THE FRAGMENT CALLED MURATORTI'S.

193. More than a century ago, this document was only known to the learned world by the publication¹ of the celebrated antiquary who discovered it in 1738 in a very ancient Latin manuscript of the Ambrosian Library of Milan. But more recently, we have seen three independent editions, made from the original by Nott,² Wieseler,³ and Hertz.⁴

The manuscript itself, in uncial characters, and without any interval between the words, presents a strange state of disorder — whether owing to the translator, whose Latin is full of gross mistakes, or to the editor and copyist, whose sentences appear very often transposed and suddenly interrupted.⁵ This state of the manuscript, as well as our ignorance of its precise date, of its author, and even of the character of the whole composition, (for it appears to have made part of an apologetic dialogue against some contemporary heretic,) — all these circumstances united (we have already said⁶) have prevented our drawing precise conclusions from it in our history of the Canon; but the incontestable antiquity of the manuscript makes it, notwithstanding, a document most worthy of attention.

Muratori assigns the authorship to Caius; Bunsen to Hippolytus; others, with equal right, suppose it to be of a more recent date. These are mere conjectures: it is enough for us to know that the author says he was a contemporary of Pius I., (the ninth bishop of Rome, from 145 to 157,) and that he must be necessarily younger than the heretics of the second century, whose striking testimony we are soon about to-examine; for he speaks of Marcion, Valentine, Basilides, and even the Cataphrygians; and this is why, in our going back from a later to an earlier period, we give him a place here.

It is generally admitted that it was originally written in Greek; for this language was then the most used in the Church of Rome; — the language of Paul, Peter, Timothy, and Luke; the language of Clement and of Pius I, as well as of Justin Martyr, Hermas, Tatian, Caius, and Hippolytus. It was the language of Irenæus when he wrote from Lyons, though at Lyons itself he conversed habitually in Celtic.⁷ It was also the language of the first liturgies of the Roman Church, and of its first sermons.⁸

194, But this ancient fragment, in its obscure language, gives a very clear testimony to our first canon, and we find in it, as we are about to state, a remarkable catalogue of our sacred books. Although the first words are wanting, and the manuscript begins in the middle of a phrase, you see at once that the writer is explaining how the four Evangelists were given.

“THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE,” he says, “IS THE THIRD,” (these words are written in red capitals;) and, forthwith, the author enters into details on the person of Luke.

“THE FOURTH GOSPEL,” he adds, “IS THAT OF JOHN, ONE OF THE DISCIPLES.” Then follow, on the person of John, fresh particulars, in which these two important statements occur.

The first statement is, that in the very variety of the teachings of each of the Gospels, there is no difference as to the faith of believers, (nihil tamen differt credentium fidei,) since in all, by one and the same sovereign Spirit, (cum uno et principali Spiritu,) all things are declared (declarata sint in omnibus onvia) touching the Saviour’s nativity, His passion, His resurrection, His conversations with His disciples, and His double advent — the first, already passed, in humiliation; the second, yet to come, in the glory of His kingly power.

The second statement is, that John calls himself not only the spectator and hearer, but also the narrator of all the miracles of the Lord; since he declares the same things in HIS EPISTLES, (singula etiam in EPISTOLIS SUIS proferat,⁹) and since he says, speaking of himself, — “The things we have seen with our eyes, which we have heard with our ears, and which our hands have touched, (palpaverunt,) this is what we have written.”

195. We see, then, on the one hand, the four Gospels announced in the fragment as forming a distinct unity, and universally recognised as to their design, their contents, and their inspiration. No difference is made between the two apostles (Matthew or John) and those of the two evangelists (Mark or Luke;) they have all four the same authority in the Church; they are the work of one and the same Spirit; not a doubt is admitted or mentioned. And then, on the other hand, we see the, Epistles of John recognised equally as written by the same apostle, in order to give us the same teachings as his Gospel. The fragment even cites the first verse of his first Epistle (1 John i. 1.)

196. After this Gospel comes the Acts.

“But the Acts of all the Apostles,” the fragment says, “have been written in a single book by Luke, who addressed it to the excellent Theophilus, telling him things of which he was an eyewitness, and for this reason not reporting either the martyrdom of Peter, or Paul’s journey to Spain.”

Then come the thirteen Epistles of Paul.

“Now the Epistles of Paul,” continues the fragment, “declare to those who wish to understand it from what place, and for what reasons, they were written.”

