Pope Innocent I Canon List
Pope Innocent I Canon List
Author’s Note: Pope Innocent I’s canon list provides important evidence for the books recognized by the Church at the beginning of the fifth century.
405 AD: Pope Innocent I[1] accepts all the Apocrypha as full Scripture. As with the African Councils, one could be pedantic about the lack of explicit mention of Baruch, but there is no reason to think it was meant to be excluded and every reason to believe he considered it part of Jeremiah.
You should review Innocent’s list in light of all the evidence for Baruch, of course, but perhaps most notable in this context is Theodoret. As I wrote in https://read.canoncrossfire.com/baruch/, “we do not have direct citation evidence to define the reference to Jeremiah. However, that is a “pedantic point” and not a real point, since aside from Jerome, I found zero evidence that any Father or Bishop at such time actually rejected Baruch. Instead, we have plenty of evidence that the practice of considering Baruch part of Jeremiah continued long after this period, such as Theodoret’s commentary on Jeremiah written around 448 AD, a generation after Jerome had died. It includes Baruch and makes no mention of Jerome, his ideas, or the slightest controversy. Theodoret was wealthy and well educated (in Antioch, the Cradle of Christianity), and his Bishopric in Syria (not far from Bethlehem, from where Jerome had been writing) included 800 parishes —so, he would seem likely to be well-informed. The fact that he does not even mention Jerome’s idea would seem to be some indication that it had not found traction as of 448 AD.”