Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE WEST IN THE FOURTH CENTURY TO JEROME
ATTACK ON THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES
At the beginning of the fourth century the churches in the Roman Empire found themselves involved in a new situation in which the distinction between the writings which properly ranked as holy scripture and all others became a matter of concern to ordinary church officials and not only to theologians. On February 23, ad 303, an imperial edict was posted, for implementation everywhere in the empire, requiring all copies of the Christian scriptures to be surrendered to the authorities for destruction. This was one of the measures which inaugurated the last period of imperial persecution to be suffered by the church. There had been outbreaks of imperial persecution before, but the order for the surrender and destruction of the scriptures was something new. It marked the recognition of the vital role of the scriptures in Christian life and worship.
Something similar had been attempted during the attempt by Antiochus Epiphanes to abolish the practice of Jewish religion about 167 bc: ‘the books of the law were torn to pieces and destroyed by fire, and where the book of the covenant was found in any one’s possession,… the king’s decree condemned him to death’ (1 Macc. 1:56f.). But now the Jewish scriptures were not threatened: it was the New Testament that was at risk, since the Hebrew Bible remained unscathed (although the Septuagint, which was by this time almost exclusively the property of the church, was placed in jeopardy by the imperial edict along with the New Testament writings).
Nowhere in the empire was the edict put into more vigorous effect than in North Africa. The record has been preserved of an inquisition conducted by the mayor of Cirta, capital of Numidia, and his assistants. The bishop was ordered to produce the sacred books: he replied that they were in the custody of the readers, whose names he was reluctant to give (saying that the municipal clerks knew them already). The readers and sub-deacons were questioned; when one of them proved not to be at home, his wife handed over his books, and the house was searched to make sure there were no others.
To hand over the sacred books, even when death was the penalty for non-compliance, was regarded as a serious offence, practically equivalent to apostasy. Those who handed them over were called traditores, which literally means ‘handers over’, but it is the word from which ‘traitors’ is derived. When peace returned to the church, it had to be carefully considered whether traditores could be restored to communion and, if so, what forms of discipline they should be required to undergo.
But a church might have a variety of books in its possession, not all of them sacred books. The officials who called for the surrender of the scriptures would probably be unable to distinguish the sacred books from others. If they would go away satisfied with a copy of the Shepherd of Hermas or a manual of church order, would it be all right to hand over books like these? When the police went to a reader’s house and found him away from home, would his wife know whether the books she gave them were holy scriptures or not? And when the police searched the house to make sure there were no other books, how could they know which were ‘canonical’ and which were not? They would probably take away all documents which had a Christian character about them. But for Christians who were ordered to hand over books it must have become important to know which books must on no account be surrendered and those which might reasonably be regarded as ‘not worth dying for’.
THE CLERMONT LIST
Codex Claromontanus is a bilingual manuscript (Graeco-Latin) of the Pauline letters and Hebrews, dating from the sixth century (its common notation is p). Between Philemon and Hebrews it contains a Latin list of biblical books, noting the number of lines in each. The Old Testament books follow the Septuagint reckoning (on which the Old Latin version was based). The New Testament books are then listed:
Four Gospels
Matthew (2600 lines)
John (2000 lines)
Mark (1600 lines)
Luke (2900 lines)
Epistles of Paul
To the Romans (1040 lines)
To the Corinthians I (1060 lines)
To the Corinthians II (70 [sic] lines)
To the Galatians (350 lines)
To the Ephesians (375 lines)
To Timothy I (208 lines)
To Timothy II (289 lines)
To Titus (140 lines)
To the Colossians (251 lines)
To Philemon (50 lines)
—————
To Peter I (200 lines)
To Peter II (140 lines)
Of James (220 lines)
Of John I (220 lines)
Of John II (20 lines)
Of John III (20 lines)
Of Jude (60 lines)
—Epistle of Barnabas (850 lines)
Revelation of John (1200 lines)
Acts of Apostles (2600 lines)
—The Shepherd (4000 lines)
—Acts of Paul (3560 lines)
—Revelation of Peter (270 lines)
The omission of Philippians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians is evidently accidental; so too, probably, is the omission of Hebrews. The order of Paul’s letters is not the order in which they appear in Codex Claromontanus; the scribe apparently copied this list into the codex from an independent source. The order of the gospels and the other books is also unusual. Carelessness must be the reason for the misnaming of 1 and 2 Peter as the epistles ‘to Peter’; this is a slip which is sometimes heard when the New Testament lesson is announced in church, but it is surprising to see it perpetrated in writing. The four ‘uncanonical’ books—the Letter of Barnabas, the Shepherd, the Acts of Paul and the Revelation of Peter—have a dash written before each of their titles, as though to indicate their inferior status (a similar dash appears before 1 Peter, but this is to mark this and the following books off from the epistles of Paul, which precede them).
