NEW TESTAMENT The expansion of the Christian Church in Europe during the r st century stands for us as the beginning of a new era in history. But the movement wore a different aspect to those who shared in it : to them it was an end rather than a beginning. "The ends of the ages" had come upon them, and the consummation,.they be lieved, could not be long delayed. The literature of the apostolic age, written as it was for the most part under this conviction, was not intended by its writers to be the permanent authority of a Church which was to remain for ages "militant here upon earth." It was called forth by the needs of a generation which expected to survive to see the end of history and the inauguration of God's kingdom. Thus the New Testament, as a collection of Scriptures, was an undesigned and unforeseen product of the apostolic age. The fervour of the first age cooled, as the fulfilment of its early hope was deferred, but it left a large and widespread body of believers who still continued, though in a changed world and with a changed emphasis, to cherish the faith and the ideals which they had learned from their first evangelists. The formation of the New Testament shows us how the Christian Society protected itself from dissolution by appeal to a recognized collection of apostolic writings.
We are not here concerned to trace the original circumstances which called forth the various books included in the New Testa ment. Information on this subject will be found under the head ings of the various books. Our present concern is to show—as far as can be shown—how these books came to be collected and finally to be compacted into a single corpus of Christian Scripture —a New Testament, which took its place beside the Scriptures of the Old Testament inherited from the Jewish Church. Our enquiries will show us that by the end of the 2nd century the New Testament was already complete in idea, though it was not till the 4th century that the exact limits of the Canon were Church itself.
The Christians of the first age had, as we have seen, no idea of adding to Scripture. Many of them were Jews, and all of them, like the Jews, recognized the authority of the Old Testa ment : they differed from unconverted Jews—and sometimes also between themselves—only as to its interpretation and application. The Lord was the Messiah whom the prophets had foretold, and Christians found in the Old Testament the justification for their faith. But in addition to the Old Testament the Church had authorities of its own which from very early days existed in written form. These provided the materials for the New Testa ment of the 2nd century.
(I) Sayings of Jesus Christ.—A natural authority attached itself to the sayings and instructions of Jesus. Collections of sayings of Jesus, which in part or in whole have been embodied in the later "biographical" form of Gospel, must date back to very early times. Paul quotes a "word of the Lord" as indis putably authoritative (I. Thess. iv. 15; I. Cor. vii. io; x. 14).
(2) Apostolic Letters.—Authority attached to the Twelve and also to other Apostles. God has set the Apostles first in the Church (I Cor. xii. 28). By word when present, and by epistle when absent, Paul claimed—though not without opposition—to direct the Churches he had founded. His Epistles were intended to be read in public to the assembled congregation, and in some cases at any rate were preserved and treasured by the Churches to which they were addressed.
(3) Prophecies.—Perhaps the nearest approach to a Christian Scripture in the apostolic age was the prophecy, one example of which was finally embodied in the Canon. The author of the Apocalypse claims direct inspiration for his work, and he pro nounces a curse on any who shall diminish or add to the words he has written (ch. xxii. 18).
(4) Church Order.—Lastly we may note a work which claims to give the teaching of the Lord through the 12 Apostles, the Didache. This work contains a summary guide to Christian morals and instructions with regard to the chief institutions of the Church. Its exact date and its exact place of origin are uncertain, but it appears to date from the later years of the 1st century when the leadership of the Church was passing from the enthusiastic mis sionaries of the first age to the local ministers, and was probably composed either in Syria or Palestine. The Didache is the f ore runner of the later Church Orders—a class of writing which is not represented in the Canon of Scripture.
In the writings of the sub-apostolic age there is a marked de cline in spiritual power, of which the authors themselves were not unconscious. Thus Ignatius of Antioch, though he can claim "to speak with God's own voice, give ye heed to the bishops and the presbyters and deacons" (Philadelph. vii. 1), yet clearly feels himself to hold a lower position than his apostolic prede cessors: "I do not enjoin you, as Peter and Paul did. They were Apostles, I am a convict ; they were free, but I am a slave to this very hour" (Rom. iv. 3) . In these circumstances it was natural that the Church should cling jealously to the Gospels and to the apostolic writings which it had inherited, and this tendency was strengthened by the increasing pressure of heretical movements.
