Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History, Books I–X

there; nor, on the other hand, could it be made a part of the New Testament, for it was not apostolic. The same was true of the Apocalypse of Peter, and the only thing which kept the Apocalypse of John in the canon was its supposed apostolic authorship. It was received as a part of the New Testament not because it was apocalyptic, but because it was apostolic, and thus the criticism of Dionysius would lead logically to its rejection from the canon. John’s Apocalypse is the only New Testament book cited by Justin as γραφή (so also by the Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, Eusebius, V. 1), and this because of its prophetic character. It must have been (according to their opinion) either a true prophecy (and therefore inspired by the Holy Spirit) or a forgery. Its authenticity being accepted, the former alternative necessarily followed, and it was placed upon a line with the Old Testament prophets, i.e. with the γραφή . After Dionysius’ time doubts of its authenticity became quite widespread in the Eastern Church, and among the doubters was Eusebius, who evidently wished to ascribe it to the mysterious presbyter John, whose existence he supposed to be established by Papias in a passage quoted in chap. 39, §4, below (compare the note on the passage). Eusebius’ treatment of the book is hesitating. He evidently himself discredited its apostolic authority, but at the same time he realized (as a historian more keenly than Dionysius the theologian) the great weight of external testimony to its authenticity, and therefore he gives his readers the liberty (in the next chapter) of putting it either with the Homologoumena or with the νόθοι . It legitimately belonged among the Homologoumena, but Dionysius’ attitude toward it doubtless led Eusebius to think that it might at some time in the future be thrown out of the canon, and of course his own objections to its contents and his doubts as to its apostolicity caused him to contemplate such a possibility not without pleasure (see the next chapter, note 1). In chapter 18, above, he speaks of it as the “so-called” Apocalypse of John, but in other places he repeats many testimonies in favor of its authenticity (see the next note), and only in chapter 39 does he state clearly his own opinion in the matter, which even there he does not press as a fixed conviction. The reason for the doubts of the book’s genuineness on the part of Eusebius and so many others lay evidently most of all in objections to the contents of the book, which seemed to favor chiliasm, and had been greatly abused for the advancement of the crassest chiliastic views. Many, like Dionysius of Alexandria were no doubt influenced also by the idea that it was impossible that the Gospel and the Apocalypse could be the works of one author, and they preferred to sacrifice the latter rather than the former. The book has found objectors in almost every age of the Church, but has continued to hold its place in the canon (its position was never disturbed in the Western Church, and only for some two or three centuries after Eusebius in parts of the Eastern Church) as an authentic work of the apostle John. The Tübingen school exalted the Apocalypse to the honorable position of one of the five genuine monuments of the apostolic age, and from it as a basis conducted their attacks upon the other Johannine writings. The more modern critical school is doubtful about it as well as the rest of the Johannine literature, and the latest theory makes the Apocalypse a Jewish document in a Christianized form (see above, chap. 18, note 1). Compare especially Holtzmann’s Einleitung, p. 411–413, and Weiss’ Einleitung, p. 93.

See Bk. VII. chap. 25, where Eusebius quotes a lengthy discussion of the Apocalypse by Dionysius of Alexandria. He also cites opinions favorable to the authenticity of the Apocalypse from Justin (in IV. 18, below), Theophilus (IV. 24), Irenæus (V. 8), and Origen (VI. 25), but such scattered testimonies can hardly be regarded as the fulfillment of the definite promise which he makes in this passage.

