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Testament come from testamentum, the word by which the Latin ecclesiastical writers translated the Greek diatheke. With the profane authors this latter term means always, one passage of Aristophanes perhaps excepted, the legal disposition a man makes of his goods for after his death. However, at an early date, the Alexandrian translators of the Scripture, known as the Septuagint, employed the word as the equivalent of the Hebrew berith, which means a pact, an alliance, more especially the alliance of Yahweh with Israel. In St. Paul (1Cor. 11:25) Jesus Christ uses the words "new covenent"[new testament] as meaning the alliance established by Himself between God and the world, and this is called "new" as opposed to that of which Moses was the mediator. Later on, the name of testament was given to the collection of sacred texts containing the history and the doctrine of the two alliances; here again and for the same reason we meet the distinction between the Old and New Testaments. In this meaning the expression Old Testament (he palaia diatheke) is found for the first time in Melito of Sardis, towards the year 170. There are reasons for thinking that at this date the corresponding word "testamentum" was already in use amongst the Latins. In any case it was common in the time of Tertullian (c. A.D. 160-225).

The New Testament, as usually received in the Christian Churches, is made up of twenty-seven different books attributed to eight different authors, six of whom are numbered among the Apostles (Matthew, John, Paul, James, Peter, Jude) and two among their immediate disciples (Mark, Luke). If we consider only the contents and the literary form of these writings they may be divided into historical books (Gospels and Acts), didactic books (Epistles), a prophetical book (Revelation). Before the name of the New Testament had come into use the writers of the latter half of the second century used to say "Gospel and Apostolic writings" or simply "the Gospel and the Apostle," meaning the Apostle St. Paul. The Gospels are subdivided into two groups, those which are commonly called synoptic (Matthew, Mark, Luke), because their narratives are parallel, and the fourth Gospel (that of St. John), which to a certain extent completes the first three. They relate to the life and personal teaching of Jesus Christ. The Acts of the Apostles, as is sufficiently indicated by the title, relates the preaching and the labors of the Apostles. It narrates the foundation of the Churches of Palestine and Syria only; in it mention is made of Peter, John, James, Paul, and Barnabas; afterwards, the author devotes sixteen chapters out of the twenty-eight to the missions of St. Paul to the Greco-Romans. There are thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, and perhaps fourteen, if, with the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), we consider him the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. They are, with the exception of this last-mentioned, addressed to particular Churches (Rom.; 1, 2 Cor.; Gal.; Ephes.; Philip.; Colos.; 1,2 Thess.) or to individuals (1,2 Tim.; Tit.; Philem.). The seven Epistles that follow (James; 1,2 Peter; 1,2,3 John; Jude) are called "Catholic," because most of them are addressed to the faithful in general. Revelation, [Apocalypse] addressed to the seven Churches of Asia Minor (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea) resembles in some ways a collective letter. It contains a vision which St. John had at Patmos concerning the interior state of the above-mentioned communities, the struggle of the Church under percecution by the pagans, and the final destiny of the New Jerusalem.

The New Testament was not written all at once. The books that compose it appeared one after another in the space of fifty years, i.e. in the second half of the first century. Written in different and distant countries and addressed to particular Churches, they took some time to spread throughout the whole of Christendom, and a much longer time to become accepted. The unification of the canon was not accomplished without much controversy. Still it can be said that from the third century, or perhaps earlier, the existence of all the books that to-day form our New Testament was everywhere known, although they were not all universally admitted, at least as certainly canonical. However, uniformity existed in the East from the fourth century after the Council at Carthage. In early times the questions of canonicity and authenticity were not discussed separately and independently of each other, the latter being readily brought forward as a reason for the former; but in the fourth century, the canonicity was held, especially by St. Jerome, on account of ecclesiastical prescription and, by the fact, the authenticity of the contested books became of miner importance. In the West we have to come down to the sixteenth century to hear the question repeated, whether the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by St. Paul, or the Epistles called catholic were in reality composed by the Apostles whose names they bear. Some Humanists, as Erasmus and Cardinal Cajetan, revived the objections based on St. Jerome based on the style of these writings. To this Luther added the inadmissibility of the doctrine, as regards the Epistle of St. James. However, it was practically the Lutherans alone who sought to diminish the traditional Canon, which the early Church had determined in the fourth century and even earlier.

It was reserved to modern times, especially to our own days, to dispute and deny the truth of the opinion received from the ancients concerning the origin of the books of the New Testament. This doubt and the negation regarding the authors had their primary cause in the religious incredulity of the eighteenth century. These witnesses to the truth of a religion no longer believed were inconvenient, if it was true that they had seen and heard what they related. Little time was needed to find, in analyzing them, indications of a later origin. The conclusions of the Tubingen school, which brought down to the second century, the compositions of all the New Testament except four Epistles of St. Paul (Rom.; Gal.; 1,2 Cor.), was very common thirty or forty years ago, in so-called critical circles. When the crisis of militant incredulity had passed, the problem of the New Testament began to be examined more calmly, and especially more methodically. From the critical studies of the past half century we may draw the following conclusion, which is now in its general outlines admitted by all: It was a mistake to have attributed the origin of Christian literature to a later date; these texts, on the whole, date back to the second half of the first century; consequently they are the work of a generation that counted a good number of direct witnesses of the life of Jesus Christ. From stage to stage, from Strauss to Renan, from Renan to Reuss, Weizsäcker, Holtzmann, J¨licher, Weiss, and from these to Zahn, Harnack, criticism has just retraced its steps over the distance it had so inconsiderately covered under the guidance of the Christian Baur. To-day it is admitted that the first Gospels were written about the year 70. The Acts can hardly be said to be later; Harnack even thinks they were composed nearer to the year 60 than to the year 70. The Epistles of St. Paul remain beyond all dispute, except those to the Ephesians and to the Hebrews, and the pastoral Epistles, about which doubts still exist. In like manner there are many who contest the Catholic Epistles; but even if the Second Epistle of Peter is delayed till towards the year 120 or 130, the Epistle of St. James is put by several at the very beginning of Christian literature, between the years 40 and 50, the earliest Epistles of St. Paul about 52 till 58.

At present the brunt of the battle rages around the writings called Johannine (the fourth Gospel, the three Epistles of John, and the Revelation). Were these texts written by the Apostle John, son of Zebedee, or by John the presbyter of Ephesus whom Papias mentions? There is nothing to oblige us to endorse the conclusions of radical criticisms on this subject. On the contrary, the strong testimony of tradition attributes these writings to the Apostle St. John, nor is it weakened at all by internal criteria, provided we do not lose sight of the character of the fourth Gospel — called by Clement of Alexandria "a spiritual gospel," as compared with the three others, which he styled "corporal." Theologically, we must take into consideration some modern ecclesiastical documents. These decisions uphold the Johannine and Apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. Whatever may be the issue of these controversies, a Christian will be, and that in virtue of his principles, in exceptionally favourable circumstances for accepting the just exigencies of criticism. If it be ever established that 2 Peter belongs to a kind of literature then common, namely the pseudepigraph, its canonicity will not on that account be compromised. Inspiration and authenticity are distinct and even separable, when no dogmatic question is involved in their union.

The question of the origin of the New Testament includes yet another literary problem, concerning the Gospels especially. Are these writings independent of one another? If one of the Evangelists did utilize the work of his predecessors how are we to suppose it happened? Was it Matthew who used Mark or vice versa? After thirty years of constant study, the question has been answered only by conjectures. Amongst these must be included the documentary theory itself, even in the form in which it is now commonly admitted, that of the "two sources." The starting-point of this theory, namely the priority of Mark and the use made of him by Matthew and Luke, although it has become a dogma in criticism for many, cannot be said to be more than a hypothesis. However disconcerting this may be, it is none the less true. None of the proposed solutions has been approved of by all scholars who are really competent in the matter, because all these solutions, while answering some of the difficulties, leave almost as many unanswered. If then we must be content with hypothesis, we ought at least to prefer the most satisfactory. The analysis of the text seems to agree fairly well with the hypothesis of two sources — Mark and Q. (i.e. Quelle, the non-Marcan document); but a conservative critic will adopt it only in so far as it is not incompatible with such data of tradition concerning the origin of the Gospels as are certain or worthy of respect.

These data may be resumed a follows.

The Gospels are really the work of those to whom they have been always attributed, although this attribution may perhaps be explained by a more or less mediate authorship. Thus, the Apostle St. Matthew, having written in Aramaic, did not himself put into Greek the canonical Gospel which has come down to us under his name. However, the fact of his being considered the author of this Gospel necessarily supposes that between the original Aramaic and the Greek text there is, at least, a substantial conformity. The original text of St. Matthew is certainly prior to the ruin of Jerusalem, there are even reasons for dating it earlier than the Epistles of St. Paul and consequently about the year 50. We know nothing definite of the date of its being rendered into Greek.

Everything seems to indicate the date of the composition of St. Mark as about the time of St. Peter's death, consequently between 60 and 70.

St. Luke tells us expressly that before him "many took in hand to set forth in order" the Gospel. What then was the date of his own work? About the year 70. It is to be remembered that we must not expect from the ancients the precision of our modern chronology.

The Johannine writings belong to the end of the first century, from the year 90 to 100 (approximately); except perhaps the Revelation, which some modern critics date from about the end of the reign of Nero, A.D. 68.

No book of ancient times has come down to us exactly as it left the hands of its author — all have been in some way altered. The material conditions under which a book was spread before the invention of printing (1440), the little care of the copyists, correctors, and glossators for the text, so different from the desire of accuracy exhibited to-day, explain sufficiently the divergences we find between various manuscripts of the same work. To these causes may be added, in regard to the Scriptures, exegetical difficulties and dogmatical controversies. To exempt the scared writings from ordinary conditions a very special providence would have been necessary, and it has not been the will of God to exercise this providence. More than 150,000 different readings have been found in the older witnesses to the text of the New Testament — which in itself is a proof that Scriptures are not the only, nor the principal, means of revelation. In the concrete order of the present economy God had only to prevent any such alteration of the sacred texts as would put the Church in the moral necessity of announcing with certainty as the word of God what in reality was only a human utterance. Let us say, however, from the start, that the substantial tenor of the sacred text has not been altered, not withstanding the uncertainty which hangs over some more or less long and more or less important historical or dogmatical passages. Moreover — and this is very important — these alterations are not irremediable; we can at least very often, by studying the variants of the texts, eliminate the defective readings and thus re-establish the primitive text. This is the object of textual criticism.