We have no certain knowledge as to how or where the four fold Gospel Canon came to be formed. It is to be noted that Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 97) and Polycarp (c. 112) both quote sayings of the Lord in a form which is independent of any of the Gospels which afterwards became canonical. It is probable that each of the four canonical Gospels gained currency and prestige through being adopted by some one of the great Churches. Thus there is strong reason for associating Mark with Rome, whence it probably obtained currency in other Churches. Matthew— a revised and expanded Mark—appears to have been in use at Antioch at the beginning of the 2nd century. John is connected with Ephesus. Some think that the fourfold Gospel originated in Asia Minor, where we have evidence of comparative study of the merits of some of the Gospels early in the 2nd century. Others think it more likely that the fourfold Gospel came from Rome. In any case it probably represents concerted action to standardize the Gospel which had been committed to the Church. Perhaps the apocryphal Gospel of Peter (not later than 140 and perhaps considerably earlier) provides our earliest testimony for the currency of the fourfold Gospel, for the writer appears to depend upon all of the four. Somewhat later (c. 17o) Tatian at Rome undertakes in his Diatessaron to combine the four into a single harmony, while to Irenaeus (c. 185) it was as natural that there should be four Gospels as that there should be four winds and four quarters of the earth (adv. Haeres. iii. 8). We may conclude that the fourfold Gospel had then been long established. A collection of Pauline Epistles, including the Pastoral Epistles, dates from the beginning of the 2nd century at latest. Ignatius (c. 112) shows acquaintance with six Pauline Epistles, including I. Tim. and Tit., while the Epistle of Polycarp shortly afterwards refers to nine Epistles including I. and II. Timothy. The Pauline Epistles were also held in high estimation by the gnostic heresi archs. Marcion (c. 140) acknowledged a collection of ten Pauline Epistles which did not include the Pastoral Epistles. It is perhaps more probable that this represented an earlier Pauline Corpus, than that Marcion deliberately rejected the Pastoral Epistles.
By the middle of the 2nd century the two chief component parts of the New Testament had taken shape, and the practice of reading apostolic writings in public worship together with the lections from the Old Testament Scriptures was preparing the way for the conception of a Canon of Scriptures of the New Testament. But the New Testament was not yet. Justin (c. i 5o) is familiar with the four Gospels—though some think that the infrequency of his citations from the Fourth Gospel is not acci dental—and with the Pauline Epistles, but when he speaks of Scriptures he means the Old Testament. That Christ has fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament is Justin's chief apologetic argument. The full recognition of the Gospels and Epistles as Scripture was hastened by the pressure of heretical movements. Marcion appears to have been the first definitely to conceive the idea of a collection of Christian Scriptures. This was a corollary to his rejection of the Old Testament for which he substituted as a doctrinal authority a mutilated edition of St. Luke's Gospel and of ten Pauline Epistles (not including the Pastorals). The Church was determined to adhere to its inheritance of the Old Testament, but it could not allow itself to fall behind a heretic in the authority it ascribed to the apostolic writings. The reply to Marcion was the construction of a fuller and more authentic collection of apostolic writings, which could be set alongside the Old Testament Scriptures. Another force which by the reaction it occasioned fostered the idea of a fixed Canon of apostolic scripture was the Montanist revival of primitive Christian prophecy. This anti-ecclesiastical and anti-clerical movement with its unregulated and enthusiastic claim to present inspiration was countered by an appeal to apostolic tradition and thus a higher conception of the apostolic writings was encouraged.
It is not improbable that the compilation of the New Testa ment Canon is due to the deliberate action of the Roman Church. In any case it is certain that by the end of the 2nd century a col lection of apostolic documents is generally recognized as author itative Scripture, and from this time forward the idea of a body of Authoritative Christian Scripture is a presupposition of all theologians. Our most important document for this period is the fragment on the Canon published by Muratori in 174o and gener ally known after him as the Muratorian fragment. It is written in Latin and probably emanates from the Church of Rome about the end of the 2nd century. The writer acknowledges a col lection of Scripture consisting of the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, 13 Epistles of Paul, two Epistles of John, the Epistle of Jude, the Apocalypse of John and the Apocalypse of Peter. The last is said however to be contested by some. Another pro phetic work—the Shepherd of Hermas—is excluded from public reading on account of its late date. Writings connected with Mar cion. Valentinus, Basilides and Montanus are condemned.
