B E F O R E L U T H E R
The dimensions of the New Testament canon were not seriously affected by the fifteenth-century revival of learning and the sixteenth- century Reformation. This is the more noteworthy because one of the features of these movements in the field of literature was the detection and exposure ofhallowed forgeries. The most notorious of these was Laurentius Valla’s demonstration of the spurious character of the so-called ‘Donation of Constantine’, the alleged justification for the secular dominion of the Papacy. In addition to this demonstration (so convincingly done that it required no repetition), Valla (1406/7-57) disproved the authenticity of the traditional correspondence between Christ and King Abgar of Edessa,’ of the Letter of Lentuhs (a thir- teenth-century work purporting to give a contemporary description of the person of Christ), 2 of the fifth/sixth-century corpus of Neoplatonic treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34); he also exploded the legend which told how each of the apostles had con-
’ First recorded in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 1.13.1-22; 2.1.68. See W. Bauer, ‘The Abgar Legend’, in Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson, New Testament Apocypba, I, pp.437443.
’ Translated in M. R. James, The Apocyphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924).
pp.477f.
241
tributed a clause to the Apostles’ Creed.3 These activities did not endear Valla to the upholders of tradition for tradition’s sake, but Valla had a powerful protector in King Alfonso V of Aragon, whose secretary he was (later, however, he became apostolic secretary to Pope Nicholas V).
It was not for nothing that Cardinal Bellarmine later described Valla as a ‘precursor of Luther’.4 At his death Valla left in manuscript a series of annotations on the New Testament. When Erasmus came upon a copy of this manuscript nearly fifty years later, he found that Valla had anticipated much of his own thinking and published the work at Paris in 1505. Valla showed little patience with theologians who wrote on the New Testament without paying any attention to the Greek text. These were Erasmus’s own sentiments, but it was expedient that the odium which their publication would inevitably incur should fall on the dead Valla and not on the living Erasmus.
The study of the New Testament in Greek, which now became more accessible in the west, was bound to make an impact on all phases of biblical study. The Greek text was printed as part of the New Testament volume of the Comphtensian Polyglot in Spain in 15 14, but it remained unpublished until the whole work, in six volumes, was published in (probably) 1522.5 By that time Erasmus had published two printed editions of the Greek New Testament (15 16, 15 19), and in 1522 a third edition appeared. There was no problem about the contents of the New Testament in these new editions: the twenty- seven established books were reproduced in them all, no more and no less. But questions within the canon were reopened. Erasmus denied the Pauline authorship of Hebrews and questioned the traditional authorship of the five ‘disputed’ catholic epistles; he thought also that on grounds of style the Apocalypse could not be attributed to the author of the Fourth Gospel.
His contemporary Cardinal Cajetan (Jacob Thomas de Vio), an able
exegete, likewise denied the Pauline authorship of Hebrews and questioned the traditional authorship of James, 2 and 3 John, and Jude; he defended the apostolic authorship of 2 Peter. Like Valla, he insisted that the study of the Vulgate was no substitute for the study of the scriptures in their original languges; for this in particular he was censured by the University of Paris. 6
’ On the origins of this legend (possibly going back to Ambrose ofMilan) see A. A.
T. Ehrhardt, ‘Christianity before the Apostles’ Creed’, in The Framework of the Ntw Trstctmmt Storir~ (Manchester, 1964), pp. 15 If.
’ Quoted by J. A. Wagenmann in P. Schaff (ed.), RrLigiow Encyrlopardia (New York, 1894), p. 1286.
’ The first four volumes contained the Hebrew, Latin (Vulgate) and Greek (Sepruagint) texts of the Old Testament in parallel columns, with the Aramaic Targum of Onkelos w the Pentaceuch printed at the foot of the appropriate pages, wirh a Latin translation. The sixth volume contained a Hebrew lexicon and grammar.