The Christian New Testament does not differ, as regards the books contained, from that of all Christian bodies at present. Like the Old Testament, the New has its deuterocanonical books and portions of books, their canonicity having formerly been a subject of some controversy in the Church. These are for the entire books: the Epistle to the Hebrews, that of James, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of John, Jude, and Revelation; giving seven in all as the number of the New Testament contested books. The formerly disputed passages are three: the closing section of St. Mark's Gospel 16:9-20 about the apparitions of Christ after the Resurrection; the verses in Luke about the bloody sweat of Jesus 22:43, 44; the Pericope Adulteræ, or narrative of the woman taken in adultery, St. John 7:53-8:11.

The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the fourth century.

Those writings which possessed the unmistakable stamp and guarantee of Apostolic origin must from the very first have been specially prized and venerated, and their copies eagerly sought by local Churches and individual Christians of means, in preference to the narratives and Logia, or Sayings of Christ, coming from less authorized sources. Already in the New Testament itself there is some evidence of a certain diffusion of canonical books: 2 Peter 3:15, 16, supposes its readers to be acquainted with some of St. Paul's Epistles; St. John's Gospel implicitly presupposes the existence of the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). There are no indications in the New Testament of a systematic plan for the distribution of the Apostolic compositions, any more than there is of a definite new Canon bequeathed by the Apostles to the Church, or of a strong self-witness to Divine inspiration. Nearly all the New Testament writings were evoked by particular occasions, or addressed to particular destinations. But we may well presume that each of the leading Churches — Antioch, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Corinth, Rome — sought by exchanging with other Christian communities to add to its special treasure, and have publicly read in its religious assemblies all Apostolic writings which came under its knowledge. It was doubtless in this way that the collections grew, and reached completeness within certain limits, but a considerable number of years must have elapsed (and that counting from the composition of the latest book) before all the widely separated Churches of early Christendom possessed the new sacred literature in full. And this want of an organized distribution, secondarily to the absence of an early fixation of the Canon, left room for variations and doubts which lasted far into the centuries. But evidence will presently be given that from days touching on those of the last Apostles there were two well defined bodies of sacred writings of the New Testament, which constituted the firm, irreducible, universal minimum, and the nucleus of its complete Canon: these were the Four Gospels, as the Church now has them, and thirteen Epistles of St. Paul — the Evangelium and the Apostolicum.

Before entering into the historical proof for this primitive emergence of a compact, nucleative Canon, it is pertinent to briefly examine this problem: During the formative period what principle operated in the selection of the New Testament writings and their recognition as Divine? — Theologians are divided on this point. This view that Apostolicity was the test of the inspiration during the building up of the New Testament Canon, is favoured by the many instances where the early Fathers base the authority of a book on its Apostolic origin, and by the truth that the definitive placing of the contested books on the New Testament catalogue coincided with their general acceptance as of Apostolic authorship. Moreover, the advocates of this hypothesis point out that the Apostles' office corresponded with that of the Prophets of the Old Law, inferring that as inspiration was attached to the munus propheticum so the Apostles were aided by Divine inspiration whenever in the exercise of their calling they either spoke or wrote. Positive arguments are deduced from the New Testament to establish that a permanent prophetical charisma was enjoyed by the Apostles through a special indwelling of the Holy Ghost, beginning with Pentecost: Matth. 10:19, 20; Acts 15:28; 1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Cor.13:3; 1 Thess. 2:13, are cited. The opponents of this theory allege against it that the Gospels of Mark and of Luke and Acts were not the work of Apostles (however, tradition connects the Second Gospel with St. Peter's preaching and St. Luke's with St. Paul's); that books current under an Apostle's name in the Early Church, such as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Revelation of St. Peter, were nevertheless excluded from canonical rank, while on the other hand Origen and St. Dionysius of Alexandria in the case of Revelation, and St. Jerome in the case of 2 and 3 John, although questioning the Apostolic authorship of these works, unhesitatingly received them as Sacred Scriptures. An objection of a speculative kind is derived from the very nature of inspiration ad scribendum, which seems to demand a specific impulse from the Holy Ghost in each case, and preclude the theory that it could be possessed as a permanent gift, or charisma. The weight of Christian theological opinion is deservedly against mere Apostolicity as a sufficient criterion of inspiration. The adverse view has been taken by Franzelin (De Divinâ Traditione et Scripturâ, 1882), Schmid (De Inspirationis Bibliorum Vi et Ratione, 1885), Crets (De Divinâ Bibliorum Inspiratione, 1886), Leitner (Die prophetische Inspiration, 1895 — a monograph), Pesch (De Inspiratione Sacræ, 1906). These authors (some of whom treat the matter more speculatively than historically) admit that Apostolicity is a positive and partial touchstone of inspiration, but emphatically deny that it was exclusive, in the sense that all non-Apostolic works were by that very fact barred from the sacred Canon of the New Testament They hold to doctrinal tradition as the true criterion.

Christian champions of Apostolicity as a criterion are: Ubaldi (Introductio in Sacram Scripturam, 2, 1876); Schanz (in Theologische Quartalschrift, 1885, pp. 666 sqq., and A Christian Apology, 2, tr. 1891); Székely (Hermeneutica Biblica, 1902). Recently Professor Batiffol, while rejecting the claims of these latter advocates, has enunciated a theory regarding the principle that presided over the formation of the New Testament Canon which challenges attention and perhaps marks a new stage in the controversy. According to Monsignor Batiffol, the Gospel (i.e. the words and commandments of Jesus Christ) bore with it its own sacredness and authority from the very beginning. This Gospel was announced to the world at large, by the Apostles and Apostolic disciples of Christ, and this message, whether spoken or written, whether taking the form of an evangelic narrative or epistle, was holy and supreme by the fact of containing the Word of Our Lord. Accordingly, for the primitive Church, evangelical character was the test of Scriptural sacredness. But to guarantee this character it was necessary that a book should be known as composed by the official witnesses and organs of the Evangel; hence the need to certify the Apostolic authorship, or at least sanction, of a work purporting to contain the Gospel of Christ. In Batiffol's view the Judaic notion of inspiration did not at first enter into the selection of the Christian Scriptures. In fact, for the earliest Christians the Gospel of Christ, in the wide sense above noted, was not to be classified with, because transcending, the Old Testament It was not until about the middle of the second century that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old; the authority of the New Testament as the Word preceded and produced its authority as a New Scripture. (Revue Biblique, 1903, 226 sqq.) Monsignor Batiffol's hypothesis has this in common with the views of other recent students of the New Testament Canon, that the idea of a new body of sacred writings became clearer in the Early Church as the faithful advanced in a knowledge of the Faith. But it should be remembered that the inspired character of the New Testament is a Christian dogma, and must therefore in some way have been revealed to, and taught by, Apostles. — Assuming that Apostolic authorship is a positive criterion of inspiration, two inspired Epistles of St. Paul have been lost. This appears from 1 Cor. 5:9, sqq.; 2 Cor. 2:4-5.

Irenæus, in his work "Against Heresies" (A.D. 182-88), testifies to the existence of a Tetramorph, or Quadriform Gospel, given by the Word and unified by one Spirit; to repudiate this Gospel or any part of it, as did the Alogi and Marcionites, was to sin against revelation and the Spirit of God. The saintly Doctor of Lyons explicitly states the names of the four Elements of this Gospel, and repeatedly cites all the Evangelists in a manner parallel to his citations from the Old Testament From the testimony of St. Irenæus alone there can be no reasonable doubt that the Canon of the Gospel was inalterably fixed in the Catholic Church by the last quarter of the second century. Proofs might be multiplied that our canonical Gospels were then universally recognized in the Church, to the exclusion of any pretended Evangels. The magisterial statement of Irenæus may be corroborated by the very ancient catalogue known as the Muratorian Canon, and St. Hippolytus, representing Roman tradition; by Tertullian in Africa, by Clement in Alexandria; the works of the Gnostic Valentinus, and the Syrian Tatian's Diatessaron, a blending together of the Evangelists' writings, presuppose the authority enjoyed by the fourfold Gospel towards the middle of the second century. To this period or a little earlier belongs the pseduo-Clementine epistle in which we find, for the first time after 2 Peter, 3:16, the word Scripture applied to a New Testament book. But it is needless in the present article to array the full force of these and other witnesses, since even rationalistic scholars like Harnack admit the canonicity of the quadriform Gospel between the years 140-175.

But against Harnack we are able to trace the Tetramorph as a sacred collection back to a more remote period. The apocryphal Gospel of St. Peter, dating from about 150, is based on our canonical Evangelists. So with the very ancient Gospel of the Hebrews and Egyptians. St. Justin Martyr (130-63) in his Apology refers to certain "memoirs of the Apostles, which are called gospels," and which "are read in Christian assemblies together with the writings of the Prophets." The identity of these "memoirs" with our Gospels is established by the certain traces of three, if not all, of them scattered through St. Justin's works; it was not yet the age of explicit quotations. Marcion, the heretic refuted by Justin in a lost polemic, as we know from Tertullian, instituted a criticism of Gospels bearing the names of the Apostles and disciples of the Apostles, and a little earlier (c. 120) Basilides, the Alexandrian leader of a Gnostic sect, wrote a commentary on "the Gospel" which is known by the allusions to it in the Fathers to have comprised the writings of the Four Evangelists.

