CNT-15 THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT ON THE CANON.

THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT ON THE CANON. In 1740 L.A. Muratori published at Milan, in his Antiquitates Italicae, a manuscript from the Ambrosian Library, more than a thousand years old, which originally belonged in the great monastery founded at Bobbio in northern Italy by Columban, of Ireland, about AD 612. The beginning and end of the manuscript are missing, and it shows marks of ignorant translation and transcription; but yet its contents are of great importance. The date of this venerable document is fixed by the following passage, in which, after he has described the various apostolic writ­ings, he refers to the Apocryphal book called The Shep­herd, and says:

“Hermas wrote the Shepherd quite recently in our own times, while Pius, his brother was occupying the chair of the Roman Church. And, therefore, it ought indeed to be read: but it should never be used in the church pub­licly, neither among the number of the prophets, nor among that of the apostles, to the end of time.” This incidental remark defines the date of this writing as about the time of the episcopate of Pius, bishop of Rome, which commenced about AD 140, and concluded about the middle of the second century. As this writer speaks of the episcopate of Pius as being in his own time, it is evident that this manuscript could not have been writ­ten later than about AD 175, and that the recollections of its author may have extended back to within twenty-five years or less of the Apostles’ days. This then seems to be THE EARLIEST LIST OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS. The fragment commences abruptly, with a part of a sentence which doubtless referred to the Gospel by Mark, as it goes on to state that the Gospel of Luke stands third in order, having been written by ’Luke the physician,’ the companion of Paul, who, not being himself an eye-wit­ness, based his narrative on such information as he could obtain, beginning from the birth of John the Baptist. The fourth place is given to the Gospel of John, a disciple of the Lord; and the occasion of its com­position is thus related: “At the entreaties of his fellow-disciples and his bishops, John said, ‘Fast with me for three days from this time, and whatsoever shall be revealed to each of us let us relate it to one another.’ On the same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John should relate all things in his own name, aided by the revision of all... What wonder is it, then, that John brings forward each detail with so much emphasis even in his Epistles, saying of himself, ‘What we have seen with our eyes, heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have we written unto you!’ For so he professes that he was not only an eye-witness, but also a hearer, and moreover a historian of all the wonderful works of the Lord in order.” The writer also speaks of the record by Luke “of those Acts of all the apostles, which fell under his own notice;” then follow thirteen Epistles of Paul, including all but the Epistle to the Hebrews. He also says, “Moreover there is in circulation an Epistle to the Laodiceans, another to the Alexandrians, forged under the name of Paul, bearing on the heresy of Marcion, and several others which cannot be received into the Catholic church; for gall ought not to be mixed with honey. The Epistle of Jude, however, and two Epistles bearing the name of John, are received in the Catholic [church] (or are reckoned among the Catho­lic [epistles]); and the book of Wisdom, written by the friends of Solomon, in his honor. We receive, moreover, the Apocalypse of John, and Peter only, which (latter) some of our body will not have read in the church. The omission of all mention of the Epistle to the Hebrews may be due to the fragmentary condition of the manuscript, which begins and ends abruptly, hence the writer’s statements concerning Hebrews may be lost; the same may be said of the Epistle of James and Second Peter. With these exceptions this writer gives an ac­count of the whole New Testament as it now stands, with the addition only of a single book, the Apocalypse of Peter which the writer declared some would not allow to be read in the church, and which has since been uni­versally rejected as spurious.

Here, then, we have an author writing within seventy years of the death of the apostle John, and while men were yet living who had seen the beloved disciple; giving a list of the books which they received as apostolic and author­itative;—admitting that one, the Revelation of Peter, was in dispute, referring to others which were forgeries, and could no more be reckoned with the genuine books than gall could be mixed with honey; and yet his list, frag­mentary as it is, contains evidently the entire New Testa­ment as we have it, with the exception of the Epistle of James, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and Second Peter; and some of these may have been mentioned in the missing portion of the manuscript.

Hence we see that the New Testament, as a whole, dates back to the generation of the apostles. And if these three omitted Epistles were to be left entirely out of the account, what doctrine of the Bible should we lose, or what necessary fact of divine revelation would escape us?

Such, in brief, are the results of years of study, as em­bodied in numerous volumes devoted to the discussion of this subject; and the more the matter is examined, the more irresistible is the evidence that we have in the New Testament the genuine, authentic, authoritative writings of the apostles of the Lamb.