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It is not easy to fix the precise date at which the Christian writings attained to a position of equality with the Old Testament in the estimation of the Church. In the Epistle of Barnabas we find a quotation from St. Matthew's Gospel introduced with the usual formula of quotation from the Old Testament—viz., “as it is written." In the Epistle of Ignatius to the Philadelphians (§ 5) there is an allusion to "the gospel," "the apostles," and "the prophets," which is understood by some to refer to the several portions of Scripture bearing these names, although the words certainly admit of being taken in a more general sense. In the Apology of Aristides (§§ 15, 16) there are two direct allusions to Christian Writings, described in one case as the sacred writing which among them (the Christians) is called Gospel" (literally, "evangelic," evayyeλins ȧyias yрapñs). In the Apology of Justin Martyr (i. 67) it is stated that “the memoirs of the apostles”—which we may confidently identify with our Gospels-were read in church every Sunday like the writings of the prophets. A generation later we find Theophilus of Antioch (180 A.D.) putting the writings of the prophets and evangelists on the same level, as inspired by the one Spirit of God, and quoting from Paul's epistles as "the divine word" (ὁ θεῖος λόγος). Towards the end of the second century we find a canon recognised by Irenæus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian of Carthage, consisting of two definite portions-viz., "the gospel" (тò evayyéλɩov), and "the apostle” (ò ¿πóστoλos), the latter including the Apocalypse. The canon was substantially the same in each case, and embraced almost all our New Testament books, the only ones questioned by any of these writers being Hebrews, James, Jude, 1 and 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John; but it also included several other books as more or less authoritative-viz., the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Apocalypse of Peter. In the Scillitan Martyrs, however (about 180 A.D.), Paul's Epistles are distinguished from the Books,-a circumstance which would seem to indicate that they had not yet attained to the same position as the Gospels, in some parts of the Church.

The earliest list of the New Testament books that has come down to us is preserved in the Muratorian Fragment (about 170 A.D.). The only books of our New Testament that are not recognised in it, directly or indirectly, are 1 and 2 Peter, James, Hebrews, and one of John's Epistles, only two of his being mentioned. The Old Latin Version contains all but 2 Peter, Hebrews, and James; the Syriac all but 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.

An important witness towards the middle of the third century is Origen, who seems to have divided the books into three classes: (1) authentic, (2) not authentic, and (3) intermediate, in which last class he placed James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John,—all the rest of our New Testament being put among the authentic books. A somewhat similar

division was followed by Eusebius, in the early part of the fourth century, who was commissioned by the Emperor Constantine to make a collection of the sacred books for the use of the Catholic Church. In the first class, those commonly accepted (μoloyoúμeva), Eusebius places all our New Testament books except James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, which he assigns to the second class, the disputed books (avriλeyóμeva), recognised, however, by most. In the third class, the spurious books (vóða), he enumerates the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd (of Hermas), the Revelation of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Teaching of the Apostles, and also remarks that the Apocalypse of John must be included in the same class by those who reject it, as well as (in the opinion of some) the Gospel according to the Hebrews. As altogether beyond the pale of recognition, Eusebius mentions certain heretical books, put forward in the name of Apostles (such as the Gospels of Peter and Thomas and Matthias, and the Acts of Andrew and John), whose language and tone of thought convicted them of being forgeries, and which had received no recognition from the successive Church Fathers.

Before the close of the fourth century, the extent of the Canon was formally settled by the collective wisdom of the Church expressed through her Councils, first at Laodicea in 364 (if the genuineness of the Decree on the subject be admitted), and at the third Council of Carthage in 397, when the very same books as are contained in our New Testament were declared to be canonical and the only ones that should be read in church.

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The history of the formation of the New Testament Canon has been conveniently summarized by Bishop Westcott, who divides it into three periods. "Of these the first extends to the time of Hegesippus (A.D. 70-170); the second to the persecution of Diocletian (A.D. 170-303); and the last to the third Council of Carthage (A.D. 303-397). . . . The first includes the area of the separate circulation and gradual collection of the Sacred Writings; the second completes the history of their separation from the mass of ecclesiastical literature; the third comprises the formal ratification of the current belief by the authority of councils" (The Canon of the New Testament, p. 15).

