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Early Christian Traditions

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The history of the New Testament canon is even more colorful. During the first few hundred years of the early Christian era, there was no official canon that the entire Christian world recognized. The Eastern and Western church traditions each used a differing list of books as scripture. Before 200 a.d., the Church fathers did not even mention Philemon, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. The status of these books was murky at best until after 400 a.d..

On the other hand, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, the Acts of Paul and the First Letter of Clement were considered by many Church fathers to be part of the early Christian scriptures.

Early Christian Works Sometimes Considered Canonical …show more content…

It consisted of the gospel of Luke (without the infancy narrative) and ten letters of Paul. He rejected the Old Testament, which he believed contained “immature ideas about God and [Jewish] nationalistic Messiahnism.” Marcion’s collection of Paul’s letters has been corroborated by non-Marcionite Syrian catalogs. It did not include the Pastoral letters (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus). The earliest surviving manuscript of the Pauline letters (at about 200 CE) does not include them either. This suggests that the Pastoral letters either did not exist or were not yet acknowledged as authentic by the churches of Marcion’s …show more content…

Irenaeus, reacting to Marcion, tried to establish his own canon. Since there were a number of gospels at that time, he decided that there should only be four "because there are only four winds and four corners of the earth." Other Church fathers who followed Irenaeus accepted his decision. Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339 a.d.) listed four categories of books.

1. The recognized books (the four gospels, Acts, fourteen letters of Paul, 1 Peter, 1 John, Revelation [?]).
2. The disputed books (James, 2 Peter, 2, 3 John, and Jude). Paul’s authorship of Hebrews is questioned by many modern Biblical scholars, in spite the fact that Clement of Rome (quoted by Eusebius) said that “the epistle to the Hebrews is Paul’s.” Hebrews is theologically and conceptually connected with Paul while the same time, the grammar and vocabulary are quite different from Paul’s other books.
3. The spurious books (Acts of Paul, Shepherd of Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, Epistle of Barnabas, Didache, Gospel of Hebrews, Revelation [?]).
4. The heretical forgeries.

Eusebius accepted 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and the letter to Hebrews. In fact, he was the first to declare Hebrews legitimate. There are two possible options that explain this historic

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