Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
Tatian (§ 30, 10) shows that soon after this the gospel of John, which was not regarded by Justin or the author of the Didache as a source for the evangelical history, although there are not wanting in both manifold references to it, came to be regarded as a work to be read in combination with these. It was only after a New Testament Canon had been in the Old Catholic Age gradually established, and from the vast multitude of books on gospel history, which even Luke had found existing (i. 1) and which had been multiplied to an almost incalculable extent both in the interests of heresy and of church doctrine, our four gospels were universally recognised as alone affording authentic information of the life and doctrines of the Lord, that the eclectic gospels hitherto in use had more and more withdrawn from them the favour of the church. Tatian’s Diatessaron maintained its place longest in the Syrian Church. Theodoret, † A.D. 457, testifies that in his diocese he had found and caused to be put away about two hundred copies. Aphraates (about A.D. 340, § 47, 13) still used it as the text of his homilies. At the time of publication of the Doctrina Addæi (§ 32, 6) it was still used in the church of Edessa, and Ephraim Syrus in A.D. 360 refers to a commentary in the form of scholia on it in an Armenian translation, in which the passages commented on are literally reproduced, Theodoret’s charge against it of cutting out passages referring to the descent of Christ after the flesh from David, especially the genealogies of Matthew and Luke, is confirmed by these portions thus preserved. Otherwise however, it is free from heretical alterations, though not wholly without apocryphal additions. All the four gospels are in brief summary so skilfully wrought into one another that no joining is ever visible. What cannot be incorporated is simply left out, and the whole historical and doctrinal material is distributed over the one working year of the synoptists.
§ 36.8. Formation of a New Testament Canon.—The oldest collection of a New Testament Canon known to us was made by the Gnostic Marcion (§ 27, 11) about A.D. 150. Some twenty years later in the so-called Muratorian Canon, a fragment found by Muratori in the 18th century with a catalogue in corrupt Latin justifying the reception of the New Testament writings received in the Roman church. For later times the chief witnesses are Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Eusebius. The Muratorian Canon and Eusebius are witnesses for the fact that in the 2nd century, besides the Gospels, the Apostolic Epistles and the Revelation of John, other so-called Apostolic Epistles were read at worship in the churches, for instance, the 1st Ep. of Clement of Rome, the Ep. of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, in some churches also the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter and Acts of Paul, in Corinth, an Ep. of the Roman bishop Soter (A.D. 166–174) to that church, and also Acts of the Martyrs. Montanist as well as Gnostic excesses gave occasion for the definite fixing of the New Testament Canon by the Catholic church (§ 40). Since the time of Irenæus, the four Gospels, the Acts, the 13 Epp. of Paul, the Ep. to the Hebrews (which some in the West did not regard as Pauline), 1st Peter, and 1st John, along with the Revelation of John, were universally acknowledged. Eusebius therefore calls these ὁμολογούμενα. There was still some uncertainty as to the Ep. of James, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John and Jude (ἀντιλεγόμενα). The antilegomena of a second class, which have no claim to canonicity, although in earlier times they were much used in churches just like the canonical scriptures, were called by him νόθα, viz. the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Ep. of Barnabas, and the Didache. He would also very willingly have included among these the Revelation of John (§ 33, 9), although he acknowledged that elsewhere that is included in the Homologoumena.—The Old Testament Canon was naturally regarded as already completed. But since the Old Testament had come to the Greek and Latin Church Teachers in the expanded form of the LXX., they had unhesitatingly assumed that its added books were quite as sacred and as fully inspired as those of the Hebrew Canon. Melito of Sardis, however, about A.D. 170, found it desirable to make a journey of research through Palestine in order to determine the limits of the Jewish Canon, and then to draw up a list of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament essentially corresponding therewith. Origen too informs us that the Jews, according to the number of letters in their alphabet acknowledged only 22 books, which, however, does not lead him to condemn this reception of the additional books of the church. From the end of the 2nd century, the Western church had Latin Translations of the biblical books, the origin of which is to be sought in North Africa, where in consequence of prevailing ignorance of the Greek language the need of such translations was most deeply felt. Even so early as the beginning of the 5th century we find Jerome († 420) complaining of varietas and vitiositas of the Codices latini, and declaring: Tot sunt exemplaria (=forms of the text) paene quot codices. Augustine101 gives preference to the Itala over all others. The name Itala is now loosely given to all fragments of Latin translations previous to that of Jerome.—The Syriac translation, the Peshito, plain or simple (so-called because it exactly and without paraphrasing renders the words of the Hebrew and Greek originals) belongs to the 3rd century, although first expressly referred to by Ephraim. In it 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John and Jude are not found.
§ 36.9. The Doctrine of Inspiration.—In earlier times it was usual, after the example of Philo, to regard the prophetic inspiration of the sacred writers as purely passive, as ἔκστασις. Athenagoras compares the soul of the prophet while prophesying to a flute; Justin Martyr in his Cohort. ad Græc. to a lyre, struck by the Holy Spirit as the plectrum, etc. The Montanist prophets first brought this theory into disrepute. The Apologist Miltiades of Asia Minor was the first Church Teacher who vindicated over against the Montanists the proposition: προφήτην μὴ δεῖν ἐν ἐκστάσει λαλεῖν. The Alexandrians who even admitted an operation of the Holy Spirit upon the nobler intellects of paganism, greatly modified the previously accepted doctrine of inspiration. Origen, for example, teaches a gradual rising or falling in the measure of inspiration even in the bible, and determines this according to the more or less prominence secured by the human individuality of the writers of scripture.
§ 36.10. Hymnology.—The Carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem in the report of Pliny (§ 22, 2), may be classed with the antiphonal responsive hymns of the church. Tertullian bears witness to a rich use of song in family as well as congregational worship. So too does Origen. In the composition of church hymns the heretics seem for a long while to have kept abreast of the Catholics (Bardesanes and Harmonius, § 27, 5), but the latter were thereby stirred up to greater exertions. The Martyr Athenogenes and the Egyptian bishop Nepos are named as authors of church hymns. We have still a hymn εἰς Σωτῆρα by Clement of Alexandria. Socrates ascribes to Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, the introduction of the alternate-song (between different congregational choirs). More credible is Theodoret’s statement that the Antiochean monks Flavian and Diodorus had imported it, about A.D. 260, from the National Syrian into the Greek-Syrian church.—Continuation § 59, 4, 5.
§ 37. Feasts and Festival Seasons.102
Sunday as a day of joy was distinguished by standing at prayer, instead of kneeling as at other times, and also by the prohibition of fasting. Of the other days of the week, Wednesday, the day on which the Jewish Council decided to put Jesus to death and Judas had betrayed him, and Friday, as the day of his death, were consecrated to the memory of Christ’s suffering; hence the Feria quarta et sexta were celebrated as watch days, dies stationum, after the symbolism of the Militia christiana (Eph. vi. 10–17), by public meetings of the congregation. As days of the Passion, penitence and fasting they formed a striking contrast to the Sunday. The chief days of the Christian festival calendar, which afterwards found richer and more complete expression in the cycle of the Christian year, were thus at first associated with the weekly cycle. A long continued and wide spread controversy as to the proper time for celebrating Easter arose during the 2nd century.
§ 37.1. The Festivals of the Christian Year.—The thought of Christ’s suffering and death was so powerful and engrossing that even in the weekly cycle one day had not been sufficient. Still less could one festal day in the yearly cycle satisfy the hearts of believers. Hence a long preparation for the festival was arranged, which was finally fixed at forty days, and was designated the season Quadragesima