The Scriptures of the Second Order of the Canon — Section Two

OF THE DIVINE SCRIPTURES AND WRITERS of both Testaments belonging to the second order of the Canon — SECTIO SECUNDA

SINCE in the first Section of this work we have enumerated the Protocanonical authors of the books of both Testaments, which pertain to the First order of the sacred canon, it follows that in this second Section we should briefly designate the Deuterocanonical writers of the books as well of the old as of the new Testament, which are placed in the Second order of the same canon: beginning from the books of the old Testament, concerning which the orthodox fathers of old entertained doubts, and which the Hebrews — the book of Esther excepted — do not receive among the divine writings. Of these the index is this:

ESTHER

THE BOOK of ESTHER אסתר, as Isidore supposes, Esdras wrote. ¹ Eusebius in the Chronicles judges that the author of this book was later than Esdras, and that the history which is described in this book happened after the death of Esdras: because it is not likely that Esdras would have passed over so

celebrated a history, if it had happened in his own times. Philo the Jew, in the volume of his chronography, asserts that the writer of this book was Joachim, Pontiff of the Hebrews, son of Jesus the high Priest: who — Mardochaeus the Hebrew, the adoptive father of Esther herself, exhorting him by letters — committed this history to writing; and instituted the solemnity of פורים Purim, that is, of Lots, in memory of the Judaic liberation, which the present history commemorates to have been wrought by the counsel and prayers of Esther. ² Very many of the Latins hand down that this volume was written in Hebrew by Mardochaeus; whom those words of the ninth chapter of this book also seem to favor: And so Mardochaeus WROTE all things, and, comprehending them in letters, sent them to the Jews; and a little below, And the Jews RECEIVED the things which Mardochaeus had commanded by letters to be done… and all the deeds which are contained in the volume of the epistle — that is, of this book. ³ Now Mardochaeus wrote all the things which are had from the beginning of the book down to those words which are set at the beginning of the tenth chapter in this manner: Mardochaeus, of Judaic race, was second from king Assuerus, and great among the Jews, and acceptable to the people of his brethren, seeking good things for his people, and speaking the things which pertained to the peace of his seed. ⁴ But the remaining six chapters, to the end of the book, were added by an uncertain Greek writer out of diverse histories, but chiefly out of the eleventh book of the Antiquities of Josephus — from which the copy of the letters of Aman, and the copy of the epistle of king Artaxerses, which are recited in the thirteenth and sixteenth chapters of this book, were taken word for word. The beginning of this book, according to the Hebraic verity and our vulgate edition, stands thus: In the days of king Assuerus, who reigned from India even unto Aethiopia, etc. But in the [Greek] vulgate translation, thus: ἔτους δευτέρου βασιλεύοντος ἀρταξέρξου τοῦ μεγάλου, τῇ μιᾷ τοῦ νισὰν, ἐνύπνιον εἶδε μαρδοχαῖος — that is, In the second year, Artaxerxes the great reigning, on the first day of the month Nisan, Mardochaeus saw a dream, etc. — which things in our codices are contained in the whole eleventh and twelfth chapters; after which are straightway subjoined the words already set down, In the days of king Assuerus, who reigned from India. Now the end of this book among the Hebrews is concluded in that sentence, Seeking good things for his people, and speaking the things which pertained to the peace of his seed — which sentence in our exemplars is the beginning of the tenth chapter. But among the Greeks this book receives its end where the eleventh chapter of our edition begins — namely in those words, In the fourth year, Ptolemaeus and Cleopatra reigning, etc., as far as, son, in Jerusalem. Our codices, however, interpose six chapters from this place to the end of the volume. And it came to pass that, on account of these rags of appendices, inserted here and there by certain writers ████ [a word inked out by the censor], this book — although Hebrew, and received by the Hebrews — very late received canonical authority among the Christians. [printed margin: Why the book of Esther was for a time not received by all catholics (Cur aliquando liber Esther non fuerit ab omnibus catholicis receptus). MS note in ink: the whole book is canonical according to the Tridentine synod (integer liber est canonicus iuxta Tridentinam).] Whence neither Melito, bishop of Sardis, nor Gregory Nazianzen enumerated it among the sacred books; and Athanasius cast it out by name from the catalog of the canonical volumes as spurious [nothum]. At last the third council of Carthage computed it among the sacred volumes. Mardochaeus was famous together with Joachim, son of Jesus the high priest, under Artaxerses, king of the Persians and Medes; ⁵ and he died in the 198th year of his life, about the year from the founding of the world ter 1600 [thus mixed in the print; i.e. three thousand six hundred].