The Christian literature of the end of the and century and the beginning of the 3rd shows widespread agreement as to the nucleus of the Canon: the four Gospels, Acts, 13 Pauline Epistles, and usually Jude, I. John or I. Peter are widely attested. though the last is not found in the Muratorian fragment and was perhaps not in the earliest Canon of the African Church. The Apocalypse of John was generally accepted in the West as being of apostolic authorship, but not accepted in the East. Hebrews and the Epistle of James were usually held to be apostolic and canonical in the East, but not in the West. Alexandria recognized a wider selec tion : Clement of Alexandria allowed apostolic status to the Epis tle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, and he quotes the Didache as Scripture. On the other hand he appears not to have received the Epistle of James, II. Peter and III. John. An important exception to the general prac tice of the Church is found in the Syriac-speaking Church of Edessa and Mesopotamia. This Church accepted as its Canon the Diatessaron of Tatian with the Acts and the Pauline Epistles. At an early date the Diatessaron was supplemented by a version of the four "separated" Gospels, but the Diatessaron, it seems, re tained its place in public worship.
During the 3rd century the great influence of Origen encouraged a wider Canon. He shows acquaintance with all the Epistles which were later recognized, though he expresses hesitation in regard to James, II. Peter and II. and III. John.
The Canon assumed its final form in the course of the 4th cen tury. At the beginning of that century there was still much un certainty: Eusebius (H. E. iii. 25. 1) describes the situation and divides the books into three classes: (i.) Those which are gener ally acknowledged, (ii.) those which are disputed but widely recognized, and (iii.) those which are rejected. To the first class belong the four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul, I. Peter, I. John, and, if it is wished (el/ye Oaysin), the Apocalypse of John; to the second, James, Jude, II. Peter, II. and III. John; and to the last the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, the Didache, and, according to some, the Apocalypse of John. Others also reckon the Gospel according to the Hebrews in this class.
The Canon which finally won acceptance first appears in the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius, A.D. 367. There was great laxity and uncertainty in Egypt as to the exact contents of the New Testament and Athanasius sets out to restore order. His great influence both in East and West secured the victory for his Canon along with the victory of Nicene Christianity. Other traditions held their own for a time. Thus the School of Antioch in general accepted only three Catholic Epistles—James, I. Peter, I. John, while one of its most illustrious representatives, Theodore of Mopsuestia, rejected the whole of this section of the Canon. The Eusebiart Tradition represented by Cyril of Jerusalem and Greg ory of Nazianzum, was already in virtual accord with Athanasius except that there was hesitation as to the recognition of the Apocalypse.
The West followed the lead of Athanasius. In 382 a synod was held at Rome under Pope Damasus at which the influence of Jerome secured the adoption of a list of books answering to that of Athanasius. This was ratified by Pope Gelasius at the end of the 5th century. The same list was confirmed independently for the province of Africa in a series of synods at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397 and 419 under the leadership of Augustine. It may be noted that though Augustine accepted the canonicity of Hebrews, his manner of quotation shows that he still felt doubts as to its Pauline authorship.
The second Canon of the second Trullan Council of 692, the Quinisextum, may be taken to have formally closed the process of the formation of the Canon for East and West.
The Syriac-speaking Churches had had, as we have seen, a dif ferent tradition from that of the rest of the Church. This was superseded by the creation of the Peshitta version, which Prof. Burkitt has shown to have been almost certainly the work of Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, 411-433. This set aside the Diates saron and added the three Catholic Epistles, James, I. Peter and I. John. The Philoxenian version of 5o8 added the other four Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse, and these were retained in the Harklean revision of 616. These latter versions, however, were confined to the Monophysite Churches, and the Nestorians continued to use the Peshitta.
