Glenn and Jesse: Sola scriptura was late to the party… really late
“Lectionaries are among the most overlooked entities that transmitted the church's scriptures in antiquity. They were selections from longer books that were read in churches in their liturgies. Such selected reading from longer books was also practiced in the synagogues and continued in the early churches. These recognized scriptural texts were regularly read in churches from their beginning but their contents are clearer and more specific from around the middle to the end of the fourth century, especially in Constantinople and other churches in the East. A helpful summary of these valuable resources is in Rouwhorst (2013: 822-42). The evidence for scripture reading in churches is limited initially, but doubtless goes back to the church's earliest beginnings that are rooted in Jewish practices in the synagogues in which the earliest Christians came and participated regularly. For examples of reading scriptures in the synagogues in the first century CE see, for example, Luke 4:16-21; Acts 13:15; 2 Cor 3:15, and the common practice of reading Christian texts in churches is everywhere assumed in the letters addressed to the churches from Paul, James, Peter, and John. However, the evidence for what specifically was read besides the NT letters is seldom as clear until the fourth and fifth centuries as in the case of the readings during the church's Eucharist observances and at baptisms.
The church's roots in Judaism make it understandable that early Christians would have followed their Jewish siblings' practice of reading scripture in the synagogue gatherings on the Sabbath and their interpretation and implications as those present were able to interpret them. This practice was less common in Temple worship that focused mostly on sacrifice and the singing of psalms. The practice of a regular reading of Torah or Pentateuchal texts and the haftarah (a conclusion of a biblical lesson), the practice of including a pericope from the Prophets, was common in the synagogues on the Sabbath in the time of Jesus (Acts 13:15; Luke 4:16-21; cf. also Philo, Spec. Laws 2.60-62; Josephus J.W. 2.289-92; m. Meg. 3.6).
Because the early Christians followed the pattern of the synagogue in their gatherings, it is likely that they also read texts of scriptures. As noted, evidence of reading NT texts in Christian gatherings can be seen in the NT letters that were addressed to churches as we see in Col 4:16. Those letters regularly cite multiple Hebrew scriptures mostly from the LXX and there is no defense presented for citing those sacred texts, but rather they are read as justification for what the authors were saying. It was not as if they were introducing something new to the people whom they were addressing, but rather the authors assume their readers will also recognize the scripture texts introduced with the usual scriptural designations, "as it is written" or "as the scripture says," or even without those designations when the authors are "writing with scripture" as noted earlier.
Justin in the mid-second century described a typical gathering of Christians on the Sunday and listed the activities that regularly took place in their meetings. That description was provided in the previous chapter but for here it mentions the regular reading of the "memoirs of the apostles" (the Gospels) "or" the writings of the prophets (the Hebrew scriptures/OT writings) as long as time allows or permits, noting that they do not read all of them on one occasion but rather like the Jews reading a selection in the synagogues from Moses (Torah) and a haftarah (portion of the prophets). There are multiple examples of reading of selections of the scriptures in synagogues in late Second Temple Judaism and useful summaries of these are in L. Levine (2005: 135-51) and those in early Christianity are summarized in Gerard Rouwhorst (2013: 825-7) and A. J. Levine (2017: 249-50, 759-63). In synagogues regular readings from the Pentateuch ("Moses") with some readings of the Prophets were common in the first century, as we see from Luke 4:16-21 and Acts 13:15.
The more familiar Christian liturgical readings in ancient churches, like those that are more contemporary, often included readings from the Law, Prophets and/or Psalms, Gospels, and Epistles. More is known about the lectionary contents from the fourth century and later, although readings from the Gospels are quite early in Christian worship as we saw earlier in Justin mentioning the Gospels ("memoirs of the apostles") or "prophets" (= all the HB/OT scriptures). This is seen also in Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. While sometimes whole books were read, especially the smaller letters or minor prophets, most often the lectionaries were selections from the Law (Pentateuch), Prophets, Gospels, and Epistles. Interestingly, Did. 8-10 (c. 90-100 CE) focuses on how to pray, observe fasting days and the Eucharist, but with no references to scripture reading while observing them. The author's reference to the example of Jesus "in his gospel" that cites his prayer (the Lord's Prayer) as a model to follow in Matt 6:9-13 suggests the readers were familiar with that Gospel. The author also admonishes readers to avoid reprimanding one another but to admonish in peace "as you have learned from the gospel and similarly to say prayers, offer charity," and "engage in all your activities as you have learned in the gospel of our Lord" (15.3-4, LCL). The author assumes that readers are familiar with the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and that most likely means their familiarity came from a liturgical reading of the Gospels in their church gatherings. It is highly unlikely that all of those hearing the Didache read to them would have had their own copies of it or the Gospels so they could check it out. Did. 16 has several parallels from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. Clearly, scriptures were read in church gatherings, but the specific texts are generally uncertain until the fourth century and thereafter.