TOBIAS

TOBIA טוביה — which sounds among us the Goodness of the lord — son of Tobiel, grandson of Hannanael, of the tribe and city of Nephthalim, which is in Galilaea toward the western border (as is had from his history, which goes about, put forth in the Hebrew speech): at the command of Raphael the Archangel, who cured him of his blindness, he wrote his book in the Chaldaic tongue; ⁶ in which he digested the calamities and the divine consolations which he, a captive with all his family, experienced in Ninive, in the time of Salmanasser, king of the Assyrians — who, in the ninth year of Osee, king of Israel, and the sixth year of Ezechias, king of Juda, Samaria being taken, carried Israel over to the Assyrians, and placed them in Hayla and in Abor, beside the river Goza, in the cities of the Medes. The divine Jerome translated this book out of the Chaldee speech into Latin, with the labor of a single day; and the third council of Carthage — at which Augustine was present, about the year of the Lord CCCCX — received it into the canon of the holy scriptures: although long before, the most holy pontiffs Clemens the first, Roman, Anacletus, and Alexander had used its testimonies for the proving of the dogmas of our faith. We saw in former years, under the name of TOBIAS, a book written in Hebrew letters and tongue, brought from the city of Constantinople; ⁷ in which Tobias himself, speaking of himself in the first person from the beginning to the end of the volume, narrated his own history; and its beginning was of this fashion: זה ספר טובי בן טוביאל בן חננאל בן אריאל בן נכאל בן עשאל — that is, This is the book of Tobi, son of Tobiel, son of Hannanael, son of Ariel, son of Gabeel, son of Hasael, etc. Which when we had read through, we found that many things abound in it which are not in our canonical book of Tobias, and that far more are lacking in it which are had among us. This hebrew book seems to have some similitude with the greek volume of Tobias, in which Tobias, speaking of himself in direct narration, is brought in through many chapters; and the exordium of the history has the same words, written in this manner: Βίβλος λόγων Τωβὶτ τοῦ Τωβιήλ, τοῦ Ἀνανιήλ, τοῦ Ἀριήλ, τοῦ Γαβαήλ, τοῦ Ἀσαήλ — that is, The Book of the words of Tobi, son of Tobiel, etc., as above. Tobias lived, according to the vulgate edition of the Latins, CII years; but according to the translation of the Greeks, CLVIII years; and he died and was buried honorably in Ninive, about the year from the founding of the world ter 1370 [thus mixed in the print; i.e. three thousand three hundred and seventy]. In his volume, the things which are read concerning his death and burial are believed to have been superadded by Tobias the son of Tobias, and are not had in the hebrew exemplar. The Greeks divide the present book into nine hundred and three chapters [nongenta tria — so printed; perhaps for nonaginta tria, ninety-three], the Latins into fourteen.

JUDITH

JEHUDITH יהודית: ⁸ Philo the Jew, in the volume of his Chronography, asserts that this book was written by Joachim the high priest, son of Jesus the high priest; who described in it the victory of Jehudith the Bethulian, of the tribe of Ruben — a rare and incomparable woman — and the liberation of the besieged fatherland, which was wrought through her in the 13th year of Artaxerses the first; who in the divine scripture is surnamed Assuerus, and Nabuchodonosor; and who with his colleague Cyrus first held empire over the Medes, Persians, and Assyrians

imperium, as is read in the first book of Esdras and in the volume of Daniel. This book Jerome made Latin from the Chaldee; and — it having been put forth before in greek by an uncertain interpreter — the sacrosanct synod of Nicaea had adopted it into the canon of the holy scriptures, about the year of the Lord CCCXXIIII. Judith lived, as Philo witnesses, a hundred and twenty-five years: of which she persevered for a hundred and five years, after the fatherland had been liberated by her, in holy widowhood, departing from human affairs about the year from the founding of the world ter 1560 [thus mixed in the print; i.e. three thousand five hundred and sixty]. Joachim the priest, the writer of her history, is believed to have survived her by a little. The beginning of this book, which among us is, Now Arphaxat, king of the Medes, had subjugated many nations to his empire, in the vulgate codices of the Greeks begins in these words: ἔτους δωδεκάτου τῆς βασιλείας Ναβουχοδονόσορ ὃς ἐβασίλευσεν ἐν νινευῆ τῇ πόλει τῇ μεγάλῃ, ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἀρφαξὰδ, ὃς ἐβασίλευσεν μήδων ἐν ἐκβατάνοις — that is, In the twelfth year of the reign of Nabuchodonosor, who reigned in Assyria in Ninive the great city, in the days of Arphaxad, who reigned over the Medes in Ecbatana, etc. Many things also are had scattered here and there in the same Greek exemplars which our vulgate edition does not acknowledge. The Greeks cut this book into sixty chapters, the Latins into sixteen.