In our backward search we have come to the sub-Apostolic age, and its important witnesses are divided into Asian, Alexandrian, and Roman:

St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and St. Polycarp, of Smyrna, had been disciples of Apostles; they wrote their epistles in the first decade of the second century (100-110). The employ Matthew, Luke, and John. In St. Ignatius we find the first instance of the consecrated term "it is written" applied to a Gospel (Ad Philad. 8:2). Both these Fathers show not only a personal acquaintance with "the Gospel" and the thirteen Pauline Epistles, but they suppose that their readers are so familiar with them that it would be superfluous to name them. Papias, Bishop of Phrygian Hierapolis, according to Irenæus a disciple of St. John, wrote about A.D. 125. Describing the origin of St. Mark's Gospel, he speaks of Hebrew (Aramaic) Logia, or Sayings of Christ, composed by St. Matthew, which there is reason to believe formed the basis of the canonical Gospel of that name, though the greater part of Christian writers identify them with the Gospel. As we have only a few fragments of Papias, preserved by Eusebius, it cannot be alleged that he is silent about other parts of the New Testament.

The so-called Epistle of Barnabas, of uncertain origin, but of highest antiquity, cites a passage from the First Gospel under the formula "it is written." The Didache, or Teaching of the Apostles, an uncanonical work dating from c. 110, implies that "the Gospel" was already a well-known and definite collection.

St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, and disciple of St. Paul, addressed his Letter to the Corinthian Church c. A.D. 97, and, although it cites no Evangelist explicitly, this epistle contains combinations of texts taken from the three synoptic Gospels, especially from St. Matthew. That Clement does not allude to the Fourth Gospel is quite natural, as it was not composed till about that time.

Thus the patristic testimonies have brought us step by step to a Divine inviolable fourfold Gospel existing in the closing years of the Apostolic Era. Just how the Tetramorph was welded into unity and given to the Church, is a matter of conjecture. But, as Zahn observes, there is good reason to believe that the tradition handed down by Papias, of the approval of St. Mark's Gospel by St. John the Evangelist, reveals that either the latter himself of a college of his disciples added the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptics, and made the group into the compact and unalterable "Gospel," the one in four, whose existence and authority left their clear impress upon all subsequent ecclesiastical literature, and find their conscious formulation in the language of Irenæus.

Parallel to the chain of evidence we have traced for the canonical standing of the Gospels extends one for the thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, forming the other half of the irreducible kernel of the complete New Testament canon. All the authorities cited for the Gospel Canon show acquaintance with, and recognize, the sacred quality of these letters. St. Irenæus, as acknowledged by the Harnackian critics, employs all the Pauline writings, except the short Philemon, as sacred and canonical. The Muratorian Canon, contemporary with Irenæus, gives the complete list of the thirteen, which, it should be remembered, does not include Hebrews. The heretical Basilides and his disciples quote from this Pauline group in general. The copious extracts from Marcion's works scattered through Irenæus and Tertullian show that he was acquainted with the thirteen as in ecclesiastical use, and selected his Apostolikon of six from them. The testimony of Polycarp and Ignatius is again capital in this case. Eight of St. Paul's writings are cited by Polycarp; St. Ignatius of Antioch ranked the Apostles above the Prophets, and must therefore have allowed the written compositions of the former at least an equal rank with those of the latter ("Ad Philadelphios," 5). St. Clement of Rome refers to Corinthians as at the head "of the Evangel"; the Muratorian Canon gives the same honour to 1 Corinthians, so that we may rightfully draw the inference, with Dr. Zahn, that as early as Clement's day St. Paul's Epistles had been collected and formed into a group with a fixed order. Zahn has pointed out confirmatory signs of this in the manner in which Sts. Ignatius and Polycarp employ these Epistles. The tendency of the evidence is to establish the hypothesis that the important Church of Corinth was the first to form a complete collection of St. Paul's writings.

In this formative period the Epistle to the Hebrews did not obtain a firm footing in the Canon of the Universal Church. At Rome it was not yet recognized as canonical, as shown by the Muratorian catalogue of Roman origin; Irenæus probably cites it, but makes no reference to a Pauline origin. Yet it was known at Rome as early as St. Clement, as the latter's epistle attests. The Alexandrian Church admitted it as the work of St. Paul, and canonical. The Montanists favoured it, and the aptness with which 6:4-8, lent itself to the Montanist and Novatianist rigour was doubtless one reason why it was suspect in the West. Also during this period the excess over the minimal Canon composed of the Gospels and thirteen epistles varied. The seven Catholic Epistles (James, Jude, 1 and 2 Peter, and the three of John) had not yet been brought into a special group, and, with the possible exception of the three of St. John, remained isolated units, depending for their canonical strength on variable circumstances. But towards the end of the second century the canonical minimum was enlarged and, besides the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, unalterably embraced Acts 1 Peter, 1 John (to which 2 and 3 John were probably attached), and Revelation. Thus Hebrews, James, Jude, and 2 Peter remained hovering outside the precincts of universal canonicity, and the controversy about them and the subsequently disputed Revelation form the larger part of the remaining history of the Canon of the New Testament However, at the beginning of the third century the New Testament was formed in the sense that the content of its main divisions, what may be called its essence, was sharply defined and universally received, while all the secondary books were recognized in some Churches. A singular exception to the universality of the above-described substance of the New Testament was the Canon of the primitive East Syrian Church, which did not contain any of the Catholic Epistles or Revelation.

The question of the principle that dominated the practical canonization of the New Testament Scriptures has already been discussed under (b). The faithful must have had from the beginning some realization that in the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists they had acquired a new body of Divine Scriptures, a New written Testament destined to stand side by side with the Old. That the Gospel and Epistles were the written Word of God, was fully realized as soon as the fixed collections were formed; but to seize the relation of this new treasure to the old was possible only when the faithful acquired a better knowledge of the faith. In this connection Zahn observes with much truth that the rise of Montanism, with its false prophets, who claimed for their written productions — the self-styled Testament of the Paraclete — the authority of revelation, around the Christian Church to a fuller sense that the age of revelation had expired with the last of the Apostles, and that the circle of sacred Scripture is not extensible beyond the legacy of the Apostolic Era. Montanism began in 156; a generation later, in the works of Irenæus, we discover the firmly-rooted idea of two Testaments, with the same Spirit operating in both. For Tertullian (c. 200) the body of the New Scripture is an instrumentum on at least an equal footing and in the same specific class as the instrumentum formed by the Law and the Prophets. Clement of Alexandria was the first to apply the word "Testament" to the sacred library of the New Dispensation. A kindred external influence is to be added to Montanism: the need of setting up a barrier, between the genuine inspired literature and the flood of pseudo-Apostolic apocrypha, gave an additional impulse to the idea of a New Testament Canon, and later contributed not a little to the demarcation of its fixed limits.

In this stage of the historical development of the Canon of the New Testament we encounter for the first time a consciousness reflected in certain ecclesiastical writers, of the differences between the sacred collections in divers sections of Christendom. This variation is witnessed to, and the discussion stimulated by, two of the most learned men of Christian antiquity, Origen, and Eusebius of Cæsarea, the ecclesiastical historian. A glance at the Canon as exhibited in the authorities of the African, or Carthaginian, Church, will complete our brief survey of this period of diversity and discussion:

Origen's travels gave him exception opportunities to know the traditions of widely separated portions of the Church and made him very conversant with the discrepant attitudes toward certain parts of the New Testament He divided books with Biblical claims into three classes:

those universally received;

those whose Apostolicity was questions;

apocryphal works.

In the first class, the Homologoumena, stood the Gospels, the thirteen Pauline Epistles, Acts, Revelation, 1 Peter, and 1 John. The contested writings were Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and probably the Gospel of the Hebrews. Personally, Origen accepted all of these as Divinely inspired, though viewing contrary opinions with toleration. Origen's authority seems to have given to Hebrews and the disputed Catholic Epistles a firm place in the Alexandrian Canon, their tenure there having been previously insecure, judging from the exegetical work of Clement, and the list in the Codex Claromontanus, which is assigned by competent scholars to an early Alexandrian origin.

Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, was one of Origen's most eminent disciples, a man of wide erudition. In imitation of his master he divided religious literature into three classes:

Homologoumena, or compositions universally received as sacred, the Four Gospels, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, Hebrews, Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation. There is some inconsistency in his classification; for instance, though ranking Hebrews with the books of universal reception, he elsewhere admits it is disputed.

The second category is composed of the Antilegomena, or contested writings; these in turn are of the superior and inferior sort. The better ones are the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John; these, like Origen, Eusebius wished to be admitted to the Canon, but was forced to record their uncertain status; the Antilegomena of the inferior sort were Barnabas, the Didache, Gospel of the Hebrews, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd, the Revelation of Peter.

All the rest are spurious (notha).

