perfect, those of intermediate, aucl those of no authority, he makes the first the canonical ; the second, those added to them by many (ptures) ; the third, all the rest. In the first list lie puts Ecclesiasticus. Among the second he puts 1 and 2 Chronicles, Job, Ezra and Nehemiah, Judith, Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees ; and in the New Testament, James, 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John. He also says that the Apocalypse of John is much doubted by the Orientals. In the third list, i.e., books of no authority added by some (quidam) to the canonical, are put Wisdom and Canticles.[1] 1 The catalogue is confused, and erroneous at least in the one respect, that Jerome is referred to as sanctioning the division given of the Old Testament books ; for neither he
nor the Jews agree with it.The ca non of the old Abyssinian church seems to have had all the books in the Septuagint, canonical and apocry phal together, little distinction being made between them. The New Testament agrees with the present Greek one. At a later period a list was made and constituted the legal one for the use of the church, having been derived from the Jacobite canons of the apostles. This gives in the Old Testament the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Judith, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther, Tobit, two books of Maccabees, Job, Psalms, five books of Solomon, minor and greater prophets. External are the Wisdom of Sirach (for teaching children) and the book of Joseph ben Gorion, i.e., that of the Maccabees. The New Testament has four gospels, Acts, seven apostolic epistles, fourteen of Paul, and the Revelation of John. Later catalogues vary much, and are often enlarged with the book of Enoch, 4 Esdnis, the Apocalypse of Isaiah, itc. The canon of the Ethiopic church was fluctuating.[2]
The Armenian canon, if we may judge from printed editions, follows the Septuagint ; but the books are put in a peculiar position. The three books of Maccabees follow the historical ones. In the New Testament the epistle to the Hebrews precedes those to Timothy and Titus ; while Sirach, a second recension of Daniel, Manasseh, 3 Corin thians, with the account of John s death, are relegated to an appendix behind the New Testament.
The Bible canon of the Eastern Church in the Middle Ages shows no material change. Endeavours were made to remove the uncertainty arising from the existence of nume rous lists ; but former decisions and decrees of councils were repeated instead of a new, independent canon. Here belongs the catalogue in the Alexandrian MS. of the 5th century, which is peculiar. After the prophets come Esther, Tobit, Judith, Ezra and Nehemiah, 4 Maccabees, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, the all-virt;i- ous Wisdom, the Wisdom of Jesus of Sirach. In the New Testament, the Apocalypse is followed by two epistles of Clement. The list was probably made in Egypt. That of Anastasius Sinaita (t 599) needs no remark. The apostolic canons (canon 76) give a list both of the Old and New Testament books, in which the usual canonical ones are supplemented by Judith, 3 Maccabees, and in the New Testament, by two epistles of Clement, and the Clementines in eight books. The Apocalypse is wanting. But the whole is a patchwork, borrowed from the Apostolic Constitutions, Athanasixis s festal epistle, and other sources. It cannot be put earlier than the 5th century; and it is pretty certain that Judith and Maccabees are later insertions.[3] We have also Nicephorus s Stichometry (806-815) ;[4] Cosmas Indicopleustes (535), who never mentions the seven catholic epistles of the New Testament or the .Apocalypse; the Council of Constantinople commonly called the Trillion (692), Johannes Damascenus (t 754), the second Nicene council (787), the Synopsis divince Scriptures Vet. et Jfovi Test, (about 1000), Zonaras (about 1120), Alexius Aris- tenus (about 11 60), and Nicephorus Callistus (1330).
In the Western church of the Middle Ages, diversity of opinion respecting certain books continued. Though the views of Augustine were generally followed, the stricter ones of Jerome found many adherents. The canon was fluctuating, and the practice of the churches in regard to it somewhat lax. Here belong Cassiodorus (about 550) ; the list in the Codex Amiatinus (about 550) ; and Isidore of Seville (t636), who, after enumerating three classes of Old Testament books gives a fourth, not in the Hebrew canon. Here he specifies Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, saying that the Church of Christ puts them among the divine books,, honours and highly esteems them.[5] There are also the fourth council of Toledo (632;, Gregory the Great (f 604), Notker Labeo (t912), Ivo (about 1092), Bede (t735), Alcuin (t 804), Rabanus Maurus (t 856), Hugo de St Victor (+ 1141), Peter of Clugny (tl!56), John of Salisbury (tl!82), Thomas Aquinas (t!270), Hugo de St Caro (t!263), Wyclifle (+1384), Nicolaus of Lyra (t!340), &c. Several of these, as Hugo de St Victor, John of Salisbury, Hugo de St Caro, and Nicolaus of Lyra, followed Jerome in separat ing the canonical and apocryphal books of the Old Testa ment.[6]
As to the arrangement of the New Testament books, the gospels stand thus in several MSS. of the old Latin version, in a, b, c,f,Jf, q. cod. D (Latin), Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. In the Acts of the council at Ephesus (431), Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, and several Latin translations, they are Matthew, John, Mark, Luke. The Curetoniau Syriac has Matthew, Mark, John, Luke ; while a very okl fragment of the gospels in Turin has Mark and Matthew.
The oldest order of the books, and that which lies at the basis of the current one given by Tertullian, is Gospels, Acts, Pauline epistles, Apocalypse, epistle of John. This was varied by putting the Catholic epistles before the Apocalypse, as in the, Muratorian fragment. This order became the prevailing one in the W r est, with a few varia tions here and there, such as the placing of the Acts after tlie Pauline epistles by the Peshito, Jerome, and Epiphanius; or after the Catholic epistles, immediately before the Apocalypse, by Augustine and the Spanish church; while in the Stichometry of the Clermont MS. they follow the Apocalypse as the last canonical book.
In the ancient Greek Church the order was different. There the usual one was Gospels, Acts, the Catholic epistles, the Pauline epistles, and the Apocalypse. This exists in Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius. and the MSS. B and A. But the Sinaitic has Gospels, Pauline epistles, Acts, Catholic epistles, Apocalypse.
The Pauline epistles seem to have been arranged accord ing to their length ; the Catholic ones have that of James first, because the author was the bishop of the church at Jerusalem, then the epistles of Peter, the chief of the apostles.[7]
The Reformers generally returned to the Hebrew canon, dividing off the additional books of the Septuagint as well as those attached to the Vulgate. These they called apocryphal, after Jerome s example. The latter, though considered of no authority in matters of doctrine, were still pronounced useful and edifying. The principal reason that weighed with them was, that Christ and the apostles testified to none of the Septuagint additions.
