Endnotes

¹  C. E. Hill is Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

² But then, such prognoses of imminent doom for Christianity have been made before, and have always had to be retracted. For an interesting analysis of the current situation, see Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (New York, et al.: Free Press, 2012).

³ Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 231.

⁴ For example, Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), “The first Christian author of any kind to advocate a New Testament canon of our twenty-seven books and no others was Athanasius, the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria. This comes in a letter that Athanasius wrote in 367 CE—over three centuries after the writings of Paul, our earliest Christian author”—a statement that might be technically true but very misleading, as we shall see later.

⁵ David L. Dungan, Constantine’s Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 133.

⁶ Dungan, Constantine’s Bible, 133.

⁷ Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 176, “As a result of this ongoing scholarship, it is widely thought today that proto-orthodoxy was simply one of many competing interpretations of Christianity in the early church. It was neither a self-evident interpretation nor an original apostolic view.… Indeed, as far back as we can trace it, Christianity was remarkably varied in its theological expressions.”

⁸ Bart Ehrman, “Christianity Turned on Its Head: The Alternative Vision of the Gospel of Judas,” in R. Kasser, M. Meyer, and G. Wurst, eds., The Gospel of Judas from Codex Tchacos (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006), 77–120, at 118. A very similarly worded account may be read in Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 173, where the view is ascribed to Walter Bauer in his celebrated work Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934). Bauer may be seen as one of the “godfathers” of the currently popular political approach to early Christianity. For more on Bauer and his influence, see Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010).

⁹ This is a simple, rough and ready, definition of the term “canon.” Scholars today are divided over whether the idea of “canon” must entail the notion of exclusivity—a definite, closed list—or whether it can simply be used for books that function with divine authority in the church, regardless of whether that list is perceived of as closed or not. The exclusivists insist that we not use the word “canon” for the period before the fourth century, for it is only at that time when we know that the church perceived its list of books as closed. Before the fourth century, they say, Christians did not have a canon but only individual books of “Scripture,” perceived to be authoritative and inspired but belonging to an open-ended collection. Though widely used, such a distinction is not really viable. For a fine treatment of the definition issue, one which does not ignore the ontological dimension, see Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), Chapter 1.

¹⁰ Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, second German ed. with added appendices, by Georg Strecker, trans. a team from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, ed. Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 194. As Ehrman says, “for Bauer, the internal Christian conflicts were struggles over power, not just theology. And the side that knew how to utilize power was the side that won,” Lost Christianities, 175.

¹¹ Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003), 147–8.

¹² Pagels, Beyond Belief, 142.

¹³ For more on Pagels’s treatment of Irenaeus in this regard see C. E. Hill, Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 58–63, and for scholars’ treatment of Irenaeus in general, Chapters 2 and 3.

¹⁴ Students will find this interpretation, and the view of history it supports, in Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John (i–xii), Anchor Bible 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966); idem, The Gospel according to John (xiii–xxi), Anchor Bible 29A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970); idem, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York/Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1979), and in many others who follow Brown’s approach.

¹⁵ Pagels, Beyond Belief, 33, “Why had the church decided that these texts were ‘heretical’ and that only the canonical gospels were ‘orthodox’? Who made those decisions, and under what conditions? As my colleagues and I looked for answers, I began to understand the political concerns that shaped the early Christian movement.”

¹⁶ E.g., “The struggle between orthodox and heretics, insofar as it was fought in the literary arena, took the form of an effort to weaken the weaponry of the enemy as much as possible. What could not be completely eliminated was at least rendered useless, or was suitably altered and then put to one’s own use. In plain language, the writings of the opponent were falsified” (emphasis added), Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 160; cf. 110. Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 217, also blithely throws around the accusation of unnamed orthodox “burning” and “destroying” heretical books. How they would have obtained all these heretical books from their owners is not stated.

¹⁷ Papyrus is the paper-like writing material most used by Christians in the early centuries. It was made from the papyrus reed that grew along the Nile.

