CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CHRISTIAN CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
A. IN THE EAST
Apart from a few fragments from pre-Christian generations, our witnesses to the text of the Septuagint are exclusively Christian. At an early date the Christians used the codex form and not the older scroll form for their copies of the Septuagint. The oldest surviving Christian copies of the Septuagint have the form of codices. These are seven of the Chester Beatty biblical papyri (a collection, now in the Chester Beatty Museum and Library, Dublin, whose acquisition was first announced in 1931). As listed in the catalogue of Septuagint codices, they are 961 (Genesis), 962 (another copy of Genesis), 963 (Numbers—Deuteronomy). 964 (Ecclesiasticus), 965 (Isaiah), 966 (Jeremiah), 967/8 (Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther). (Another codex in the same collection contained the Greek text of 1 Enoch and the Paschal Homily of Melito, Bishop of Sardis.) With three New Testament codices, these apparently made up the Bible of a Greek-speaking church somewhere in Egypt. They were copied between the mid-second and late fourth centuries ad; they are all sadly defective but some are in a better condition than others.
THREE EARLY UNCIALS
The great uncial codices of the complete Greek Bible from the fourth and fifth centuries ad tell us something of the books which were acknowledged as having the status of holy scripture or at least being not unworthy to be bound up along with books of holy scripture. Here, for example, are the contents of the codices Sinaiticus (). Vaticanus () and Alexandrinus (), so far as their Old Testament part is concerned:
Sinaiticus 4th century:
Genesis …, Numbers …, Judges …, 1 & 2 Chronicles, 1 & 2 Esdras, Esther, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, the Twelve, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Sirach, Job. (Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Ezekiel are missing, as also are most of Joshua—4 Kingdoms; the text of the Twelve Prophets is incomplete.)
Vaticanus 4th century:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–4 Kingdoms, 1 & 2 Chronicles, 1 & 2 Esdras, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Letter of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. (The books of Maccabees are not included.)
Alexandrinus 5th century:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–4 Kingdoms, 1 & 2 Chronicles, the Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Letter of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Esdras, 1–4 Maccabees, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Sirach, [Psalms of Solomon]. (The Psalms of Solomon, a collection of eighteen poems from the middle of the first century bc, were probably never accepted as holy scripture. The work is listed, at the end of all the biblical books, in the catalogue of contents prefaced to Codex Alexandrinus, but its text is not reproduced.)
JUSTIN MARTYR
The story of the origin of the Septuagint, as told in the Letter of Aristeas, is summarized by Justin Martyr (c ad 160), who evidently regards the Septuagint version as the only reliable text of the Old Testament. Where it differs from the Hebrew text, as read and interpreted by the Jews, the Jews (he says) have corrupted the text so as to obscure the scriptures’ plain prophetic testimony to Jesus as the Christ. He tells how the compositions of the prophets were read in the weekly meetings of Christians along with the memoirs of the apostles; the memoirs of the apostles indicated the lines along which the prophets’ words were to be understood.
MELITO OF SARDIS
Few of the early Christian writers had occasion to give a precise list of the Old Testament books recognized and used in their own circles; therefore, for our present purpose, special interest attaches to those who do give such a list. One of these was Melito, bishop of Sardis about ad 170. Melito’s use of the Old Testament is well illustrated by his Paschal Homily, which is based on the reading of the Exodus narrative; following the precedent set by Paul in 1 Cor. 5:7f.; 10:1–4, he expounds the narrative typologically with reference to Christ, but takes it for granted that the gospel story itself is well enough known to his hearers without its being necessary for him to appeal to any writing of the Christian age.
His list of Old Testament books is given in the course of a letter to a friend of his named Onesimus. For its preservation we are indebted to Eusebius, who has included in his Ecclesiastical History quotations from so many writers of the first three centuries ad whose works are otherwise lost (in whole or in part). Melito ascertained the number and names of the books, he tells us, during a visit to the east in which he ‘reached the place where these things were preached and enacted’. So, he says,
having learned accurately the books of the old covenant, I set them down and have sent them to you. These are their names:
Five books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy.
Joshua the son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kingdoms, two books of Chronicles.
The Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon (also called Wisdom), Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Job.
The Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Twelve in a single book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras.