The majority opinion seems to be that this list is based on one drawn up at or near Alexandria about ad 300; in its original form it appears to mark a stage in the canonizing process intermediate between Origen and Eusebius.
THE CHELTENHAM LIST
Another fourth-century Latin list was identified by Theodor Mommsen in 1885 in a tenth-century manuscript in what was the Sir Thomas Phillipps collection at Cheltenham. (It is sometimes referred to as the Mommsen list.) It too comprises the books of both Testaments. Its place of origin seems to have been North Africa, and a reference to the consulships of Valentinian and Valens suggests that it was drawn up in ad 365. Here too the titles of the books are followed by a note of the number of lines contained in each. After the Old Testament list the document goes on:
Similarly the catalogue of the New Testament:
The Four Gospels
Matthew (2700 lines)
Mark (1700 lines)
John (1800 lines)
Luke (3300 lines)
In all: 10,000 lines
Epistles of Paul—in number 13
Acts of Apostles (3600 lines)
Apocalypse (1800 lines)
Epistles of John, 3 (350 lines) one only
Epistles of Peter, 2 (300 lines) one only
Again, there are some unusual features in the order of the books, but no ‘outside’ books are listed. The number of lines in Paul’s epistles is not given. Since his epistles are said to be thirteen in number, Hebrews is omitted. By mid-century the church in Rome had been persuaded by Athanasius to acknowledge Hebrews as canonical, but evidently the North African churches had not yet come into line on this. James and Jude are also omitted.
The repeated note ‘one only’ appended to the mention of the epistles of John and Peter ‘expresses a preference for First John and First Peter exclusively’, according to A. Souter; since the compiler had inherited a list in which the number of lines was given for John’s epistles together and for Peter’s epistles together, he reproduced what he found in his source but indicated his personal preference for 1 John and 1 Peter only. So B. M. Metzger very persuasively suggests. The compiler rejected the five disputed catholic epistles.
ATHANASIUS VISITS ROME
In 340 Athanasius, exiled (for the second time) from his see in Alexandria, made his way to Rome and spent a few years in the fellowship of the church there. He established good relations with the bishop of Rome (Julius I) and other church leaders, and the Roman church profited in various ways from the presence within it of such a distinguished theologian from the east. It is probable that he persuaded the Roman Christians to fall into line with their eastern brethren in admitting the canonicity, if not the Pauline authorship, of Hebrews. From that time on the right of Hebrews to be accepted as a New Testament book was not seriously questioned at Rome, or in those western churches which fell within Rome’s sphere of influence.
HILARY OF POITIERS
Hilary, bishop of Poiters (died 367), was in any case a follower of Athanasius and a champion of Nicene orthodoxy; in his exegetical and dogmatic writings he introduced several ideas of eastern theology to the west. He accepted not only the canonicity of Hebrews but its Pauline authorship: he quotes Hebrews 1:4 and 3:1, for example, as ‘what Paul writes to the Hebrews’. He similarly quotes James 1:17 (‘with whom there is no variation’) and ascribes it to ‘the apostle James’; he is in fact the first western writer known to us to accept the letter of James as apostolic.
COMMENTATORS ON PAUL
To the fourth century belong several Latin writers of commentaries on the letters of Paul. The first of these was Marius Victorinus, a native of the province of Africa who became a leading teacher of rhetoric in Rome and was converted to Christianity about 335. In the years following 360 he wrote expositions of Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians. He was a stout defender of Nicene orthodoxy, in the presentation of which he gives clear evidence of the Neoplatonic pattern of his thought.
More important for our purpose is the scholar whom we must (following Erasmus) call Ambrosiaster because his real name has not been preserved. He is the author of commentaries on the thirteen epistles which bear Paul’s name, written at Rome while Damasus was bishop (366–384), but in the manuscript tradition they have been assigned chiefly to Ambrose, bishop of Milan (339–397). They are certainly not by Ambrose, but this certainty does not help us with a positive attribution (Ambrosiaster means ‘pseudo-Ambrose’). The same writer is held (with good reason) to be the author also of a work entitled Questions of the Old and New Testament, which has been transmitted among the works of Augustine.
