Why Was the Canon Still Up For Grabs in the Second Century?

[00:00:01] Why was the canon still up for grabs in the second century? By Bart Ehrman why did it take so long to decide on which books will be in the canon? [00:00:12] I continue my reflections on the issues connected with fixing a canon of Scripture in early Christianity, drawing from excerpts of my book Lost Christianities, published by Oxford University Press in 2003. [00:00:25] It may seem odd that Christians of earlier times, while recognizing the need for authoritative texts to provide guidance what to believe and how to live, did not see the need to have a fixed number of apostolic writings, a closed canon. [00:00:39] But in fact there is no evidence of any concerted effort anywhere in Proto Orthodox Christianity, or anywhere else for that matter, to fix a canon of Scripture in the early second century, when Christian texts were being circulated and described authority and different Proto Orthodox Christians had different attitudes towards sacred texts. [00:01:02] Let me illustrate the point by considering views found in three Proto Orthodox writings from around the second quarter of the second century. [00:01:09] It's difficult to date these writings with any precision, but it appears that the bulk of the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians was written around 130 CE the Shepherd of Hermas over a period of time between 110 and 140 CE, and the sermon known as 2 Clement sometime around 150 CE. [00:01:29] All three are Proto Orthodox productions. [00:01:33] The latter two, in fact, were themselves occasionally accepted as canonical scripture by Proto Orthodox Christians of later times. [00:01:40] Both are included in early manuscripts of the New Testament, but they evidence widely disparate understandings of sacred textual authorities. [00:01:50] Polycarp's letter is a virtual pastiche of quotations and allusions drawn from writings that eventually came to be included in the New Testament, nearly 100 of them in a letter of 14 relatively brief chapters, in contrast to only about a dozen quotations and allusions from the Old Testament. [00:02:09] On one occasion he might refer to the Book of Ephesians as scripture, but the interpretation of the passage is debated, and sometimes he will refer to an explicit authority, such as remember what the Lord taught. [00:02:22] Most of the time, though, Polycarp simply uses lines and phrases familiar from New Testament writings, especially the works of Paul, Hebrews, first, Peter, and the Synoptic Gospels were his letter the only proto Orthodox text available to us from the period. We might think that we could here detect the steady movement toward ascribing authority to earlier writings, those that came to be included in the New Testament, which serve as the basis then for all Christian reflection and exhortation. [00:02:53] But not so the shepherd of Hermas, which reached probably its final form after Polycarp's letter and is no less proto orthodox in its orientation, paints a completely different picture. [00:03:05] This is a much larger book, longer than any book that made it into the New Testament, and so one might expect a correspondingly greater number of quotations and allusions. [00:03:15] But that's not the case. [00:03:16] Even though the book is filled with authoritative teachings and ethical exhortations, there is only one explicit quotation of any textual authority to be found, and that, as it turns out, is of a now lost and unknown Jewish apocalypse called the Book of Eldad and Modat. [00:03:35] Some readers have suspected that Hermas knows and has been influenced by the Book of James and possibly Matthew and Ephesians. But the arguments are rather tenuous. In contrast to Polycarp, Hermas does not appear to have any investment at all in sacred textual authorities or an emerging canon of Scripture. [00:03:54] Take a third example and you find a third situation. [00:03:58] Neither Polycarp's feast nor hermas famine. The mid 2nd century sermon known as 2 Clement makes several statements that are verbal similarities with some of the New Testament epistles, such as first Corinthians and Ephesians, but it does not quote these books as authorities. [00:04:13] With relatively more frequency, it quotes the word of Jesus, uses the phrase the Lord said, but it does so without attributing these words to any of our written gospels. [00:04:24] What's possibly most striking is that of the 11 quotations of Jesus teachings, five of them do not occur in the canonical Gospels. One of the most intriguing is this. [00:04:34] For the Lord said, you will be like sheep in the midst of wolves. [00:04:39] But Peter replied to him, what if the wolves rip apart the sheep? And Jesus said to Peter, after they are dead, the sheep should fear the wolves no longer. And so to you do not fear those who kill you, and then can do nothing more to you but fear the one who after you die, has the power to cast your body and soul into the hell of fire. [00:04:59] That's 2 Clement 5 2, 4. [00:05:04] The source for this odd dialogue is unknown. Even more striking for our purposes is the saying found in 2 Clement 12:2 for when the Lord himself was asked by someone when his kingdom would come, he said, where the two are one, and the outside like the inside, and the male with the female is neither male nor female. [00:05:26] This is very like a saying found not in a canonical Gospel, but in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, saying number 22, they said to him, shall we then as children enter the kingdom? And Jesus said to them, when you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside and the above like the below. I want you to make the male and the female one and the same, so the male may not be male, nor the female female. Then you will enter the kingdom. [00:05:58] Far from supporting Polycarp in showing a reliance exclusively on books that were to become part of the canon, and from supporting Hermas in overlooking earlier textual authorities, Second Clement appears to accept a wide range of authorities, especially sayings of Jesus, including those that were not finally sanctioned by being included included within the canon of Scripture. [00:06:19] And so by the mid second century, the questions of the canon would there be one? Would it be closed? What would it contain? Were still up for grabs in proto orthodox circles. [00:06:29] This confirms what we have seen throughout our study. Christians in Rossus accept the Gospel of Peter, as does their first bishop, Serapion, only to reject it later. [00:06:39] Some Christians accept the Apocalypse of Peter or Paul's letter of Third Corinthians as Scripture. Others don't. Some see the Epistle of Barnabas or of first Clement as canonical. Others do not. The Book of Revelation, the Epistle of Hebrews, Matters of constant debate.