Eusebius diverged from his Alexandrian master in personally rejecting Revelation as an un-Biblical, though compelled to acknowledge its almost universal acceptance. Whence came this unfavourable view of the closing volume of the Christian Testament? — Zahn attributes it to the influence of Lucian of Samosata, one of the founders of the Antioch school of exegesis, and with whose disciples Eusebius had been associated. Lucian himself had acquired his education at Edessa, the metropolis of Eastern Syria, which had, as already remarked, a singularly curtailed Canon. (comments on St. John clysostom)Luician is known to have edited the Scriptures at Antioch, and is supposed to have introduced there the shorter New Testament which later St. John Chrysostom and his followers employed — one in which Revelation 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude had no place. It is known that Theodore of Mopsuestia rejected all the Catholic Epistles. In St. John Chrysostom's ample expositions of the Scriptures there is not a single clear trace of the Revelation, which he seems to implicitly exclude the four smaller Epistles — 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude — from the number of the canonical books. Lucian, then, according to Zahn, would have compromised between the Syriac Canon and the Canon of Origen by admitting the three longer Catholic Epistles and keeping out Revelation. But after allowing fully for the prestige of the founder of the Antioch school, it is difficult to grant that his personal authority could have sufficed to strike such an important work as Revelation from the Canon of a notable Church, where it had previously been received. It is more probable that a reaction against the abuse of the Johannine Revelation by the Montanists and Chiliasts — Asia Minor being the nursery of both these errors — led to the elimination of a book whose authority had perhaps been previously suspected. Indeed it is quite reasonable to suppose that its early exclusion from the East Syrian Church was an outer wave of the extreme reactionist movement of the Aloges — also of Asia Minor — who branded Revelation and all the Johannine writings as the work of the heretic Cerinthus. Whatever may have been all the influences ruling the personal Canon of Eusebius, he chose Lucian's text for the fifty copies of the Bible which he furnished to the Church of Constantinople at the order of his imperial patron Constantine; and he incorporated all the Catholic Epistles, but excluded Revelation. The latter remained for more than a century banished from the sacred collections as current in Antioch and Constantinople. However, this book kept a minority of Asiatic suffrages, and, as both Lucian and Eusebius had been tainted with Arianism, the approbation of Revelation, opposed by them, finally came to be looked upon as a sign of orthodoxy. Eusebius was the first to call attention to important variations in the text of the Gospels, viz., the presence in some copies and the absence in others of the final paragraph of Mark, the passage of the Adulterous Woman, and the Bloody Sweat.

St. Cyprian, whose Scriptural Canon certainly reflects the contents of the first Latin Bible, received all the books of the New Testament except Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, and Jude; however, there was already a strong inclination in his environment to admit 2 Peter as authentic. Jude had been recognized by Tertullian, but, strangely, it had lost its position in the African Church, probably owing to its citation of the apocryphal Henoch. Cyprian's testimony to the non-canonicity of Hebrews and James is confirmed by Commodian, another African writer of the period. A very important witness is the document known as Mommsen's Canon, a manuscript of the tenth century, but whose original has been ascertained to date from West Africa about the year 360. It is a formal catalogue of the sacred books, unmutilated in the New Testament portion, and proves that at its time the books universally acknowledged in the influential Church of Carthage were almost identical with those received by Cyprian a century before. Hebrews, James, and Jude are entirely wanting. The three Epistles of St. John and 2 Peter appear, but after each stands the note una sola, added by an almost contemporary hand, and evidently in protest against the reception of these Antilegomena, which, presumably, had found a place in the official list recently, but whose right to be there was seriously questioned.

While the influence of Athanasius on the Canon of the Old Testament was negative and exclusive, in that of the New Testament it was trenchantly constructive. In his "Epistola Festalis" (A.D. 367) the illustrious Bishop of Alexandria ranks all of Origen's New Testament Antilegomena, which are identical with the deuteros, boldly inside the Canon, without noticing any of the scruples about them. Thenceforward they were formally and firmly fixed in the Alexandrian Canon. And it is significant of the general trend of ecclesiastical authority that not only were works which formerly enjoyed high standing at broad-minded Alexandria — the Revelation of Peter and the Acts of Paul — involved by Athanasius with the apocrypha, but even some that Origen had regarded as inspired — Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache — were ruthlessly shut out under the same damnatory title.

The Muratorian Canon or Fragment, composed in the Roman Church in the last quarter of the second century, is silent about Hebrews, James, 2 Peter; 1 Peter, indeed, is not mentioned, but must have been omitted by an oversight, since it was universally received at the time. There is evidence that this restricted Canon obtained not only in the African Church, with slight modifications, as we have seen, but also at Rome and in the West generally until the close of the fourth century. The same ancient authority witnesses to the very favourable and perhaps canonical standing enjoyed at Rome by the Revelation of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas. In the middle decades of the fourth century the increased intercourse and exchange of views between the Orient and the Occident led to a better mutual acquaintance regarding Biblical canons and the correction of the catalogue of the Latin Church. It is a singular fact that while the East, mainly through St. Jerome's pen, exerted a disturbing and negative influence on Western opinion regarding the Old Testament, the same influence, through probably the same chief intermediary, made for the completeness and integrity of the New Testament Canon. The West began to realize that the ancient Apostolic Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, indeed the whole Orient, for more than two centuries had acknowledged Hebrews and James as inspired writings of Apostles, while the venerable Alexandrian Church, supported by the prestige of Athanasius, and the powerful Patriarchate of Constantinople, with the scholarship of Eusebius behind its judgment, had canonized all the disputed Epistles. St. Jerome, a rising light in the Church, though but a simple priest, was summoned by Pope Damasus from the East, where he was pursuing sacred lore, to assist at an eclectic, but not ecumenical, synod at Rome in the year 382. Neither the general council at Constantinople of the preceding year nor that of Nice (365) had considered the question of the Canon. This Roman synod must have devoted itself specially to the matter. The result of its deliberations, presided over, no doubt, by the energetic Damasus himself, has been preserved in the document called "Decretum Gelasii de recipiendis et non recipiendis libris," a compilation partly of the sixth century, but containing much material dating from the two preceding ones. The Damasan catalogue presents the complete and perfect Canon which has been that of the Church Universal ever since. The New Testament portion bears the marks of Jerome's views. St. Jerome, always prepossessed in favour of Oriental positions in matters Biblical, exerted then a happy influence in regard to the New Testament; if he attempted to place any Eastern restriction upon the Canon of the Old Testament his effort failed of any effect. The title of the decree — "Nunc vero de scripturis divinis agendum est quid universalis Christian a recipiat ecclesia, et quid vitare debeat" — proves that the council drew up a list of apocryphal as well as authentic Scriptures. The Shepherd and the false Revelation of Peter now received their final blow. "Rome had spoken, and the nations of the West had heard" (Zahn). The works of the Latin Fathers of the period — Jerome, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Sardina, Philaster of Brescia — manifest the changed attitude toward Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 3 John.

It was some little time before the African Church perfectly adjusted its New Testament to the Damasan Canon. Optatus of Mileve (370-85) does not used Hebrews. St. Augustine, while himself receiving the integral Canon, acknowledged that many contested this Epistle. But in the Synod of Hippo (393) the great Doctor's view prevailed, and the correct Canon was adopted. However, it is evident that it found many opponents in Africa, since three councils there at brief intervals — Hippo, Carthage, in 393; Third of Carthage in 397; Carthage in 419 — found it necessary to formulate catalogues. The introduction of Hebrews was an especial crux, and a reflection of this is found in the first Carthage list, where the much vexed Epistle, though styled of St. Paul, is still numbered separately from the time-consecrated group of thirteen. The catalogues of Hippo and Carthage are identical with the Christian Canon of the present. In Gaul some doubts lingered for a time, as we find Pope Innocent 1, in 405, sending a list of the Sacred Books to one of its bishops, Exsuperius of Toulouse.

So at the close of the first decade of the fifth century the entire Western Church was in possession of the full Canon of the New Testament In the East, where, with the exception of the Edessene Syrian Church, approximate completeness had long obtained without the aid of formal enactments, opinions were still somewhat divided on the Revelation. But for the Catholic Church as a whole the content of the New Testament was definitely fixed, and the discussion closed.

The final process of this Canon's development had been twofold: positive, in the permanent consecration of several writings which had long hovered on the line between canonical and apocryphal; and negative, by the definite elimination of certain privileged apocrypha that had enjoyed here and there a canonical or quasi-canonical standing. In the reception of the disputed books a growing conviction of Apostolic authorship had much to do, but the ultimate criterion had been their recognition as inspired by a great and ancient division of the Catholic Church. Thus, like Origen, St. Jerome adduces the testimony of the ancients and ecclesiastical usage in pleading the cause of the Epistle to the Hebrews (De Viris Illustribus, 59). There is no sign that the Western Church ever positively repudiated any of the New Testament deuteros; not admitted from the beginning, these had slowly advanced towards a complete acceptance there. On the other hand, the apparently formal exclusion of Revelation from the sacred catalogue of certain Greek Churches was a transient phase, and supposes its primitive reception. Greek Christianity everywhere, from about the beginning of the sixth century, practically had a complete and pure New Testament Canon.

The New Testament in its canonical aspect has little history between the first years of the fifth and the early part of the sixteenth century. As was natural in ages when ecclesiastical authority had not reached its modern centralization, there were sporadic divergences from the common teaching and tradition. There was no diffused contestation of any book, but here and there attempts by individuals to add something to the received collection. In several ancient Latin manuscripts the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans is found among the canonical letters, and, in a few instances, the apocryphal 3 Corinthians. The last trace of any Western contradiction within the Church to the Canon of the New Testament reveals a curious transplantation of Oriental doubts concerning the Revelation. An act of the Synod of Toledo, held in 633, states that many contest the authority of that book, and orders it to be read in the churches under pain of excommunication. The opposition in all probability came from the Visigoths, who had recently been converted from Arianism. The Gothic Bible had been made under Oriental auspices at a time when there was still much hostility to Revelation in the East.

The Orthodox Russian and other branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church have a New Testament identical with the Roman Catholic. In Syria the Nestorians possess a Canon almost identical with the final one of the ancient East Syrians; they exclude the four smaller Catholic Epistles and Revelation. The Monophysites receive all the book. The Armenians have one apocryphal letter to the Corinthians and two from the same. The Coptic-Arabic Church include with the canonical Scriptures the Apostolic Constitutions and the Clementine Epistles. The Ethiopic New Testament also contains the so-called "Apostolic Constitutions."

As for Protestantism, the Anglicans and Calvinists always kept the entire New Testament But for over a century the followers of Luther excluded Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation, and even went further than their master by rejecting the three remaining deuterocanonicals, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John. The trend of the seventeenth century Lutheran theologians was to class all these writings as of doubtful, or at least inferior, authority. But gradually the German Protestants familiarized themselves with the idea that the difference between the contested books of the New Testament and the rest was one of degree of certainty as to origin rather than of instrinsic character. The full recognition of these books by the Calvinists and Anglicans made it much more difficult for the Lutherans to exclude the New Testament deuteros than those of the Old. One of their writers of the seventeenth century allowed only a theoretic difference between the two classes, and in 1700 Bossuet could say that all Christians and Protestants agreed on the New Testament Canon. The only trace of opposition now remaining in German Protestant Bibles is in the order, Hebrews, coming with James, Jude, and Revelation at the end; the first not being included with the Pauline writings, while James and Jude are not ranked with the Catholic Epistles.