By the creation of the Canon of the New Testament the Church secured its connection with the creative movement in which it originated. The results have been mixed. The appeal to the classi cal authority of the apostolic age went along with a depreciation of the sense of present inspiration; and the transformation of the apostolic literature into apostolic scripture entailed an arti ficial exegesis similar to that which the Jews had already learned to apply to the Old Testament. This often obscured the original meaning of the text in its historical content and it was only after the idea of the Canon had received systematic criticism in the i8th century that a scientific historical exegesis could arise. For the ancient Church, Old and New Testament together came to form "one book" (Origen). But the Church was preserved from some of the most serious evils that wait upon a religion of a book; for the retention of the Old Testament as authoritative Scripture introduced "a wholesome element of complication" into the idea of the Canon. Once formed, the New Testament took precedence of the Old Testament, yet the Old Testament retained its place and its prestige. Lastly, it has been an inestimable gain that through the New Testament Canon the personality of Jesus Christ and the teaching of His greatest apostle have been placed in permanent authority over the Christian Church.
(J. M. C.) (a) Greek MSS.—The original autographs of the New Testa ment books have long since perished, and (except for a few frag ments, all from Upper Egypt) the same fate has overtaken all the mss. used by Christians in the ante-Nicene period. When in the 4th century the empire became Christian and the Church estab lished, copies of the Scriptures were multiplied in a substantial form—that of the codex, i.e., book, on vellum. Two such, dating from the 4th century itself, and each originally containing what was regarded as a whole Bible, survive. Before the 4th century most Christian mss. were written on papyrus, and in the earliest times were in the form of a roll (fiber), or a one-quire book (uolumen) like modern booksellers' catalogues. Such mss. would contain no more than a single Gospel; rolls were kept with others in a box (capsa).
Whole Bibles, even New Testaments (with or without the Apocalypse), were always rather uncommon. Generally the Four Gospels made one volume, the Pauline Epistles another: Acts .(with the other Epistles) is sometimes found bound up with the Pauline Epistles, sometimes separate. Counting fragments, there must be some 4,00o Greek mss. whose existence has been re ported, dating from the 4th century to the invention of printing, Ike greater number coming from the. nth th to the 14th centuries.
The nomenclature of this vast series of books 'offers many problems. From the 9th century onward most Greek mss. were written in minuscules, i.e., in a character more or less like the Greek of a printed book; before that "uncials" were used, i.e., something like Greek capitals but more rounded (e.g., C, not /, kJ not St). Since 1751 it has been customary to denote the uncials by capital letters, and the minuscules (also called "cursives") by arabic figures. A much more scientific but very complicated notation has been invented by von Soden, and is used in his edition (see below), but it has not come into general use. Yet the old notation has grave defects: the arabic figures are arbitrary, giving no index of the character of the minuscules to which they belong, while the number of uncials has outrun the letters of the Latin and Greek alphabets, so that the Hebrew alphabet has had to be used. But there is a good case for retaining the old notation, at least for the more important mss. These are not very numerous, and so much has been written about some of them, such as "B" and "D," that it is inconvenient to rebaptize them.
The following are the most important mss. of the New Testa ment. There is no space here to give descriptions, except where really new information is to be given : for details the reader should consult the editions of Tischendorf or von Soden. von Soden's new numbers are given in brackets.
e8 (e 168) : readings in Tischendorf.
69 etc., or fam13, or "the Ferrar Group" (it in v. Soden's ap paratus, J in his Introduction)=13-69-124-346-543-788-826 828-983-1689-17o9. Edit. by T. K. Abbott from W. H. Ferrar's collations (Dublin, 1877) see also Streeter, Four Gospels, p. 80. This group must have descended from a very old ms. brought to Calabria before the i2th century. 124 (€ 1211), and after it 69 6505), are specially valuable within the group.
565 (€ 93), Tischendorf's 2Pe, Hort's 81 : 9th century. This splendid ms., written in gold minuscules on purple vellum for (or by) the Empress Theodora, wife of Theophilus (842-56), is textually akin to 0, with which it is practically contemporary. It also comes from the same region, viz., Kumish-Khane, south of Trebizond. Edit. by J. Belsheim, 1885, corrected by H. S. Cronin (ed. of Cod. N., Cambridge, 1899).
7oo (€133), Scrivener's 6o4: full collation and Introduction in H. C. Hoskier's Full Account . . . of Codex 6o4 (London, 189o).