242
L U T H E R ’ S N E W T E S T A M E N T
It was Cajetan who, as papal legate, examined Martin Luther at Augsburg in 1518 and tried in vain to gain his submission to the authority of the Pope. Luther’s own views on the New Testament canon gained wide currency with the publication of his German New Testament in 1522. (The Greek basis for his translation was Erasmus’s second edition of 1519.) The table of contents suggested that he distinguished two levels of canonicity in the New Testament: the names of the first twenty-three books (Matthew- 3 John) are preceded by serial numbers l-23; the remaining four books-Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation-are separated from those by a space and are given no serial number. Luther did not exclude the last four books from the canon, but he did not recognize in them the high quality of
‘the right certain capital books’, and expressed his opinion forthrightly in his individual prefaces to these books. In his preface to Hebrews it is plain that he had given up the traditional Pauline authorship: it was written, he says, by ‘an excellent man of learning, who had been a disciple of the apostles and had learned from them, and who was very well versed in scripture’. (By 1537 he was sure that this ‘excellent man of learning’ was Apollos. ‘) It is in his preface to James in his 1522 New Testament that he calls it ‘an epistle of straw’. He finds that it contradicts Paul and the other scriptures on justification by faith, and, while it promotes law, it does not promote Christ. Jude is a superfluous document: it is an abstract of 2 Peter. (Nowadays it would be generally agreed that 2 Peter is based on Jude, not vice vevsa.) Moreover, Jude is suspect because it contains history and teaching nowhere found in scripture (this is a reference to the Enoch quotation and the dispute
’ On Erasmus and Cajetan see B. Hall, ‘Biblical Scholarship: Editions and Commentaries’, CHB III, pp.38-93, pa~~ini.
’ Luther ascribes the work to Apollos in a sermon of 1537 on 1 Cor. 3:4ff. (Luther.~
Wrrke, Weimar edition, 45, p.389) and again in his Commentary on Genesis, 1545 (Weimar edition, 44, p.709).
243
T H E C A N O N O F S C R I P T U R E
about the body of Moses). As for Revelation, it ‘lacks everything that I hold as apostolic or prophetic’.’
Luther knew that those books had been disputed in earlier days:
that, however, is not his main reason for relegating them to a secondary status. He appears to have had no difficulty with 2 Peter or 2 and 3 John, which had also been disputed. His main reason is that in the four relegated books he could not find that clear promotion of Christ which was the principal note of holy scripture. 9 If one asked for Luther’s criterion of canonicity (or at least primary canonicity), it is here. ‘That which does not teach Christ is still not apostolic, even if it were the teaching of Peter or Paul. On the other hand, that which preaches Christ, that would be apostolic even if Judas, Annas, Pilate or Herod did it.“’
‘The conclusion’, says Roland H. Bainton, ‘was a hierarchy of values within the New Testament. First Luther would place the Gospel of John, then the Pauline epistles and First Peter, after them the three other Gospels, and in a subordinate place Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation. He mistrusted Revelation because of its obscurity. “A revelation”, said he, “should be revealing”.‘” (There are some omissions in Bainton’s summary: probably Acts would go along with the Synoptic Gospels, the Johannine letters with the Fourth Gospel, and-more doubtfully-2 Peter with 1 Peter.)
The recognition of an ‘inner canon’ within the wider canon has persisted in the Lutheran tradition to the present day: the ‘inner canon’
is a Pauline canon. As Bainton goes on to say, ‘the New Testament was for Luther a Pauline book’. ‘* So it was for Marcion, but Luther was no Marcionite: for him ‘the Old Testament was a Christian book’.13 It could not be otherwise: it was an Old Testament text that set him on the road to peace with God: ‘in thy righteousness deliver me’ (Ps 31:1).14
Luther’s contemporary Karlstadt wrote a little work on the canon of scripture in which he distinguished three grades in the New Testament: (1) the Gospels and Acts, (2) the Pauline letters with 1 Peter and 1 John, (3) Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Revelation. To him the authorship of Hebrews was unknown, the authorship of James was doubtful, while he followed Jerome in ascribing 2 and 3 John to the elder John, not to the evangelist. ”
T Y N D A L E ’ S N E W T E S T A M E N T
In the later part of 1525 the printing of William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament was begun in Cologne. I6 When ten sheets (80 quart0 pages) had been printed, the printer (Peter Quentel) was forbidden by the city authorities to proceed with the work. It had to be printed again from the beginning-this time by a Worms printer, Peter Schoeffler, who was able to complete the work by the end of February 1526. Two copies of this Worms octave survive, but the table of contents is missing from both. I7 But 64 pages of the Cologne quart0 are extant in a copy in the British Museum, I8 and they include the table of contents, which is set out as follows:
The bokes conteyned in the newe Testament i
ii. . . 111. . . .
1111 V
vi
The gospel1 of saynct Mathew The gospel1 of S . Marke The gospel1 of S. Luke The gospel1 of S. Jhon
The actes of the apostles written by S. Luke The epistle of S. Paul to the Romans R These prefaces are printed in the Weimar edition, Die deursche Bibef, 7, pp. 344f.
(Hebrews), 384f. @roes), 387 (Jude), 404 (Revelation).
9 His expression is w&j Chrisrum treibet, ‘what presses Christ home’, ‘what promotes Christ’.
lo Preface to James.
