2 Pet. iii. 16 is usually taken as one of many arguments against the genuineness of that epistle ; but a citation from Matthew is certainly referred to as Scripture in the epistle of Barnabas. But such recognition of an individual gospel is a long way removed from the recognition of an apostolic canon. The apostolic writings continued to be very par tially diffused, and readers used such books as they had access to, often failing to distinguish between books of genuine value and worthless forgeries. For most readers were very uncritical, and there was an enormous floating mass of spurious and apocalyptic literature, including recensions of the gospel altered by heretical parties to suit their own views. It was perhaps in contest with the heretics of the 2d century that the necessity of forming a strict list of really authoritative writings came to be clearly felt ; and it is remarkable that heretics, generally hostile to the Old Testament, seem to have been among the first to form collections of Christian writings for themselves. Thus Marcion, in the middle of the 2d century, selected for himself on dogmatical grounds ten Pauline epistles, and a gospel which seems to have been based on Luke. Up to this time perhaps no formal canon of sacred writings had been put forth by the Catholic Church. But in the second half of the century the notion of an authoritative New Testament collection appears in full development, and there is an amount of agreement as to the contents of the canon, which implies that, in spite of the loose way in which apocryphal books circulated side by side with genuine works, the church had no great difficulty in drawing a sharp line between the two classes when this was felt to be necessary. At the time of the great teachers of the close of the 2d century (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement) we find a twofold collection, the Gospel and the Apostles. The Gospel comprises the four evangelists; and this number was
already so absolutely fixed as to admit of no further doubt.Quite beyond dispute were also the main books of the Apofstolicon, the Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, 1st Peter, 1st John, and the Apocalypse. The Muratorian fragment which contains a list twenty or thirty years older than the 3d century omits 1st Peter, but adds Jude, 2d and 3d John ( ?), and (as a disputed book) the Apocalypse of Peter. The Shepherd of Hennas might also be read, but it is pointed out that it is of quite recent date and not of prophetic or apostolic authority. From this time forward, then, the controversy is narrowed to a few books, occupying a middle position between the large mass of our present New Testament, which was already beyond dispute, and the spurious literature which was quite excluded from ecclesiastical use. Absolute uniformity was not at once attainable, for various churches had quite independent usages ; and, as we see from the Muratorian canon, a book might receive a certain ecclesiastical recognition without being, therefore, viewed as strictly canonical. This dubious margin to the canon was of very uncertain limits, and Clement of Alexandria still uses many apocryphal books which found no acknowledgment in other parts of the church. Gradually the list of books which have even a disputed claim to authority is cut down. In the time of Eusebius the Shepherd of Hennas was still read in some churches, and several other books the Epistb of Barnabas, the Acts of Paul, the Revelation of Peter, the Teachings of the Apostles appear as controverted writings. But all these are plainly on the verge of rejection, while, on the other hand, 2d and 3d John, Jude, James, and 2d Peter are gradually gaining ground. This process continued to go on without inter ruption till at length the whole class of disputed books (antilegomena) melted away, and only our present canon was left on the one hand, and books of no authority or repute upon the other. Thus the Council of Laodicea was able wholly to forbid the ecclesiastical use of uncanonical books (3GO A.D.) and the only uncertain point remaining in the tradition of the Eastern Church was the position of the Apocalypse, which had gradually fallen into suspicion, and was not fully reinstated till the 5th century. The Western Church, on the other hand, was long dubious as to the epistle to the Hebrews, which was received without hesitation in the East, as the Apocalypse continued to bo in the West. The age of Augustine and Jerome saw the close of the Western canon.
Transmission and Diffusion of the Bible in the Christian Church before the Invention of Printing.
Under this head ve have to speak 1st, of the transmission of the original text ; 2d, of the ancient versions.
1. The Original Text—Old Testament.—The rapid spread of Christianity among the Gentiles of the West made Greek the sacred language of Christendom. Not only is Greek the language of the New Testament, but it was in the Septuagint version that the Old Testament was first circulated in the most important Gentile churches. Hebrew was almost unknown even to learned Christians, and in fact the current (Jewish as well as Christian) doctrine of the inspiration of the Septuagint, and a suspicion that the Hebrew text had been falsified by the Jews, made the study of the original appear unprofitable. A juster view of the value of Hebrew studies was formed by the two greatest scholars of the patristic period, Origen and Jerome. But the Septuagint continued to enjoy an authoritative place in the Eastern Church ; and the Latin Church, though it finally adopted Jerome s translation from the Hebrew in place of the older translation from the Greek, was not led by this change to take any interest in further study of the original. The Hebrew Bible continued to be the peculiar possession of the Jews, of whose labours in iixing and transmitting a standard text we have already spoken. It was not till the beginning of the ICth century that Christian scholars began to take a lively interest in the "Hebrew verity; " and what has been done since that time to repair so many centuries of neglect belongs to the history of the printed text or of exegesis.
New Testament.—The original copies of the New Testament writings were probably written on papyrus rolls, and were so soon worn out by frequent use, that W3 do not even possess any historical notice of their existence. They must, however, have been written in uncial or large capital letters, without division of words or punctuation, without accents, breathings, &c., and probably with out any titles or subscriptions whatever. The earliest transcripts comprised only portions of the New Testament, the gospels being oftencst copied, and the Pauline oftener than the catholic epistles. Even after the canon became fixed, MSS. of the whole New Testa ment, or of the whole Greek Bible, were comparatively rare. The order of the several books was not quite fixed ; but the catholic epistles generally followed the book of Acts. It may also be noted that in the oldest MSS. the epistle to the Hebrews precedes the pastoral epistles. In course of time various changes were intro duced in the externals of the written text. Parchment and vellum took the place of papyrus, and form the material of the oldest extant copies. The uncial character held its ground till about the 10th century, M - hen the use of a cursive or running hand became general. Attempts to indicate the punctuation go back as far as the 4th or 5th century. The oldest MSS. use for this purpose an occasional simple point, or a small blank space in the line. Another system was to write the text in short lines (<rrixoi) accommodated to the sense. The author of this stichometry was Euthalius of Alex andria in the second half of the 5th century, who applied it to the epistles and Acts. The same plan was afterwards extended to the gospels ; but vellum was too costly to allow of its general adoption. The present system of punctuation was first used in printed books. Breathings and accents were not in common use down to the end of the 7th century; but occasional traces of them seem to occur con siderably earlier.
Another device for the more convenient use of the New Testa ment was the division of the text into sections of various kinds. The gospels were divided by Ammonias of Alexandria {220 A.D.) into short chapters (Ammonian sections, Kf<pdaia), constructed to facilitate the comparison of corresponding passages of the several gospels. These sections are marked on the margin of most MSS. from the 5th century onwards ; and in general a reference is also given to the so-called canons of Eusebius, which are a kind of index to the sections, enabling the reader to find the parallel passages. Another division of the gospels into larger sections (rirXoi, breves) is also found in MSS. of the 5th century, and a similar division of the other books into chapters (KeQdKaia) came into use not much later. The chapters of the Acts and the catholic epistles were the work of Euthalius. Our present chapters are much later. They were invented by Cardinal Hugo of S. Cams in the 1 3th century, were first applied to the Latin Bible, and are still unknown in the
