Muratorian fragment

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The Muratorian fragment is a copy of perhaps the oldest known list of the books of the New Testament. The fragment lacks its beginning and ending, and is a 7th century Latin manuscript, which internal cues identify as a translation from a Greek original from around 170. The fragment listed all the works that were accepted as canonical by the churches known to its anonymous compiler. It was discovered in the Ambrosian Library in Milan by father Ludovico Antonio Muratori, (1672 – 1750), the most famous Italian historian of his generation, and published in 1740.

The text of the list itself is dated to about 170 because its author refers to Pius I, bishop of Rome (142 - 157), as recent:

But Hermas wrote The Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after their time.

The unidentified author accepts four Gospels, the last two of which are amongst the modern four, but the names of the first two are lost in the lacking beginning. Also accepted by the author are the "Acts of all Apostles" and 13 of the Pauline Epistles (but not the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews). The author considers spurious the letters claiming to have Paul as author, and that claim to be written to to the Laodiceans and to the Alexandrians.

Of the Catholic Epistles, the author accepts the Epistle of Jude and says that two epistles bearing the name of John are counted in the catholic Church; and the Book of Wisdom, written by the friends of Solomon in his honour." The two epistles of John however are not identified further by the author, and there is no reason to assume that the John of the first letter is the same as that of the second - the church even officially regarded the canonical epistles of John as being by two different authors (who they named John the Evangelist and John the Presbyter, respectively). The Apocalypse of Peter is mentioned as a book which some of us will not allow to be read in church, though it isn't certain whether this refers to the Greek Apocalypse of Peter or the quite different Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, the latter of which, unlike the former, was gnostic.

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Other sources

According to The Catholic Encyclopaedia, lines of the Muratorian fragment are preserved in "some other manuscripts", including codices of Paul's Epistles at the 8th Century abbey of Monte Cassino.

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