Melito’s list probably includes all the books of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. Esdras will be Ezra-Nehemiah, reckoned as one book in the Hebrew enumeration, as in the Septuagint (2 Esdras), and Lamentations may have been reckoned along with Jeremiah as a sort of appendix to it. The order Numbers-Leviticus is no doubt a slip; the order of the prophetical books was not fixed. It is uncertain if Esdras is reckoned to be a prophet; if so, there is nothing surprising in that: any inspired writer was ipso facto a prophet. None of the writings in the ‘Septuagintal plus’ is listed: the ‘Wisdom’ included is not the Greek book of Wisdom but an alternative name for Proverbs. According to Eusebius, Hegesippus and Irenaeus and many other writers of their day called the Proverbs of Solomon ‘the all-virtuous Wisdom’.
Since Melito says that he ascertained the number and names of the books in Palestine, it may be that he derived them from a Jewish source. He is the first extant writer to describe them comprehensively as ‘the books of the old covenant’ (or Old Testament). This does not necessarily imply that he would have called the evangelic and apostolic writings ‘the books of the new covenant’ (or New Testament); this expression is first attested a decade or two later.
A BILINGUAL LIST
Of uncertain date, but perhaps not far removed in time from Melito’s list, is a list contained in a Greek manuscript copied in ad 1056, belonging to the library of the Greek patriarchate in Jerusalem, discovered in 1875 and published in 1883. In this list the names of Old Testament books are given both in Aramaic (transcribed into the Greek alphabet) and in Greek. Twenty-seven books are listed:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Joshua, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Ruth, Job, Judges, Psalms, 1 Samuel (= 1 Kingdoms), 2 Samuel (= 2 Kingdoms), 1 Kings (= 3 Kingdoms), 2 Kings (= 4 Kingdoms), 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Jeremiah, the Twelve, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Esther.
If 1 and 2 Esdras are Ezra and Nehemiah, and Lamentations was included with Jeremiah as an appendix, then these twenty-seven books are identical with the twenty-four of the Hebrew Bible, as usually reckoned. It is difficult to account for the bizarre order in which the books are listed. The list reappears, in a revised and tidier form, in a treatise by Epiphanius, fourth-century bishop of Salamis in Cyprus.
ORIGEN
The next surviving Christian list of Old Testament books was drawn up by Origen (ad 185–254), the greatest biblical scholar among the Greek fathers. He spent the greater part of his life in his native Alexandria, where from an early age he was head of the catechetical school in the church of that city; then, in ad 231, he moved to Caesarea in Palestine, where he discharged a similar teaching ministry. He was an indefatigable commentator on the books of the Bible: to this work he devoted his mastery of the long-established techniques of Alexandrian scholarship. One feature of his work which makes it difficult for students today to appreciate him as he deserves is his proneness to allegorical interpretation, but this was part and parcel of the intellectual tradition which he inherited, and indeed allegorization was the only means of extracting from large areas of the text a meaning which he and his contemporaries would have found acceptable.
Origen’s chief contribution to Old Testament studies was the compilation called the Hexapla (Greek for ‘sixfold’). This was an edition of the Old Testament which exhibited side by side in six vertical columns (1) the Hebrew text, (2) the Hebrew text transcribed into Greek letters, (3) Aquila’s Greek version, (4) Symmachus’s Greek version, (5) the Septuagint, (6) Theodotion’s Greek version. For certain books two and even three other Greek versions were added in further columns. Origen paid special attention to the Septuagint column; his aim was to present as accurate an edition of this version as was possible. By means of critical signs, for example, he indicated places where the Septuagint omitted something found in the Hebrew text or added something absent from the Hebrew text. The Hexapla in its entirety probably never existed but in its original manuscript, but this was preserved at Caesarea for the use of scholars until the Arab conquest of Palestine in the seventh century. Eusebius and Jerome were among the students who made use of it.
