Melito’s List
Melito’s List
The earliest certain date for a list is Melito’s, which is dated at 170 AD.[1] The main issue with this list is a debate as to whether it is just a list of the Jewish canon or intended as the list for Christians as well. We do not actually have Melito’s full writing, just a portion of the cover letter, as copied by Eusebius, with some slight commentary by Eusebius. I will discuss the issues with Eusebius later and focus, now, only on the words of Melito. But bear in mind what we have already seen with the Bryennios List: a lack of context is a really bad basis for guessing.
Melito was a Bishop in modern Turkey who traveled to the East (Judea, presumably) and sent back to “brother” Onesimus (presumably a fellow Bishop) the following:
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 have also desired to have an accurate statement of the ancient books, 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. Accordingly when I went to the East and reached the place where these things were preached and done, I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament, and I send them to you as written below. These are their names: Of Moses five, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Joshua the son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, four of Kingdoms, two of Chronicles, the Psalms of David, Solomon’s Proverbs or Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job; of the Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Twelve [minor prophets] in one book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. From which also I have made the extracts, dividing them into six books.
People have asked many questions about this whole situation, including why a Bishop would go in search of the Books he has long been preaching; why go to Judea rather than just ask the local Jews (in his Bishopric of Sardis, a city in Turkey); why make “extracts” from the Books; etc.
Some believe Onesimus must have wanted to know the Jewish version of the Books so that he could argue with Jews, not so that he could use them as his own Bible, which he and Melito already had. Others believe this is evidence that the Jews of Asia Minor may have kept a different canon, so Melito went to Judea to get the Judean Jewish canon. To others, still, it was a mission to confirm that the Christians had the right Books (i.e., Books that match the Jewish books), and their order and number, etc. Who Melito speaks for is also an open question: does his view represent others or not?
Melito, incidentally, was “Jewish by birth,” which makes some of these questions and possible answers even stranger to think about. In fact, there are people who doubt he even traveled to the East—the ancients might say such things without meaning them literally. And at least one scholar is dubious that Melito was actually a Bishop.[2] The possibility that he asked the wrong people for the canon also cannot be dismissed: i.e., he asked the Jews without realizing they would give him a canon different from his Church’s canon.
If you are thinking of answers to any of those questions, you are already lost. “Facts are truth; explanations of facts are lies,” as we say. Make speculative decisions after you see all the evidence, not piece by piece. For my purposes, the letter says what it says; otherwise, it is ambiguous. And bear in mind that our actual goal is not to decide anything about Melito; it is to decide about the canon. The letter is a piece of that, not the whole, and the answers to the Melito Mystery may not even matter to the final conclusion on the canon.
One part that makes the letter ambiguous is that Melito expressly says “Books of the Old Testament”—but that is the first known reference to such a thing; for all we know, Melito invented the phrase.[3] We know what it means to later writers, but we must be careful about guessing from later evidence (E.g., Gallagher and Meade tell us that “the later LXX codices do not necessarily provide insight into the nature of the title ‘Of Jeremiah’”).[4] While Melito clearly sees the phrase Old Testament to mean Scripture (for Jews or Christians), there is nothing in the letter to indicate that the list is exclusive (so that not being on this list constitutes a Christian rejection of a book) or that his concept of how to divide the Old/New Testament would match ours. He may have considered Apocrypha part of the New Testament and seen the Old Testament as nothing but those Books the Jews accept.[5]
Eusebius (writing 150 years later) calls Melito’s List “a catalog of the acknowledged books of the Old Testament”—but that is Eusebius’ view of Melito’s view, which is not necessarily Melito’s view (nor Eusebius’ personal view either).[6]
Regardless, the actual contents of the letter raise several issues:
- Esther is missing. That could be a mistake (by the Jews, Melito, or Eusebius), but there are lists that do not include Esther, and lists that note that it is disputed, plus we know that objections to Esther were raised among the Jews until they settled on their canon. When there are reasons to think that it might have been intentional, then the burden of proof is on those claiming it was an unintentional mistake; and in this case, there is no evidence that it was a mistake.[7] What Melito thought of things that are not on the list is ambiguous (as it also is for the Apocrypha).[8]
- Five Apocrypha are not mentioned (Tobit, Judith, Sirach, and 1 and 2 Maccabees). If it is a Christian list (i.e., intended by Melito to list the books for Christians as well), that would be some negative evidence against them, although not conclusive (they could be part of Melito’s idea of the “New” Testament, for example). If it is just a Jewish list, then by itself it would not be meaningful regarding the question of what the early Church accepted.