Even those Christian theologians who defend Apostolicity as a test for the inspiration of the New Testament (see above) admit that it is not exclusive of another criterion, viz., Christian tradition as manifested in the universal reception of compositions as Divinely inspired, or the ordinary teaching of the Church, or the infallible pronouncements of ecumenical councils. This external guarantee is the sufficient, universal, and ordinary proof of inspiration. The unique quality of the Sacred Books is a revealed dogma. Moreover, by its very nature inspiration eludes human observation and is not self-evident, being essentially superphysical and supernatural. Its sole absolute criterion, therefore, is the Holy inspiring Spirit, witnessing decisively to Itself, not in the subjective experience of individual souls, as Calvin maintained, neither in the doctrinal and spiritual tenor of Holy Writ itself, according to Luther, but through the constituted organ and custodian of Its revelations, the Church. All other evidences fall short of the certainty and finality necessary to compel the absolute assent of faith.

The ancients were aware of the variant readings in the text and in the versions of the New Testament; Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine particularly insisted on this state of things. In every age and in diverse places efforts were made to remedy the evil; in Africa, in the time of St. Cyprian (250); in the East by means of the works of Origen (200-54); then by those of Lucian at Antioch and Hesychius at Alexandria, in the beginning of the fourth century. Later on (383) St. Jerome revised the Latin version with the aid of what he considered to be the best copies of the Greek text. Between 400 and 450 Rabbula of Edessa did the same thing for the Syriac version. In the thirteenth century the universities, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans undertook to correct the Latin text. In the fifteenth century printing lessened, although it did not completely suppress, the diversity of readings, because it spread the same type of text, viz., that which the Hellenists of the Renaissance got from the Byzantine scholars, who came in numbers of Italy, Germany, and France, after the capture of Constantinople. This text, after having been revised by Erasmus, Robert Estienne, and Théodore de Bèze, finally, in 1633, became the Elzeverian edition, which was to bear the name of the "received text." In remained the ne varietur text of the New Testament for Protestants up to the nineteenth century. The British and Foreign Bible Society continued to spread it until 1904. All the official Protestant versions depended on this test of Byzantine origin up to the revision of the Authorized Version of the Anglican Church, which took place in 1881.

The Roman Catholics on their side followed the official edition of the Latin Vulgate (which is in substance the revised version of St. Jerome), published in 1592 by order of Clement 8, and called on that account the Clementine Bible. Thus it can be said that, during two centuries at least, the New Testament was read in the West in two different forms. Which of the two was the more exact? According as the ancient manuscripts of the text were discovered and edited, the critics remarked and noted the differences these manuscripts presented, and also the divergences between them and the commonly received Greek text as well as the Latin Vulgate. The work of comparison and criticism that became urgent was begun, and for almost two centuries has been conducted with diligence and method by many scholars, amongst whom the following deserve a special mention: Mill (1707), Bentley (1720), Bengel (1734), Wetstein (1751), Semler (1765), Griesbach (1774), Hug (1809), Scholz (1830), both Christians, Lachmann (1842), Tregelles (1857), Tischendorf (1869), Westcott and Hort, Abbé Martin (1883), and at present B. Weiss, H. Von Soden, R.C. Gregory.

Never was it as easy as it is in our own days to see, consult, and control the most ancient documents concerning the New Testament. Gathered from almost everywhere they are to be found in the libraries of our big cities (Rome, Paris, London, Saint Petersburg, Cambridge, etc.), where they can be visited and consulted by everyone. These documents are the manuscripts of the Greek text, the old versions and the works of ecclesiastical or other writers who have cited the New Testament. This collection of documents, daily increasing in number, has been called the apparatus criticus. To facilitate the use of the codices of the text and versions they have been classed and denominated by means of letters of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. Von Soden introduced another notation, which essentially consists in the distribution of all the manuscripts into three groups designated respectively by the three Greek letters d (i.e. diatheke, the manuscripts containing the Gospels and something else as well), e (i.e. euaggelia, the manuscripts containing the Gospels only), a (i.e. apostolos, the manuscripts containing the Acts and the Epistles. In each series the manuscripts are numbered according to their age.

More than 4000 have been already catalogued and partly studied, only the minority of which contain the whole New Testament. Twenty of these texts are prior to the eighth century, a dozen are of the sixth century, five of the fifth century, and two of the fourth. On account of the number and antiquity of these documents the text of the New Testament is better established than that of our Greek and Latin classics, except Virgil, which, from a critical point of view, is almost in the same conditions. The most celebrated of these manuscripts are:

B Vaticanus, d 1, Rome, fourth cent.;

Sinaiticus, d 2, Saint Petersburg, fourth cent.;

C Ephræmus rescriptus, d 3, Paris, fifth cent.;

A Alexandrinus, d 4, London, fifth cent.;

D Cantabrigiensis (or Codex Bezæ) d 5, Cambridge, sixth cent.;

D 2 Claromontanus, a 1026, Paris, sixth cent.;

Laurensis, d 6, Mount Athos, eighth-ninth cent.;

E Basilcensis, e 55, Bâle, eighth cent.

To these copies of the text on parchment a dozen fragments on papyrus, found in Egypt, most of which go back to the fourth century, one even to the third century, must be added. (Dead Sea Scrolls?).

Several are derived from original texts prior to the most ancient Greek manuscripts. These versions are, following the order of their age, Latin, Syriac, Egyptian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Gothic, and Georgian. The first three, especially the Latin and the Syriac, are of the greatest importance.

Latin version — Up to about the end of the fourth century, it was diffused in the West (Proconsular Africa, Rome, Northern Italy, and especially at Milan, in Gaul, and in Spain) in slightly different forms. The best known of these is that of St. Augustine called the "Itala," the sources of which go as far back as the second century. In 383 St. Jerome revised the Italic type after the Greek manuscripts, the best of which did not differ much from the text represented by the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. It was this revision, altered here and there by readings from the primitive Latin version and a few other more recent variants, that prevailed in the west from the sixth century under the name of Vulgate.

Syriac Version — Three primitive types are represented by the Diatessaron of Tatian (second cent.), the palimpset of Sinai, called the Lewis codex from the name of the lady who found it (third cent., perhaps from the end of the second), and the Codex of Cureton (third cent.). The Syriac Version of this primitive epoch that still survives contains only the Gospels. Later, in the fifth century, it was revised after the Greek text. The most widespread of these revisions, which became almost the official version, is called the Pesittâ (Peshitto, simple, vulgate); the others are called Philoxenian (sixth cent.), Heraclean (seventh cent.), and Syro-Palestinian (sixth cent.).

Egyptian Version — The best known type is that called Boharic (used in the Delta from Alexandria to Memphis) and also Coptic from the generic name Copt, which is a corruption of the Greek aiguptos Egyptian. It is the version of Lower Egypt and dates from the fifth century. A greater interest is attached to the version of Upper Egypt, called the Sahidic, or Theban, which is a work of the third century, perhaps even of the second. Unfortunately it is only incompletely known as yet.

These ancient versions will be considered precise and firm witnesses of the Greek text of the first three centuries only when we have critical editions of them; for they themselves are represented by copies that differ from one another. The work has been undertaken and is already fairly advanced. The primitive Latin version had been already reconstituted by the Benedictine D. Sabatier ("Bibliorum Sacorum latinæ versiones antiquæ seu Vetus Italica," Reims, 1743, 3 vols."); the work has been taken up again and completed in the English collection "Old-Latin Biblical Texts" (1883-1911), still in course of publication. The critical edition of the Latin Vulgate published at Oxford by the Anglicans Wordsworth and White, from 1889 to 1905, gives the Gospels and the Acts. The "Diatessaron" of Tatian is known to us by the Arabic version edited by 1888 by Mgr. Ciasea, and by the Armenian version of a commentary of St. Ephraem (which is founded on the Syriac of Tatian) translated into Latin, in 1876, by the Mechitarists Auchar and Moesinger. The publications of H. Von Soden have contributed to make the work of Tatian better known. Mrs. A. S. Lewis has just published a comparative edition of the Syriac palimpset of Sinai (1910); this had been already done by F.C. Burkitt for the Cureton codex, in 1904. There exists also a critical edition of the Peshitto by G. H. Gwilliam (1901). As regards the Egyptian versions of the Gospels, the edition of G. Horner (1901-1911, 5 vols.) has put them at the disposition of all those who read Coptic and Sahidic. The English translation, that accompanies them, is meant for a wider circle of readers.

The text of the whole New Testament could be constituted by putting together all the citations found in the Fathers. It would be particularly easy for the Gospels and the important Epistles of St. Paul. From a purely critical point of view, the text of the Fathers of the first three centuries is particularly important, especially Irenæus, Justin, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, and later on Ephraem, Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine. Here again a preliminary step must be taken by the critic. Before pronouncing that a Father read and quoted the New Testament in this or that way, we must first be sure that the text as in its present form had not been harmonized with the reading commonly received at the time and in the country where the Father's works were edited (in print or in manuscripts). The editions of Berlin for the Greek Fathers and of Vienna for the Latin Fathers, and especially the monographs on the citations of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford Society for Historical Theology, 1905), in St. Justin (Bousset, 1891), in Tertullian (Ronsch, 1871), in Clement of Alexandria (Barnard, 1899), in St. Cyprian (von Sodon, 1909), in Origen (Hautsch, 1909), in St. Ephraem (Burkett, 1901), in Marcion (Zahn, 1890), are a valuable help in this work.