Miller has observed that the scriptures known to the Orthodox Christians in the East were almost completely lections in the liturgies that were read in the churches. He observes that of the 1,500 surviving Septuagint (LXX) manuscripts employed in the preparation of Rahlfs's and Frenkel's Verzeichnisder griechischen Handschriften des Alten Testaments (2004) only seventeen manuscripts have a full OT. He goes on to say that the common persons in churches knew their OT only partially and mostly through the church's OT lectionaries that he calls the "Prophetologion." He contends that the whole OT was seldom known to all the churches throughout the whole Byzantine period and that "the Prophetologion was the Old Testament of Byzantine Christianity." He adds that this selective core of the OT "is reducible to a strictly textual core" (Miller 2010: 55-8). This was likely for three reasons: (1) the difficulty and cost of producing a complete collection of the OT scriptures that "ensured that few exemplars of such scope were produced in antiquity;" (2) low literacy rates would have prevented most of the people from being familiar with the church's scriptures; and (3) the familiarity and accessibility of a complete OT would not have been possible to most since the circulation of such longer texts would have been prohibitive and did not circulate freely in antiquity. This is similar in the surviving NT manuscripts, namely, there is little evidence that the scope of the OT and NT was widely known throughout the Byzantium period and certainly those few copies of both Testaments in the fourth and fifth centuries (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus) were not widely circulated or even known in many if not most churches as the surviving manuscripts show.
Only a small group of NT manuscripts (now over 5,740) contain all the NT books and none of them contain all the NT books and only those books before around 1000 and possibly even as late as 1116 CE as in the case of a Mt Athos manuscript (Gregory 922; cf. Schmidt 2002: 475-9). The lectionaries that were circulating in the churches largely from the fourth century are the best representatives of the sacred books known in most of the ancient churches. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the role that lectionaries had in the formation of the church's scriptures (Schmidt 2002: 55-76; Scanlin 1996: 300-12). What Miller says about the Orthodox churches in the East is most likely also true for most churches in the West.
The church's scholars might well have known and had accessibility to all the books that now comprise the church's OT canon, but certainly not the average minister or priest let alone layperson.
By the fourth century and thereafter churches began to prepare lections for Eucharist observances and baptisms as well as for festive occasions in churches. The evidence for complete Bibles for churches in the East and West was rare in antiquity and for many centuries. As a result, the selection of lections was especially valuable for church worship and other special occasions. Hopefully scholars will give more attention to lections as they consider the multiple influences that gave rise subsequently to the church's Bibles.
4. THE MANUSCRIPTS AND CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE
One of the peculiarities of the early Christian community is its preference for the codex by no later than 100 CE. The codex undoubtedly appealed to Christians because of its portability and convenience and possibly also its greater affordability. Later improvements in the production of the codex allowed multiple books to be included in a single codex.
By the middle of the fourth century when all the church's sacred books could be included in a single volume, this also began the emergence of multiple fixed biblical multiple canon lists. The technology of producing books and the increased capacity of the codex eventually made it possible to contain the whole Bible in one volume, but as noted earlier, the cost of the materials and professional copiers made it difficult or even impossible for most churches to have a complete collection of the church's scriptures. Besides the cost of hundreds of animals and the salary of a qualified scribe, the average of more than two years per copy made it very costly for a church to own a complete copy of the scriptures it recognized. Again, as the capacity of the codex increased, so also did the number of books included in it along with occasionally other books not later included in the church's Bible.
It is interesting that *no manuscript includes all the books of the NT until the middle to late fourth century* as we see in Codex Sinaiticus, but it also includes the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. As noted earlier no known manuscript contains all the NT books and no others until around 1116 CE (Gregory 922; see Schmidt 2002: 476-7; see further discussion of this manuscript below).
Some manuscripts as late as the fourteenth century contain books not later included in church Bibles. Most early churches did not have access to all the OT and NT books and sometimes their sacred collections included noncanonical books such as the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, 1 and 2 Clement, the Letters of Ignatius, and occasionally other gospels, letters, and apocalypses. If the capacity of codices was able to accept more texts in it before the fourth century, we can only imagine what else might have been in them and how they might have affected subsequent church history.
