TJ - Révélation

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TJ - Révélation

XVIII. The Eastern Canons

For centuries the Diatessaron of Tatian, along with Acts and the Pauline Epistles (except Philemon), comprised the only accepted books in the Syrian churches, meaning that Tatian’s stricter views, resulting in the rejection in 1 Timothy, did not win out. Moreover, after the pronouncements of the 4th century on the proper content of the Bible, Tatian was declared a heretic and in the early 4th century Bishop Theodoretus of Cyrrhus and Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (both in Syria) rooted out all copies they could find of the Diatessaron and replaced them with the four canonical Gospels (M 215). Thanks to them, no early copies of the Diatessaron survive—although a very early fragment suggests it would have been crucial evidence for the true state of the early Gospels (see IX). By the fifth century the Syrian Bible, called the Peshitta, became formalized somehow into its present form : Philemon was accepted, along with James, 1 Peter and 1 John, but the remaining books are still expelled (2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Revelation, and Jude). After the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., the Eastern Syrian church, in turn divided between the Nestorian and the Syrian Orthodox Churches, broke away, and retained this canon of only 22 books (the Peshitta) until the present day. However, to confuse matters, a monument erected by a Nestorian in China in 781 A.D. states that there were 27 holy books (the number in the standard Western Bible of today), although they are not named and there is debate over what books are meant. Meanwhile, the Western Monophysite Syrian church, at the urging of Bishop Philoxenus in 508 A.D., abandoned the Peshitta altogether and adopted a new Syriac translation of the Catholic Bible, yet the Harcleans still insisted on including 1 and 2 Clement in their Bible, the last surviving copy of which dates to 1170 A.D. (M 218-22).

Then there is the Armenian Church, significant not only in being a breed apart, but also in being the first « national church » in Christian history—the royal family, and thus at their behest the rest of the nation, converted to Christianity a few years before Constantine. The Armenian Bible is essentially the same as ours, with one addition : a third letter to the Corinthians, actually taken directly from the Acts of Paul (M 176, 182, 219, 223 ; cf. IX), became canonized in the Armenian Church and remains a part of the Armenian Bible to this day. Revelation, however, was not accepted into the Armenian Bible until c. 1200 A.D. when Archbishop Nerses arranged an Armenian Synod at Constantinople to introduce the text. Still, there were unsuccessful attempts even as late as 1290 A.D. to include in the Armenian canon several apocryphal books : Advice of the Mother of God to the Apostles, the Books of Criapos, and the ever-popular Epistle of Barnabas (M 224).

Then there are the African canons. The Coptic Bible (adopted by the Egyptian Church) includes the two Epistles of Clement, and the Ethiopic Bible includes books nowhere else found : the Sinodos (a collection of prayers and instructions supposedly written by Clement of Rome), the Octateuch (a book supposedly written by Peter to Clement of Rome), the Book of the Covenant (in two parts, the first details rules of church order, the second relates instructions from Jesus to the disciples given between the resurrection and the ascension), and the Didascalia (with more rules of church order, similar to the Apostolic Constitutions).

XIX. The Western Canons

Bishop Hilary gained respect and authority among the Western orthodoxy for his clever and impassioned attack on Arianism at the Council of Seleucia in 359 A.D. Since he had an affinity for some of the books accepted in the East but rejected in the West, this had the effect of turning the tide of opinion in the Western Church (M 232-3). The great scholar Jerome was influenced by this, and by his Eastern education, and when he decided to replace the numerous conflicting Latin translations of the New Testament texts his choices would be decisive for the rest of Western Christendom, for his translation would become a monumental masterpiece in its own right, winning respect for its literary competence and unity. Once it won the endorsement of the pervasively-influential Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century, its authority would never be questioned. This was the Latin Vulgate Bible, of which the Gospels were completed and delivered to the Pope in 384 A.D. It is debated whether Jerome himself finished the rest, or if it was completed by others, but the finished project contained all the 27 books now found in the Bible, no more and no less, and the choice was almost certainly Jerome’s, since his many other works all speak of these books as authoritative, and a letter he wrote listed all these books as his ideal canon—a letter which was placed as a preface to many of his Latin Bibles (M 234-5). We have some insights into his thinking. On several occasions he makes statements that entail the belief that those books were to be accepted which had gained authority merely by having been long held in respect by the churches (M 235). Not an objective criterion, this is a vote by fatigue, a tacit acceptance of argumentum ad nausium. Yet this manner of thinking has resulted in a certain contradiction in thinking about Biblical canonicity that remains to this day : Jude was accepted as canonical simply because it was long held in respect. But Jude quotes the book of Enoch as an authority (vv. 14-15)—yet the book of Enoch was rejected because it was not so widely respected. Curiously, Jude is the only book in the NT that actually cites any other book outside of the OT, and such a citation by its force and uniqueness should have won Enoch a place in the NT. For if Enoch is false, so must be Jude, at least in part—it makes no sense to call Jude an authority, and yet reject his sources. Similarly, Jerome fully believed that the Epistle of Barnabas was authentically written by the companion of Paul (M 236), a fact that surely should have won it a place in the NT (Luke and Acts, even in tradition, have no better authority than this), yet because it was not universally popular it was not accepted into his idea of the Bible. In direct contrast, though he declared that no one really knew who wrote Hebrews, he still accepted it as an authority. This is a method that contradicts all objective sense. Yet thus came the Bible.

