CANON
274
CANON
vised Version, in a separate volume. The deuteros
sure ^ t ill appended to the German Bibles printed under
the auspices of the orthodox Lutherans.
For the O. T. Canon in general. — Catholic works: The In- troductions o/Cornely, Kaulen, Vigouroux, Gigot. Ubaldi, etc.; Vigouroux, in Diet, de la bible. — Non-Catholic works: Davidsox, The Canon of the Bible (3d ed„ London, 1878); Reuss, History of the Canon of Holy Scripture in the Christian Church (tr., Edinburgh, 18S4); Buhl, Canon and Text of the Old Testament (tr.. Edinburgh, 1S92); Green, General Intro- duction to the O. T.: The Canon (New York, 189S), conserva- tive; Woods, in Hast. Bibl. Diet.
IV. The Canon of the New Testament. — The Catholic N. T., as defined by the Council of Trent, does not differ, as regards the books contained, from that of all Christian bodies at present. Like the O. T.. the New has its deuterocanonical books and por- tions of books, their canonicity having formerly been a subject of some controversy in the Church. These are for the entire books: the Epistle to the Hebrews, that of James, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of John, Jude, and Apocalypse; giving seven in all as the number of the N. T. contested books. The formerly disputed passages are three: the closing section of St. Mark's Gospel, xvi, 9-20 about the apparitions of Christ after the Resurrection; the verses in Luke about the bloody sweat of Jesus, xxii, 43. 44; the Pericope Adulterer, or narrative of the woman taken in adultery, St. John, vii, 53 to viii. 11. Since the Council of Trent it is not permitted for a Catholic to question the inspiration of these passages.
(1) The formation of the New Testament Canon; c. A. D. 100-220. — The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the N. T. existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain ob- scurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.
(a) The witness of the N. T. to itself: The first col- lections. — Those writings which possessed the unmis takable stamp and guarantee of Apostolic origin must from the very first have been specially prized and venerated, and their copies eagerly sought by local Churches and individual Christians of means, in preference to the narratives and Logia, or Sayings of Christ, coming from less authorized sources. Already in the N. T. itself there is some evidence of a certain diffusion of canonical books: II Peter, iii, 15, 16, sup- poses its readers to be acquainted with some of St. Paul's Epistles; St. John's Gospel implicitly presup- poses the existence of the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). There are no indications in the N. T. of a systematic plan for the distribution of the Apostolic compositions, any more than there is of a definite new Canon bequeathed by the Apostles to the Church, or of a strong self-witness to Divine inspiration. Nearly all the N. T. writings were evoked by particu- lar occasions, or addressed to particular destinations. Hut we may well presume that each of the leading Churches — Antioch, Thessalonica. Alexandria. Cor- inth, Rome — sought by exchanging with other Chris- tian communities to add to its special treasure, and have publicly read in its religious assemblies all Apos- tolic writings which came under its knowledge. It was doubtless in this way (hat the collections grew, and reached completeness within certain limits, bu) a considerable number of years must have elapsed (and that counting from the composition of the latest book) before all the widely separated Churches of early Christendom possessed the new sacred literature in full. And this wani of an organized distribution,
secondarily to the absence of an early fixation of the
Canon, left room for variations and doubts which lasted far into the centuries. Hut evidence will pres ently be given that from days touching on those .if the
last Apostaes there were two well defined bodies of
sacred writings of the N. T., which constituted the
firm, irreducible, universal minimum, and the nucleus
of its complete Canon: these were the Four Gospels,
as the Church now has them, and thirteen Epistles of
St. Paul — the Eramjelium and the Apostolicum .
(b) The principle of canonicity. — Before entering into the historical proof for this primitive emergence of a compact, nucleative Canon, it is pertinent to briefly examine this problem: During the formative period what principle operated in the selection of the N. T. writings and their recognition as Divine? — Theologians are divided on this point. The view that Apostolicity was the test of the inspiration dur- ing the building up of the N. T. Canon, is favoured by the many instances where the early Fathers base the authority of a book on its Apostolic origin, and by the truth that the definitive placing of the contested books on the N. T. catalogue coincided with their general acceptance as of Apostolic authorship. More- over, the advocates of this hypothesis point out that the Apostles' office corresponded with that of the Prophets of the Old Law, inferring that as inspira- tion was attached to the munus prophetieiim so the Apostles were aided by Divine inspiration whenever in the exercise of their calling they either spoke or wrote. Positive arguments are deduced from the N. T. to establish that a permanent prophetical charisma (see Charismata) was enjoyed by the Apostles through a special indwelling of the Holy Ghost, be- ginning with Pentecost: Matth.. x, 19, 20; Acts, xv, 28; I Cor., ii, 13; II Cor., xiii. 3; I Thess., ii, 13. are cited. The opponents of this theory allege against it that the Gospels of Mark and of Luke and Acts were not the work of Apostles (however, tradition connects the Second Gospel with St. Peter's preaching and St. Luke's with St. Paul's); that books current under an Apostle's name in the Early Church, such as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Apocalypse of St. Peter, were nevertheless excluded from canonical rank, while on the other hand Origen and St. Dionysius of Alexandria in the case of Apocalypse, and St. Jerome in the case of II and III John, although ques- tioning the Apostolic authorship of these works, un- hesitatingly received them as Sacred Scriptures. An objection of a speculative kind is derived from the very nature of inspiration ad seribendum, which seems to demand a specific impulse from the Holy Ghost in each case, and preclude the theory that it could be possessed as a permanent gift, or charisma. The weight of Catholic theological opinion is deservedly against mere Apostolicity as a sufficient criterion of inspiration. This adverse view has been taken by Franzelin (De Divina Traditione et Scriptura, 18S2), Schmid (De Inspirationis Bibliorum Vi et Ratione, iss.'ii. (rets (De Divina Bibliorum Inspiratione, 1886), Leitner (Die prophetische Inspiration. 1S95 — a monograph), Pesch (De Inspiratione Sacrse Scriptura'. 1906). These authors (some of whom treat the mat- ter more speculatively than historically') admit that Apostolicity is a positive and partial touchstone of in- spiration, but emphatically deny that it was exclu- sive, in the sense that all non-Apostolic works were by that very fact barred from the sacred Canon of the N. T. They hold to doctrinal tradition as the true criterion.
Catholic champions of Apostolicity as a criterion are: Ubaldi (Introductio in Sacram Scripturam. II, 1S76); Schanz (in Theologische Quart alsehrift. 1SS5. pp. 606 sqq., and A Christian Apology, II. tr. 1 VI I; Szekely (Hermeneutica Biblica, 1902). Recently Professor BatilTol, while rejecting the claims of these latter advocates, has enunciated a theory regarding the principle (hat presided over the formation of the N. T. Canon which challenges attention and perhaps marks a new stage in the controversy. According to Monsignor BatilTol. the Gospel (i. e. the words and
