The present edition has been revised throughout and several parts re-written. The author hopes that it will be found still more worthy of the favor with which the first was received.
Chapter I. Introductory.
As introductory to the following dissertation, I shall explain and define certain terms that frequently occur in it, especially canon, apocryphal, ecclesiastical, and the like. A right apprehension of these will make the observations advanced respecting the canon and its formation plainer. The words have not been taken in the same sense by all, a fact that obscures their sense. They have been employed more or less vaguely by different writers. Varying ideas have been attached to them.
The Greek original of canon[1] means primarily a straight rod or pole; and metaphorically, what serves to keep a thing upright or straight, a rule. In the New Testament it occurs in Gal. vi. 16 and 2 Cor. x. 13, 15, 16, signifying in the former, a measure; in the latter, what is measured, a district. But we have now to do with its ecclesiastical use. There are three opinions as to the origin of its application to the writings used by the church. According to Toland, Whiston, Semler, Baur, and others, the word had originally the sense of list or catalogue of books publicly read in Christian assemblies. Others, as Steiner, suppose that since the Alexandrian grammarians applied it to collections of Old Greek authors as models of excellence or classics, it meant classical (canonical) writings. According to a third [pg 010] opinion, the term included from the first the idea of a regulating principle. This is the more probable, because the same idea lies in the New Testament use of the noun, and pervades its applications in the language of the early Fathers down to the time of Constantine, as Credner has shown.[2] The “canon of the church” in the Clementine homilies;[3] the “ecclesiastical canon,”[4] and “the canon of the truth,” in Clement and Irenæus;[5] the “canon” of the faith in Polycrates,[6] the regula fidei of Tertullian,[7] and the libri regulares of Origen,[8] imply a normative principle. But we cannot assent to Credner's view of the Greek word for canon being an abbreviation of “Scriptures of canon,”[9] equivalent to Scripturæ legis in Diocletian's Act[10]—a view too artificial, and unsanctioned by usage.
It is true that the word canon was employed by Greek writers in the sense of a mere list; but when it was transferred to the Scripture books, it included the idea of a regulative and normal power—a list of books forming a rule or law, because the newly-formed Catholic Church required a standard of appeal in opposition to the Gnostics with their arbitrary use of sacred writings. There is a lack of evidence on behalf of its use before the books of the New Testament had been paralleled with those of the Old in authority and inspiration.
The earliest example of its application to a catalogue of the Old or New Testament books occurs in the Latin translation of Origen's homily on Joshua, where the original seems to have been “canon.”[11] The word itself is certainly [pg 011] in Amphilochius,[12] as well as in Jerome,[13] and Rufinus.[14] As the Latin translation of Origen has canonicus and canonizatus, we infer that he used “canonical,”[15] opposed as it is to apocryphus or secretus. The first occurrence of “canonical” is in the fifty-ninth canon of the Council of Laodicea, where it is contrasted with two other Greek words.[16] “Canonized books,”[17] is first used in Athanasius's 39th festal epistle. The kind of rule which the earliest fathers attributed to the Scriptures can only be conjectured; it is certain that they believed the Old Testament books to be a divine and infallible guide. But the New Testament was not so considered till towards the close of the second century when the conception of a Catholic Church was realized. The latter collection was not called Scripture, or put on a par with the Old Testament as sacred and inspired, till the time of Theophilus of Antioch (about 180 a.d.) Hence, Irenæus applies the epithets divine and perfect to the Scriptures; and Clement of Alexandria calls them inspired.
When distinctions were made among the Biblical writings other words[18] were employed, synonymous with “canonized.”[19] The canon was thus a catalogue of writings forming a rule of truth, sacred, divine, revealed by God for the instruction of men. The rule was perfect for its purpose.
The word apocryphal[20] is used in various senses, which it is difficult to trace chronologically. Apocryphal books are,—