BARUCH

BARUCH ברוך, that is, Blessed, prophet, son of Neerias, grandson of Maasias, ⁹ great-grandson of Sedechias, great-great-grandson of Sedei, disciple and scribe of Jeremias the prophet: when after the overthrow of the city he had come into Babylon from Aegypt — whither he had been carried off with Jeremias — he wrote in the Hebrew speech a prophetic book, in which he bewept the calamity of the Chaldaic captivity and the causes of that same calamity — namely the incredulity and ingratitude of the Judaic people — with vaticinations intermixed concerning the happy return of the Jews into their fatherland, concerning the promise of the New testament, and concerning the coming of the son of God into flesh. Which book when he himself had read — the whole people which was captive in Babylon hearing and weeping — before king Jeconias and his nobles, it pleased them all that the book, together with moneys, should be sent to Jerusalem (or rather to the ruins of Jerusalem, already burnt) to Joachim, son of Helchias, and to the other priests who remained in the city from the remnants of the captivity: that with assiduous prayers they might supplicate God for the salvation of the captive people and for the safety of king Nabuchodonosor. The book was put forth, read, and sent to Jerusalem in the fifth year of the devastation of Jerusalem and of the Babylonian captivity, in the first month, on the seventh day of the month. This book the council of Florence and the council of Trent enumerate in the canonical catalog; Cyril likewise, bishop of Jerusalem, a thousand and two hundred years ago, reviews the same among the divine writings of irrefragable authority, in the fourth of the orations which are had among his catecheses. Hilary, in the fourth book Of the trinity, cites the testimonies of this book under the name of Jeremias ¹⁰ — which others of the ancients also are wont to do, attributing, namely, what is the disciple’s to the master.

THE SECOND EPISTLE OF JEREMIAS (IEREMIAE PISTOLA II. [so printed, for EPISTOLA])

THE LITTLE BOOK — whether admonition, or second epistle, of Jeremias the prophet — which is annexed to the volume of Baruch in the vulgate edition, Jeremias dictated, Baruch his scribe taking it down; and after the overthrow of the city he delivered it to the people, soon to be led away into captivity by the Chaldaeans: that by this writing he might admonish them, lest, having entered Babylon, when they should see the golden gods of that region, they should desert the worship of their own God and adore the idols of the Chaldaeans. The author of the second book of the Maccabees remembers this writing, in chapter 2, in these words: ¹¹ IT IS FOUND in the descriptions of Jeremias the prophet, that he commanded those who were transmigrating to take fire; and he gave them a law, that they should not forget the precepts of the lord, and that they should not err in their minds, seeing the idols of gold and silver, and their other ornaments. This also is numbered among the other Testamentary writings.

THE WISDOM OF SALOMON

THAT the author of the BOOK of Wisdom was Salomon is established from those things which the author himself wrote of himself in the ninth chapter of this volume, saying: BUT THOU, O LORD, hast chosen me to be king of thy people, and judge of thy sons and daughters; and hast said that I should build a temple in thy holy mount, and an altar in the city, a similitude of thy tabernacle which thou preparedst from the beginning. It appears also that the sentences of this book, although founded by Solomon, were nevertheless collected by a greek writer, and written down in greek in this volume. ¹² Augustine at one time judged the writer of this book to have been Jesus, son of Syrach; which afterward, inquiring more diligently, he retracted in the second volume of the Retractations. There are those who think the work to be of Philo the Jew the younger, a man most celebrated for greek eloquence, who discharged an embassy on behalf of his nation to the emperor Caius. Others judge it to be of the other, the elder Philo the Jew, who flourished almost a hundred and seventy years before the advent of our Saviour, in the times of Onias the high priest. With whose opinions not only do the aforesaid words of this volume seem to conflict, but Josephus himself also most openly protests, when in the first book against Apion he reviews the elder Philo not among the Jews, but among the ethnic historians — and those especially who never read the sacred books. But of this matter it shall be spoken by us more fully, God approving, in the eighth book of this work. The third synod of Carthage, the great council of the Lateran, and Pope Gelasius fitted it into the order of the canonical volumes.

ECCLESIASTICUS

THE WISDOM of Syrach is inscribed Ecclesiasticus for this cause, ¹³ because, as Augustine says, it merited to be received into the Authority of the Church, and to be numbered among the prophetic books; but by the Greeks it has been called Πανάρετος [All-virtuous], from every virtue which is contained in it. This book Jesus, son of Syrach, of Jerusalem, wrote in the Hebrew tongue; and Jerome testifies, in the preface of the Proverbs to Chromatius, that he found it written in Hebrew. But his grandson, himself also called Jesus — and, as Damascene hands down in the fourth book of the Orthodox faith, having Syrach for father — turned the volume from hebrew into Greek. Isidore, in the sixth book of the Etymologies, judges that the interpreter of this book, who in the preface [calls himself] the grandson of Jesus,

nominates himself the grandson of Jesus the high priest, lived in the times of Aggaeus and Zacharias — which indeed seems absurd to very many, because three hundred years intervened between this man and that. For the interpreter of the present work, the grandson of Jesus, was famous when Ptolemaeus Euergetes was reigning as king of AEgypt, in the year from the founding of the world three thousand seven hundred. The third Council of Carthage, in chapter 43, received the present volume among the canonical writings — yet under the name and title of SALOMON; ¹⁴ inscribing it so, perhaps, either because, as Augustine noted in the book Of the city of God, the custom of those times prevailed that it should be called by the appellation of Salomon; or because the volume itself either had been collected out of the sentences of Salomon, or at least seemed not unworthy of Salomon. Subscribing to the decree of this council, the most blessed pontiffs Innocent and Gelasius inserted the same book among the canonical scriptures.