Origen’s list of Old Testament books, like Melito’s, was preserved by Eusebius. It comes in the course of his commentary on the first Psalm. There he says:
We should not be ignorant that there are twenty-two books of the [Old] Testament, according to the tradition of the Hebrews, corresponding to the number of letters in their alphabet… These are the twenty-two books according to the Hebrew:
That which among us is entitled Genesis, but among the Hebrews, from the beginning of the book, Bereshith, that is ‘in the beginning’. Exodus, We-elleh shemoth, that is, ‘these are the names’. Leviticus, Wayyiqra, ‘and he called’. Numbers, Homesh piqqudim. Deuteronomy, Elleh hadde barim, ‘these are the words’. Joshua the son of Nun, Yoshuaʿben-Nun. Judges, and Ruth therewith in one book, Shophetim. 1 and 2 Kingdoms, one book with them, Samuel, ‘the called of God’. 3 and 4 Kingdoms in one book, Wehammelekh Dawid, that is ‘the kingdom of David’. 1 and 2 Chronicles in one book, Dibre̅ yamim, that is ‘words of days’. 1 and 2 Esdras in one book, Ezra, that is ‘helper’. The book of Psalms, Sephar tehillim. The Proverbs of Solomon, Me{sha}loth. Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth. Song of Songs (not, as some suppose, Songs of Songs), Shir hash-shirim. Isaiah, Yeshaʿiah. Jeremiah with Lamentations and the Epistle in one book, Yirmeyahu. Daniel, Daniyyēl. Ezekiel, Hezeqiʾēl. Job, Hiyyōb. Esther, Esthēr. Outside these are the books of Maccabees, entitled Sar bēth sha-ben̄eʾēl.
Origen lists the books according to their Greek and Hebrew names. He excludes from his total of twenty-two the books of Maccabees (how many they are, he does not say). But (apart from Maccabees) he has listed only twenty-one books: one, namely the book of the Twelve Prophets, has accidentally dropped out in the course of transmission. His twenty-two books (when the book of the Twelve is restored to the list) correspond to the twenty-four of the Hebrew Bible, except that he includes the Letter of Jeremiah (an item in the ‘Septuagintal plus’) along with Lamentations as part of Jeremiah.
In this same commentary on Psalm 1 Origen enlarges on the appropriateness of the number twenty-two. ‘For’, he says, ‘as the twenty-two letters appear to form an introduction to the wisdom and the divine teachings which are written down for men and women in these characters, so the twenty-two divinely-inspired books form an ABC into the wisdom of God and an introduction to the knowledge of all that is.’
Origen’s care to confine the books listed to those found in the Hebrew Bible (apart from his inclusion, perhaps by an oversight, of the ‘Letter of Jeremiah’) is the more noteworthy because the evidence suggests that the church of Alexandria, in which he was brought up, did not draw the boundaries of holy scripture very sharply. Clement of Alexandria, for example, quotes not only from the ‘Septuagintal plus’ but also from 4 Ezra, 1 Enoch and even from such an out-of-the-way work as the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. But when Origen moved to Caesarea he not only found himself among Christians with a different tradition from that of Alexandria but also had opportunity of contact and discussion with Palestinian Jews. From them he acquired some knowledge of the Hebrew language and Hebrew scriptures—enough to enable him to complete his Hexapla project—and it was plain to him that, when dealing with Jews, he could appeal to no authoritative scriptures but those which they acknowledged as canonical.
Even so, Origen made free use of the ‘Septuagintal plus’ and did not hesitate to refer to other works not even included in the Septuagint, without implying that they were among the books which are indisputably recognized as divinely inspired. His attitude to some books changed over the years. At one time, like Clement, he was happy to quote 1 Enoch as the work of the antediluvian patriarch, but later he doubted its authority.