Other minuscules, such as 33 (648), 157 (€207), 579 (€ 376), are worthy of mention as having a text akin to tt and B, but the list here given has been selected to include the codices which have ancient elements of text not preserved elsewhere.
A few words must be said on the early Papyrus fragments of N.T. books discovered in the past 4o years. They all come from Upper Egypt, mostly from Oxyrhynchus, where the soil is dry enough to preserve perishable material. Most, of course, are so small in size that they present little textual material. The following stand out as of special interest:— I. Oxyrhynchus Pap. 2: Matt. i. 1-9, 12, 14-20 (late 3rd cen tury).
2. Oxyrhynchus Pap. 208 and 1228: fragg. of John i., xv., xvi., xx. (3rd century).
3. Michigan Pap. 1578: Matt. xxvi. 19-52 (3rd century).
4. Michigan Pap. 157i : Acts xviii. 27-xix. 6, 12-16 (3rd cen tury).
5. Oxyrhynchus PaP. 4o5: Irenaeus, c. Haer iii. 9 (early 3rd century).
No. 2 is probably the oldest surviving Christian uolumen, i.e., it contained the Gospel of John arranged in a single quire, like a bookseller's catalogue. Nos. and 2 give general support to the N B text, No. 3 seems to have a greater tendency towards "Western," i.e., D, readings, but neither 1, 2 or 3 have Byzantine readings. No. 5 is specially noteworthy, in that it was published and dated before its connection with Irenaeus was perceived. Irenaeus wrote in A.D. 180, so this scrap comes from a ms. written only 3o or 4o years later (see the revised text in Ox. Pap., vol. iv. p. 264). The fragment gives Irenaeus's quotation of Matt. iii. 16 f. in a text that agrees with D and a against other mss., and against the Latin translation of Irenaeus.
Quite distinct from these fragments is the Papyrus Book, con taining Acts and some 0.T. Books in Sahidic, dating from about A.D. 3oo (edited by Sir E. W. Budge, London, 1923). The text is incorporated in Horner's ed. (see below).
(b) Versions.—For about 8o years, from A.D. 70 tO I5o, almost all Christians were Greek-speaking subjects of the Roman empire. At the close of the period Christianity reached the Latin-speaking regions of Roman Africa and the little independent principality of Edessa (q.v.), beyond the Euphrates. Very soon afterwards Latin and Syriac versions of the newly collected New Testament Scriptures appear. These versions stand in a class by themselves for antiquity and critical importance, for in other countries (such as Egypt and Palestine) Christianity long remained a Greek speaking cult and no written versions were made into what was regarded as the barbarous patois of provincials.
1. Latin Versions.—No tradition about the date, place or authorship of the first Latin versions survives. It is possible that the first rendering of any part of the New Testament into Latin was a Harmony of the Gospels, an early form of Tatian's Diates saron (see TEXTUAL CRITICISM); what is certain is that the Scil litan Martyrs at Carthage (A.D. 18o) had in their box of rolls "letters of Paul, the just man," which were not likely to be in anything else but Latin. By, Tertullian's day, whose writings are dated from 20 tO 4o years later, the whole Bible seems to have been extant in Latin, but Tertullian himself often translated directly from the Greek : he never shows that respect for the Latin text usually accorded to a vernacular rendering of some age. Cyprian, on the other hand, writing between 24o and 25o, quotes the Latin Bible consistently and accurately. It may therefore be inferred that the New Testament was rendered into Latin, prob ably at Carthage, in the last third of the 2nd century.