In 367 CE when Athanasius sent out his annual Festal letters to let churches know when to celebrate Easter, he often added considerably more in them than the date to celebrate Easter. In his Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter he advised churches on which sacred books to read in the churches, which to read privately, and which to avoid altogether. His OT is similar to the HB, and he also adds Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah but omits Esther. He allowed private reading of several non-HB books and non-NT books, but rejected the reading of those he believed were pseudonymous or heretical that he identified as "apocryphal" that should not be read at all.
The ancient manuscripts occasionally include noncanonical writings among the scripture collections and they often omit some NT books as well. An example of this is in Codex Vaticanus that along with P46 omits the Pastoral Letters, though possibly because
both are fragmented texts, which may not have been the case in Codex Vaticanus. One cannot be sure here, since they are absent from the two oldest manuscript collections of Paul's writings P46 and Marcion's collection. The current Greek NTs do not indicate that the Pastoral Epistles are absent from Codex Vaticanus or P46. Unfortunately, much of the significant information about the full contents of the NT manuscripts must be found elsewhere than in the introductions of the Greek NTs. Daryl Schmidt and Eldon Epp provide a valuable service reminding us of the many omissions in the available
biblical apparatuses but also what all of this means for understanding the Bible in its early formative period (Epp 2002; Schmidt 2002). They acknowledge that the manuscripts functioned authoritatively in the communities that had them (and that produced them), and some manuscripts also contain nonbiblical books.
They also note that the scriptural text in these manuscripts also often varies. Many unintentional errors and intentional changes were included in the early manuscripts, and along with their multiple variants they served as authoritative texts that welcomed and read them.
Epp rightly concludes, "Most if not all such competing variants were held to be canonical, wittingly or not, at various times and places in real-life Christian contexts, requiring the disquieting conclusion that canonicity of readings has virtually the same degree of multiformity as do the meaningful competing variants in a variation unit" (Epp 2002: 515). In many instances the term "canonical" no longer applies to only one variant reading and therefore no longer to only a single text of NT writings (Epp 2002: 515).
Sanders, speaking about textual variations in the book of Psalms, agrees substantially with Epp and writes, "There were probably as many canons as there were communities." He explains that the problem of fluidity in the books and texts in the collections of books that various communities possessed brings "attention to the question of literature considered authoritative-that is, functionally canonical-by one Jewish or Christian community but not by another" (Sanders 1999: 316-33, 1995: 56-63, here esp. 58; and 1991: 203-17). This is an important factor that is seldom understood or focused on by biblical scholars.
Epp shows that the canon manuscripts from the fourth and fifth centuries represent more the scriptural texts of the Christian communities up to that time. They show more accurately the situations in the local churches than do the canon lists or the books listed by councils or synods that served the churches. While there is considerable overlap in the contents of the biblical manuscripts and the canon lists, there are also considerable variations in them (Epp 2002: 495-6; and Sanders 1999: 316-33; and his 1991: 203-17). He supports this point by noting that textual and biblical scholars tend only to discuss the biblical books found at Oxyrhynchus but not the noncanonical books that were also discovered there (2004: 14-17).
For example, the manuscripts discovered at the Egyptian Oxyrhynchus site also include:
seven copies of the Shepherd of Hermas
three copies of the Gospel of Thomas
two copies of the Gospel of Mary
one copy of the Acts of John
one copy of the Acts of Paul
one copy of the Acts of Peter
one copy of the Sophia of Jesus Christ
two copies of the Gospel of Peter
Single copies of three unknown gospels/sayings of Jesus
one copy of the Acts of Paul and Thecla
one copy of the Didache
one copy of the Protevangelium of James
one copy of the Letter of Abgar to Jesus. (see Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.13)
While many early NT books were also found at Oxyrhynchus, we cannot overlook that the above apocryphal books and some unknown gospel-like writings were also found there (Epp, 2004: 18-20). Epp further notes that in the discovery at Oxyrhynchus there was one Old Latin and twenty-three Greek manuscripts of the LXX that included portions of Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, Apocalypse of Baruch, and 1 Enoch. For more information on the Egyptian manuscript discoveries and their contents, see more detailed information in McDonald (2017: 2:237-94).
*The point here is that the scriptural collections varied from time to time and place to place in the formative period before there was a recognized Bible.*
5. MAJUSCULE/UNCIAL MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE SECOND TO FIFTH CENTURIES
Because of the greater capacity to include all the churches' scriptures in one very large volume by the middle to late fourth century, it is important to see what was in those pandect codices that can help us to see what religious texts were informing Christian faith at that time. In them we will see several writings not later included in Christian Bibles but were considered at one time scripture for some Christians. Some noncanonical books are occasionally included in church father citations, various translations, and manuscripts; and sometimes canonical writings were omitted.