The different readings attested for the same word were first noted, then they were classed according to their causes; involuntary variants: lapsus, homoioteleuton, itacismus, scriptio continua; voluntary variants, harmonizing of the texts, exegesis, dogmatical controversies, liturgical adaptations. This however was only an accumulation of matter for critical discussion.

At first, the process employed was that called individual examination. This consists in examining each case by itself, and it nearly always had as result that the reading found in most documents was considered the right one. In a few cases only the greater antiquity of certain readings prevailed over numerical superiority. Yet one witness might be right rather than a hundred others, who often depend on common sources. Even the oldest text we have, if not itself the original, may be corrupt, or derived from an unfaithful reproduction. To avoid as far as possible these occasions of error, critics were not long before giving preference to the quality rather than to the number of the documents. The guarantees of the fidelity of a copy are known by the history of the intermediate ones connecting it with the original, that is by its genealogy. The genealogical process was brought into vogue especially by two great Cambridge scholars, Westcott and Hort. By dividing the texts, versions, and Patristic citations into families, they arrived at the following conclusions:

(a) The documents of the New Testament are grouped in three families that may be called Alexandrian, Syrian, and Western. None of these is entirely free from alterations.

The text called Western, best represented by D, is the most altered although it was widely spread in the second and third centuries, not only in the West (primitive Latin Version, St. Irenæ St. Hippolitus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian), but also in the East (primitive Syriac Version, Tatian, and even Clement of Alexandria). However, we find in it a certain number of original readings which it alone has preserved.

The Alexandrian text is the best, this was the received text in Egypt and, to a certain extent, in Palestine. It is to be found, but adulterated in C (at least as regards the Gospels). It is more pure in the Bohaïric Version and in St. Cyril of Alexandria. The current Alexandrian text however is not primitive. It appears to be a sub-type derived from an older and better preserved text which we have almost pure in B and N. It is this text that Westcott and Hort call neutral, because it has been kept, not absolutely, but much more than all the others, free from the deforming influences which have systematically created the different types of text. The neutral text which is superior to all the others, although not perfect, is attested by Origen. Before him we have no positive testimony, but historical analogies and especially the data of internal criticism show that it must be primitive.

Between the Western text and the Alexandria text is the place of the Syrian, which was that used at Antioch in Cappadocia and at Constantinople in the time of St. John Chrysostom. It is the result of a methodical "confluence" of the Western text with that received in Egypt and Palestine towards the middle of the third century. The Syrian text must have been edited between the years 250 and 350. This type has no value for the reconstruction of the original text, as all the readings which are peculiar to it are simply alterations. As regards the Gospels, the Syrian text is found in A and E, F, G, H, K, and also in most of the Peschitto manuscripts, Armenian Version, and especially in St. John Chrysostom. The "received text" is the modern descendant of this Syrian text.

(b) The Latin Vulgate cannot be classed in any of these groups. It evidently depends on an eclectic text. St. Jerome revised a western text with a neutral text and another not yet determined. The whole was contaminated, before or after him, by the Syrian text. What is certain is that his revision brought the Latin version perceptibly nearer to the neutral text, that is to say to the best. As to the received text which was compiled without any really scientific method, it should be put completely aside. It differs in nearly 8000 places from the text found in the Vaticanus, which is the best text known.

(c) We must not confound a received text with the traditional text. A received text is a determined type of text used in some particular place, but never current in the whole Church. The traditional text is that which has in its favour the constant testimony of the entire Christian tradition. Considering the substance of the text, it can be said that every Church has the traditional text, for no Church was ever deprived of the substance of the Scripture (in as far as it preserved the integrity of the Canon); but, as regards textual criticism of which the object is to recover the ipsissima verba of the original, there is no text now existing which can be rightly called "traditional." The original text is still to be established, and that is what the editions called critical have been trying to effect for the last century.

(d) After more than a century's work are there still many doubtful readings? According to Westcott and Hort seven-eighths of the text, that is 7000 verses out of 8000, are to be considered definitely established. Still more, critical discussions can even now solve most of the contested cases, so that no serious doubts exist except concerning about one-sixtieth of the contents of the New Testament. Perhaps even the number of passages of which the authenticity has not yet had a sufficient critical demonstration does not exceed twelve, at least as regards substantial alterations. We must not forget, however, that the Cambridge critics do not include in this calculation certain longer passages considered by them as not authentic, namely the end of St. Mark (16:9-20) and the episode of the adulteress (John 8:1-11).

(3) These conclusions of the editors of the Cambridge text have in general been accepted by the majority of scholars. Those who have written since them, for the past thirty years, B. Weiss, H. Von Soden, R. C. Gregory, have indeed proposed different classifications; but in reality they scarcely differ in their conclusions. Only in two points do they differ from Westcott and Hort. These latter have according to them given too much importance to the text of the Vaticanus and not enough to the text called Western. As regards the last-mentioned, modern discoveries have made it better known and show that it is not to be overmuch depreciated.

The New Testament is the principal and almost the only source of the early history of Christianity in the first century. All the "Lives of Jesus Christ" have been composed from the Gospels. The history of the Apostles, as narrated by Renan, Farrar, Fouard, Weizsäcker, and Le Camus, is based on the Acts and the Epistles. The "Theologies of the New Testament," of which so many have been written during the nineteenth century, are a proof that we can with canonical texts build up a compact and fairly complete doctrinal system. But what is the worth of these narrations and syntheses? In what measure do they bring us in contact with the actual facts? It is the question of the historical value of the New Testament which today preoccupies higher criticism.

Everybody agrees that the first three Gospels reflect the beliefs regarding Jesus Christ and his work current among Christians during the last quarter of the first century, that is to say at a distance of forty or fifty years from the events. Few ancient historians were in such favourable conditions. The biographies of the Cæsars (Suetonius and Tacitus) were not in a better position to get exact information. All are forced to admit, moreover, that in the Epistles of St. Paul we come into immediate contact with the mind of the most influential propagator of Christianity, and that a quarter of a century after the Ascension. The faith of the Apostle represents the form of Christian thought most victorious and most widespread in the Greco-Roman world. The writings of St. John introduce us to the troubles of the Churches after the fall of the Synagogue and the first encounter of Christianity with the violence of pagan Rome; his Gospel expresses, to say the least, the Christian attitude of that period towards Christ. The Acts inform us, at all events, what was thought in Syria and Palestine towards the year 65 of the foundation of the Church; they lay before our eyes a traveller's diary which allows us to follow St. Paul from day to day during the ten best years of his missions.

Must our knowledge stop here? Do the earliest monuments of Christian literature belong to the class of writings called "memoirs," and reveal only the impressions and the judgments of their authors? Not a single critic (meaning those who are esteemed as such) has yet ventured to underrate thus the historical worth of the New Testament taken as a whole. The ancients did not even raise the question, so evident did it seem to them that these texts narrated faithfully the history of early Christianity. What aroused the distrust of modern critics was the fancied discovery that these writings although sincere were none the less biased. Composed, as was said, by believers and for believers or, at all events, in favour of the Faith, they aim much more at rendering credible the life and teaching of Jesus than at simply relating what He did and preached. And then they say these texts contain irreconcilable contradictions which testify to uncertainty and variety in the tradition taken up by them at different stages of its development.

(1) It is agreed that the authors of the New Testament were sincere. Were they deceived? If so the writing of truthful history should, apparently, be given up altogether. They were near the events: all eye-witnesses or depending immediately on eye-witnesses. In their view the first condition to be allowed to "testify" on Gospel history was to have seen the Lord, especially the risen Lord (Acts 1:21-22; 1 Cor. 9:11; 11:23; 1 John 1:1-4; Luke 1:1-4). These witnesses guarantee matters easy to observe and at the same time of supreme importance to their readers. The latter must have controlled assertions claiming to impose an obligation of faith and attended with considerable practical consequences; all the more so as this control was easy, since the matters were in question that had taken place in public and not "in a corner," as St. Paul says (Acts 26:26; 2:22; 3:13-14). Besides, what reasonable hope was there to get books accepted which contained an altered form of the tradition familiar from the teaching of the Churches for more than thirty years, and cherished with all the affection that was borne to Jesus Christ in person? In this sentiment we must seek the final reason for the tenacity of ecclesiastical traditions. Finally, these texts control each other mutually. Written in different circumstances, with varying preoccupations, why do the agree in substance? For history only knows one Christ and one Gospel; and this history is based on the New Testament. Objective reality alone accounts for this agreement.

It is true that these same texts present a multitude of differences in details, but the variety and uncertainty to which that may give rise does not weaken the stability of the whole from a historical point of view. Moreover, that this is compatible with the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures. The causes of these apparent contradictions have been long since pointed out: viz., fragmentary narratives of the same events abruptly put side by side; different perspectives of the same object according as one takes a front or a side view; different expressions to mean the same thing; adaptation, not alteration, of the subject-matter according to the circumstances a feature brought into relief; documents or traditions not agreeing on all points, and which nevertheless the sacred writer has related, without claiming to guarantee them in everything or decide the question of their divergence, These are not subtelties or subterfuges invented to excuse as far as possible our Evangelists. Similar observations would be made about profane authors if there was anything to be gained by doing so. Try for example to harmonize Tacitus with himself in "Historiae," 5:4, and 5:9. But Herodotus, Polybius, Tacitus, Livy did not narrate the history of a God come to earth to make men submit their whole life to His word. It is under the influence of naturalistic prejudice that some people easily, and as it were a priori, are opposed to the testimony of the Biblical authors. Have not modern discoveries come to show that St. Luke is a more exact historian than Flavius Josephus? It is true that the authors of the New Testament were all Christians, but to be truthful must we be indifferent towards the facts we relate? Love does not necessarily make us blind or untruthful, on the contrary it can allow us to penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of our subjects. In any case, hate exposes the historian to a greater danger of partiality; and is it possible to be without love or hate towards Christianity?