The fact that Ambrosiaster did not include Hebrews among the Pauline epistles which he expounded is evidence enough that he set it in a category apart: he refers to it occasionally, both in his Pauline commentaries and in the Questions, in terms which show that he accepted it as canonical but did not know who wrote it.
Another commentator on Paul’s thirteen epistles is Pelagius (c 350–430), the first British or Irish author known to us—the evidence is best satisfied if he be regarded as an Irishman (Scotus) born or resident in Britain. Unlike Ambrosiaster, Pelagius cites Hebrews as Pauline, but the fact that he did not write a commentary on it may suggest that he did not regard it as Pauline in the same sense as the thirteen.
Among those commentators Victorinus refers to James the Lord’s brother in terms which indicate that he viewed him as technically in heresy and that, while he knew the letter of James, he did not regard it as canonical. Ambrosiaster, on the other hand, accepted it as canonical. He also ascribed 3 John to ‘John the apostle’. In fact he cites every book of the New Testament, with the exception of Jude. One can well believe that Athanasius had persuaded the Roman church not only to acknowledge the canonical status of Hebrews but also to give up any lingering doubts about the canonicity of the five disputed catholic epistles.
LUCIFER, FILASTER AND AMBROSE
Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia (died 370/1), was a vigorous anti-Arian polemicist. His works are linguistically interesting because they were written in vulgar Latin; they are important for the history of the Latin Bible because he quoted extensively from a pre-Vulgate text. His quotations are drawn from most of the New Testament books, including Hebrews; in one of his treatises he incorporates almost the whole of the letter of Jude in an attack on heresy.
Filaster (Philaster), bishop of Brescia (died c 397), wrote a work On Heresies, sadly deficient in literary organization. His confusion appears in a list of the New Testament scriptures from which Hebrews and the Apocalypse are missing, although it is perfectly plain from other references in his work that he accepted both books as canonical, ascribing the former to the apostle Paul and the latter to the apostle John. Such works as the apocryphal Acts he recommends to the spiritually mature for their ethical instruction.
Ambrose, the illustrious bishop of Milan (339–397), quotes Hebrews as canonical but is reticent about its authorship. He was familiar with the tradition of the Greek fathers, but prudently refrained from committing himself to Pauline authorship, on which he knew western theologians had well-founded misgivings.
RUFINUS
Rufinus of Aquileia (345–410), at first the friend and then the opponent of Jerome, is best known as the translator of Origen, but has left some writings of his own, including An Exposition of the Creed. When the creed confesses faith in ‘the Holy Spirit’ and ‘the holy church’, Rufinus takes the opportunity to mention the books of the Old and New Testaments which have been inspired by the Spirit and handed down in the church. He then lists the Old Testament books according to the Hebrew Bible (the writings which appear in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible are called not ‘canonical’ but ‘ecclesiastical’). After listing the Old Testament books he goes on to list the same twenty-seven New Testament books as Athanasius, but not in the same order:
Of the New Testament there are the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John); the Acts of the Apostles (written by Luke); fourteen epistles of the apostle Paul, two of the apostle Peter, one of James (brother of the Lord, and apostle), one of Jude, three of John; the Revelation of John. These are the books which the fathers have comprised within the canon; from these they would have us deduce the evidences of our faith.
As the Old Testament has appended to it books which are ‘ecclesiastical’ but not ‘canonical’, so has the New Testament. These are:
the little book which is called the book of the Shepherd of Hermas, and that which is called The Two Ways or the Judgment of Peter. They would have all of these read in the churches but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named ‘apocrypha’; these they would not read in the churches.
Rufinus uses ‘apocrypha’ of heretical works, as Athanasius does. The Two Ways (‘the way of life and the way of death’) is a little body of ethical teaching or catechesis incorporated both in the Didachē and in the Letter of Barnabas. Jerome mentions the Judgment of Peter among the apocryphal works ascribed to Peter; nothing is now known of it.
Not only does Rufinus ascribe fourteen epistles to Paul; he occasionally cites him as author when he quotes Hebrews, although he recognizes that ‘some do not receive it as his’.