His attitude to the ‘Septuagintal plus’ is interestingly illustrated by his letter to Julius Africanus. Julius Africanus, born in Jerusalem, was a contemporary and friend of Origen. About ad 238 he read a controversial work by Origen in which appeal was made to the History of Susanna, one of the Septuagintal additions to Daniel, as though it were an integral part of Daniel. He spent some time considering this matter and preparing relevant arguments; then he sent a respectful letter to Origen in which he questioned the propriety of using the History of Susanna as though it belonged to the authentic book of Daniel. It was evident, he pointed out, that the History of Susanna was originally written in Greek, because the crux of the story turned on a double pun which was possible only in Greek. In the story Daniel conducts a separate examination of each of the two false witnesses against Susanna and asks under what kind of tree her alleged offence was committed; he receives inconsistent answers and pronounces an appropriate doom against each. To the one who specifies a mastic tree (Gk schinos) he says, ‘God will cut you in two’ (schizo̅); to the one who specifies a holm-oak (Gk. prinos) he says, ‘God will saw you asunder’ (Gk. prio̅). At one time Origen himself had acknowledged the force of this argument: according to Jerome, he expressed agreement with those in whose judgment this section was composed in Greek. But in replying to Julius Africanus he points out that there are many things in the Greek Bible which are not found in the Hebrew text, and the church cannot be expected to give them all up. As for the double pun, Origen had consulted several Jews but none of them could give him the Hebrew names of the trees in question: he does not rule out the possibility that there might be two Hebrew names of trees which did lend themselves to such a play on words. He implies, too, that the History of Susanna is an excellent theme for rich allegorical interpretation. One might get the impression that, where the relation of the Hebrew Bible to the Septuagint is concerned, Origen is anxious to eat his cake and have it. He is certainly unwilling to deviate from the regular practice of the church.
ATHANASIUS
Unfortunately, for the bulk of Origen’s work we are dependent on Latin translations, especially the translation of Rufinus of Aquileia (c 345–410), carried out well over a century after Origen’s death. Rufinus thought it proper to conform Origen’s language to the orthodoxy and usage of a later age. For example, he represents Origen as using the word ‘canon’ in the sense of ‘canon of scripture’, as we understand the term. But it is a near-certainty that Origen never used the Greek word kanōn in this sense. The first writer known to have used it thus is Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria. In one of his works Athanasius mentions the Shepherd of Hermas (a work which elsewhere he calls ‘a most profitable book’) as ‘not belonging to the canon’. More often he uses the verb kanonizo̅ (‘canonize’) in the sense ‘include in the canon’. This is so in his most important treatment of the subject.
One of the minor decisions of the Council of Nicaea (ad 325) was that, to guard against any disagreement about fixing the date of Easter, the bishop of Alexandria should have the privilege, year by year, of informing his brother bishops (well in advance) of the date of the following Easter. Throughout his long tenure of that see (328–373) Athanasius issued forty-five such ‘festal letters’. In each he took the opportunity of dealing with some other matter of current importance. In the thirty-ninth letter, announcing the date of Easter in 367, he dealt with the canon of the Old and New Testaments. He was concerned about the introduction by some people of heretical or spurious works (which he calls ‘apocryphal’) among the books of holy scripture, and goes on, echoing the prologue to Luke’s gospel:
Inasmuch as some have taken in hand to draw up for themselves an arrangement of the so-called apocryphal books and to intersperse them with the divinely inspired scripture, concerning which we have been fully persuaded, even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered it to the fathers: it has seemed good to me also, having been stimulated thereto by true brethren, to set forth in order the books which are included in the canon and have been delivered to us with accreditation that they are divine. My purpose is that each one who has been led astray may condemn those who have led him astray and that those who have remained untarnished may rejoice at having these things brought to remembrance again.
The books of the Old Testament, then, are twenty-two in number, for (as I have heard) this is the traditional number of letters among the Hebrews.
He then lists them by name in order, after the following pattern:
1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua the son of Nun
7. Judges
8. Ruth
9. 1 and 2 Kingdoms
10. 3 and 4 Kingdoms
11. 1 and 2 Chronicles
12. 1 and 2 Esdras
13. Psalms
14. Proverbs
15. Ecclesiastes
16. Song of Songs
17. Job
18. The Twelve Prophets
19. Isaiah
20. Jeremiah, with Baruch, Lamentations and the Epistle
21. Ezekiel
22. Daniel
Athanasius’s total is the same as Origen’s, but he lists Ruth separately from Judges and omits Esther.
Athanasius then lists the New Testament books. He follows with some general comments on the unique value of holy scripture (including the admonition: ‘Let no one add to these nor take anything from them’), and continues:
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 Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith and Tobit … 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 gratuitiously assign and add to them dates so that, offering them as ancient writings, they may have an excuse for leading the simple astray.
