Epiphanius Canon Lists
Epiphanius Canon Lists
385 AD:[1] Epiphanius. Epiphanius is the Romaniote Jewish Christian mentioned earlier. He gives us multiple Jewish canons and one Christian list. For my purposes, Baruch and Susanna are accepted (by both Christians and Jews, per Epiphanius[2]); Wisdom and Sirach, I will discuss momentarily; and the other four Apocrypha are excluded.
Wisdom and Sirach are mentioned in every list. De Mensuris et Ponderibus 4-5 says, “And the twenty-two books were filled according to the number of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrews. For the two books in verse, both the one of Solomon, being called the Excellent, and the one of Jesus son of Sirach, and the grandson Jesus (for his grandfather was called Jesus), who wrote the wisdom in Hebrew, which his grandson, Jesus, wrote by translating it into Greek. And these are useful and beneficial, but they are not offered up to the number of the specified books. Therefore neither were they placed in the ark, that is, in the ark of the covenant.”[3] Here he is speaking of the Jews, since the Ark is in the time of the Jews, not the time of Christians (plus there is other context to make it clear if you read more of his book).
Panarion 8.6.1-4: “These are the twenty-seven books given by God to the Jews; now these are numbered twenty-two just as their letters in Hebrew characters because ten books are double, being reckoned as five. Now we have spoken clearly concerning this in another place. Now they also have two other books in dispute, the Wisdom of Sirach and the one of Solomon, separate from some other apocryphal books.” Again, “they,” speaking of the Jews.
Panarion 76.22.5: “For if you were begotten from the Holy Spirit and instructed in the prophets and apostles, you must have gone through (the record) from the beginning of the genesis of the world until the times of Esther in twenty-seven books of the Old Covenant, which are numbered as twenty-two, and in the four holy gospels, and in fourteen epistles of the holy apostle Paul, and in the general epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude before these [and] with the Acts of the Apostles in their times, and in the Revelation of John, and in the Wisdom books, I mean of Solomon and of the son of Sirach, and in short having gone through all the Divine Scriptures, I say, you should have condemned yourself …” Now, he is speaking of the Christian Bible.
That is what Epiphanius said, which (to me) is easy to understand: the Jews do not fully accept them, and Christians do. What makes things hard is not what Epiphanius said; it is what others claim he said. Gallagher and Meade:
The Wisdom books of Solomon and Sirach are not included in the twenty-seven books of the Old Testament and appear at the end of the summary lists of the Old and New Testaments. This placement of Sirach and Wisdom at the end of the NT list coheres with a wider patristic practice of listing the useful non-canonical books after the canons of the Old Testament and the New Testament (see Horbury 1994). (p. 168, FN 162).
As an example, it is, indeed, in Athanasius’ seventh and last paragraph that he says, “There are other books besides these, indeed not received as canonical but having been appointed by our fathers to be read … Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit …”[4] It is not Athanasius’ “coherence to a Patristic pattern” that identifies those Books as “not canonical but to be read,” but his actual use of the words “not received as canonical but having been appointed by our fathers to be read.” The order of the Books does not override the words Epiphanius wrote.
That he refers to them collectively as the Wisdom books, fit for instruction of Christians, accords with his previous description of these books as useful and beneficial. They are in dispute, and not established. (Ibid.)
Nowhere does Epiphanius say this. He said “they”—not we. They the Jews, not we the Christians “also have two other books in dispute” and “these are useful and beneficial…” In his Christian list, he identifies that same 27 Book list of the Jews, plus all the other books the Christians accept as Divine Scripture, including the New Testament and Wisdom and Sirach. Nowhere does he say the Books are in dispute among Christians or only useful and beneficial among Christians; instead, he identifies them as Divine Scripture.
However, they are separate from the apocryphal books, which may indicate a middle category of useful Scripture, which is between canonical Scripture and apocryphal books. They are useful Scripture for the training and instruction of Christians, but they are not canonical Scripture according to Epiphanius, for they are only mentioned as useful and not as among the number of specified and established books. (Ibid.)
Epiphanius does not say any of that when referring to the Christian Scriptures. The blurring of Jewish and Christian Scripture is entirely in the mind of those who insist on reading their own presupposition into what Epiphanius wrote.
[1] Gallagher and Meade use a 376 date and probably have a better basis for that, but I did not notice that they did so until I was already almost finished. So, I stick with 385, taken from www.bible-researcher.com/epiphanius.html. In any event, De Mensuris et Ponderibus is dated 392 AD.
[2] Other Fathers also imply that Baruch and Susanna are accepted by the Jews when they write their odes to the Divinely-inspired Septuagint, saying that the Jews view it as inspired as well, etc. Epiphanius clearly separates Jews from Christians with his lists, identifies the Septuagint as the versions of the Books on his Jewish lists, and has a background whereby he should know what some Jews are actually and truly accepting. So, it is noteworthy that Epiphanius believed that the Greek translation was actually ‘more Divinely inspired’ than the Hebrew text: “the seventy-two handed down a more accurate reading that could not be expressed as concisely in Hebrew; their additions gave clarity to the text” (Sundberg, in the Canon Debate, p. 72). And Epiphanius was not alone in that view; we see it above with Cyril of Jerusalem, and with many others.
[3] The actual Ark is said to have disappeared before many Old Testament works were written (or in some cases, finalized); but this is at least a figure of speech, with the point being what is/is not Jewish Scripture. Note that 2 Maccabees 2:4-10 says that Jeremiah hid the Ark in a cave prior to the Babylonian invasion. So, if you hold to a literal understanding of Epiphanius’ concept, then 2 Maccabees, by its own terms, cannot be in the Ark.
