testament ‘apocrypha’ listed here see p. 79.
But see p. 206, n. 40 for its changed position in the Sahidic version of this letter. Athanasius quotes Heb. 11:3 and expressly ascribes it to Paul more than once (On the Incarnation of the Divine Word, 3.2; On the Decrees: Defence of the Nicene Definition, 18).
See p. 194.
See p. 200.
Athanasius is specially given to quoting from the Shepherd, ‘a most profitable book’ (On the Incarnation, 3.1), the opening words of Mandate 1, ‘First of all believe that God is one, who created all things and fitted them together, and made all things to be out of that which is not’ (cf also On the Decrees, 18; Festal Letter 11 [Easter 339], 4).
See p. 80.
English translation in NPNF, series 2, XIV, p. 159.
Here follow the Old Testament books; see pp. 80f.
For other works with the same title see pp. 162, 311.
Catechetical Lecture 4.36 (NPNF, series 2, VII, pp. 27 f.).
See p. 201.
Cyril’s language is based on the arrangement by which Acts and the catholic epistles precede Paul’s epistles.
See p. 81.
That is, ‘of the new revelation’; when used in a Christian sense, ‘mystery’ in the New Testament is something hitherto concealed in the divine counsel but now revealed.
Gk. ouranophoite̅s, a reference to John’s experience in his Patmos vision (Rev. 4:1 f.), although Gregory did not include the Apocalypse in his canon.
Gregory, Hymn 1. 1. 12.31, lines 30–39.
See p. 81.
Compare Origen’s reason for accepting Jude (p. 193).
Amphilochius, Iambics to Seleucus, lines 289–319.
‘Before these’ in the arrangement by which Acts and the catholic epistles precede the Pauline epistles.
Epiphanius, Panarion, 76.22.5. He apostrophises the extreme Arian Aëtius (died 367), founder of the Anomoeans, and undertakes to refute his published set of heretical propositions.
See p. 81.
Panarion 51.35.
Migne, PG 56.317.
Homilies on Matthew, 47.3.
E.g. by B. F. Westcott, On the Canon of the New Testament (London, 31870), p. 411.
See p. 81.
Leontius, Against the Nestorians and Eutychians, 3.14.
Isho’ dad, Commentary on the Epistle of James, ed. M. D. Gibson, Horae Semiticae X (Cambridge, 1913), p. 49 (Syriac), p. 36 (English).
Ephrem (4th century) wrote commentaries on the Diatessaron, on Acts, and on the Pauline epistles (among the latter he included the spurious 3 Corinthians, part of the Acts of Paul; see p. 239).
See B. M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977), pp. 3–75 (the Philoxenian version is discussed on pp. 63–68); J. S. Siker, ‘The Canonical Status of the Catholic Epistles in the Syriac New Testament’, JTS n.s.. 38 (1987), pp. 311–340.
The Monophysites deviated from Chalcedonian orthodoxy by ascribing to our Lord one nature, not two (divine and human); the Nestorians, by ascribing to him two persons (divine and human), not one. In the language of the early creeds ‘person’ has a technical sense unlike its present usage.