THE SUPPLEMENT OF DANIEL

THE SUPPLEMENT of the book of Daniel — which is not had in the Hebrew, but was transcribed by Jerome out of the Greek edition of Theodotion — contains four things: namely the prayer of Azarias and the hymn of the three children (which among us are read in the third chapter of Daniel); the history of Susanna (which the Greeks set at the beginning of the book of Daniel); and the narration of Bel, placed at the end of the volume as well in our codices as in the Greek. Concerning these there was of old a huge altercation among the highest nobles of the church. ¹⁵ Athanasius, in the Synopsis, teaches that this whole appendix was written by the prophet Daniel himself, and received among the canonical scriptures. Origen, in tractate 31 on Matthew, witnesses that the same was of old retained in the church with the highest veneration. Eusebius and the younger Apollinarius judge that this matter pertains not at all to the prophecy and deeds of Daniel the prophet, of the tribe of Juda, which are had in the sacred canon; but that it is part of a certain history or prophecy which Abakuk, son of Juda, of the tribe of Levi — a different man from him who is numbered among the twelve prophets — wrote concerning another certain Daniel, a priest, son of Abda. Which thing they confirm from the title and beginning of the history of Bel, which among the seventy interpreters is set down in the manner that follows: Προφητεία τοῦ ἀββακοὺμ υἱοῦ τοῦ Ἰουδᾶ, ἐκ φυλῆς Λευί — that is, The Prophecy of Abbakum, son of Juda, of the tribe of Levi. After which title the exordium of the book begins thus: ἄνθρωπός τις ἦν ἱερεὺς ὀνόματι Δανιήλ, υἱὸς τοῦ Ἀβδᾶ, συμπότης τοῦ Βασιλέως τῆς Βαβυλῶνος — that is, There was a certain man, a priest, by name Daniel, son of Abda, table-companion of the King of Babylon. Julius Africanus conjectures this part to be the fabrication of a Greek writer, on account of the words which are contained in the history of Susanna, where Daniel answers the elders — ἀπὸ τοῦ σχίνου σχίσαι, ἀπὸ τοῦ πρίνου πρίσαι [from the mastick tree, to cleave; from the holm oak, to saw] — which etymologies cohere so with the Greek speech that they cannot be accommodated to the Hebrew tongue. ¹⁶ But of this kind of controversy we have discoursed enough and more in the 5th and 8th books of this work. The Catholic Church — from the times of the Apostles even until now chanting daily the hymn of the three children among the divine praises, and every year repeating the prayer of Azarias, together with the history of Susanna and of Bel and of Abakuk the dish-bearer, in the sacred mysteries of the forty-day fast — has won canonical authority for this appendix. There have also been feigned certain things, written under the title of DANIEL, to be reviewed in the following volume.