In connection with the history of the New Testament Canon, there are two points that may occasion difficulty :-(1) that a number of the books contained in our New Testament lay under suspicion for a time in some parts of the Church; (2) that a number of books which are not in it were widely regarded, for a time, as more or less authoritative, and publicly read in church. The explanation in both cases is to be found in the general principle on which the Canon was determined by the Church, namely, that it should contain only the writings of apostles and of those who had written under the influence or direction of apostles. In the case of the three books outside of our New Testa

ment that were most revered-viz., the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas, the author was identified with the person of the same name, mentioned in the New Testament in connection with the Apostle Paul (Phil. iv. 3; Acts xii. 25, &c. ; Rom. xvi. 14); while on the other hand it was because their genuineness was considered doubtful that the right of certain of our books to a place in the Canon was called in question. Ultimately, however, a decisive judgment was arrived at by the Church, and the same Council of Carthage which sanctioned the admission of disputed books excluded certain other books that had been regarded as more or less authoritative-the result being that the Canon was fixed precisely as it now stands in our English Version.

NOTE B on MSS. and Versions.

I. MANUSCRIPTS.

I. The Sinaitic MS. (N) was discovered by Tischendorf in 1844, when he was on a visit to the Convent of St. Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai. The monks had no idea of its value till they saw the importance attached by Tischendorf to some forty leaves of it which he picked out of a waste-paper basket. It was not till he made a third visit in 1859 under the patronage of the Czar, the temporal head of the Greek Church, that he succeeded in obtaining the whole existing MS., which now lies at St. Petersburg. It is written on the finest vellum on pages of more than a foot square, each sheet of two leaves representing the entire skin of an animal. The page is arranged in four columns, giving it the appearance of the old papyrus rolls. It is supposed to have been the work of four different scribes, two of whom were employed on the New Testament, but it bears traces of revision by perhaps no less than twelve correctors before the thirteenth century, and the characters seem to have been retraced in the eighth century. Besides the New Testament it contains part of the Septuagint and other writings.

2. The Vatican MS. (B), so called because it has lain for centuries in the Papal residence of that name at Rome, is also written on beautiful thin vellum. Its page and also the characters in which it is written are rather smaller than those of the Sinaitic, to which it bears a general resemblance. There are three columns in each page. Like the Sinaitic it has been retraced by some scribe, probably of the tenth century, whose workmanship has a good deal impaired the beauty of the characters. It contains the Old Testament and most of the New. 3. The Alexandrine MS. (A) was presented to Charles I. by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1628, and now lies in the British Museum. It has two columns to the page of fifty lines each. It is usually assigned to the faith century. Both Old and New Testaments are nearly complete.

4. Of about the same date is Codex Ephraemi (C), deposited in the National Library of Paris. The original writing was effaced in the twelfth century to make room for the writings of Ephraem Syrus. Hence the document is called a palimpsest. It is very fragmentary.

5. Codex Bezae (D) is a MS. of the sixth century, containing the Gospels and Acts in Greek and Latin, the Greek occupying the lefthand page and the Latin the right, there being only one column to the page. It has evidently been corrected and largely interpolated at various times by many different hands, and bears traces especially of Syrian influence. It lies in the Cambridge University Library.

Few of the MSS. are dated, but in general it is not difficult to determine the age of a MS. from its handwriting, material, &c. "It may be laid down as a general rule that the more upright, square, and simple the uncial characters are, the earlier is the writing. Narrow, oblong, and leaning characters came in later, together with greater elaborateness in style. Absence of initial letters of larger size than the rest, is a mark of antiquity. In the earlier MSS., marks of breathing, accent, and punctuation are very rare, frequently absent altogether, or, if present, inserted on no apparent fixed principle, except that a dot to mark the division of sentences became pretty general about the beginning of the fifth century" (Hammond's Textual Criticism, p. 31).