The following list of the fourth century and later uncial manuscripts not only have considerable overlap but also several differences. They show both the considerable overlap in most of the texts accepted by Christians as scripture in the fourth to the thirteenth century, as well as variations in some of the "fringe" books not welcomed by all in Eastern and Western churches. Primary examples include the following:
1. Greek-Codex Vaticanus (B, c. 350-375): The OT includes Esther with additions, 1-2 Esdras, Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, 1 Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Susannah, Bel and the Dragon. The NT is fragmentary and breaks off in the middle of Heb 9:14. Later hands added the rest of the NT books including 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation.
2. Greek-Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph or N, c. 375-380): 1-2 Esdras, Tobias, Judith, 1 and 4 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Esther with additions, 1 Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah. It includes all the NT books and also the Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas.
3. Greek-Codex Alexandrinus (A, c. early to mid-fifth century): Additions to Esther, 1 Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Esdras, 1, 2, 3, 4 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Psalms of Solomon, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalms of Solomon, Psalm 151, and 14 Odes. It includes all the NT books in a different order plus 1 and 2 Clement and possibly Psalms of Solomon listed in the table of contents.
4. Greek-Codex Claromontanus (D; likely fifth to sixth century): Wisdom, Sirach, 1-3 Maccabees, Esdras, Judith, and Tobit. Its NT inserted text in Latin and Greek Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; Paul includes Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians Ephesians, 1-2 Tim. Titus, Col. Phlm., 1-2 Peter, James, 1-3 John, Jude, Hebrews, Ep. Barn., Revelations, Acts, Shepherd, Acts of Paul, Revelations of Peter (missing Philippians and 1-2 Thessalonians).
5. Greek-Codex Venetus (fifth and eighth centuries): Additions to Esther, 1-2 Esdras, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Tobit, Judith, 1, 2, 3, 4 Maccabees.
6. Syriac-Codex Ambrosianus, 7al (seventh century): Wisdom, Epistle of Jeremiah, 1-2 Baruch, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon (Dan 13-14), Judith, Sirach, Apocalypse of Baruch, 4 Ezra, 1-4 Maccabees, Josephus, War VI.
7. Latin-Codex Sangermanensis (Dabal or 0319, c. ninth or tenth centuries): Includes Odes, plus OT Apocrypha, 2 Esdras, and the NT including Shepherd of Hermas (see Houghton 2016: 213-14).
8. Latin-Cassiodorus' pandect (complete Tanak/OT) is a nine-volume Bible (late sixth century): Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Maccabees, additions to Esther, and the additions to Daniel (Hymn of the Three Young Men [Dan 3:24-90]), plus Susanna, Bel and the Dragon (Dan 13-14; see Houghton 2016: 58-9, 206-7.)
9. Latin-Codex Amiatinus (early eighth century): Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Daniel additions (Hymn of the Three Young Men Dan 3:24-90; Susanna and Bel and the Dragon Dan 13 and 14 in Catholic Bibles), additions to Esther, Tobit, Judith, and 1-2 Maccabees. Baruch and Epistle of Jeremiah are missing (Gallagher and Meade 2017: 254-5).
10. Latin-The Alcuin Bible (c. 800): the Tanak/OT and 2 Esdras (= 3 Esdras), Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1-2 Maccabees.
11. Latin-The Paris Bibles (early thirteenth century onwards): They generally follow the Alcuin Bible. 2 Esdras (= 3 Esdras), Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1-2 Maccabees (Houghton 2016: 105-9, 189-91).
---Above text is direct quotations from pgs. 122-128---
No one was wandering around with piles of papyri scrolls and cooking up their personal interpretion of a neat, fixed, 66 book Canon of Scripture. Not only was it impossible to do so because of the sheer cost, but also because the majority of the world in that time couldn't even read or write. They estimate that 1 copy of the Gospels would have been equivalent to $9,000.
One of the ways the Church determined the Apostolic authority of the texts was by looking at what the ancient Churches read in their lectionaries and Liturgies.
Notice in the Codex traditions provided above that there are numerous books that are not in the Prot 66 book Canon. But wait, they claim to be going back to the Canon the earliest Christians all used....Which, as we have seen, wasn't the 66 book list the Prots arbitrarily decided upon over the last 500 years.
Anyone can *claim* to be following the "ancient Church"—See Joseph Smith. *Demonstrating* the truth claim about reality is where the Modern cults always fall apart.
No one was practicing Sola Scriptura prior to the Reformers inventing it.”
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