Although Justin's letter of about 130 AD
mentioned the memoirs and writings of the apostles, he did not say what exactly
those were. The next writer, however,
was more detailed. He was Melito, bishop
of the church at Sardis about 170 AD. He
wrote a letter to Onesimus, a fellow Christian who had asked
for an accurate statement of the ancient books.
Melito replied,
I accordingly proceeded to the East, and went to the very spot where the
things in question were preached and took place; and, having made myself
accurately acquainted with the books of the Old Testament, I have set them down
below, and herewith send you the list. Their names are as follows:--
The five books of Moses--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy;
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, the two of Chronicles, the book
of the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, also called the Book of
Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Job, the books of the prophets Isaiah,
Jeremiah, of the twelve contained in a single book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. (Eusebius, Church History, Book IV: 26)
Melito is the first Christian who left a written
record of the accepted books of the Old Testament. His list includes all the books of today but
did not include the Apocrypha and did not include Esther (although there is
some speculation that it could've been included in Esdras, which is otherwise
Ezra and Nehemiah).
Although Melito did not explain why he did not include the Apocrypha, we can draw several other conclusions:
first, by 170, there was not yet a widely-accepted canon of the Bible, not even
of the Old Testament. There was such a
canon in the east, but Melito had to go there to discover it. And second, there was apparently no consensus yet
about the New Testament, or perhaps not yet even a sense that there ought to be
a canon for the writings of the apostles, as Melito makes no mention of any
books other than the Old Testament, although he does note that this list is the
old testament: the first writer known to do so. So third, he implied that there was a new testament, but apparently it had not yet been defined.
No comments:
Post a Comment