THE FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF THE MACCABEES

THE HISTORY of the Maccabees — whom the Jews call חשמונאי Chasmonai, that is, born of Asamoneus — comprehended in two volumes, seems to have been written by three diverse authors. ¹⁷ That its first book is of a Hebrew author, and written in Hebrew, the very phrase indicates; and Jerome, in the Preface of Kings, confirms that he read it written in the Hebraic tongue. The second book — which, its first chapter and half of the second being removed, begins thus: Of Judas Machabaeus, and his brethren, etc. — a Greek writer, from thence to the end of the whole Work, contracted into an epitome out of the five books of Jason of Cyrene; which he himself confesses in the Preface, saying: The five books comprehended BY Jason of Cyrene we have attempted to abridge in one volume. ¹⁸ This abbreviator Jerome, in the second volume against the Pelagians, judges to have been Josephus, son of Mathathias; but Honorius, presbyter of Autun, in the book Of the Ecclesiastical writers, thinks it was Philo the Jew. The Third part of this history — which is compressed into the two epinician [victory] epistles from the beginning of the second book to the middle of its second chapter — the Senate of Jerusalem wrote: one of these epistles being sent to the Jews inhabiting Aegypt, the other to Aristobulus, preceptor of the King of Aegypt. And these, since they touch upon the victories described in the two books of the Maccabees, were deservedly placed by the Fathers after the end of the former volume and before the beginning of the latter, as looking equally to both. That these books, as well the first as the second, were received by the Church of God into the sacred Canon a thousand two hundred years ago, ¹⁹ Augustine asserts in the 18th [book] Of the City of God: The books OF THE MACCABEES, he says, not the Jews, but the Church holds for Canonical, on account of the vehement and wondrous passions of certain Martyrs, who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even unto death, and endured evils most grievous and horrible. Thus he. Josephus nevertheless, at the close of the book which he inscribed Of the Maccabees, most constantly affirms that the martyrdoms of the old man Elezar, and of the seven sons with their mother, comprehended in the second volume of this history, are held even among the Hebrews among the sacred letters. Now the first book of the Maccabees contains the wars which, against the impious nations, ²⁰ on behalf of the people of God, four most valiant captains of the Hebrews — namely Mathathias the priest, great-grandson of Asamoneus the priest, and thereupon his three sons, Judas, Jonathas, and Simon, one after the other — waged through two-and-forty continuous years: namely from the year of the founded world ter 1788 [thus mixed in the print; i.e. three thousand seven hundred eighty-eight] — which is the year CLXXIV before Christ, and the CXXXVII of the kingdom of the Greeks noted at the beginning of this book — down to the year from the founding of the world three thousand eight hundred and thirty, which is the year before the birth of Christ 132, and 178 of the kingdom of the Greeks: in which year Simon was slain by the fraud of Ptolemaeus; in whose death the whole canonical history of the Maccabees is concluded. For the history which is narrated in the latter book ²¹ is almost nothing else than a broader and fuller repetition of the things done by Judas Maccabaeus under the two Antiochi, father and son, down to the first year of king Demetrius and the slaughter of Nicanor — which are narrated in the first seven chapters of the first of Maccabees. But since these two volumes have taken their title from the illustrious surname of the Maccabees, it is pleasing here briefly to subjoin what I myself have read concerning the origin of this surname in the commentaries of Rabbi Isaac ben Schola; it stands thus: JUDAS, son of Mathathias, when he was about to enter battle against Antiochus, the enemy of the Jews, gave to his soldiers, as a watchword of war, that sentence of Moses in Exodus, chapter 15: מי כמוך באלים יהוה Mi chemocha baelim Iehoua — that is, Who is like unto thee among the strong, O lord? — and he commanded it to be inscribed on the standards of each of the ranks, as an omen of certain victory, by these four letters מכבי, that is, M, C, B, I; which are the initials of the four words aforesaid, and signify their sense entire. ²² But when the common run of the soldiers had begun, for brevity’s sake, to pronounce these four letters not according to the entire sentence which they render, but according to the single word only which first results from their combination — namely MACCABAEI — little by little the military custom prevailed, that the author of this watchword, Judas, and their posterity, should be called by the surname of MACCABEES.

THE SUM, therefore, of all the books of the old testament embraces the number of three thousand eight hundred and thirty years, that is: ²³

FROM the beginning of Genesis to the death of Moses, described at the end of the Pentateuch, two thousand four hundred ninety-two years.

THENCE to the construction of the first temple, which is had in the third of Kings, chapter six, four hundred and forty years.

HENCE to the restoration of the second temple, which is read in the volume of Esdras, 125 years [so printed].

THENCE to Christ, according to the supputation of the weeks of Daniel, there are four hundred and ninety years: that is, from the restoration of the second temple to the death of Simon — which imposes the end upon the canonical writings of the ancient testament — three hundred fifty-eight years; and from the death of Simon to Christ, 132 years.

THERE ARE therefore, from the founding of the world to Christ, three thousand nine hundred sixty-two years. ²⁴

OF THE SECOND ORDER of the Scriptures of the new Testament

THUS FAR of the Second order of the scriptures of the old testament, which the Jews reject; there follows now the Second order of the scriptures of the new testament, concerning which there was at one time controversy among orthodox Christians. Their catalog is this:

THE END OF MARK

THE END of MARK — that is, the last chapter of his gospel, namely from that place, AND JESUS RISING EARLY THE FIRST DAY OF THE SABBATH, ²⁵ to the end, in which the apparition of Christ to Magdalen and his ascension into heaven is narrated — as appears from the monuments of the ancients, was not straightway from the beginning of the nascent church received among the canonical scriptures. ²⁶ Jerome, in the third question to Hedibia, dissolving the contradiction which seems to be between Matthew, saying that Christ rose on the evening of the sabbath, and Mark, saying that Jesus rose early on the first day of the sabbath, writes thus: OF THIS question the solution is twofold: for either we do not receive the testimony of Mark, which is carried in but few gospels — almost all the books of Greece not having this chapter at the end — especially since it seems to narrate things diverse and contrary to the other Evangelists; or this must be answered: that both speak true — Matthew showing when the lord rose, on the evening of the sabbath; but Mark, when Magdalen saw him. Thus Jerome; to whom Euthymius subscribing, in the explanation of the same chapter, immediately after those words of Mark, THEY SAID NOTHING TO ANY MAN, FOR THEY WERE AFRAID, etc., speaks thus: CERTAIN of the interpreters assert that in this place the gospel of Mark was completed, and that the things which follow are a more recent addition; yet it behooves to explain this also, since it is in no way repugnant to the truth. I judge that this last chapter was at one time suspect to some of the fathers on account of certain apocryphal periods, rashly inserted by an uncertain author; of which Jerome, in the second dialogue against the Pelagians, cites certain words in this manner: IN CERTAIN exemplars, he says, and chiefly in the Greek codices, according to Mark, at the end of his gospel it is written: AFTERWARD, when the eleven had sat down at table, JESUS appeared to them, and upbraided their incredulity and the hardness of their heart, because they had not believed those who had seen him rising again. And they made satisfaction, saying: THIS AGE is the substance of iniquity and incredulity, which suffereth not, through the unclean spirits, the true virtue of God to be apprehended; therefore even now reveal thy justice, etc. Which addition indeed — because it smacks of the dogma of the Manichaeans — has deservedly been cut away and cast out of all exemplars, as well Greek as Latin. Augustine, in the third book Of the consent of the Evangelists, receives the present chapter from beginning to end with the same veneration as the whole gospel of Mark, ²⁷ and under the name of Mark the Evangelist harmonizes this same with the sayings of the other Evangelists. Beda, near the end of the fourth book of the commentaries on Mark, [says] this recognizing this last chapter, by the authority of the whole church, as the proper and genuine [chapter] of Mark the Evangelist, and expounding it, says these things: IT IS TO BE NOTED that, by as much as Mark began his gospel later than the rest, by so much he stretched forward to longer times in his writing: for, writing nothing of the nativity of the lord himself or of his precursor, nor of his infancy or boyhood, he began from the beginning of the evangelical preaching, which was done by John, and arrived in his narration at that time in which the Apostles disseminated that same word of the gospel through the whole world by their preaching. To these fathers the whole chorus of the Latin fathers, before and after them, assents without any hesitation; and the universal church of Christians every year, in the feasts of the lord’s assumption [ascension], pronounces and chants with so open a voice that it is Mark the Evangelist’s, that of its author as well as of its authority no one but an impious man can doubt. ²⁸