(2) These being the conditions, if the New Testament has handed on to us a counterfeit of history, the falsification must have come about at an early date, and be assignable neither to the insincerity nor the incompetence of its authors. It is the early Christian tradition on which they depend that becomes suspected in its vital sources, as if it had been formed under influences of religious instincts, which irrevocably doomed it to be mythical, legendary, or, again, idealistic, as the symbolists put it. What it transmitted to us was not so much the historical figures of Christ (in the modern acceptation of the term) as His prophetic image. The Jesus of the New Testament had become such as He might or ought to have been imagined to be by one who saw in Him the Messias. It is, doubtless, from the saying of Isaiah, "Behold a virgin shall conceive," that the belief in the supernatural conception of Jesus springs — a belief which is definitely formulated in the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke. Such is the explanation current amongst unbelievers of to-day, and amongst an ever-increasing number of liberal Protestants. It is notoriously that of Harnack.

Avowedly or no, this way of explaining the formation of Gospel tradition has been put forward principally to account for the supernatural element with which the New Testament is permeated: the objectivity of this element is refused recognition for reasons of a philosophical order, anterior to any criticism of the text. The starting-point of this explanation is a merely speculative prejudice. To the objection that the positions of Strauss became untenable the day that critics began to admit that the New Testament was a work of the first century, and therefore a witness closely following on the events, Harnack answers that twenty years or even less suffice for the formation of legends. As regards the abstract possibility of the formation of a legend that may be, but it still remain to be proved that it is possible that a legend should be formed, still more, that it should win acceptance, in the same concrete conditions as the Gospel narrative. How is it that the apocrypha never succeeded in forcing their way into the might current that bore the canonical writings to all the Churches, and got them accepted? Why were the oldest known to us not composed till at least a century after the events?

Furthermore, if the Gospel narrative is really an exegetical creation based on the Old Testament prophecies, how are we to explain its being what it is? There is no reference in it to texts of which the Messianic nature is patent and accepted by the Jewish schools. It is strange that the "legend" of the Magi come from the East at the summons of a star to adore the infant Jesus should have left aside completely the star of Jacob (Num. 24:17) and the famous passage in Isaiah, 9:6-8. On the other hand, texts are appealed to of which the Messianism is not obvious, and which do not seem to have been commonly interpreted (then, at least) by the Jews in the same way as by the Christians. This is exactly the case with St. Matthew 2:15, 18, 23, and perhaps 1:23. The Evangelists represent Jesus as the popular preacher, par excellence, the orator of the crowd in town and country; they show Him to us whip in hand, and they out into His mouth words more stinging still addressed to the Pharisees. According to St. John (7:28, 37; 12:44), He "cries out" even in the Temple. Can that trait in his physiognomy be readily explained by Isaiah, 42:2, who had foretold of the servant of Yahweh: "He shall not cry nor have respect to person, neither shall his voice be heard abroad"? Again, "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb . . . and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp" (Isaiah 11:6-8) would have afforded material for a charming idyl, but the Evangelists have left that realism to the apocrypha and to the Millenarians. What passage of the Prophets or even of the Jewish Revelation, inspired the first generation of Christians with the fundamental doctrine of the transitory character of the Law; and above all, with the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple? Once one admits the initial step in this theory, he is logically led to leave nothing standing in the Gospel narrative, not even the crucifixion of Jesus, nor His existence itself. Solomon Reinach actually pretends that the Passion story is merely a commentary on Psalm 21, while Arthur Drews denies the very existence of Jesus Christ.

Another factor which contributed to the alleged distortion of the Gospel story was the necessity imposed on primitive Christianity of altering, if it were to last, the conception of the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus in person. On His lips, it is said, the Gospel was merely a cry of "Sauve qui peut" addressed to the world which He believed to be about to end. Such was also the persuasion of the first Christian generation. But soon it was perceived that they had to do with a world which was to last, and the teaching of the Master had to be adapted to the new condition of things. This adaptation was not achieved without much violence, done, unconsciously, it is true, to historical reality, for the need was felt of deriving from the Gospel all the ecclesiastical institutions of a more recent date. Such is the eschatological explanation propagated particularly by J. Weiss, Schweitzer, Loisy; and favorably received by Pragmatists.

It is true that it was only later that the disciples understood the significance of certain words and acts of the Master. But to try and explain all the Gospel story was the retrospect of the second Christian generation is like trying to balance a pyramid on its apex. Indeed the hypothesis, in its general application, implies a state of mind hard to reconcile with the calmness and sincerity which is readily admitted in the Evangelists and St. Paul. As for the starting-point of the theory, namely, that Christ was the dupe of an illusion about the imminent destruction of the world, it has no foundation in the text, even for one who regards Christ as a mere man, except by distinguishing two kinds of discourses (and that on the strength of the theory itself), those that are traced back to Jesus, and those that have been attributed to Him afterwards. This is what is called a vicious circle. Finally, it is false that the second Christian generation was prepossessed by the idea of tracing, per fas et nefas, everything — institutions and doctrines — back to Jesus in person. The first generation itself decided more than once questions of the highest importance by referring not to Jesus but to the Holy Spirit and to the authority of the Apostles. This was especially the case with the Apostolic conference at Jerusalem (Acts, 15), in which it was to be decided in what concrete observances the Gospel was to take the place of the Law. St. Paul distinguishes expressly the doctrines or the institutions that he promulgates in virtue of his Apostolic authority, from the teachings that tradition traced back to Christ (1 Cor. 7:10, 12, 25).

Again it is to be presumed that if Christian tradition had been formed under the alleged influence, and that, with such historical freedom, there would remain less apparent contradictions. The trouble take by apologists to harmonize the texts of the New Testament is well known. If the appellation "Son of God" points out a new attitude of the Christian conscience towards Jesus Christ, why has it not simply replaced that of "Son of Man"? The survival of the Gospels of this latter expression, close by in the same texts with its equivalent (which alone showed clearly the actual faith of the Church, could only be an encumbrance; nay more, it remained as a telltale indication of the change that came ─ afterwards. It will be said perhaps that the evolution of popular beliefs, coming about instinctively and little by little, has nothing to do with the exigencies of a rational logic, and therefore has not coherence. Granted, but it must not be forgotten that, on the whole, the literature of the New Testament is a thoughtful, reasoned, and even apologetic work. Our adversaries can all the less deny it this character, as, according to them, the authors of the New Testament are "tendentious," that is to say, inclined more than is right to give a bias to things so as to make them acceptable.

Christianity being the normal continuation of Judaism, the New Testament must needs inherit from the Old Testament a certain number of religious doctrines concerning God, His worship the original destinies of the world, and especially of men, the moral law, spirits, etc. Although these beliefs are not specifically Christian, the New Testament develops and perfects them.

The attributes of God, particularly His spirituality, His immensity, His goodness, and above all His fatherhood are insisted on more fully.

The moral law is restored to its primitive perfection in what regards the unity and perpetuity of marriage, respect for God's name, forgiveness of injuries, and in general the duties towards one's neighbours; the guilt of the simple desire of a thing forbidden by the Law is clearly set forth; external works (prayer, almsgiving, fasting, sacrifice) really derive their worth from the dispositions of the heart that accompany them.

The Messianic hope is purified from the temporal and material elements with which it had become enveloped.

The retributions of the world to come and the resurrection of the body are specified more clearly.

Other doctrines, specifically Christian, are not added on to Judaism to develop, but rather to supersede it. In reality, between the New and Old Testaments there is a direct but not revolutionary succession as a superficial observer might be inclined to believe; just as in living beings, the imperfect state of yesterday must give way before the perfection of to-day although the one has normally prepared the other. If the mystery of the Trinity and the spiritual character of the Messianic Kingdom are ranked among the peculiarly Christian dogmas, it is because the Old Testament was of itself insufficient to establish the doctrine of the New Testament on this subject; and still more because, at the time of Jesus, the opinions current among the Jews went decidedly in the opposite direction.

The Divine life common to the Three Persons (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) in the Unity of one and the same Nature is the mystery of the Trinity, obscurely typified or outlined in the Old Testament.

The Messias promised by the Prophets has come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who was not only a man powerful in word and work, but the true God Himself, the Word made man, born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, but risen from the dead and now exalted to the right hand of His Father.

It was by an ignominious death on the Cross, and not by power and glory, that Jesus Christ redeemed the world from sin, death, and the anger of God; He is the Redeemer of all men (Gentiles as well as Jews) and He united them to Himself all without distinction.

The Mosaic Law (rites and political theocracy) having been given only to the Jewish people, and that for a time, must disappear, as the figure before the reality. To these practices powerless in themselves Christ substitutes rites really sanctifying, especially baptism, eucharist, and penance. However the new economy is to such a degree a religion in spirit and truth, that, absolutely speaking, man can be saved, in the absence of all exterior means, by submitting himself fully to God by the faith and love of the Redeemer.

Before Christ's coming, men had been treated by God as slaves or children under age are treated, but with the Gospel begins a law of love and liberty written first of all in the heart; this law does not consist merely in the letter which forbids, commands, or condemns; it is also, and chiefly, an interior grace which disposes the heart to do the will of God.

The Kingdom of God preached and established by Jesus Christ, though it exists already visibly in the Church, will not be perfected until the end of the world (of which no one knows the day or the hour), when He will come Himself in power and majesty to render to each one according to his works. In the meantime, the Church assisted by the Holy Spirit, governed by the Apostles and their successors under the authority of Peter, teaches and propagates the Gospel even to the ends of the earth.

Love of our neighbour is raised to the height of the love of God, because the Gospel makes us see God and Christ in all men since they are, or ought to be, His mystical members. When necessary, this love must be carried as far as the sacrifice of self. Such is Christ's commandment.

Natural morality in the Gospel is raised to a higher sphere by the counsels of perfection (poverty and chastity), which may be summed up as the positive renouncement of the material goods of this life, in so far as they hinder our being completely given up to the service of God.

Eternal life, which shall not be fully realized until after the resurrection of the body, consists in the possession of God, seen face to faces, and of Jesus Christ.

