The Mistaken Bryennios List: 20/20 Hindsight
The Mistaken Bryennios List: 20/20 Hindsight
Gallagher and Meade are the best resource I have found for all the early canon lists.[1] So we start with their first Christian entry, the Bryennios List, allegedly the earliest canon list. They date it from 100-150 AD.[2]
In fact, Gallagher and Meade (writing in 2017) tell us that “392 [the date of Epiphanius’ list, to be discussed below] is the terminus ad quem [latest possible date] for the source of [the Bryennios List]” because “All scholars agree that Epiphanius’ list [and the Bryennios List] share a common source.”
Three years later, Luke J. Stevens[3] proved that the Bryennios List was actually a copy made in 1056 AD from a medieval book (written around 700 AD) that, itself, was a collection of extracts/copies, including an extract of the 392 AD list from Epiphanius. The medieval book includes many of the same differences as the Bryennios List has when compared to Epiphanius, with the Bryennios List having some additional scribal errors that its own scribe must have made. In addition, the medieval book was clearly a copy of Epiphanius (because it copied more of Epiphanius than just what appears in the Bryennios List). So, that chain of evidence and reasoning seems very solid to me—a slam dunk, in fact. Still, judge it for yourself, even though I now move on.[4]
Gallagher and Meade (and many others) were misled. Every single piece of scholarly speculation about the list was wrong. All of it—even the claims that its “latest possible date” was 392 AD. Every part of it was bunk.
Of course, to some extent, that is just how science works. All we can do is learn from it and move on. On one level, we could learn that this is not a fair and equal situation. It was those who wanted to believe in the early dating of the Bryennios List who were most accepting of the early date—and most likely to make wide and sweeping claims of what the list proved. For example:
If the usual dating of BL can be accepted, then we have an early-second-century Jewish list of books received among Christians, comprising the twenty-seven books of the Old Testament. (p. 78).
They make it a point to tell us that their beloved dating was the “usual” date. The “most scholars agree” trick is usually the weakest part of someone’s proof of something. We all rely on it because we have to. But science is not a democracy, and majority vote is actually not as meaningful as we writers attempt to make it when trying to win the debate—because every single day, lone scientists prove everyone else wrong. That is what science is all about, and Stevens was such a lone scientist in this case. The real distinction should be between honest and dishonest debate. If it is honest, then ideally, we should see it as debated and leave it at that. (Good luck with that…)
Meanwhile, the phrase “comprising the Old Testament” is not actually what the list says. The list actually says, “Names of the Books among the Hebrews.” It took a lot of guessing to get from that statement to the conclusion that because it is a list of the Hebrew books it is, therefore, meant to “comprise” the complete and entire Christian Old Testament. And the guessing was dead wrong. The “true author,” Epiphanius, was just listing the Hebrew books. Elsewhere, he makes it clear that Christians have (and to his mind, should have) a different list.
Guessing is dangerous, especially if you are already making guesses before you have seen all the evidence. Hence, for my purposes, a list of that sort is always a “Jewish List” for the canon debate—if, at the end of the process, you decide a Jewish list is to also be your Christian list, that is your decision. But make it at the end, not along the way.
… The different orthographies [used in the Bryennios List and Epiphanius’ List] resulted from the long textual transmission of the list, in all probability. Also, Epiphanius’s list has much fuller Greek titles than BL. The agreements and differences probably demonstrate that these lists descend from a common source and that Epiphanius’s list has undergone more revision or correction than BL. This contrast may be observed in the different ordering of the books as well… (p. 73).
[footnote 16]: … Epiphanius’s version of the list is usually viewed as a later revision of the common source from which [his list] and BL descended … BL was probably a more faithful copy of the source than [Epiphanius], since the latter shows a greater conformity to the other lists of the fourth century. … [Emphasis added.]
All wrong. Note the multiple assessments of “probably” that were not probable at all. (The medieval book simplified the spelling in Epiphanius, and the Bryennios List simplified the spelling in the medieval book.)
Still, many scholars convinced themselves that there was an original document: a source document called “Q.” They believed that they could tell what a later copyist (who actually turned out to be the original author—funny how that happened) had changed from this Q. They alleged what they were doing to be “science,” even though no one had ever found a fragment of Q, or even a single ancient mention of the existence of this alleged document. But the important thing is that they were able to publish an endless stream of books and articles showing what they claimed were the “original words” to be found in Q. Turns out, they were all just writing their own fantasies, while gullible simpletons believed only the actual, documented evidence. Somewhere in there is a lesson, if only we are wise enough to seek it.[5]
… The language of the list and its unusual order of the books suggested to Audet an early second century date (ca. 100-50). Not all subsequent research agreed with Audet’s conclusions regarding the language of the titles. (p. 74).
