Originally Posted by Ben C Smith via PM

...please preface it with some kind of disclaimer. The formation of the canon is not really my thing; I was just listing passages as they came to mind.

Hi, Doug.

Unfortunately, we are very often left in the dark, I think, about the motives of those who in their own way helped to shape the canon of scripture. It seems to me that we can discern two basic stages in the eventual approval of a book as canonical:

1. The book is quoted or alluded to by some very early father like Ignatius, Polycarp, or Justin, but not by name.

2. The book is quoted by name and given some sort of seal of approval. (Example: Irenaeus arguing for the fourfold gospel in Against Heresies or Theophilus quoting from John as from someone carried along by the spirit in To Autolycus 2.22.2; the placing of the text on an official list like the Muratorian canon also counts here.)

These stages are not always successive; they overlap according to which father we are discussing, but the main point is that the later church fathers (stage 2) developed their explicit canon based on what earlier respected church fathers had implicitly used. Eusebius in History of the Church 3.3.1, 4, for example, writes:

One epistle of Peter, that called the first, is acknowledged as genuine. And this the ancient elders used freely in their own writings as an undisputed work.

Such are the writings that bear the name of Peter, only one of which I know to be genuine and acknowledged by the ancient elders.

So the question of why a book made it into the canon is pushed back to earlier fathers (stage 1), who rarely if ever tell us exactly why they were quoting from, say, the gospel of Matthew and never from, say, the gospel of Thomas.

I would say that this statement is half correct; there is another half, if we are to believe Eusebius, History of the Church 3.25.6-7, writing about the spurious gospels such as those of Thomas and Peter:

...of which [reason 1] none of the ecclesiastical men in the succession has seen fit in any way to make mention in his writing. And, moreover, [reason 2a] somehow even the character of the phrasing differs from the apostolic style, and [reason 2b] the opinion and tendency of those things extant in them is so very far from the true orthodoxy that it is indeed clear that they happen to be the forgeries of heretical men.

Reason 2b above is the reason you are giving with respect to Serapion and the gospel of Peter, and I think that at least in that case there is much to be said for it as the most basic reason. Reason 2a is quite similar to 2b, and just about as subjective (one suspects that the apostolic style, whatever that is, has at least a little to do with subject matter).

But there is also reason 1. Which books were quoted as holy and which were not was a topic passed down from generation to generation within the church. And notice that Eusebius ties that topic in with another very popular patristic pasttime, to wit, tracing the succession of ecclesiastical authorities from apostolic times (underlined above). The connection between these two topics is one that ought to be explored further.

But, of course, reason 1 does not explain how any given book got started as a quotable text amongst the proto-orthodox.

Sometimes there did seem to be a rational process at work in deciding which books were apostolic and which were not. For example, Eusebius quotes Dionysius of Alexandria at length in History of the Church 7.25.1-27 to the effect that the book of Revelation was not written by John the apostle. Some of the reasons are pretty good, and they often anticipate modern criticism. His arguments are along the lines of reason 2a above, style and such, but Dionysius was a nonchiliast, so was probably quite biased against Revelation on that account (this is partly what I meant when I said that one suspects style and subject matter are often interlinked). So reasoning does appear to have been part of the process at times, though of course the cynic will point out that in this case the reasoner was overruled; Revelation eventually made it into the canon.

Reasoning also appears to have gone into the rejection of the gospel of John by Gaius of Rome. Again, Gaius appears to have been biased. And, again, his reasoning was overruled (very quickly, as a matter of fact).

Whether their conclusions were based on objective evidence depends on why we imagine Polycarp, for example, quoted from something that sounds like Matthew and Luke and not from Thomas or Peter.

Another datum: Jude was slow coming into the canon because it quoted from the apocryphal 1 Enoch. See Jerome, On Famous Men 4.

Also, I would like to add that, in the end, how rational the patristic canonization process was depends quite a bit on our own view of how successful the fathers were in their final decisions.