THE HISTORY OF THE BLOODY SWEAT OF CHRIST, and of the Angel’s consolation to him, from the Gospel of Luke, Chap. XXII

THE HISTORY of the bloody sweat of Christ, and of the Angelic consolation to him, which Lucas describes in the 22nd chapter of his gospel, is placed in the second order of the canonical scriptures for this reason: that some of the ancients at one time entertained doubts about it, ²⁹ and that many very old codices of the catholics did not have it — as Hilary testifies in the tenth [book] Of the trinity, in these words: NOR indeed must we be ignorant that in very many codices, both greek and Latin, nothing is found written either of the coming of the Angel or of the bloody sweat of Christ. For those in doubt, therefore, whether these things in the various books are either lacking or superfluous, this is left uncertain to us because of the diversity of the books. This Jerome also, in the second dialogue against the Pelagians, seems to indicate, saying thus: IN certain codices, as well greek as Latin, it is found, Luke writing: There appeared to him an Angel from heaven, comforting him — no doubt, the lord Saviour. By which form of speech the divine Jerome intimates that not all codices had those words. But I suspect that this history was of old rejected by certain orthodox men with a zeal pious indeed, but simple, ³⁰ because it seemed to favor the Arrian heretics, who from this and testimonies like it built up [the claim] that the son of God is not in the same nature of the impassible God with the father. For another testimony also, concerning the weeping of Christ, similar to this one, was for this cause removed from the gospel of Luke by some catholics — Epiphanius plainly shows it in the book Anchoratus, writing these things: Christ WEPT also, as it is had in the Gospel according to Luke in the uncorrupted exemplars; and holy Irenaeus uses that testimony in the work against heresies, against those who say that Christ appeared in appearance [only]. But certain of the orthodox took the word away, fearing, and not understanding its end and force and strength. For Christ, set in anxiety, sweated; and his sweat was as drops of blood; and an Angel was seen comforting him. Thus Epiphanius. It is established that this history — which Dionysius the Areopagite cites and approves in the book Of the celestial hierarchy — was received into the canon of the sacred volumes by the common consent of the whole Church; and it was provided by ecclesiastical sanction, under pain of anathema, that no one should dare to contemn its authority. Whence also among the other ecclesiastical anathematisms which are enumerated by Athanasius in the sixth volume Of the beatitude of the son of God, this one too is reviewed: IF ANY MAN SHALL DENY THAT THE TRUE MAN, WHOM THE SON OF GOD ASSUMED, SWEATED BLOOD — ANATHEMA TO HIM.

THE FORMER PART OF THE EIGHTH CHAPTER of the Gospel according to John

THE HISTORY of the WOMAN taken in adultery, ³¹ which is had in the eighth chapter of John, the Church received into the canon many years after the Gospel of John, and declared it to be part of the Gospel of John — although before, it was not extant in many exemplars of the Greeks and Latins; as Jerome writes in the second volume against the Pelagians, and as Euthymius, in the commentaries on the same chapter, has left witnessed in these words: But it BEHOOVES TO KNOW that the things which are had from this place up to that where it is said, AGAIN THEREFORE JESUS SPOKE TO THEM, SAYING, I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD ³², in the more exact exemplars either are not found, or are pierced through with the obelus, because they seem illegitimate and added; and the argument for this is, that no one has interpreted them. To us nevertheless the mind is to declare these things also, because they are not without utility — as also the Chapter concerning the woman taken in adultery, which is placed among them. Thus he. But certain of the more ancient judge that the present history was translated hither out of a certain Apocryphal Gospel according to the Hebrews, in which Eusebius, in the third [book] of the Ecclesiastical history, indicates from the testimony of Papias that such a narration was described, in these words: PAPIAS at the same time also subjoins a certain history of an adulterous woman, who was accused by the Jews before the lord; and this parable is had, written in the Gospel which is called ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS. But the sacrosanct Church — every year, in the time of the Quadragesimal fast, chanting this history in the sacred mysteries under the name of the Gospel — has conferred on it an authority equal with the other chapters of the same Gospel; and the divine Ambrose, in the second epistle to Studius, asserts that this same [history] was always celebrated in the Church, and chanted by the mouth of all the faithful as an evangelical writing of John.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