I’ R. H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Lz$ of Martin Luther (New York/Nashville, 1950), p. 332. Luther evidently did not find Revelation to be (as the title of a book by Vernard Eller puts it) The Mosf Reveahl: Bnok o/rbe Bible (Grand Rapids, 1974).
I* Bainton, ihid. ” Bainton, ihid.
I4 From the preface to the Wittenberg edition of his Latin works, translated in L~&rr’s Works, American edition, 34 (Philadelphia, 1960), pp.336f.
‘* Karlstadt, De canoniris [ihris lihelh (Wittenberg, 1520); German edition, W&be Biirher he&g und Bib~irch sind (Wittenberg, 152 1); see B. M. Metzger, The Canon ofthe Neu Testament, pp.241f.
lb Its basis was the third edition of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament (1522). This was the first edition in which Erasmus (under protest) included the spurious text about the three heavenly witnesses (1 John 5:7); accordingly, it appeared in Tyndale’s version and in succeeding English versions throughout the following century, including AV/KJV.
” A facsimile edition, W/ham Tyndak’s New Testrmtent 1526, was published by Paradine Reprints, London, in 1976, to mark its 450th anniversary.
‘s A facsimile of these 64 pages is included in Thr FirIt Punted Eq/nh Near, Te~tument. ed. E. Arber (London, 187 1).
244 245
vii. . .
Vlll
ix
X
xi xii. . .
Xl11. . . . Xl111
XV
xvi xvii. . .
XV111
xix xx xxi xxii. . .
XX111
T H E C A N O N O F S C R I P T U R E
The fyrst pistle of S. Paul to the Corrinthians The second pistle ofS. Paul to the Corrinthians The pistle of S. Paul to the Galathians The pistle of S. Paul to the Ephesians The pistle of S. Paul to the Philippians The pistle of S. Paul to the Collossians The fyrst pistle of S. Paul vnto the Tessalonians The seconde pistle of S. Paul vnto the
Tessalonians
The fyrst pistle of S. Paul to Timothe The seconde pistle of S. Paul to Timothe The pistle of S. Paul to Titus
Te pistle of S. Paul vnto Philemon The fyrst pistle of S. Peter
The seconde pistle of S. Peter The fyrst pistle of S. Jhon The seconde pistle of S. Jhon The thryd pistle of S. Jhon The pistle vnto the Ebrues The pistle of S. James The pistle of Jude The revelation of Jhon
As in Luther’s table of contents, the last four titles are marked off from the others by a space and by the omission of serial numbers in front of them. But we do not know if Tyndale shared Luther’s opinion of the inferior status of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation. The adoption of Luther’s arrangement and title-page layout may have been purely mechanical. The Luther-Tyndale sequence of books was followed by Coverdale’s Bible (1535) and Matthew’s Bible (1537) and other English editions for the next few years, but the Great Bible of 1539 reverted to the now traditional order with Hebrews and James coming between Philemon and 1 Peter, and this order has been followed by most editions of the English Bible since then.
J O H N C A L V I N
Calvin accepted the New Testament canon as it had been handed down. For him the authority of the New Testament, like that of all
scripture, rested not on any church decree but on the self-authenticat- ing quality of what was written, attested in the receptive heart by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit. I9 But on questions of authorship he freely exercised his philological and historical judgment. Hebrews was undoubtedly canonical, but it was undoubtedly not by Paul:” Calvin thought of Luke or Clement of Rome as a possible author. *’ Unlike Luther, he had no difficulty in accepting James: ‘it contains nothing unworthy of an apostle of Christ.’ But he would not commit himself positively on the author’s identity: he might be James the Just or James the son of Alphaeus, one of the twelve (whom he took to be the
‘pillar’ James of Gal. 2:9).‘* As for 2 Peter, if it is canonical and therefore trustworthy, it must be accepted as having come from Peter-‘not that he wrote it himself, but that one of his disciples composed by his command what the necessity of the times demanded. ‘23 1 John was the work of the beloved disciple.24 When Jude introduces himself at the beginning of his epistle as ‘the brother of James’, he refers to James the son of Alphaeus. *’ Calvin’s views on the authorship of 2 and 3 John and of Revelation are unknown: he wrote no commentaries on these books, although he quotes occasion- ally from them.
C O U N C I L O F T R E N T
When the Council of Trent, at its fourth session (April 1546), dealt with the canon of scripture, it listed the twenty-seven ‘received’ books of the New Testament. Its position differed from that of the Reformers not with regard to the contents of the New Testament canon but with regard to the according of equal veneration with scripture to the
‘unwritten traditions’ received ultimately ‘from the mouth of Christ himself by the apostles, or from the apostles themselves at the dictation of the Holy Spirit’, and also in its specifying the ‘ancient and Vulgate
” Calvin, Institutes ofthe Christiun Relqym, 1.7.1-5.