¹⁸ Eldon J. Epp, “The Oxyrhynchus New Testament Papyri: ‘Not without Honor except in their Hometown’?,” JBL 123 (2004): 5–55 at 17.

¹⁹ Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them) (New York: Harper One, 2009), 215.

²⁰ Epp, “Not without Honor,” 18.

²¹ For more details on early Gospel manuscripts and their implications for the development of the canon, see C. E. Hill, “A Four-Gospel Canon in the Second Century? Artifact and Arti-fiction,” Early Christianity 4 (2013): 310–334.

²² Egypt Exploration Society.

²³ Ambrose Swasey Library, Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, New York.

²⁴ For details see Hill, “A Four-Gospel Canon in the Second Century?,” 323–32.

²⁵ Eldon J. Epp, “The Significance of the Papyri for Determining the Nature of the New Testament Text in the Second Century: A Dynamic View of Textual Transmission,” in W. L. Petersen, ed., Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 71–103 at 73.

²⁶ Bart Ehrman, “Christianity Turned on its Head,” 118.

²⁷ Lee Martin McDonald, “Identifying Scripture and Canon in the Early Church: The Criteria Question,” in McDonald and Sanders, eds., The Canon Debate (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 416–39 at 423.

²⁸ McDonald, “Criteria Question,” 424.

²⁹ McDonald, “Criteria Question,” 423. Many other scholars could be cited as emphasizing the criteria, but I’ll only list a few: Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 67–70, who lists four criteria: apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy, and traditional usage; Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 251–4, who lists three: conformity to the “rule of faith,” apostolicity, continuous use and acceptance by the church at large; F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 255–69, who lists six: apostolic authority, antiquity, orthodoxy, catholicity, traditional use, and inspiration; Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 240–3, who lists four: antiquity, apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy.

³⁰ McDonald, “Criteria Question,” 432.

³¹ McDonald, “Criteria Question,” 434.

³² McDonald, “Criteria Question,” 434.

³³ As stated by H. J. de Jonge, in J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge, The Biblical Canons, BETL 163 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 309–19 at 312–13, “It should be noticed in passing that these so-called criteria of canonicity were often used, not to determine a priori whether or not a writing was authoritative, but to justify a posteriori the high respect in which a writing had already been held for some time past, or the disapproval it had already incurred.” I think de Jonge has it right here, except that what he noticed “in passing” is actually a fundamental point.

³⁴ McDonald, “Criteria Question,” 433.

³⁵ “In brief, the so-called criteria of canonicity were used with notable flexibility and irritating inconsistency,” de Jonge, “The New Testament Canon,” 314.

³⁶ For an English translation of the full text of the Muratorian Fragment, see Metzger, Canon, 305–7.

³⁷ See C. E. Hill, “‘The Writing which Says …’ The Shepherd of Hermas in the Writings of Irenaeus,” in Markus Vinzent, ed., Studia Patristica 65, vol. 13: The First Two Centuries; Apocrypha; Tertullian and Rhetoric; From Tertullian to Tyconius (Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2013), 127–38.

³⁸ Ehrman, Lost Christianities, “After Jesus’ death, his teachings … were granted sacred authority by his followers” (233); later “the authoritative writings of his apostles … were being granted sacred status before the end of the New Testament period” (234). The very way of stating the issue assumes that it is the church that “grants” sacred status to the books. But as we shall see below, the early Christians evidently did not perceive it that way.

³⁹ See the excellent study by Henk van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology: Truth and Trust (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008).

⁴⁰ “For truth is cleared of all doubt when, not sustained by external props, it serves as its own support” (I.8.1).

⁴¹ Contrast the words of the Second Vatican Council, “Thus it comes about that the Church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal feelings of devotion and reverence. (10) Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church,” Dei verbum, II.9–10, Austin Flanner, gen. ed., Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1975).