The Uncials range from the fourth to the tenth century, the Cursives from the ninth to the sixteenth or seventeenth century. One MS. (A. Tischendorfianus III. Oxoniensis) of the ninth century is written partly in uncials, partly in minuscules. The Uncials are now usually designated by the capital letters of the Latin, Greek, or Hebrew alphabet, the Cursives by Arabic numerals. These symbols, however, do not denote the whole New Testament in each case, but individual parts of which it is composed, forming originally, it may be, separate codices, and copied by different scribes-viz., (1) the Gospels; (2) the Acts and Catholic Epistles; (3) the Pauline Epistles; and (4) the Apocalypse usually arranged in this order. The same symbol is generally, but not always, assigned to the several parts of a MS. so far as they exist. This is the case with the Sinaitic (N), which is the only complete MS. of the New Testament, the Alexandrine (A), which is nearly complete, and the Codex Ephraemi (C), from which none of the four sections is altogether wanting. Where one or more of the portions is wanting, the symbol is applied, in the case of a missing part, to some other MS.; e.g. B, which is the name of the great Vatican MS., represents in the Apocalypse (which is absent from the Vatican), quite a different and far inferior MS. (Cod. Basilianus). When the same letter is thus applied to more than one MS., its repeated use is indicated by a small numeral appended to it, as E1, E2, E3. Many of the later Uncials are Lectionaries (denoted by numerals not capitals) composed of passages selected for reading in church, and consisting of

(1) Evangelistaria (from the Gospel), and (2) Praxapostoli or Apostoli (from Acts and Epistles). The oldest Lectionary in Greek is of the eighth century, in Syriac of the sixth century, but traces of their existence at an earlier period may be found in the writings of Chrysostom (fourth century) and other Church Fathers.

Many of the MSS. enumerated by critics are mere fragments, consisting in some cases of a few words or verses. The Gospels greatly predominate.

II. VERSIONS.

The following are the most important :— (1) Vetus Latina or Old Latin. Evidence of its existence in the second century is afforded by the statements of Tertullian (200 A.D.), and of its character by the numerous quotations in the writings of Cyprian (250 A.D.). In its earliest form it seems to have originated in Africa, where these Church Fathers lived, and hence the oldest and rudest type of Latin text is called “African.” In the third or fourth century a somewhat different text (possibly a revision of the other) seems to have come into use in Western Europe, especially in North Italy, which critics now designate "European"; and this in turn was succeeded by a new revision (made with the aid of the Greek text), to which the name of “Italian” is applied, as being identical with the improved version to which Augustine alludes under the name of Itala. So much error and confusion had by this time crept into the Latin text both of the Old and New Testaments, owing to the "interpretum numerositas," that at the request of Damasus, Bishop of Rome, Jerome, the greatest scholar of his day, undertook (383 A.D.) a new revision of the Latin Bible with the aid of the Greek and Hebrew originals. Bitterly opposed at first, this Version (which, so far as the New Testament is concerned, introduced few important changes except in the Gospels), became in course of time the accepted standard of the Church, and was recognised as such by the Council of Trent (1545 A.D.), which described it as "the ancient and commonly received edition" (vetus et vulgata editio—whence the name Vulgate). Efforts were subsequently made to purge the text from the corruptions that had crept into it since the days of Jerome; and an authorized edition was issued by Clement VIII. in 1592, which still retains its position of supremacy in the Church of Rome.

(2) Syriac or Aramæan. This translation is almost in the language spoken by the inhabitants of Palestine in our Lord's day. It can be traced to the first half of the second century; but it may have existed even earlier. Its oldest form is represented by a MS. of the fifth century, containing fragments of the Gospels, which was brought from an Egyptian Monastery by Dr. Cureton in 1842, and now lies in the British Museum; but, like the Old Latin, this Version underwent

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