JEROME
In response to Pope Damasus’s direction, Jerome produced his revised Latin version of the four gospels about 383. How far he is responsible for the rest of the Vulgate New Testament is a disputed question. But the important point is that the Vulgate New Testament—more precisely, the New Testament part of the Latin Bible which came in due course to be called the common or ‘vulgate’ edition—comprised twenty-seven books, and with the general acceptance of the Vulgate by western Christians the dimensions of the New Testament canon were fixed.
Jerome expresses himself more than once on the canon of scripture. Writing to Paulinus, bishop of Nola, for example, in 394, he outlines the books of the Old Testament at some length and then undertakes to deal more briefly with the New Testament.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the Lord’s team of four, the true cherubim (which means ‘abundance of knowledge’), endowed with eyes throughout their whole body; they glitter like sparks, they flash to and fro like lightning, their legs are straight and directed upward, their backs are winged, to fly in all directions. They are interlocked and hold on to one another, they roll along like wheels within wheels, they go to whatever point the breath of the Holy Spirit guides them.
The apostle Paul writes to seven churches (for the eighth such letter, that to the Hebrews, is placed outside the number by most); he instructs Timothy and Titus; he intercedes with Philemon for his runaway slave. Regarding Paul I prefer to remain silent than to write only a few things.
The Acts of the Apostles seem to relate a bare history and to describe the childhood of the infant church; but if we know that their writer was Luke the physician, ‘whose praise is in the gospel’, we shall observe likewise that all their words are medicine for the sick soul. The apostles James, Peter, John and Jude produced seven epistles both mystical and concise, both short and long—that is, short in words but long in thought—so that there are few who are not deeply impressed by reading them.
The Apocalypse of John has as many mysteries as it has words. I have said too little in comparison with what the book deserves; all praise of it is inadequate, for in every one of its words manifold meanings lie hidden.
In comparing the four gospels to Ezekiel’s four chrerubim or ‘living creatures’, Jerome reproduces the details of Ezekiel’s description of the cherubim to a point where he himself might have been puzzled to say exactly how they applied to the gospels. For the rest, we note that he places Acts and the catholic epistles together after the Pauline epistles, that he distinguishes Hebrews from Paul’s letter ‘to seven churches’, and that he assigns apostolic authorship to all seven catholic epistles.
Elsewhere, however, he expresses himself more critically. In writing to Dardanus, prefect of Gaul, in the year 414, he answers his correspondent’s questions about the ‘promised land’ of scripture and quotes highly relevant texts from Hebrews 11:13–16, 39f.; 12:22f. On the authority of these texts he says:
This must be said to our people, that the epistle which is entitled ‘To the Hebrews’ is accepted as the apostle Paul’s not only by the churches of the east but by all church writers in the Greek language of earlier times, although many judge it to be by Barnabas or by Clement. It is of no great moment who the author is, since it is the work of a churchman and receives recognition day by day in the churches’ public reading. If the custom of the Latins does not receive it among the canonical scriptures, neither, by the same liberty, do the churches of the Greeks accept John’s Apocalypse. Yet we accept them both, not following the custom of the present time but the precedent of early writers, who generally make free use of testimonies from both works. And this they do, not as they are wont on occasion to quote from apocryphal writings, as indeed they use examples from pagan literature, but treating them as canonical and ecclesiastical works.
Jerome’s insistence that canonicity is not dependent on particular authorship, not even on apostolic authorship, reveals an insight which has too often been ignored in discussions about the canon of scripture, in earlier and more recent times alike.
As for the catholic epistles, Jerome receives all seven as canonical, but he recognizes the questions that were raised about their authorship and authority. James the Lord’s brother, he says, ‘wrote a single letter, which is reckoned among the seven catholic epistles. Even so, some claim that is was published by another person under James’s name and gradually gained authority as time went on’. Peter ‘wrote two epistles which are called catholic, the second of which, on account of its stylistic difference from the first, is considered by many not to be by him.’ In a letter to Hedibia (406/7) he suggests that the stylistic difference between the two might be due to the employment of two different translators (on whom Peter presumably relied to turn his Galilean Aramaic into Greek and write it down). He ascribes 1 John to John the apostle and evangelist, but thinks that 2 and 3 John were written by another John, ‘John the elder (presbyter)’. The author of both 2 and 3 John introduces himself as ‘the elder’, and Jerome links this self-designation with Papias’s ‘John the elder’. When he adds that to the memory of this John ‘another sepulchre is shown at Ephesus to the present day, though some think that there are two memorials of one and the same John, the evangelist’, he echoes the testimony of Dionysius of Alexandria, preserved by Eusebius. But Dionysius, followed by Eusebius, was concerned to find another John than the evangelist as author of the Apocalypse. With regard to the one remaining catholic epistle, ‘Jude, the brother of James’, says Jerome, ‘left a short epistle which is reckoned among the seven catholic epistles, but it is rejected by many because in it he quotes from the apocryphal book of Enoch. Nevertheless by age and use it has gained authority and is reckoned among the holy scriptures.’
