Melito, the Jews & the Hebrew Canon

1. In those days also Melito, bishop of the parish in Sardis, and Apolinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, enjoyed great distinction. Each of them on his own part addressed apologies in behalf of the faith to the above-mentioned emperor of the Romans who was reigning at that time.

2. The following works of these writers have come to our knowledge. Of Melito, the two books On the Passover, and one On the Conduct of Life and the Prophets, the discourse On the Church, and one On the Lord’s Day, still further one On the Faith of Man, and one On his Creation, another also On the Obedience of Faith, and one On the Senses; besides these the work On the Soul and Body, and that On Baptism, and the one On Truth, and On the Creation and Generation of Christ; his discourse also On Prophecy, and that On Hospitality; still further, The Key, and the books On the Devil and the Apocalypse of John, and the work On the Corporeality of God, and finally the book addressed to Antoninus.

3. In the books On the Passover he indicates the time at which he wrote, beginning with these words: While Servilius Paulus was proconsul of Asia, at the time when Sagaris suffered martyrdom, there arose in Laodicea a great strife concerning the Passover, which fell according to rule in those days; and these were written.

4. And Clement of Alexandria refers to this work in his own discourse On the Passover, which, he says, he wrote on occasion of Melito’s work…

12. But in the Extracts made by him the same writer gives at the beginning of the introduction a catalogue of the acknowledged books of the Old Testament, which it is necessary to quote at this point. He writes as follows:

13. Melito to his brother Onesimus, greeting: Since you have often, in your zeal for the word, expressed a wish to have extracts made from the Law and the Prophets concerning the Saviour and concerning our entire faith, and has also desired to have an accurate statement of the ancient book, as regards their number and their order, I have endeavored to perform the task, knowing your zeal for the faith, and your desire to gain information in regard to the word, and knowing that you, in your yearning after God, esteem these things above all else, struggling to attain eternal salvation.

14. Accordingly when I went East and came to the place where these things were preached and done, I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament (Covenant), and send them to you as written below. Their names are as follows: Of Moses, five books: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Jesus Nave, Judges, Ruth; of Kings, four books; of Chronicles, two; the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, Wisdom also, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job; of Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah; of the twelve prophets, one book ; Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. From which also I have made the extracts, dividing them into six books. Such are the words of Melito. (Church History, Book IV; emphasis mine)

Confusion about the exact contents of the Jewish canon is evidenced by Christian writers as well. Melito (c.170) provided a list of the books of the Jewish canon in answer to frequent questions from his brother [bishop?] Onesimus, who ‘desired to have an accurate statement of the ancient books as regards their number and order’ (Eusebius, HE 4.26.13—14).

Apparently unable to fulfil this request in Sardis, Melito ‘went East and came to the place where these things were preached and done’. In his list of twenty-one books, Melito oddly omits mention of Esther and Lamentations and places Ezekiel after Daniel.

Later, Origen also provided a list of the Jewish canon. ‘But it should be known that there are twenty-two canonical books, as the Hebrews have handed them down; the same as the number of the letters of their alphabet … These are the twenty-two books according to the Hebrews …’ (Eusebius, HE 6.25.2).

Origen included a transliteration in Greek of the Hebrew titles to parallel the names of the books as known in the Septuagint. He appears to have omitted the book of the Twelve Prophets, since his intended list of twenty-two books includes only twenty-one Hebrew titles; unless indeed one reads e.g. <oi Dodeka prophetai, Tresawr> ‘Iwb. He also noted the book of the Maccabees at the end of his list.

Both lists that Melito and Origen presented ARE CLEARLY JEWISH CATALOGUES AND NOT CHRISTIAN ONES. Origen drew a clear distinction between ‘their scriptures’ (those of the Jews) and ‘our scriptures’ (those of the Church), both with respect to the reading of the text (cf. Ad Afnicanum 5, 9, 13) and with respect to the number of books.

He noted, for instance, that the Jews did not use Tobit and Judith, to which the churches did appeal (Ad Afncanum 13.3). Origen appears to have suggested confinement by Christians to the Jewish canon only for polemic purposes with Jewish opponents (Ad Afncanum 5.13). A similar need may lie behind Melito’s list, for he is known to have made a collection of ‘testimonies’ from the Jewish canon (Eusebius, HE 4.2612, 14).