As Athanasius includes Baruch and the ‘Letter of Jeremiah’ in one book with Jeremiah and Lamentations, so he probably includes the Greek additions to Daniel in the canonical book of that name, and the additions to Esther in the book of that name which he recommends for reading in church. He makes no mention of the books of Maccabees.
Evidently Athanasius makes a distinction between those books which are ‘included in the canon’ and others which are recommended for their inspirational and edifying quality. Only those works which belong to the Hebrew Bible (apart from Esther) are worthy of inclusion in the canon (the additions to Jeremiah and Daniel make no appreciable difference to this principle); other works belonging to the ‘Septuagintal plus’, however great their value, are relegated to a second grade. The ‘apocryphal’ writings are not those which have been called so since Jerome’s time (i.e., for the most part, the ‘Septuagintal plus’), but heretical works: they are subversive and ought to be utterly rejected.
In practice Athanasius appears to have paid little attention to the formal distinction between those books which he listed in the canon and those which were suitable for the instruction of new Christians. He was familiar with the text of all, and quoted from them freely, often with the same introductory formulae—‘as it is written’, ‘as the scripture says’, etc.
CANONS OF LAODICEA
Shortly before Athanasius issued his thirty-ninth festal letter, a church council was held at Laodicea in the Lycus valley (c ad 363). The ‘canons’ or rules promulgated by this council were acknowledged by later church councils as a basis of canon law. Canon 59 lays it down that ‘no psalms composed by private individuals or any uncanonical (akanonista) books may be read in church, but only the canonical books (kanonika) of the New and Old Testament’. Canon 60 (the last of the series) then enumerates those canonical books. But the genuineness of Canon 60 is open to doubt; it is probably indebted to the canon of Athanasius and other lists. It follows Athanasius closely, except that Ruth is attached to Judges as part of No. 7 and Esther follows immediately as No. 8.
LATER GREEK FATHERS
In the last two decades of the fourth century other Greek fathers drew up lists of the canonical books, to much the same effect as their predecessors. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem from 348 to 386, gives a list which follows Origen’s, except that Baruch is included in one book with Jeremiah, as well as Lamentations and the ‘Letter of Jeremiah’. Gregory of Nazianzus (c 330–390) may have been the first of many down the ages to produce a list of books of the Bible in verse, for easier memorization. In order to accommodate the names of the books he had to employ a variety of metres. Like Athanasius, he gives the total of Old Testament books as twenty-two and omits Esther. Another metrical canon was drawn up by Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, who died some time after 394. After listing the same Old Testament books as Gregory, he adds a line: ‘Along with these some include Esther’. We have mentioned already that Epiphanius (c 315–403) adapts an earlier bilingual list which yields a total of twenty-seven Old Testament books. In another place Epiphanius appends the Wisdom of Solomon and Ben Sira to a list of New Testament books.
THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA AND OTHERS
Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia (modern Misis) in S. E. Cilicia from 392 to 428, is best known as the most illustrious exponent of the exegetical school of Antioch. Some of his views on the canonicity of Old Testament books were regarded as dangerously radical. In his commentary on Job he denies the ‘higher inspiration’ of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Of the Song of Songs he had no great opinion at all. He rejected the traditional titles to the Psalms and was suspected of rejecting Job and Chronicles.
The earliest form of the Syriac Old Testament appears to have lacked Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles. This might be because their canonicity was doubted, or it might be a fortuitous consequence of the fact that these books are the last in the traditional sequence of the Hebrew scriptures.
The further history of the canon among eastern Christians will not be surveyed here: suffice it to say that in 1642 and 1672 respectively Orthodox synods at Jassy (Iasi) and Jerusalem confirmed as ‘genuine parts of scripture’ the contents of the ‘Septuagintal plus’ (the canonicity of which had been taken for granted), specifically: 1 Esdras (= Vulgate 3 Esdras), Tobit, Judith, 1, 2 and 3 Maccabees, Wisdom, Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah. The Septuagint remains the ‘authorized version’ of the Old Testament in Greek Orthodoxy, its deviations from the traditional Hebrew text being ascribed to divine inspiration. Most Orthodox scholars today, however, follow Athanasius and others in placing the books of the ‘Septuagintal plus’ on a lower level of authority than the ‘protocanonical’ writings.
See C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London, 1983).