Fragments of the Latin version used by Cyprian survive in Cod. Bobiensis (k), now at Turin, which contains the latter half of Mark followed by the first half of Matthew; and in the Fleury Palimpsest (h ), now at Paris, which contains fragments of the Apocalypse and of Acts. Cod. Palatinus (e), formerly at Vienna, now restored to Trent, containing the latter half of Matthew, nearly all of John and Luke, and fragments of Mark, is of the same family but more assimilated to the European standard. (The class mark of k is G vii. 15: it was much damaged by damp in the great fire of 1904: phototype ed., Turin, 1913.) In Cyprian's correspondence some letters come from Rome. The Biblical quotations in these differ perceptibly from those of Cyprian himself, and approach those of 4th-century writers such as Lucifer of Cagliari. By the middle of the 3rd century, there fore, the Church of Rome, now become a Latin-speaking com munity, had a version of its own. To this version, commonly called the "European Latin" to distinguish it from the "African," i.e., Cyprianic, text, are assigned the remaining "Old-Latin" codices; of the Gospels there are some dozen, not counting small fragments (list below), including the Latin side of D. Only one fragmentary ms. of the Pauline Epistles survives besides the Latin sides of DP" and GPaul, but Acts and Apocalypse are represented, and there are some late non-Vulgate texts of most of the Catholic Epistles.
The mss. of the "European"-Latin differ much among them selves, but all seem to descend from the same stock, which is more like a revision of the "African"-Latin than a fresh independent translation. These differences were noted late in the 4th century and Pope Damasus commissioned the great scholar Jerome to draw up a standard revision. The Gospels were completed in A.D. 383 and the new revision rapidly found favour, even in Africa: at Hippo under Augustine in 4o4 the Gospels were pub licly read from Jerome's revision, while for Acts the unrevised "African"-Latin was retained. In other countries, notably north Italy and parts of Gaul, the revised version made much slower progress. By the time of Gregory the Great (d. 604), however, Jerome's revision was everywhere used, except in so far as Old Latin readings survived in imperfectly corrected codices. From its use ever since the 7th century Jerome's revision is known as the Vulgate, in contradistinction to the new renderings made from the Greek in the i6th century.
Short list of Old-Latin mss. of the Gospels, with dates, with the regions they may be held to represent, and the name of their editors.
There are several other smaller fragments. f is much influenced by the Gothic version, q occasionally so. h only contains Mat thew. 1 contains all four Gospels but is only Old-Latin in Luke: the same is nearly true of i. The late ms. c is European in Mat thew : there are many Vulgate readings throughout, especially in John, but in Mark and Luke c has a large African element.
The mss. from the rest of the N.T. are mentioned in the text. Add : D. de BRUYNE, Les Fragments de Freising (r) (Rome, 192I).
Besides the Diatessaron the four separate Gospels were trans lated into Syriac, probably about A.D. 200. Of this translation two mss. survive : the Sinai Palimpsest (4th century), discovered by Mrs. A. S. Lewis at the Convent of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai in 1892, quoted as Syr. 5; and Cureton's ms. (early 5th century) from the Nitrian collection in the British Museum, quoted as Syr. C. These mss. differ considerably in reading, and each has certainly been influenced by the Diatessaron, so that in Syriac-speaking lands about A.D. 400 the Gospel was extant as a Harmony and as "separated Gospels" (in Syriac Evangelion da Mepharreshe), the single copies having many discordant read ings, just as had been the case in Latin before Jerome. To rem edy this, Rabbula, bishop of Edessa from 411 to 435, prepared a revised edition of the "Separated Gospels," freely correcting the text from Greek mss. such as were then current at Antioch : this edition he established by authority and suppressed the Diates saron, with such success that no Syriac copy of the Diatessaron survives, and of the unrevised version only Syr. S and C. Rab bula's revision is now used by both the great divisions of the Syriac-speaking Church (the Jacobites and Nestorians) : to dis tinguish it from the elaborate later revision of the (Jacobite) Old and New Testament it is usually called Peshitta, i.e., the simple version. For modern criticism Syr. S and Syr. C are among the half-dozen primary authorities; the Peshitta has only the value of a post-Nicene revision.
An Arabic translation of the Diatessaron survives, translated from a form of the Syriac in which the wording had been almost completely assimilated to the Peshitta, whereas the quotations of Ephraim (d. 373) show that the wording in ancient time had been more like that of Syr. S and C: in the processes of revision and of translation into Arabic many characteristics of the original must have disappeared. But the general arrangement of the Gos pel mosaic has been well preserved, as we see from agreements in order with Ephraim's Commentary on the Diatessaron (extant in an Armenian translation only), which are enough to demon strate that this Syriac Harmony is distinct from the Latin form of the same work, though akin to it (see further on TEXTUAL