Polycarp, another writing called the Teaching (Didache) of the Apostles. This book Eusebius|, in the fourth century, classes among those that were not certainly spurious or certainly canonical, but disputed. We cannot say that it was used publicly by any Church.
A list of Biblical books in a sixth-century manuscript of the Epistles (Codex Claromontanus, Paris) includes among Biblical books, Barnabas, Hermas, the Revelation of Peter, and the Acts of Paul. But it is impossible to maintain that these Acts enjoyed a reputation equal to that of the other books.[1]
So our list is a very short one. We may fairly say that the only books which had a real chance of being included in the Canon of the New Testament were the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, the Revelation of Peter, and the Shepherd of Hermas; for I do not think we need reckon in the Didache or the Acts of Paul. And we may be thankful that the Church at large finally declared against them; for the first Epistle of Clement is the only one of them which we should have found tolerable now.
There was, then, a serious claim for the recognition of four or five books. But when we have said this much, we have by no means exhausted the list of writings for which the same claim was made and was not so seriously entertained: books which in larger or smaller circles were placed on a level with those of our Canon, but were regarded by the Church at large as the Book of Mormon or the writings of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy are now. Outside the ranks of these, too, there is an immense crowd of smaller writings which claim, indeed, to supplement the Bible in one way or another, but of which it is difficult to say that any one was ever looked upon as ‘Scripture’. Such are many of the lesser Passion-narratives, or again those of the Death of the Virgin. Documents of this kind may be said to shade off gradually into the category of the Lives of the Saints.
Of all these classes is the present collection composed. A brief survey of the arrangement will make this clear.
I have placed first the remains of the oldest books, mainly
- ↑ One writing of the fifth century uses them, and cannot be proved to use the Canonical Acts; but it is an exception, and an eccentric one in itself—a book called the Supper of (pseudo-)Cyprian, a cento of Bible tags, made perhaps for use in schools.