Codices
See p. 70
P45, P46, P47 in the catalogue of New Testament manuscripts. See pp. 129, 130.
Codex Sinaiticus (in British Museum, London)
Codex Vaticanus (in Vatican Library, Rome)
Codex Alexandrinus (in British Museum, London)
The use of letters of the alphabet as short-hand labels for the chief uncial manuscripts (manuscripts written in capital letters) was inadvertently begun by Brian Walton, bishop of Chester, who in his Biblia Sacra Polyglotta (London, 1655–57) used A to designate Codex Alexandrinus. B was later used to designate Codex Vaticanus, and so on. When Tischendorf discovered Codex Sinaiticus, he did not wish to do it the indignity of labelling it with a letter lower down the alphabet than A and B, so he designated it by Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
In this and all following lists of the Greek Old Testament books, ‘Chronicles’ translates Gk. Paraleipomena (see p. 90, n. 39).
In LXX the book of Joshua is regularly called Iēsous Nauē (Latin Jesus Nave), i.e. ‘Joshua (the son of) Nun’, Nauē being a form which Nun took through corruption in the course of transmission.
See p. 66.
First Apology, 67.3. See p. 127.
See p. 68.
In Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.26.12–14.
Hist. Eccl. 4.22.9.
See p. 180.
MS 54, folio 76a, discovered and published by Ph. Bryennios. It was this manuscript that first gave to the modern world the text of the Didachē (‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’).
See J.-P. Audet, ‘A Hebrew-Aramaic List of Books of the Old Testament in Greek Transcription’, JTS n.s. 1 (1950), pp. 135–154.
The number twenty-seven may be intended to correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet plus the special forms which five of these letters take at the end of a word. See pp. 90, 213.
As in Origen (see p. 74) and in the Latin Vulgate and versions dependent on it (see pp. 90, 107).
Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures, 23 (cf p. 81). See also R. T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (London, 1985), pp. 188–190, 224, n. 15.
See R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture (London, 1959); M. F. Wiles, ‘Origen as Biblical Scholar’, CHB I, pp. 454–489. See p. 195 below.
Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 6.161–17.1.
In Hist. Eccl. 6.25.1, 2. On Origen’s treatment of the Old Testament scriptures see R. P. C. Hanson, Origen’s Doctrine of Tradition (London, 1954), pp. 133–137.
Lit. ‘the fifth of the musters (censuses)’. The five books of the Pentateuch were sometimes called ‘the five fifths of the law’; each of them therefore was a ‘fifth’. This name was given to Numbers (as was the LXX name arithmoi, ‘numbers’) because of the censuses of chapters 2 and 26. In the Hebrew Bible Numbers is designated Bemiḏbar, ‘in the wilderness’, from its first distinctive phrase, like the other Hebrew names of Pentateuchal books here reproduced by Origen.
A reference perhaps to the etymology of (šemûʿēl), ‘name of God’. In another place Origen explains the name as meaning ‘There is God himself’ (šām hûʾ ʾēl); see Hanson, Allegory and Event, p. 170, n. 6 (quoting Homily on 1 Sam. 1:5).
These are the opening words of 1 Kings, but they mean ‘and King David’, not (as Origen mistranslates them) ‘and the kingdom of David’.
That is, Ezra-Nehemiah (as in Jerome’s Vulgate).
Eusebius’s text reads melōth, from which something seems to have dropped out in transmission. The form mešālôṯ is an unusual plural of māšāl, ‘proverb’ (the usual plural being mešālîm).
This was presumably the title of 1 Maccabees, which (unlike the other books of Maccabees) was originally written in Hebrew. It seems to mean ‘prince of the house of the heroes’ (lit. ‘sons or God’), which may have been a designation of Judas Maccabaeus, the hero of the book. Another, but unnecessary, suggestion is that sar (‘prince’) has been corrupted from sēfer (‘book’).
This comes from a portion of his commentary on Psalm 1 preserved in Philocalia 3.
What remains of this pseudepigraphic work (to be dated in the 1st century bc or 1st century ad) is edited and translated by O. S. Wintermute in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. J. H. Charlesworth, I (Garden City, N. Y., 1983), pp. 497–515).
