Alex Arevalo

Dr. Foster

RELI 4080

26 September 2023

Following the establishment of the canonical Gospels as a closed and accepted collection

amongst the whole Church, Metzger’s Chapter V, Development of the Canon in the East,

explores how the books that were not included in the canon were received in various regions into

which the Christian faith had spread. In the East, Tatian transcribed his Diatessaron into Syriac,

thus supplying proof that all four Gospels held authoritative power. Tatian spread his Greek

harmony to local churches in Syria, arguing that the format of a fourfold harmony was the best,

most succinct way of presenting the whole Gospel story at once. While Tatian rejected some of

Paul’s Epistles, he accepted the Epistle to Titus, denying the authority of 1 Timothy. In Western

Syria, Theophilus, the sixth bishop of Antioch, believed that the Pauline Epistles were not

Scripture, but were on the way to becoming Scripture due to their nature as ‘the divine word.’ In

a letter to his friend Autolycus, Theophilus argues that the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul are

inspired, and that they are essentially equal with the Scriptures of the Jewish canon. Serapion,

successor to Theophilus, accepted the writings of Peter and the other apostles as the words of

Christ, but rejected writings he believed to be falsely ascribed to them since they weren’t

supported by acknowledged tradition. In Asia Minor, Polycarp was relatively ambiguous in the

amount of authority he attributed to the apostolic Epistles, and Melito sought to ascertain the

canon of the Old Testament, making it likely that he sought to do the same in authenticating New

Testament documents. In Greece, Athenagoras made references to Matthew, Mark, John, and

several of Paul’s Epistles but refused to reference any other Old or New Testament texts.
Aristides, also in Greece, refused to refer to the writings of the apostolic authors as canonical. To

begin to sum up this overview, each of these countries, including Egypt, experienced the spread

of New Testament literature and ideas, with the peoples of these areas reacting differently – due

to societal norms of those areas, existing beliefs, and the point of history in which each place was

exposed. During these periods, key influential figures like Tatian, Theophilus, and more arose to

provide their respective interpretations and compilations of these texts and what they considered

to be canon.

It makes sense that the canonization process in the East was met with a lot of different

reactions. It’s really interesting, however, the contrasting levels of respect to prior texts like the

Old Testament and Epistles from one country to another. For states that are so close to one

another, one would think they would have similar viewpoints in regards to referencing the Old

Testament and similar assumed-canonical texts. The same can be said about the Gospels, with

several states accepting all four, while others argued that they were invalid texts. Overall, this

chapter of Metzger’s sort of muddied the picture of the canonization process. It’s hard to

understand how figures of that time discerned what was to become canon when they were so

many contrasting arguments from so many different sources.