⁴² Most likely he did not know it, or only had an inkling. Van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture, investigates the question whether Calvin derived the term αὐτόπιστοϛ from ancient sources, and searches in particular the Aristotelian and Euclidian traditions (71–83), then the church fathers (84–86). He sees little possibility of influence (due mainly to the unavailability of editions of the most relevant fathers in Calvin’s day), touching briefly only upon a possible “indirect” influence from Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, 7.2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 452, is able to claim general patristic support, but only cites a single sentence of Augustine: “canonical scripture is contained by its own fixed boundaries” (Conf. 6, 5; 11, 3).

⁴³ H. Gregory Snyder, “The Classroom in the Text: Exegetical Practices in Justin and Galen,” in Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, eds., Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture. Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 663–85, at 678, “On the contrary, Galen affirms that authority flows not from a text or the person behind it, but from proper application of the scientific method, which for him, stands upon the pillars of proper reason and careful observation.” The closest analogy in Galen’s works to the approaches of Jews and Christians is perhaps in the practice he attributes to Chrysippus, who “keeps turning away from scientific proofs … and uses poets, myths, and women for confirmation of his teaching.”

⁴⁴ Justin’s experience seems remarkably similar to that of Calvin, who says, “Read Demosthenes or Cicero; read Plato, Aristotle, and others of that tribe. They will, I admit, allure you, delight you, move you, enrapture you in wonderful measure. But betake yourself from them to this sacred reading. Then, in spite of yourself, so deeply will it affect you, so penetrate your heart, so fix itself in your very marrow, that, compared with its deep impression, such vigor as the orators and philosophers have will nearly vanish. Consequently, it is easy to see that the Sacred Scriptures, which so far surpass all gifts and graces of human endeavor, breathe something divine” (Inst. I.8.1).

⁴⁵ By the way, we often rightly complain about someone’s practice of “proof-texting” from Scripture, simply listing verses without showing how they prove what we think they are proving. But the very fact that Christians “proof-text,” that is, use Scriptural citations nakedly as sufficient proof for something, is a very significant thing.

⁴⁶ Here and in the following two sentences Justin uses the word, ἀποδείκνυμι, “prove,” the verbal form of the noun ἀπόδειξιϛ.

⁴⁷ My translation. Speaking of Jesus, and in particular his predictions of suffering on the part of those who believe in him and confess him to be the Christ, Justin concludes “so that it is manifest no word or act of his can be found fault with” (Dial. 35.7)

⁴⁸ Snyder, “The Classroom in the Text,” 685.

⁴⁹ Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis Books One to Three, FTC 85, trans. John Ferguson (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991). Greek text of Clement from Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 2, Stromata Buch I–VI, GCS 15 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1906).

⁵⁰ Translation, slightly modified, from Henry Chadwick and J. E. L. Oulton, eds., Alexandrian Christianity: Selected Translations of Clement and Origen (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 155. Greek from Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae Propheticae, Quis Dives Salvetur, Fragmente , GCS 17 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1909).

⁵¹ Greek αὐτεξούσιοϛ. Greek text from Martin Heimgartner, Pseudojustin – Über die Auferstehung. Texte und Studien, PTS 54 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001). Heimgartner believes the author is Athenagoras of Athens.

⁵² E.g., Gamble, The New Testament Canon, 12; L. M. McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 319, “the NT canon process began in the second century with the recognition of Christian literature as scripture that was useful for the teaching and mission of the church.…”

⁵³ Just one recent example would be David Brakke, “Scriptural Practices in early Christianity: Towards a New History of the New Testament Canon,” in Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen and David Bakke, eds., Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), 263–80 at 266, “And so it is simply anachronistic to ask of writers of the second century which books were in their canon and which not—for the notion of a closed canon was simply not there.” For more early evidence of the existence of such a notion see C. E. Hill, “The New Testament Canon. Deconstructio ad absurdum?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 52 (2009): 101–119, esp. 113–17.

⁵⁴ The translation of Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London/New York: Routledge, 1997), 161.