Jerome gives the impression that on one or two of the canonical books he has private reservations, but by this time the canon was something ‘given’ and not to be modified because of the personal opinion of this or that churchman, however eminent. Similarly he gives the impression that he thought one or two of the ‘outside’ books worthy of inclusion in the canon, but by this time they were decidedly outside, and it was not for him, or anyone else, to add them.
The writing called the Letter of Barnabas, for example, he regards as the authentic work of Barnabas, Paul’s colleague. Since Paul at times appears to recognize Barnabas’s standing as comparable with his own, and since Barnabas and Paul are twice called ‘apostles’ by Luke, it might be concluded that a letter of Barnabas, ‘valuable for the edification of the church’ (as Jerome says), should have its place in the canon with other apostolic writings. But it was not in the canon which Jerome had received, and therefore it ‘is reckoned among the apocryphal writings’ (as in an Old Testament context, so here Jerome uses the adjective ‘apocryphal’ of those ‘ecclesiastical’ writings which are read ‘for the edification of the people but not for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas’). As a matter of fact, the Letter of Barnabas cannot be the work of the Barnabas who figures in Acts and in the Pauline epistles; it belongs to the later part of the first century and is probably of Alexandrian origin.
Jerome ascribes the Shepherd of Hermas to that Hermas to whom Paul sends greetings in Romans 16:14 (an ascription mentioned also by Eusebius, who does not commit himself to it). The Shepherd, he says, ‘is read publicly in some churches of Greece; it is in fact a useful book and many of the ancient writers quote from it as authoritative, but among the Latins it is almost unknown’—which is remarkable, since it originated in Rome. In any case, whatever be the date of the Shepherd, there is nothing to be said in favour of identifying the author with Paul’s Hermas.
With Jerome, then, the canon is a datum to be received gratefully, preserved faithfully, and handed on intact.
Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, 11–13; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 8.2.4 f.
An English translation (from Gesta apud Zenophilum, CSEL 26, pp. 186–188) is provided in J. Stevenson (ed.), A New Eusebius (London, 1957), No.249, pp. 287–289.
W. R. Farmer, Jesus and the Gospel (Philadelphia, 1982), p. 220. Farmer emphasizes more than most writers on the subject the importance of persecution and martyrdom as a factor in the formation of the New Testament canon.
Claromontanus, from the Latin form of Clermont, near Beauvais, where the codex was originally identified; it is now in Paris.
Codex Claromontanus (in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)
The Old Testament list (which deviates somewhat in order from what is usual) includes 4 Maccabees as well as 1 and 2 Maccabees.
If (as is most probable) the Latin list is translated from a Greek original, the omission of the four epistles could be explained by the wandering of a scribe’s eye from ‘Ephesians’ to ‘Hebrews’: in Greek, ‘Ephesians’ and ‘Hebrews’ have the same number of letters (eight) and the first letter and last four letters are identical in the two words.
In Codex Claromontanus the epistles appear in the same sequence as we find in most modern editions of the New Testament.
See p. 122.
See p. 166.
See p. 202.
See p. 161.
See T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, II (Erlangen/Leipzig, 1890), pp. 157–172; A. Harnack, Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur, II (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 84–86.
See T. Mommsen, ‘Zur lateinischen Stichometrie’, Hermes 21 (1886), pp. 142–156; W. Sanday, ‘The Cheltenham List of the Canonical Books of the New Testament and of the Writings of Cyprian’, Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica, III (Oxford, 1891), pp. 217–303, with appendix by C. H. Turner, pp. 304–325. Later a copy of the same list was identified in a ninth-century codex at St Gall, Switzerland.
Something has gone wrong: the total number of lines in the four gospels, as given, is 9500, not 10, 000.
The Text and Canon of the New Testament (London, 21954), p. 196, n. 1.
