The Canon
of Marcion
The Canon of Marcion, written by Marcion of Sinope
in Pontus, was the first
known canon to be adopted by any sizable unitary group of people. Although
Marcion was the son of a bishop, he fell into Gnosticism and believed that the
deity of the Old Testament was cruel, evil, and inferior to the God and Father
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Marcion repudiated the entire Old Testament and set
out to establish a canon completely free of Jewish influences. His canon
consisted only of the Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul's Epistles, which he badly
mutilated. He cut out any reference to the Old Testament and rejected the
Pastoral Epistles along with Hebrews. He arranged the remaining Epistles of
Paul beginning with Galatians and followed by 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1
and 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians (which he called Laodiceans), Colossians,
Philippians, and Philemon (according to Tertullian, Against Marcion, V)
Marcion's canon threatened to create a rift in the Church and caused many
leaders to respond with fervency. Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Irenaeus,
Epiphanius, and Tertullian all opposed him as a heretic. Irenaeus and
Tertullian wrote five books against his errors. Though Marcion's arbitrary
canon caused much upheaval at first, the reactions of the early Church showed,
first of all, that the books that he included in his canon must have been regarded
as indisputably authentic, and, secondly, that the books that he rejected must
have been accepted as canonical by the great majority.
The
Muratorian Fragment of the Canon
This document was
discovered by and named after the Italian librarian and historian, L.A.
Muratori, who found it in the Ambrosian Library at Milan in 1740. It is believed
to have been written in Rome towards the end of the second century, although
that is not certain. The Muratorian Fragment is significant in that it is the
earliest existing document approaching the canon in a formal fashion. It states
what documents are to be accepted as canonical and which are to be rejected. It
is, unfortunately, only a fragment of a larger work and therefore not complete.
Recorded in it is a list of all the books of the current New Testament except
for 1 John, Hebrews, James and 2 Peter. 1 John is, however, quoted elsewhere in
the canon. The Muratorian Fragment includes one additional book, the Apocalypse of Peter, though the writer
of the Fragment himself was dubious about the book, for he said, "Some of
you do not think that it should be read publicly in the church." But
despite the damage the Muratorian Canon has sustained, and its variation from
today's canon, it remains valuable. This early manuscript indicates which books
were recognized as canonical in the church towards the end of the second
century, and shows how the near the canon was to its final and complete form.
The
"Festal Letter" of Athanasius
Athanasius
was possibly the first to apply the term "canonical" to the exact
twenty-seven books of today's New Testament. Although Origen had already
referred to a set of "canonical Scriptures," it was due to the
influence of Athanasius in the East that the New Testament gained a certain
fixity from then onward. In fact, henceforth, not a single book remained
disputed, at least in Alexandria and for those looking there for leadership.
Athanasius' list contained the four Gospels, Acts, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2,
and 3 John, Jude, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy,
Titus, Philemon, and Revelation. "These," said Athanasius, "are
the wells of salvation, so that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the
sayings in these. Let no one add to these. Let nothing be taken away."
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