” Calvin, The Epistle. to the Hebretu and the Fmt andSecond Epistles o/Peter, E. T.
(Edinburgh, 1963), p. 1.
” Ibid., p.216(onHeb. 13.23).
” Calvin, Conmentaries on the Cathofic Epistle, E. T. (Edinburgh, 1855), pp.276f.
” The Epistle, to the Hebrews and the Firit crnd Second Epl.rrlrr of Peter, p, 325,
24 The Go@ according to St. John I l-21 and the Fwt @I.!& of John, E. T.
(Edinburgh, 1961), p.231.
” CommenttrrieJ on tbr Catbohr Epih, pp.428f.
edition’ of the Latin Bible to be the one authentic text of scripture.26 Some modern interpreters of this decree of Trent suggest that the Vulgate was here singled out as authoritative over against more recent Latin versions of the Bible and that it was not intended to affirm its primacy over the Hebrew and Greek texts. Some members of the Council, like Cardinal Reginald Pole, thought that the authority of the Hebrew and Greek originals should be explicitly acknowledged.
‘The majority considered this to be unnecessary’, says E. F. Sutcliffe;
but since he mentions that some members of the Council misinter- preted the decree as giving the Vulgate superior authority to the originals, such an acknowledgment would have been by no means superfluous. 27 A century after the Council of Trent the Westminster Assembly of Divines found it expedient to state that ‘the Old Testament in Hebrew. . .and the New Testament in Greek. . . , being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them’.28 If this affirmation was not unnecessary at Westminster, where there was no antecedent bias in favour of the Vulgate, it was certainly not unneces- sary at Trent. In any case, issues of contemporary concern and tension affected both what was expressed and what was not expressed.
‘ T o d a y , . Catholics like every one else go back to the original languages and base their translations on the same critical principles’. 29
N E W T E S T A M E N T C A N O N I N T H E A G E O PRINTING
There was no need to name them one by one: the same twenty-seven books appeared in all relevant editions of the New Testament, in Greek, Latin or English, and in the European vernaculars. When the original Forty-Two Articles were promulgated under Edward VI, the New Testament books were accessible in the Great Bible and exactly the same books remained accessible when the Great Bible was super- seded under Elizabeth I by the Geneva Bible of 1560 and the Bishops’
Bible of 1568. The churchmen who were responsible for the wording of this Article no doubt knew that at one time five or even seven of the twenty-seven books had been disputed; to that extent it was not quite accurate to say that the canonical books were those ‘of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church’. They would know also of Luther’s reservations about four of the New Testament books. But such details were irrelevant to the situation with which they had to deal: the recognition of the twenty-seven books went back to Jerome and Augustine, and indeed to Athanasius.
T H E T H I R T Y - N I N E A R T I C L E S
After the detailed listing of the books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, there is a brief statement about the New Testament:30
‘All the books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them Canonical.’
Lh Actu Con& Tdentrni, Sessio 4: Dwntua de canoniris wiptwu; Decretum de dtjiaitimw rt NJN J~L~M~N~ lihmrrm.
” E. F. Sutcliffe, ‘The Council of Trent on the Adxntia of the Vulgate’,JTS 49 (194X), pp.3542.
LX Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.8.
2’) Krrvwd Stadrrrd Vwrum: Nm Tntownt, Catholic Edition (London, 1965).
introduction.
“’ See pp. 105f.
24X
T H E W E S T M I N S T E R C O N F E S S I O N O F F A I T H Unlike Article VI, the Westminster Confession of Faith included in its first chapter (‘Of the Holy Scripture’) a precise list of New Testament as well as of Old Testament books. Its list of all the biblical books has been reproduced earlier in our pages. 31 One point which the careful reader of the list of New Testament books will observe is that the Westminster Divines did not commit themselves on the Pauline authorship of Hebrews. The Pauline letters are headed ‘Paul’s Epistles’, followed by ‘to the Romans, Corinthians I’, and so forth, without the repetition of ‘Epistle(s)‘; but after Philemon the heading ‘Epistle’
appears again in ‘The Epistle to the Hebrews’, which is thus marked off from the thirteen which bear Paul’s name.
In the tradition of Calvin, the Westminster Confession denies that the authority of scripture rests ‘upon the testimony of any man or church’; rather, ‘our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.’
While due allowance is made for the place of reason in the study of scripture and for the acceptance of whatever may be deduced from it
‘by good and necessary consequence’, yet ‘nothing at any time is to be
‘I Seep. 109
249