THE EPISTLE to the Hebrews effects two things chiefly. ³³ First, against certain hebrews lately converted, who thought the observance of the law was to be mingled with the Gospel, it shows that from the advent of Christ the shadows of the Mosaic law have ceased, and that in place of the old testament a new and far more excellent one has succeeded. Then it consoles those who, for the faith of Christ, were bearing persecutions and various afflictions

perseveringly bearing. Concerning this epistle — its author as much as its authority — there was of old no light controversy between the Greek and Latin fathers ³⁴: very many of the Latins asserting that it is not Paul’s, and for this cause not receiving it among the canonical scriptures; as appears from the writings of Jerome, who, making mention of its authority on the sixth chapter of Esaias, says thus: PAULUS, in the epistle to the Hebrews, which the Latin custom does not receive, etc.; and on chapter 8 of Esaias: The BLESSED Apostle, in the epistle which is written to the Hebrews, although the Latin custom does not receive it among the canonical scriptures, etc. Of the author also the same Jerome, in the catalog of illustrious men, writes thus: The EPISTLE which is carried to the Hebrews is believed even to this day not to be Paul’s, on account of the distance of its style and speech; but either Barnabas’s, according to Tertullian, or Luke the Evangelist’s, according to some, or even Clement’s, of the city of Rome. Yet it must be known that the most ancient nobles of the church, of the Latin as well as of the Greek church, venerated this epistle as a writing of Paul — even as Jerome, in the epistle to Dardanus, confesses in these words ³⁵: The EPISTLE which is inscribed to the Hebrews is received as [the epistle] of Paul the Apostle, not only by the churches of the Orient, but by all writers of the Greek speech — although very many judge it to be either Barnabas’s or Clement’s. But it matters nothing whose it is, since it is of an ecclesiastical man, and is celebrated daily in the reading of the churches. And if the custom of the Latins does not receive it — neither indeed do the churches of the Greeks receive the Apocalypse of John with the same liberty ³⁶ ; and nevertheless we receive both, by no means following the custom of this time, but the authority of the ancient writers, who for the most part use the testimonies of each, not as they are sometimes wont [to use] the apocrypha, but as ecclesiastical and canonical. Thus Jerome, of the author and authority of this epistle — of which we shall discourse most copiously in the seventh book of this work. Paul therefore wrote, or dictated, this epistle in the hebrew speech ³⁷; but Lucas the Evangelist, or Clemens the Roman Pontiff, adorned it in the greek speech, yet not in its senses. This epistle the most sacred synod of Nicaea received among the sacred volumes as written by Paul the Apostle; and the council of Laodicea, the third of Carthage, and the council of Orange [Aurusicanum] referred it into the sacred catalog. It was sent from the city of Rome, out of bonds, by Timothy; and it is divided among the Latins into thirteen chapters, but among the Greeks into 22 chapters.

THE EPISTLE OF JAMES

JACOBUS the Apostle, son of Alphaeus, by surname the Just (whom Paul, writing to the Galatians, calls the brother of the lord ³⁸, and Mark calls the less ³⁹), was the first bishop of Jerusalem ⁴⁰. Him Epiphanius thinks to have been the son of Joseph, the spouse of the virgin Mary; but Jerome [thinks him] begotten of Mary, the sister of the lord’s mother, the wife of Alphaeus. He wrote to the twelve tribes of the dispersion, then first converted to Christ, one epistle — of the variety of temptations; of faith justifying out of works; of the things which become as well the rich as the poor; of the utility of patience; and of the priests to be brought in over the sick. ⁴¹ Which epistle was neither believed, immediately in the very times of the apostles, to be James the Apostle’s, nor taken up among the canonical writings — Eusebius, in the second volume of the ecclesiastical history, and Jerome, in the catalog of ecclesiastical writers, affirm it; but long afterward it was numbered among the canonical books by the sacrosanct councils of Laodicea, of Carthage, and the others following. This epistle the Latins have distinguished into five, the Greeks into seven chapters. Jacobus the Apostle dies, cast headlong from the highest summit of the temple of Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Nero, when he had presided over the church for thirty years; and he was buried beside the temple, where he had been cast down, in the year from the birth of our Saviour the sixty-third ⁴². Jerome, on the seventeenth chapter of Esaias, indicates that some of the ancient authors exempted this Jacobus, the brother of the lord, from the number of the twelve apostles whom Christ first chose, and called him the thirteenth apostle — as also [they called] Paul the fourteenth. There are extant under the name of this Apostle diverse writings, which shall be reported in the book next following.

THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER

SIMON PETRUS, the author of that epistle which is placed in the former order of the canon, wrote also another epistle to those Hebrews who had lately believed ⁴³: Of the faith of Christ, fore-announced by the prophets through the Holy Spirit; Of seducers to be avoided; Of the time to be passed not negligently; Of the preparation for the imminent day of judgment. The argument and order of which epistle Peter himself explains in its third chapter ⁴⁴, saying thus: BEHOLD, this second epistle I write to you, my dearly beloved; in which I stir up by way of admonition your sincere mind, that you may be mindful of those words which I foretold, [spoken] by the holy prophets, and of the precept of us, who are apostles of the lord — and the rest which follows. Concerning the author and authority of this epistle, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome hand down that there was at one time doubt; the sacrosanct synod of Laodicea and the council of Carthage decreed that it should be inserted among the canonical volumes under the name of Peter. The Latins have dissected it into three, the Greeks into four chapters.

THE SECOND AND THIRD EPISTLES OF JOHN

JOANNES, Apostle and Evangelist, besides that first epistle always approved by all the churches, wrote also two other epistles ⁴⁵: the one, of the right faith to be kept, and of heretics to be shunned, to Gaius; the other, Of hospitality, to Electa. Which [latter], as Jerome indicates, certain of the orthodox judged to be of another certain John, a presbyter, whose sepulcher was shown in the city of Ephesus — because in these he wrote himself “the presbyter,” and wrote to one woman and to a single Gaius, against the custom of the catholic epistles; which for this reason are called catholic, that is, universal, or encircling ⁴⁶, because they were written not distinctly to one person, nation, or city, but universally to all the faithful. Both, how-[-ever (men →)] the aforesaid most sacred councils received both into the canon as John’s. Of these the Greeks divide the former into two chapters, the latter into three.

THE EPISTLE OF JUDE

JUDAS the Apostle — who is also Thaddaeus, or Lebbaeus; brother, as he himself testifies in the salutation of his epistle, of James the less, and the same, as Matthaeus writes, a brother of our Lord Jesus Christ, born of Alphaeus and Maria of Cleophas, sister of the virgin Mary — wrote to those who had already believed a certain small epistle, Of the faith once received, to be manfully defended, and Of seducers to be fled from, over whom a great punishment hung. ⁴⁷ Which epistle — because its author took up a testimony out of the apocryphal book of Enoch, and brought forth, out of another obscure volume which is inscribed the Ascension of Moses, the history of Michael disputing with the devil about the body of Moses — very many of the ancients, as Jerome and Eusebius testify, cast out of the canon; but by its antiquity and use it earned authority even to the times of Jerome, and was computed among the holy scriptures by the aforesaid holy synods. The greeks distinguish it into three chapters, the Latins into none. This apostle died at Berytus, and there was buried, in the year of the lord LX ⁴⁸, after he had for a long time preached the gospel to the Edessenes and to all Mesopotamia.

THE APOCALYPSE

THE APOCALYPSE — that is, the Revelation — of Joannes the Evangelist, which contains a prophecy of the future tribulations of the church, from the beginning of the nascent church to the end of the world: certain of the most ancient greek fathers thought it should be cast off from the canon as foreign to the diction and tongue of Joannes the Evangelist, referring it to Joannes the presbyter, who obtained a monument at Ephesus not far from the sepulcher of Joannes the Evangelist. Yet Dionysius the Areopagite, Papias, Justinus, Irenaeus, Dionysius bishop of the Corinthians, Basil, Epiphanius, Gregory the Theologian, and with these the universal assembly of the Latin fathers, counted it among the legitimate and genuine writings of John the apostle; and the aforesaid most sacred councils reviewed it among the canonical volumes. Andreas, Archbishop of Caesarea of Cappadocia, dissected the book — according to the mystery of the four-and-twenty elders who are described in it — into four-and-twenty parts, and distinguished each of these, in honor of the most blessed Triad, into three chapters, so that the sum of all the chapters is LXXII; which among the Latins XXII chapters comprehend. Eusebius in the chronicles noted that the Apocalypse was put forth in the fourteenth year of the emperor Domitian, by whom Joannes the apostle was banished into the island of Pathmos, [where] he saw the revelations described in this book, in the year from the birth of Christ 97. ⁴⁹ Yet Andreas and Arethas, bishops of Caesarea, following the opinion of Tertullian and Epiphanius, hand down that the Apocalypse was written about thirty-eight years before this time, under Nero (in the second year of whose empire Joannes, after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, was carried off to Pathmos); and that in this volume are contained many visions and vaticinations of the future destruction of Jerusalem, and of the everlasting casting-away of the Judaic nation.