The Growth of A New Testament Canon – The Testimony of Eusebius

In these blog posts, we are looking at the development of the New Testament Canon. Last week we saw evidence from the Muratorian Fragment. This week we will consider the writings of the early Church historian Eusebius. 

Eusebius lived and ministered around 300AD, during the time of the last great persecution under Diocletian and the great changes that came under Constantine. He is one of the most important early historians of the Church. His writings give important insights into the events of early Christianity, often giving access to documents we no longer possess.

One important section in the writings of Eusebius concerns which books of the New Testament were accepted by the Church of his day. To do this, Eusebius broke books down into three categories: recognized, disputed, and rejected.

Recognized referred to those books that were universally accepted by the Church. These included the four Gospels, Acts, 13 Pauline epistles (thus including the Pastoral epistles); Hebrews (ascribed as Pauline); 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation. Thus, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of the New Testament was universally accepted by the Church by 300, and also that no books outside of our present canon were universally accepted.

Disputed referred to those books accepted by some or most of the Church, but not accepted by some portion of the Church. He broke these down into two groups: those that were generally accepted (James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John), and those that were generally recognized as not being a genuine part of Scripture (Acts of Paul, Shepherd of Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache). Thus, every single book in our New Testament was either universally accepted or nearly so by the time of Eusebius, while no books not in our canon were recognized and accepted by a significant portion of the Church. Furthermore, most of those which were “disputed and not genuine” are books that are considered helpful, but not Scripture (the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Didache).

Rejected refers to books that were universally rejected by the early Church. These books were recognized as being spurious in their claims to have been written by an apostle, and as being heretical in their teachings. This list included the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Andrew, and the Acts of John. These writings are mainly Gnostic heresies and were never accepted by the Church.

Next time we will look at the general trends evident from the Muratorian Canon and the writings of Eusebius.

In Christ,

Bret