For example, I think they got the authorship of Mark and Luke right, but the authorship of Matthew and John wrong (though some of the fathers may have pegged John right; long story that). I think they got 8 Pauline letters right and the remaining 5 wrong. I think Hebrews may have made it in based on its Pauline associations, yet it is not Pauline (as many of the fathers knew). I think they hesitated too long on Jude, and for all the wrong reasons, but were wrong on 2 Peter. If 1 Peter is not Petrine, they were wrong on that too, but I can forgive them such a close call.

But ask me which books I think they should have canonized and the historian in me will answer all of them; that way they would have all been multiply preserved.


Ben

Originally Posted by S.C.Carlson

Perhaps the most detailed discussion of authenticity of early Christian texts is found throughout in Eusebius's history, and those he quotes, particularly Dionysius of Alexandria, who most approaches the criteria used today in his demonstration that the authors of Revelation and John are different. There is also some discussion in Jerome, where he tries to account for the difference in style among 1 Peter and 2 Peter.

Basically, the church fathers desired authenticity for the texts they accepted (they never knowingly accepted a fake) but lacked the modern techniques for determining authenticity. Thus, they had to rely on various heuristic criteria, including: (a) orthodoxy, (b) apostolicity (attributed to an apostle or immediate followers), (c) antiquity (used by previous generations of churchmen), and (d) catholicity (used broadly geographically among the church).

In one sense, these do not differ too much from those critical historians use today, except that we no longer assume orthodoxy to be eternally unchanging as did the ancients (thus, we reconstruct Paul's theology in the big 4 epistles and compare them, e.g., with the Pastorals), and we more frequently use stylistic criteria to determine apostolicity (e.g. the Pastorals as well).

As it turns out, Eusebius turned out to stricter than the rest of the church. If he had it his way, James, 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude, and Revelation would not be in the New Testament. Instead, there was a tendency to give a text "the benefit of the doubt" if it appeared both orthodox and apostolic. This was true also for disputed textual sections such as the longer ending of Mark and the pericope of the adulteress.

I think the gospel of Peter shows this in action. Without reading it, Serapion assumed that it was OK to read an otherwise unknown gospel of Peter. Clearly, he gave it the benefit of the doubt at first only based on criterion of apostolicity (b). Then he read the work and found it violated the criterion of orthodoxy (a). In fact, modern criticism agrees with Serapion, but more nuancedly in that the theology expressed in Gospel of Peter (particularly the anti-Judaism) cannot be the work of Peter.

Stephen

Originally Posted by gregor

Maybe someone could take it chronologically and explain from the oldest to the youngest when people were determining which books to include (i.e. accept as authentic) and which to exclude.

Originally Posted by gregor

Second, it seems that there is reliance upon too late decision-makers (e.g. Anathanias' decision or Eusebius' reference to Papias). One could suppose that 2nd century fathers didn't care about a canon, and 4th century fathers couldn't verify apostolic authorship.

Originally Posted by Bede

1.) What happened to the texts that they used to create their final product?

Nothing much. They were most likely written on papyrus and so wore out. The surviving fourth century Bibles are written on vellum. This was hideously expensive (so required a rich patron or buyer) but lasts forever.

2.)Why, do you suppose, that those sacred sources have not survived and why is it that we, in fact, have almost no copies of these writings from the first couple of centuries of the common era?

Nothing of any description survives from the first couple of centuries in the manuscript tradition. The earliest vellum bibles are 4th century, the earliest pagan writings (by Virgil) are from the late fifth century IIRC. We only have earlier documents from Egyptian rubbish dumps - ie: it is stuff that was thrown out that survived!

Furthermore, we know that the pagan Emperor Diocletian launched a purge against Christians in the late third century. He did order the destruction of all Christian books and this might have been why Eusebius's generation were so keen to preserve what was left (by copying it out in posh new editions).

3.) Why wouldn't this lead one to believe that the church itself could have had some reason to make sure that those older texts disappeared?

Because history must be based on evidence and not hearsay. You need to produce evidence that the church did this, not rely on what you personally might believe. I could just as well say, the church would have been very keen to preserve the oldest writings to vouch for the accuracy of the new copies.

Best wishes

James