CNT-14 THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN ON THE CANON.

THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN ON THE CANON.

He was one of the most learned and eminent of the early writers. He was born of Christian parents at Alex­andria, about AD 185, and died at Caesarea or Tyre, about AD 254, after a life devoted to Scriptural studies and literary pursuits. Living as he did within a century of the time of the apostles, and inheriting the traditions of his parents, whose recollections were still earlier; hav­ing access to libraries and ancient authorities, and being himself a voluminous critic and author, sometimes em­ploying nearly a score of ready writers and copyists in his own literary labors;—the testimony of such a man, as to what books were then received as authoritative by the Christian church, must be especially weighty and conclu­sive. In his Sermon, or Homily, on Luk 1:1, “Foras­much as many have taken in hand,” etc., we find the following:

“The phrase have taken in hand implies a tacit accu­sation of those who rushed hastily to write Gospels with­out the grace of the Holy Spirit. Matthew and Mark and Luke and John did not take in hand to write their Gospels, but wrote them being full of the Holy Spirit.... The Church has four Gospels, heresies very many, of which one is entitled ‘According to the Egyptians,’ an­other, ’According to the Twelve Apostles’… Four Gos­pels only are approved, out of which we must bring forth points of teaching under the person of our Lord and Savior. There is, I know, a Gospel which is called ‘According to Thomas,’ and [one] ‘According to Mat­thias;’ and there are many others which we read, lest we should seem to be unacquainted with any point, for the sake of those who think they possess some valuable knowl­edge if they are acquainted with them. But in all these we approve nothing else but that which the Church ap­proves, that is, four Gospels only as proper to be received.”

Again, in his Homily onJos 7:1, Origen, in his characteristic style of allegory, makes the falling of the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpets of the priests an illustration of the effects of the preaching of the word of God, and thus incidentally furnishes us a list of the New Testament books:

“So, too, our Lord, whose advent was typified by the son of Nun, when he came, sent his apostles as priests bear­ing well-wrought trumpets. Matthew first sounded the priestly trumpet in his Gospel. Mark, also Luke and John, each gave forth a strain on their priestly trumpets. Peter moreover sounds loudly on the twofold trumpet of his Epistles; and so also James and Jude. Still the number is incomplete, and John gives forth the trumpet-sound in his Epistles and Apocalypse; and Luke while describing the Acts of the Apostles. Lastly, however, came he who said, ‘I think that God hath set forth us apostles last of all,’ and thundering on the fourteen trumpets of his Epis­tles, threw down even to the ground the walls of Jericho, that is to say all the instruments of idolatry and the doc­trines of the philosophers.” But we go back much earlier than the period of Origen and examine what appears to be the most ancient catalogue of the New Testament books yet discovered, an anony­mous document known as The Muratorian Fragment.