Note that Audet’s dating analysis would turn out to be wrong. Whatever he saw in the language was never really there.
…The identification of the list’s source language [Hebrew or Aramaic] has had a considerable influence on whether the list is interpreted as Jewish or Jewish-Christian.
…Audet [seeing it as Aramaic] considered either a Jewish or Jewish-Christian community as the ultimate origin of the list. … Goodblatt, on the other hand, concluded that nothing in the titles (including the Aramaic prefixes) prevents attributing those titles to a strict Jewish milieu. … (p. 74).
In this case, we know the answer: it was in Greek, not Hebrew, and not Aramaic, and is a Jewish list written by a Jewish Christian.[6]
Assuming the Jewish origin of the list based on its original language, the questions still to be answered are: (1) when did Christians receive it; and (2) how did they adapt it? We will see later that Melito’s list provides a plausible context for BL and might show that it was received by Christians before the end of the second century. (p. 74).
Melito’s list was not at all a plausible context. And we see how scholars used the Bryennios List as a data point when they made judgments and claims about the other Lists (and vice versa). All of it was wrong.
… If the list comprises primarily Hebrew titles in Middle/Mishnaic Hebrew, the evidence of the list’s language dates it before the fifth century. Other considerations such as the ordering of the books, its relation to other lists, and the reception history of individual books, provide a more precise basis for dating the list. Most scholars have dated this list to some time during the first or second centuries. (p. 74-75).
So, the allegedly more precise methods were actually less precise. That, to me, is the key lesson here: what “most scholars” thought was more precise was actually less precise, and that is what led them astray. Those methods were focused on the order of the Books, the names of the Books, the history of the Books, and how all of that relates in comparison to other lists.
Whereas the linguists (or at least some of them) were right that the Hebrew went back to before the fifth century because Epiphanius’ list (the one it was copied from) was from the fourth century. But linguistics did not work for determining the actual order of which document came first and which was the copy—which, itself, often matters for dating things.
…The second century attests both very few canonical lists and documented confusion on the number and order of the biblical books (cf. Melito, discussed above and also the section on Melito below), so it seems to provide a more likely context for BL than the fourth century, when canonical lists become much more numerous, reflecting more awareness of the issues and more stability. (p. 77-78).
Actually, it turns out that the second century attests just one single list, Melito’s. All others depended on debatable datings, and this one was way off. We should use certainties to judge ambiguities, not use ambiguities to judge certainties. And we really did not know that the other lists were from the second century. The dating and all the speculation about Bryennios were dead wrong. It might well be wrong for others, too.
Meanwhile, note exactly what happened: a list that fits perfectly in the fourth century (since that is what it was copied from) was pushed into the second century because it fit someone’s preconceived notions of where it ought to go. Worse, it was pushed despite evidence to the contrary. I am particularly dubious of claims about dates that rely on where something “fits” because, over and over, people push the lists they like to an early date.
[1] Although their 405 AD cutoff date is problematic, since it keeps the 419 Council of Carthage (attended by 217 Bishops who voted to accept all of the Apocrypha) out of the discussion. I think my choice of 450 is a much better date to end it.
[2] I generally do not provide copies of the entire lists in this book. You should buy Gallagher and Meade’s book, or I offer links to the lists online. On my end, I break the information from the lists out by the specific Apocrypha, which I believe is really much more useful for this purpose. Focus on individual books; it will help a lot.
[3] “The Bryennios List and its Origin” (The Journal of Theological Studies, October 2020—free copies for non-scholars are available at www.academia.edu)
[4] I did not find any critique of it to read. Perhaps there is none to be made, or perhaps it will be published tomorrow, or perhaps Google is not the right method for finding such things.
[5] A sarcastic reference to the “Q” source, the alleged document(s) from which folks like the Jesus Seminar claim the Gospels derive. Here we have a test case, where such methods pointed to a document that never existed, without even alerting the practitioners of such techniques that they might be completely and entirely wrong. That there was no separate source document, and some Evangelists may have copied the other(s), has always been one of the arguments against Q.
[6] Gallagher and Meade say he gave both the Hebrew names and the Greek names on his list, but I believe they mean transliterations of the Hebrew into the Greek alphabet, judging by their depiction of the actual text (which looks all Greek to me).
