(c) They are placed last of all in a homily attributed to Origen, but this does not necessarily show that father's opinion.[370]
(d) They stand first of all in a Gallican Sacramentarium cited by Hody.[371]
VI. With respect to the order of the individual epistles, the current one has been thought as old as Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria. But the proof of this is precarious. It appears in the fourth century, and may have been prior to that. It is in Epiphanius, who supposes that the arrangement was the apostle's own. Not only was it the prevalent one in the Greek Church, but also in the Latin as we see from the codex Amiatinus, and the Vulgate MSS. generally. It rests upon the extent of the epistles and the relative importance of the localities in which the believers addressed resided.
(a) Marcion had but ten Pauline epistles in the following order: Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, the Laodiceans, (Ephesians), Colossians, Philemon, Philippians.
(b) 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Romans, Philemon, Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy, to the Laodiceans, the Alexandrians (the Epistle to the Hebrews); in the Muratorian canon.
(c) Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Thessalonians, Colossians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews; in Augustine, and several MSS. of the Vulgate in England.[372]
(d) Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Thessalonians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews; in the so-called decree of Gelasius in the name of Hormisdas, in Labbe's text. But here different [pg 116] MSS. vary in regard to the position of the Thessalonian epistles.
VII. The Laodicean letter was inserted either before the pastoral epistles, as in several MSS. of the Vulgate in England; or before the Thessalonian epistles preceding them; or at the end of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as in a MS. of the Latin Bible at Lembeth. Its insertion in copies of the Vulgate was owing to the authority of Gregory the Great, who looked upon it as authentic.
VIII. The position of the Epistle to the Hebrews usually was either before the pastoral epistles, i.e., immediately after those to the Thessalonians; or after the pastoral ones and Philemon. The former method was generally adopted in the Greek Church from the fourth century. The latter prevailed in the Latin Church from Augustine onward.
(a) Pauline epistles to churches (the last being the second to the Thessalonians), Hebrews, Timothy, Titus, Philemon; in the MSS. א, A. B. C. H., Athanasius, Epiphanius; Euthalius,[373] Theodoret. Jerome mentions it after the epistles of Paul to the seven churches as an eighth excluded by the majority, and proceeds to specify the pastoral ones. But Amphilochius and Ebedjesu the Syrian have the western order, viz., the following—