Such are the fundamental points of Christian dogma, as expressly taught in the New Testament. They are not found collected together in any of the Canonical books, but were written throughout a period extending from the middle of the first century to the beginning of the second; and, consequently, the history of the way in which they were expressed at different times can be reconstructed. These texts never could, and were never meant to, dispense with the oral tradition which preceded them. Without this perpetual commentary they would not always have been understood and frequently would have been misunderstood.

Apostle and evangelist. The name Matthew is derived from the Hebrew Mattija, being shortened to Mattai in post-Biblical Hebrew. In Greek it is sometimes spelled Maththaios, B D, and sometimes Matthaios, CEKL, but grammarians do not agree as to which of the two spellings is the original. Matthew is spoken of five times in the New Testament; first in Matthew 9:9, when called by Jesus to follow Him, and then four times in the list of the Apostles, where he is mentioned in the seventh (Luke 6:15, and Mark 3:18), and again in the eighth place (Matthew 10:3, and Acts 1:13). The man designated in Matthew 9:9, as "sitting in the custom house," and "named Matthew" is the same as Levi, recorded in Mark 2:14, and Luke 5:27, as "sitting at the receipt of custom." The account in the three Synoptics is identical, the vocation of Matthew-Levi being alluded to in the same terms. Hence Levi was the original name of the man who was subsequently called Matthew; the Maththaios legomenos of Matthew 9:9, would indicate this. The fact of one man having two names is of frequent occurrence among the Jews. It is true that the same person usually bears a Hebrew name such as "Shaoul" and a Greek name, Paulos. However, we have also examples of individuals with two Hebrew names as, for instance, Joseph-Caiaphas, Simon-Cephas, etc. It is probable that Mattija, "gift of Iaveh," was the name conferred upon the tax-gatherer by Jesus Christ when He called him to the Apostolate, and by it he was thenceforth known among his Christian brethren, Levi being his original name. Matthew, the son of Alpheus (Mark 2:14) was a Galilean, although Eusebius informs us that he was a Syrian. As tax-gatherer at Capharnaum, he collected custom duties for Herod Antipas, and, although a Jew, was despised by the Pharisees, who hated all publicans. When summoned by Jesus, Matthew arose and followed Him and tendered Him a feast in his house, where tax-gatherers and sinners sat at table with Christ and His disciples. This drew forth a protest from the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked in these consoling words: "I came not to call the just, but sinners." No further allusion is made to Matthew in the Gospels, except in the list of the Apostles. As a disciple and an Apostle he thenceforth followed Christ, accompanying Him up to the time of His Passion and, in Galilee, was one of the witnesses of His Resurrection. He was also amongst the Apostles who were present at the Ascension, and afterwards withdrew to an upper chamber, in Jerusalem, praying in union with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and with his brethren (Acts 1:10 and 1:14).

Of Matthew's subsequent career we have only inaccurate or legendary data. St. Irenæus tells us that Matthew preached the Gospel among the Hebrews, St. Clement of Alexandria claiming that he did this for fifteen years, and Eusebius maintains that, before going into other countries, he gave them his Gospel in the mother tongue. Ancient writers are not as one as to the countries evangelized by Matthew, but almost all mention Ethiopia to the south of the Caspian Sea (not Ethiopia in Africa), and some Persia and the kingdom of the Parthians, Macedonia, and Syria. According to Heracleon, who is quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Matthew did not die a martyr, but this opinion conflicts with all other ancient testimony. Let us add, however, that the account of his martyrdom in the apocryphal Greek writings entitled "Martyrium S. Matthæi in Ponto" and published by Bonnet, "Acta apostolorum apocrypha" (Leipzig, 1898), is absolutely devoid of historic value. Lipsius holds that this "Martyrium S. Matthæi," which contains traces of Gnosticism, must have been published in the third century. There is a disagreement as to the place of St. Matthew's martyrdom and the kind of torture inflicted on him, therefore it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded. The Roman Martyrology simply says: "S. Matthæi, qui in Æthiopia prædicans martyrium passus est." Various writings that are now considered apocryphal, have been attributed to St. Matthew. In the "Evangelia apocrypha" (Leipzig, 1876), Tischendorf reproduced a Latin document entitled: "De Ortu beatæ Mariæ et infantia Salvatoris," supposedly written in Hebrew by St. Matthew the Evangelist, and translated into Latin by Jerome, the priest. It is an abridged adaptation of the "Protoevangelium" of St. James, which was a Greek apocryphal of the second century. This pseudo-Matthew dates from the middle or the end of the sixth century. The Latin Church celebrates the feast of St. Matthew on 21 September, and the Greek Church on 16 November. St. Matthew is represented under the symbol of a winged man, carrying in his hand a lance as a characteristic emblem.

The earliest Christian communities looked upon the books of the Old Testament as Sacred Scripture, and read them at their religious assemblies. That the Gospels, which contained the words of Christ and the narrative of His life, soon enjoyed the same authority as the Old Testament, is made clear by Hegesippus (Eusebius, "Hist. eccl." 4, 22:3), who tells us that in every city the Christians were faithful to the teachings of the law, the prophets, and the Lord. A book was acknowledged as canonical when the Church regarded it as Apostolic, and had it read at her assemblies. Hence, to establish the canonicity of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, we must investigate primitive Christian tradition for the use that was made of this document, and for indications proving that it was regarded as Scripture in the same manner as the Books of the Old Testament.

The first traces that we find of it are not indubitable, because post-Apostolic writers quoted the texts with a certain freedom, and principally because it is difficult to say whether the passages thus quoted were taken from oral tradition or from a written Gospel. The first Christian document whose date can be fixed with comparative certainty (95-98), is the Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians. It contains sayings of the Lord which closely resemble those recorded in the First Gospel (Clement 16:17 = Matt. 11:29; Clem. 24:5= Matt. 13:3), but it is possible that they are derived from Apostolic preaching, as, in chapter 13:2, we find a mixture of sentences from Matthew, Luke, and an unknown source. Again, we note a similar commingling of Evangelical texts elsewhere in the same Epistle of Clement, in the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, in the Epistle of Polycarp, and in Clement of Alexandria. Whether these these texts were thus combined in oral tradition or emanated from a collection of Christ's utterances, we are unable to say.

The Epistles of St. Ignatius (martyred 110-17) contain no literal quotation from the Holy Books; nevertheless, St. Ignatius borrowed expressions and some sentences from Matthew ("Ad Polyc." 2:2 = Matt. 10:16; "Eph." 14:2 = Matt. 12:33, etc.). In his "Epistle to the Philadelphians" (5:12), he speaks of the Gospel in which he takes refuge as in the Flesh of Jesus; consequently, he had an evangelical collection which he regarded as Sacred Writ, and we cannot doubt that the Gospel of St. Matthew formed part of it.

In the Epistle of Polycarp (110-17), we find various passages from St. Matthew quoted literally (12:3 = Matt. 5:44; 7:2 = Matt. 26:41, etc.).

The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles (Didache) contains sixty-six passages that recall the Gospel of Matthew; some of them are literal quotations (8:2 = Matt. 6:7-13; 7:1 = Matt. 28:19; 11:7 = Matt. 12:31, etc.).

In the so-called Epistle of Barnabas (117-30), we find a passage from St. Matthew (22:14), introduced by the scriptural formula, os gegraptai, which proves that the author considered the Gospel of Matthew equal in point of authority to the writings of the Old Testament.

The "Shepherd of Hermas" has several passages which bear close resemblance to passages of Matthew, but not a single literal quotation from it.

In his "Dialogue" (99:8), St. Justin quotes, almost literally, the prayer of Christ in the Garden of Olives, in Matthew, 26:39,40.

A great number of passages in the writings of St. Justin recall the Gospel of Matthew, and prove that he ranked it among the Memoirs of the Apostles which, he said, were called Gospels (1 Apol. 66), were read in the services of the Church (ibid., @i), and were consequently regarded as Scripture.

In his "Legatio pro christianis," 12:11, Athenagoras (117) quotes almost literally sentences taken from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:44).

Theophilus of Antioch (Ad Autol. 3, 13-14) quotes a passage from Matthew (5:28, 32), and, according to St. Jerome (In Matt. Prol.), wrote a commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew.

We find in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs — -drawn up, according to some critics, about the middle of the second century — -numerous passages that closely resemble the Gospel of Matthew (Test. Gad 5:3; 6:6; 5:7 = Matt. 18:15, 35; Test. Jos. 1:5, 6 = Matt. 25:35, 36, etc.), but Dr. Charles maintains that the Testaments were written in Hebrew in the first century before Jesus Christ, and translated into Greek towards the middle of the same century. In this event, the Gospel of Matthew would depend upon the Testaments and not the Testaments upon the Gospel. The question is not yet settled, but it seems to us that there is a greater probability that the Testaments, at least in their Greek version, are of later date than the Gospel of Matthew, they certainly received numerous Christian additions.

The Greek text of the Clementine Homilies contains some quotations from Matthew (Hom. 3:52 = Matt. 15:13); in Hom. 18:15, the quotation from Matt. 13:35, is literal.

Passages which suggest the Gospel of Matthew might be quoted from heretical writings of the second century and from apocryphal gospels — the Gospel of Peter, the Protoevangelium of James, etc., in which the narratives, to a considerable extent, are derived from the Gospel of Matthew.

Tatian incorporated the Gospel of Matthew in his "Diatesseron"; we shall quote below the testimonies of Papias and St. Irenæus. For the latter, the Gospel of Matthew, from which he quotes numerous passages, was one of the four that constituted the quadriform Gospel dominated by a single spirit.

Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 4:2) asserts, that the "Instrumentum evangelicum" was composed by the Apostles, and mentions Matthew as the author of a Gospel (De carne Christi, 12).

Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 3:13) speaks of the four Gospels that have been transmitted, and quotes over three hundred passages from the Gospel of Matthew, which he introduces by the formula, en de