Augustine all but codified this method, declaring without qualification that one is to « prefer those that are received by all Catholic Churches to those which some of them do not receive » (On Christian Doctrines 2.12). Of course, this whitewashes the fact that by « Catholic Churches » he means those whose opinion he accepts (a problem we have seen throughout the history of NT canonization), since many Eastern Churches rejected some of the very books Augustine upheld as universally received. In the same passage, Augustine allows these dissenting churches to be outweighed by the opinions of « the more numerous and weightier churches. » Thus, this is a purely circular argument : those books are to be accepted by the Church that are accepted by the Church. This is not an objective methodology by any stretch, and is entirely driven by blind tradition and the demands of authoritarian dogma.

Augustine effectively forced his opinion on the Church by commanding three synods on canonicity : the Synod of Hippo in 393, the Synod of Carthage in 397, and another in Carthage in 419 A.D. (M 237-8). Each of these reiterated the same Church law : « nothing shall be read in church under the name of the divine scriptures » except the OT and the 27 canonical books of the NT. Incidentally, these decrees also declared by fiat that Hebrews was written by Paul, ending all debate on the subject. That may have been convenient for the Church, but it was hardly honest. Nevertheless, Hebrews continued to be excluded from many Bibles in the West, while the bogus Epistle to the Laodiceans (see XV) continued to be found in hundreds of Bibles in various languages until relatively recent times.

Strangely, this is essentially where the story ends. It is most curious that there was never any pronouncement by any central authority such as the Pope in all of Christian history as to which books belonged in the Bible, until 1443 A.D. at the conclusion of the Council of Florence—yet this only carried weight in the West. This pronouncement excluded Laodiceans and included Hebrews, thus effectively ratifying the 27 books that had been the staple of orthodox opinion since the 4th century A.D. (M 240). This no doubt arose because for the first time in almost a thousand years scholars were once again starting to question the authenticity of certain books in the canon, for example the authorship of Hebrews. A telling case is that of Erasmus, who, after being chastised by the Church, renounced his rational doubts about this and various Biblical books, on the ground that « the opinion formulated by the Church has more value in my eyes than human reasons, whatever they may be » (Response to the Censure of the Theology Faculty at Paris, 9.864 ; M 241). No freethinker he. No one can trust the opinions of such a man. Nevertheless, the canon of Florence was still not enforced by threat of excommunication until the canon was made an absolute article of faith at the Council of Trent in 1546 A.D. Almost all the Protestant churches followed suit within the next century with essentially identical conclusions (M 246-7), dissenting only by excluding the OT apocrypha held as canonical by the Catholics.

But it is worth adding an interesting irony : for with the Reformation the history of canonization came almost full circle. Luther wrote prefaces on the books of his Bible, and ordered the books consciously in descending degrees of credit (M 242-3), and his entire scheme reveals a pervasive criterion : everything that agrees with Paul and preaches Christ is a priori true and to be held in highest esteem, while everything else is to be doubted. And he repeats the argument from fatigue : though he explains why certain books like Hebrews and Jude are to be doubted—namely, they contradict the teachings of Paul—he goes on to declare that he does not want to remove them from so venerable a collection. Thus, not only dogmatic presupposition, but mere tradition wins the canon—not objective scholarship. The irony is that Luther is almost a twin of the heretic Marcion, who was, if you recall, the first man in Christian history to propose a canon. For Marcion believed that only Paul’s doctrine was true—although he was in a better position to be more consistent about this by rejecting all books that contradicted Paul. And it is well known that Luther was rabidly anti-Jewish—as was Marcion. Though the two men differed on many key points, in a small sense the Reformation effectively re-launched the old Marcionite heresy, at the very end of the process of canonization that Marcion had begun [9].

XVIII. The Eastern Canons

XIX. The Western Canons

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