⁵⁵ We might compare, for instance, the usage of Theophilus of Antioch, from slightly earlier, and of Tertullian of Carthage from slightly later. Theophilus appears to use the four Gospels, Acts, a Pauline corpus, and the book of Revelation. He may know more, but this is just what we can deduce from his writings that have survived and from testimonies about the ones that did not survive (see Hill, Who Chose the Gospels?, 90–93; Metzger, Canon, 117–119). Tertullian’s New Testament contained the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline epistles, Hebrews (which he attributed to Barnabas), Revelation, and of the general epistles, at least 1 Peter, 1 John, and Jude (Metzger, Canon, 157–160).

⁵⁶ 2 Peter 1:15 seems to be echoed in AH 3.1.1. This is made more credible by the fact that in Irenaeus’s region, writing a few years earlier (in 177 or 178), the author of the Letter of Vienne and Lyons apparently knows 2 Peter 1:8 (HE 5.1.45).

⁵⁷ 3 John 9–10 in AH 4.26.3.

⁵⁸ On his use of The Shepherd of Hermas, which some believe he considered to be Scripture, see Hill, “‘The Writing which Says.’” It appears that Irenaeus valued this work as a faithful exposition of apostolic teaching but not as apostolic or as Scripture.

⁵⁹ While Clement obviously holds The Shepherd of Hermas in esteem, Batovici concludes “it is not always an easy task to grasp the meaning of this esteem” (Dan Batovici, “Hermas in Clement of Alexandria,” in Markus Vinzent, ed., Studia Patristica 66, vol. 14: Clement of Alexandria; The Fourth-Century Debates (Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2013), 45–51 at 45). Metzger, Canon, 134, n.43, also observes that “Clement does not hesitate to criticize an interpretation given by the author of the Epistle of Barnabas (Paed. II. X. 3 and Strom. II. Xv. 67).” Eusebius reports that Clement, in his now lost Hypotyposes, gave concise comments about all the canonical (ἐνδιαθήκου) Scriptures, “not omitting even the disputed books—that is, the Epistle of Jude and the other Catholic Epistles, and the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Apocalypse of Peter” (Eccles. Hist. 6.14.1). Exactly what Clement said about these books we unfortunately do not know, but the fact that he treated the last three along with the others probably shows his high esteem for them.

⁶⁰ These include 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John (see Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.8) and 2 Timothy (In Matt. ser. vet. interp. 117).

⁶¹ So Metzger, Canon, 140.

⁶² There is a similar situation in his Homilies on Genesis 13.2, where, without listing all their books, he lists all the New Testament authors: “Isaac, therefore, digs also new wells, nay rather Isaac’s servants dig them. Isaac’s servants are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; his servants are Peter, James, Jude; the apostle Paul is his servant. These all dig the wells of the New Testament.”

⁶³ Everett Ferguson, “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon: A Survey of Some Recent Studies,” in The Canon Debate, 295–320 at 295–6.

⁶⁴ On Serapion and what he says relative to the Gospel of Peter, see Hill, Who Chose the Gospels?, 78–93; for more detail, idem, “Serapion of Antioch, the Gospel of Peter, and a Four Gospel Canon,” in J. Baun, A. Cameron, M. Edwards and M. Vinzent, eds., Studia Patristica XLV (Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010), 337–42.

⁶⁵ See C. E. Hill, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp: Identifying Irenaeus’ Apostolic Presbyter and the Author of ad Diognetum, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 186 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2006), and an update in idem, “The Man Who Needed No Introduction. A Response to Sebastian Moll” in Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, eds., Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 95–104.

⁶⁶ He states that John lived in Ephesus until the times of Trajan (AH 3.3.4), who came to the throne in AD 98 and died in 117.

⁶⁷ This may have some relationship to the Epistle to Diognetus 11.1, where the author says he became a “disciple of apostles.” For the evidence that this “epistle” to Diognetus might preserve the words of Polycarp, see Hill, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp, 97–165.

⁶⁸ A charge recorded by Irenaeus, AH 3.1.1.

⁶⁹ Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament, Its Background, Growth and Content, third, revised and enlarged ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 318.

⁷⁰ William Barclay, The Making of the Bible (London and New York, 1961), 78, cited from Metzger, Canon, 286.