Essays on the work entitled "Supernatural Religion"

by J. B. Lightfoot

(3) To this class belonged (i) the Four Gospels; (ii) the Acts; (iii) the thirteen Epistles of St Paul.

(4) As regards these, he contents himself with preserving any anecdotes which he may have found illustrating the circumstances under which they were written, e.g. the notices of St Matthew and St Mark in Papias, and of the Four Gospels in Irenæus.

(5) The Catholic Epistles lie on the border-land between the Homologumena and the Antilegomena, between the universally acknowledged and the disputed books. Of the Epistles of St John for instance, the First belonged to the one class, the Second and Third to the other. Of the Epistles of St Peter again, the First was acknowledged, the Second disputed. The Catholic Epistles in fact occupy an exceptional position.

Respecting his treatment of this section of the Canon he is not explicit in his opening statement, and we have to infer it from his subsequent procedure. As this however is uniform, we seem able to determine with tolerable certainty the principle on which he acts. He subjects all the books belonging to this section to the same law. For instance, he mentions any references to 1 John and 1 Peter (e.g. in Papias, Polycarp, and Irenæus), though in the Church no doubt was ever entertained about their genuineness and authority. He may have thought that this mention would conduce to a just estimate of the meaning of silence in the case of disputed Epistles, as 2 Peter and 2, 3 John.

(6) The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse still remain to be considered. Their claim to a place in the Canon is, or has been, disputed: and therefore he records every decisive notice respecting either of them, e.g. the quotations from the Epistle to the Hebrews in Clement of Rome and Irenæus, and the notices of the Apocalypse in Justin and Melito [47:1] and Apollonius [47:2], and Theophilus and Irenæus. So too, he records any testimony, direct or indirect, bearing the other way, e.g. that the Roman presbyter Gaius mentions only thirteen Epistles of St Paul, 'not reckoning the Epistle to the Hebrews with the rest.' [47:3]

(7) With regard to the books which lie altogether outside the Canon, but which were treated as Scripture, or quasi-scripture, by any earlier Church writer, he makes it his business to record the fact. Thus he mentions the one quotation in Irenæus from the Shepherd of Hermas; he states that Hegesippus employs the Gospel according to the Hebrews; he records that Clement of Alexandria in the Stromateis has made use of the Epistles of Barnabas and Clement, and in the Hypotyposeis has commented on the Epistle of Barnabas and the so-called Apocalypse of Peter [47:4].

It will have appeared from the above account, if I mistake not, that his treatment of this subject is essentially frank. There is no indication of a desire to make out a case for those writings which he and his contemporaries received as Canonical, against those which they rejected. The Shepherd of Hermas is somewhere about two-thirds the length of the whole body of the thirteen Epistles of St Paul. He singles out the one isolated passage from Hermas in Irenæus, though it is quoted anonymously; and he says nothing about the quotations from St Paul, though they exceed two hundred in number, and are very frequently cited by name.

It is necessary however, not only to investigate his principles, but also to ascertain how far his application of these principles can be depended upon. And here the facts justify us in laying down the following rules for our guidance:—

(i) As regards the anecdotes containing information relating to the books of the New Testament he restricts himself to the narrowest limits which justice to his subject will allow. His treatment of Irenæus makes this point clear. Though he gives the principal passage in this author relating to the Four Gospels [48:1], he omits to mention others which contain interesting statements directly or indirectly affecting the question, e.g. that St John wrote his Gospel to counteract the errors of Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans [48:2]. Thus too, when he quotes a few lines alluding to the unanimous tradition of the Asiatic elders who were acquainted with St John [48:3], he omits the context, from which we find that this tradition had an important bearing on the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, for it declared that Christ's ministry extended much beyond a single year, thus confirming the obvious chronology of the Fourth Gospel against the apparent chronology of the Synoptists.

(ii) As regards the quotations and references the case stands thus. When Eusebius speaks of 'testimonies' in any ancient writer taken from a Scriptural book, we cannot indeed be sure that the quotations were direct and by name (this was certainly not the case in some), but we may fairly assume that they were definite enough, or numerous enough, or both, to satisfy even a sceptical critic of the modern school. This is the case, for instance, with the quotations from the Epistle to the Hebrews in Clement of Rome, and those from the First Epistle of St Peter in Polycarp. In no instance which we can test does Eusebius give a doubtful testimony. On the other hand he omits several which might fairly be alleged, and have been alleged by modern writers, as, for instance, the coincidence with 1 John in Polycarp [49:1]. He may have passed them over through inadvertence, or he may not have considered them decisive.