The author here enumerates them all, but in an order different from that we have been accustomed to follow, and evidently determined by the particular object which he is pleased to attribute to the apostles for each of them. “Paul,” he says, “addresses his letters to seven churches, having doubled those which he wrote to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians. “Nevertheless,” he adds, “it must be acknowledged that there is but one Church alone spread over all the globe, (una tamen per omnem orbem terrae ecclesia diffusa esse dignoscitur,) and “for this reason, John, in the APOCALYPSE, even when he writes to seven churches, addresses himself to all. But, besides these letters to seven churches, Paul wrote one to Philemon, one to Titus, and two to Timothy.”

197. Let it be carefully noticed that the whole of our first canon is repeated in this fragment, with the single exception of the First Epistle of Peter, which certainly has its place elsewhere in the same document, as we shall proceed to shew; and there are equally recognised (we may observe in passing) the Apocalypse and the two short Epistles of John, and also the general Epistle of Jude.¹⁰

But at this point the fragment, in its disorder, proceeds to name some other books which, according to it, were illegitimate. “There are reported, also, (fertur etiam,)” it says, “an epistle to the Laodiceans, and another to the Alexandrians, invented under the name of Paul to aid the heresy of Marcion, and many others which cannot be received into the Catholic Church; for it is not fit to mingle gall with honey.”

The Epistle of Jude, indeed, (sane,) he adds, and¹¹ two epistles of John, of which we have spoken above, (et superscripti Johannis duae,) are reckoned among the catholic epistles, (in catholica habentur.)

198, It must be carefully noted here that the fragment which, in reference to Jude and John, has just named them catholic epistles, does not enumerate the group in its usual place. This group should be found, as in general, either following the Acts or following Paul’s epistles. Every one in fact admits that, in its actual disorder, the document evidently betrays transpositions and lacunae. This explains why the first catholic Epistle of Peter, which has never been doubted anywhere, and which, with the first of John, forms the kernel of the catholic Epistles, which had just been spoken of, is not here mentioned, any more than that of James; while the first of John has been mentioned, as if by chance and out of its place. This defect is easily explained by the fragmentary state of the document, by which the connexion of the parts is so frequently interrupted.

In fact, having arrived so far, the manuscript goes on with this strange sentence on the book of Proverbs: “And the wisdom written,” he says, “by the friends of Solomon in his honour.” This expression, which occurs so strangely in a place where no one would expect it, would be absolutely unintelligible, if we did not see in it (as Bunsen thinks) a fragmentary allusion to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, like the Book of Solomon, had been written by some friend of Paul, and not by himself.

Lastly, the document adds, “We receive only the (Apocalypses) Revelations of John and of Peter. And some of our people are not willing that the latter should be read in the church.”

It is immediately in connexion with these words that he mentions, on the one hand, Hermas, and, on the other, the principal heretics of the age. “Hermas,” he says, “has written in our day in Rome, The Shepherd, during the time that Pius, his brother, filled the see of the church of Rome. It should be read; but cannot be published to the people in church, neither among the prophets, of which the number is complete, nor among the apostles, to the end of time. As to Arsinoiis, or Valentine, or Miltiades, we absolutely receive nothing of theirs. Some psalms, also have been attributed to Marcion and to Basilides; and as to the chief of the Cataphrygians of Asia” . . . . .

Here the fragment ends abruptly. Whatever may be thought of these latter details, on which we do not wish to dwell, we see sufficiently the remarkable testimony which this ancient document, with all its want of arrangement, bears to our first canon.

We pass now to the first half of the second century.

1) Antiq. Ital. Medii Aevi. Milan, 1740.

2) See Dr Routh’s Reliquiae Sacrae, (2d ed., 1846,) i., 394, 403.

3) See Studien u. Krit., 1847, p. 815, and 1856, part i.

4) See Bunsen’s Analecta Ante-Nicaena, i., p. 187, &e.

5) Any one may judge of this for himself, by looking at the exact copy given by Credner in his Geschichte der Canons, p. 71, &c., 1847. It may be also found in Mr Westcott’s work on the Canon, at the end of the volume, p. 557. Cambridge, 1855.

6) Prop. 81.

7) Irenæus, Haeres., i., προοίμιον, p. 3.

8) Bunsen’s Hippolytus, ii, 123.

9) The text has profaram, but in these quotations we have corrected (as Bunsen, Hartz, and Wieseler have done) the manifest errors and barbarisms of the text,

10) Wieseler (Stud. u. Krit., 1856, p. 98) thinks that the Epistle to the Hebrews is also designated by the words, Alia ad Alexandrinos, (to the Egyptian Diaspora.) It would have for its readers, he says, the J ewish Christians of Alexandria,

11) Two, or the two; Bunsen alone has written in Catholicis.