This chapter is the only place in which Eusebius attempts to treat the canon systematically, and in it he is speaking purely as an historian, not as a critic. He is endeavoring to give an accurate statement of the general opinion of the orthodox Church of his day in regard to the number and names of its sacred books. He does not, in this passage, apply to the various works any criterion of canonicity further than their acceptance as canonical by the orthodox Church. He simply records the state of the canon; he does not endeavor to form a canon. He has nothing to do, therefore, with the nature and origin of the books which the church accepts. As remarked by Weiss ( Einleitung in das N. T., p. 96), the influence of Eusebius in the formation of the canon is very commonly overestimated. He contributed himself very little; his office was to record the usage of the church of his age, not to mould it. The church whose judgment he takes is, in the main, the church of the Orient, and in that church at this time all the works which we now call canonical (and only those) were already commonly accepted, or were becoming more and more widely accepted as such. From the standpoint, then, of canonicity, Eusebius divided the works which he mentions in this chapter into two classes: the canonical (including the Homologoumena and the Antilogomena ) and the uncanonical (including the νόθοι and the ἀναπλ€σματα αὶρετικῶν ἀνδρῶν ). But the νόθοι he connects much more closely with the Homologoumena and Antilegomena than with the heretical works, which are, in fact, separated from all the rest and placed in a class by themselves. What, then, is the relation of the Homologoumena, Antilegomena, and νόθοι to each other, as Eusebius classifies them? The crucial point is the relation of the νόθοι to the ἀντιλεγόμενα . Lücke ( Ueber den N. T. Kanon des Eusebius, p. 11 sq.) identified the two, but such identification is impossible in this passage. The passages which he cites to confirm his view prove only that the word Antilegomena is commonly employed by Eusebius in a general sense to include all disputed works, and therefore, of course, the νόθοι also; that is, the term Antilegomena is ordinarily used, not as identical with νόθοι , but as inclusive of it. This, however, establishes nothing as to Eusebius’ technical use of the words in the present passage, where he is endeavoring to draw close distinctions. Various views have been taken since Lücke’s time upon the relation of these terms to each other in this connection; but, to me at least, none of them seem satisfactory, and I have been led to adopt the following simple explanation. The Antilegomena, in the narrower sense peculiar to this summary, were works which, in Eusebius’ day, were, as he believed, commonly accepted by the Eastern Church as canonical, but which, nevertheless, as he well knew, had not always been thus accepted, and, indeed, were not even then universally accepted as such. The tendency, however, was distinctly in the direction of their ever-wider acceptance. On the other hand, the νόθοι were works which, although they had been used by the Fathers and were quoted as γραφὴ by some of them, were, at this time, not acknowledged as canonical. Although perhaps not universally rejected from the canon, yet they were commonly so rejected, and the tendency was distinctly in the direction of their ever-wider rejection. Whatever their merit, and whatever their antiquity and their claims to authenticity, Eusebius could not place them among the canonical books. The term νόθοι , then, in this passage, must not be taken, as it commonly is, to mean spurious or unauthentic, but to mean uncanonical. It is in this sense, as against the canonical Homologoumena and Antilegomena, that Eusebius, as I believe, uses it here, and his use of it in this sense is perfectly legitimate. In using it he passes no judgment upon the authenticity of the works referred to; that, in the present case, is not his concern. As an historian he observed tendencies, and judged accordingly. He saw that the authority of the Antilegomena was on the increase, that of the νόθοι on the decrease, and already he could draw a sharp distinction between them, as Clement of Alexandria could not do a century before. The distinction drawn has no relation to the authenticity or original authority of the works of the two classes, but only to their canonicity or uncanonicity at the time Eusebius wrote. This interpretation will help us to understand the peculiar way in which Eusebius treats the Apocalypse, and thus his treatment of it becomes an argument in favor of the interpretation. He puts it, first among the Homologoumena with an εἴγε φανείη , and then among the νόθοι with an εἴ φανείη . No one, so far as I know, has explained why it should be put among the νόθοι as an alternative to the Homologoumena, instead of among the Antilegomena, which, on the common interpretation of the relation of the classes, might be naturally expected. If the view presented is correct, the reason is clear. The Antilegomena were those works which had been disputed, but were becoming more and more widely accepted as canonical. The Apocalypse could not under any circumstances fall into this class, for the doubts raised against it in the orthodox Church were of recent date. It occupied, in fact, a peculiar position, for there was no other work which, while accepted as canonical, was doubted in the present more than in the past. Eusebius then must either put it into a special class or put it conditionally into two different classes, as he does. If the doubts should become so widespread as to destroy its canonicity, it would fall naturally into the νόθοι , for then it would hold the same position as the other works of that class. As an historian, Eusebius sees the tendency and undoubtedly has the idea that the Apocalypse may eventually, like the other Christian works of the same class (the Shepherd, the Apocalypse of Peter, etc.), become one of the νόθοι , one of the works which, formerly accepted, is at length commonly denied to be canonical: and so, as an historian, he presents the alternative. The Apocalypse was the only work in regard to which any doubt could exist. Eusebius’ failure to mention explicitly in this passage the Epistle to the Hebrews, has caused considerable misunderstanding. The explanation, if the view presented be adopted, is simple. Eusebius included it, I believe, among the epistles of Paul, and did not especially mention it, simply because there was no dispute about its canonicity. Its Pauline authorship had been widely disputed as Eusebius informs us elsewhere, and various theories had been proposed to account for it; but its canonicity had not been doubted in the orthodox Church, and therefore doubts as to the authorship of it did not in the least endanger its place among the Homologoumena, as used here in a technical sense; and since Eusebius was simply stating the works of each class, not discussing the nature and origin of those works, he could, in perfect fairness, include it in Paul’s epistles (where he himself believed it belonged) without entering upon any discussion of it. Another noticeable omission is that of the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. All efforts to find a satisfactory reason for this are fruitless. It should have been placed among the νόθοι with the Epistle of Barnabas, etc., as Eusebius’ treatment of it in other passages shows. It must be assumed, with Holtzmann, that the omission of it was nothing more nor less than an oversight. Eusebius, then, classifies the works mentioned in this chapter upon two principles: first, in relation to canonicity, into the canonical and the uncanonical; and secondly, in relation to character, into the orthodox ( Homologoumena, Antilegomena, which are canonical, and νόθοι , which are uncanonical), and heterodox (which are not, and never have been, canonical, never have been accepted as of use or authority). The Homologoumena and Antilegomena, then, are both canonical and orthodox, the ἀναπλ€σματα αἱρετικῶν ἀνδρῶν are neither canonical nor orthodox, while the νόθοι occupy a peculiar position, being orthodox but not canonical. The last-named are much more closely related to the canonical than to the heterodox works, because when the canon was a less concrete and exact thing than it had at length become, they were associated with the other orthodox works as, like them, useful for edification and instruction. With the heretical works they had never been associated, and possessed in common with them only the negative characteristic of non-canonicity. Eusebius naturally connects them closely with the former, and severs them completely from the latter. The only reason for mentioning the latter at all was the fact that they bore the names of apostles, and thus might be supposed, as they often had been—by Christians, as well as by unbelievers—to be sacred books like the rest. The statement of the canon gives Eusebius an opportunity to warn his readers against them. Upon Eusebius’ New Testament Canon, see especially the work of Lücke referred to above, also Westcott’s Canon of the New Testament, 5th ed., p. 414 sq., Harnack’s Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, p. 6 sq., Holtzmann’s Einleitung in das N.T., p. 154 sq., and Weiss’ Einleitung, p. 92 sq. The greater part of the present note was read before the American Society of Church History in December, 1888, and is printed in Vol. I. of that Society’s papers, New York, 1889, p. 251 sq.

On Matthew, see the previous chapter, note 5; on Mark, Bk. II. chap. 15, note 4; on Luke, Bk. III. chap. 4, notes 12 and 15; on John, the previous chapter, note 1.