The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford, 1987), pp. 231f.
On the Trinity, 4. 11.
On the Trinity, 4. 8.
For his list of Old Testament books see p. 90, n. 45. He has left no comparable list of New Testament books.
See A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St Paul (Oxford, 1927).
See W. Erdt, Marius Victorinus Afer,… Pauluskommentator (Frankfurt, 1980).
See G. Geiger, C. Marius Victorinus Afer, ein neuplatonischer Philosoph (Metten, 1888/9); P. Henry, Plotin et l’Occident (Louvain, 1934), pp. 44–62.
See A. Souter, A study of Ambrosiaster. TS 7.4 (Cambridge, 1905); Earliest Latin Commentaries, pp. 39–95.
The commentary on Hebrews included in some manuscripts along with Ambrosiaster’s Pauline commentaries is actually by Alcuin of York (E. Riggenbach, Die ältesten lateinischen Kommentare Zum Hebräerbrief, FGNTK 8 [Leipzig, 1907], pp. 18–40).
Souter, Earliest Latin commentaries, pp. 205–230. Souter was the first editor of Pelagius’s commentaries: see his Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul, I–III, TS 9. 1–3 (Cambridge, 1922–31). See also J. Ferguson, Pelagius: An Historical and Theological Study (Cambridge, 1956).
Augustine and others say he was British; Jerome (Commentary on Jeremiah, 1, preface) calls him an Irishman (Scotus), intending this as an insult.
Victorinus, Commentary on Galatians, on Gal. 1:19.
See Souter, Study of Ambrosiaster, pp. 196f. Ambrosiaster (on Gal. 5:10) quotes Jas. 5:20 (‘as James says in his letter’); he quotes 2 Peter more than once (e.g. on Phil. 1:3–5) as the work of ‘Peter the apostle’; on Rom. 16:23 he (no doubt wrongly) identifies Paul’s host Gaius with the Gaius ‘to whom the apostle John wrote’ (in 3 John).
Vulgar Latin is the colloquial Latin from which the Romance languages of Europe developed.
Lucifer, On Heretics, 15. Lucifer does not use the Apocalypse.
Filaster, On Heresies, 88.
He implies (or assumes) Pauline authorship when, e.g., he quotes Col. 1:15 as coming from the ‘apostle’ and goes on: ‘In another place also the apostle has declared that God made the Son “heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds …” ’, quoting Heb. 1:2 (On the Faith, 1:48).
On the Creed, 36–38. The form of the creed which Rufinus expounds is called the creed of Aquileia, an earlier form of what is traditionally known as the Apostles’ Creed.
On the Creed, 37f See p. 90.
On the Creed, 37. By placing Jude before the epistle of John, he brings the latter into close association with John’s Apocalypse.
On the Creed, 38. On the Shepherd of Hermas see pp. 166, 210.
See pp. 23, 122.
Jerome, On Illustrious Men, 1.
E.g., On the Creed, 3, where a quotation of Heb. 11:6 is introduced by the words: ‘as the apostle Paul, writing to the Hebrews, says’.
Apology, 1.39.
See p. 88.
See B. M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977), pp. 356–362.
From Ezek. 1:7–21.
2 Cor. 8:18 (see p. 174).
Epistle 53.9.
Cf Irenaeus (p. 175, n. 29).
Cf Codex Sinaiticus (pp. 205f.).
Cf the Muratorian list, Cyprian and Victorinus of Pettau (p. 164 with n. 15).
Epistle 129.3.
See Augustine’s position (p. 232).
On Illustrious Men, 2.
On Illustrious Men, 1.
Epistle 120.11.
On Illustrious Men, 9.
See p. 119, n. 5.
See pp. 195f. It is more probable that there were two rival memorials to John the evangelist; see F. F. Bruce, Men and Movements in the Primitive Church (Exeter, 1979), pp. 139f.
On Illustrious Men, 4.
On Illustrious Men, 6. B. M. Metzger points out that in his book On Hebrew Names (composed in 388) Jerome lists the proper names in both Testaments and adds at the end thirteen from the Letter of Barnabas (The Canon of the New Testament, p. 236).
Cf Gal. 2:1–10; 1 Cor. 9:6.
Acts 14:4, 14. The sense in which Luke used the term here of Paul and Barnabas is arguable; normally be restricts it to the twelve.
See p. 122.
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.3.6.
On Illustrious Men, 10.