The extant evidence suggests that the Jews defined their canon (c.100) some time after the Christians had separated from the synagogues and that the Christians inherited a larger body of Jewish scriptures than the later Jewish canon. The Eastern church felt the impact of the newly established Jewish canon more clearly than the Western. Melito, implicitly, and Origen, explicitly, attempted to correlate Christian usage with the Jewish twenty-two-book list, at least for polemical purposes. Like their successors, they related, in varying combinations, separate Septuagint works to the Hebrew titles of the Jewish canon (see Table 3.1). In Epiphanius there are three different attempts to correlate Christian usage of Jewish scriptures with the Jewish canon. These variations suggest that while the tradition of a twenty-two-book Jewish canon was received from Palestine, no clear tradition of the contents or of how the Jews arranged or counted their scriptures was known to the churches. There is in the Christian and Jewish lists a general disagreement about contents, order, and grouping. No extant Christian list of the Old Testament agrees with the Masoretic Jewish canon until the Synod of Dort in the seventeenth century. These differences indicate the fluidity that once existed, and further confirm that the early church did not inherit an established Jewish canon. (Geoffrey Mark Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs) [Clarendon Press Publication,1992], pp. 76-77, 80; emphasis mine)

In summary, it is clear that not only did the Church NOT INHERIT a canon of Scripture from Judaism, but that the Church was forced to determine an Old Testament canon for itself.¹⁸

Sundberg’s distinction between ‘scripture’ and ‘canon’ is useful in distinguishing between the time when the Church’s Old Testament scriptures were undefined, and the fourth century, when the churches were struggling with fixing an Old Testament canon. The establishment of the Jewish canon does not seem to have prompted the Christians at first to define their own Old Testament.

The early lists of the Jewish canon of Melito and Origen appear to have been devised ONLY for polemic purposes. Only in the fourth century did the Eastern Fathers attempt to limit their Old Testament scriptures to the Jewish canon. The Western Fathers, on the other hand, were content to establish an Old Testament canon without limitation by the Jewish canon. In the West, Jewish non-canonical scriptures like Judith, Tobit, Sirach, and the books of the Maccabees found their way into the Christian Old Testament canon. Whether in the West or the East, the crucial period in the formation of the Christian Old Testament canon was the fourth century. (Ibid., pp. 81, 83; emphasis mine)

1. The Old Testament

The endorsement of an Old Testament for the Christian Church appears interwoven with the fixing of the New Testament canon in the fourth century. Almost all the New Testament catalogues of that time (and all the New Testament collections) are preceded by an Old Testament.

Melito’s and Origen’s earlier Old Testament catalogues (HE 4.26.14; 6.25.2, respectively) appear to be ONLY Christian lists OF THE JEWISH CANON. The first extant Christian recensions of the Old Testament canon are dated to the fourth century, and during that period there are seventeen undisputed Old Testament catalogues, all but one of which was associated with a New Testament list. The exception is Hilary’s Old Testament catalogue (Prol. in Lib. Ps. 15) which was probably derived from Origen. Eusebius is the only New Testament cataloguer without an original Old Testament list.

This absence in Eusebius may be contextual, since his New Testament list appeared after a discussion of the apostles, and since he provided Melito’s and Origen’s Old Testament lists later in the work (HE 4.26.14; 6.25.2, respectively). Epiphanius too did not immediately precede his New Testament list (Pan. 76.5) with one from the Old, but an Old Testament list is present earlier in the source where the New Testament catalogue is found (Pan. 8.6). Moreover, Epiphanius provided two other Old Testament catalogues elsewhere in his writings (De Mens. et Pond. 4, 23). Thus the action of cataloguing Christian scripture not only appears to have originated in the fourth century, but also to have been a matter related generally to the whole Christian canon, and not simply to the Old or New Testament independently. New Testament catalogues always appear in the context of the formation of the whole Christian canon, and not in response to a previously established Old Testament. (Ibid., pp. 174-175; emphasis mine)

In the Eastern church, however, the impact of the closing of the Jewish canon in the late first or early second century was more immediate. This is evidenced in the lists of the Jewish canon drawn up first by Melito and Origen (Eusebius, HE 4.26.14, 6.25.2, respectively).

In the East, the tendency in the churches was to exclude the books which are now called the Apocrypha from the Old Testament, including Wisdom.

Some of these ‘deuterocanonical’ works were included under titles from the Jewish canon (e.g. Athanasius, Ep. Fest. 39.4; Cyril, Catech. 4.35; Epiphanius, Pan. 1.1.8): the heading of ‘Daniel’ in many Eastern lists included the Song of the Three Holy Children, the History of Susanna, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, all of which were excluded from the Hebrew Bible.

Similarly for the Christians ‘Esdras’ implied 1 Esdras, Ezra, and Nehemiah; and ‘Jeremiah’ included Lamentations, Baruch, and the Epistle of Jeremy.

Other deuterocanonical works were recommended for secondary reading, or considered with the New Testament writings. (Ibid, pp. 203-204; emphasis mine)