He had already profited by the instruction of Jewish teachers in Alexandria; see N. R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews (Cambridge 1976), pp. 25, 40.
He quotes it as if it were holy scripture in On First Principles 1.3.3; 4.1.35 (from his Alexandrian period); later, in Against Celsus 5.54, he says, ‘the books superscribed with Enoch’s name are by no means recognized in the churches as divine’ (similar reservations are expressed in his Commentary on John 6:42; Homily on Num. 8:2). See Hanson, Origen’s Doctrine of Tradition, p. 136: A. C. Sundberg, The Old Testament in the Early Church (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 165f.; R. M. Grant, The Formation of the New Testament (London, 1965), p. 170.
Translated, with Africanus’s letter to which it is a reply, in ANF IV, pp. 385–392.
Susanna 54f.
Susanna 58f. The verb is that used in Heb. 11:37 (‘they were sawn in two’), where Origen (Letter to Africanus, 9) sees a reference to the martyrdom of Isaiah.
Cf Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, prologue; also on Dan. 13:54–59.
Letter to Africanus, 15.
In his Commentary on Matthew (part 2, 61), he says that he quotes from the History of Susanna, although he knows that it is not in the Hebrew Bible, ‘because it is received in the churches’. See Hanson, Origen’s Doctrine of Tradition, p. 134.
In the Latin translation of his Homily on Joshua 2:1 there is a reference to the Assumption of Moses, ‘although it is not received in the canon’, but the words (licet in canone non habeatur) are those of Rufinus.
On the Decrees (= Defence of the Nicene Definition), 18.
On the Incarnation of the Divine Word, 3.
Gk. mē on ek tou kanonos.
An English translation of this letter is provided in NPNF, series 2, IV, pp. 551f.
Ezra-Nehemiah.
See p. 208.
See p. 23. Compare Novatian, On the Trinity, 16: ‘But woe is pronounced on those who add, as also on those who take away.’
He adds the Didachē and the Shepherd here; these bear the same relation to the canonical books of the New Testament as the five just listed bear to those of the Old Testament.
He does not say in so many words why Esther is not included in the canon: he may have inherited a tradition, going back possibly to a Jewish source, which denied it canonical status; cf what is said below of Gregory Nazianzen and Amphilochius. See further J. Ruwet, ‘Le canon alexandrin des écritures: Saint Athanase’, Biblica 33 (1952), pp. 1–29.
See NPNF, series 2, XIV, pp. 125–160; a translation of Canons 59 and 60 appears on pp. 158f.
See NPNF, series 2, VII, p. 27 (Catechetical Lecture, 4.35).
Gregory, Hymn 1.1.12.31, lines 11–29.
Amphilochius, Iambics to Seleucus, lines 251–288. He goes on to list the New Testament books (see. p. 212), and concludes with the words: ‘This would be the most unerring canon of the divinely inspired books.’ He is the next writer after Athanasius to use ‘canon’ (Gk. kanōn) in this sense.
See p. 72 with n. 17.
Epiphanius, Panarion 76.5. Compare the mention of Wisdom in the Muratorian list.
The expression is H. B. Swete’s (DCB, IV, sv ‘Theodorus of Mopsuestia’, p. 940). See also M. F. Wiles, ‘Theodore of Mopsuestia as Representative of the Antiochene School’, CHB I, pp. 489–510.
See Swete, ibid.
Leontius of Byzantium, Against the Nestorians and Eutychians, 3.12–16. See A. C. Sundberg, The Old Testament of the Early Church, pp. 144f.; R. T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, pp. 190f., 225, n. 22, 307–310, 333, n. 138.
In view of the fact that Theodore was Nestorius’s teacher, it is noteworthy that the Nestorians also omitted Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; see F. P. W. Buhl, Canon and Text of the Old Testament, E. T. (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 53; L. Rost, ‘Zur Geschichte des Kanons bei den Nestorianern’, ZNW 27 (1928), pp. 103–106; R. T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, pp. 191f., 195–197.
See T. [Kallistos] Ware, The Orthodox Church (Harmondsworth, 1963), pp. 208f.; also M. Jugie, Histoire du canon d l’Ancien Testament dans l’église grecque et l’église russe (Paris, 1909).