- Two Apocrypha (Susanna and Baruch) are implicitly included because of the Septuagint names for Daniel and Jeremiah. That is the evidentiary view. Alternative speculation exists, varying by whether (a) the list (and Books from which the extracts were made) came from Christians,[9] in which case they probably were included or (b) it came from Jews, in which case, perhaps, they were not, except that (c) from the titles it seems that the Jews (if Jews they were) gave Melito the Septuagint Books (which, then, would probably include these Apocrypha). Perhaps the Jews he got them from accepted the Septuagint; perhaps these were the only Greek translations they had; or perhaps they wanted to sell the “wrong” books that no Jew wanted; etc. Who knows.
- One Apocrypha (Wisdom) may be mentioned—the wording is unclear; in fact, the ancient manuscripts themselves can differ on the key words. It could be a reference to Proverbs, which was sometimes called “Wisdom,” but it might not.[10] More on that below.
- Several “canonical” Books are missing, but the guess is they were included as parts of other works (Nehemiah as part of Esdras, Lamentations as part of Jeremiah, etc.). Such presumptions are fine, and we may agree with them (I do, and all these combined Books are seen in the Septuagint), but the same presumptions should be applied to Susanna and Baruch.
- On the other hand, Melito lists Ruth separate from Judges. This is interesting, since so much is made of Judges and Ruth being combined when Josephus’ numbering is discussed, etc. But between the time of Josephus’ list and Origen’s explanation (he is the first to claim that they were combined into one Book, and he comes later), we have this list separating the books. This is one more aspect of how weak the claim is that Judges and Ruth were one Book, when compared to Jeremiah and Baruch, or Daniel and Susanna.
Let’s discuss Wisdom a bit first. As evidence that the word might mean Proverbs in this case, Gallagher and Meade note that (per Eusebius) Irenaeus (“and the whole company of the ancients”) referred to Proverbs as Wisdom.[11] Irenaeus is contemporaneous with this use of the word Wisdom, so that has real evidentiary value.
But Gallagher and Meade conveniently forgot to mention Irenaeus (who calls the Book of Baruch “Jeremiah”) when discussing the meaning “Of Jeremiah” on this exact same list. If you accept one, you should accept the other, and we have Irenaeus, in his own words, referring to Baruch as Jeremiah. We seem to only have Eusebius telling us that Irenaeus said that Wisdom could mean Proverbs (mere hearsay, to a lawyer).
And since Gallagher and Meade are now encouraging the use of citation evidence to determine the meaning of the word Wisdom on this list, what other citations should we consider?
First, they also tell us with characteristic understatement that the Book of Wisdom was “certainly an important book in early Christianity.”[12] Putting aside Biblical allusions for the moment, the earliest allusions to the Book of Wisdom occur in the earliest non-Biblical work we have, Clement of Rome’s Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Clement, dating back to perhaps before 70 AD, when Disciples were still alive and many New Testament Books had yet to be written—it even shows up in ancient Bibles and on canon lists as part of the New Testament). There is an allusion to Wisdom 2:24 in Section 3, and to 12:10 in Section 7, but the clearest allusion comes in Section 27.[13]
Justin Martyr, in 155 AD, alludes to the Book of Wisdom as Scripture and Prophecy in his Dialogue with Trypho (describing the debate which had occurred in 135 AD (Sections 137-138)).[14]
Irenaeus then alludes to Wisdom 6:18-19 (And love is the keeping of her [Divine Wisdom’s] laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption; And incorruption maketh us near unto God) in Against Heresies 4, 38, 3 “…the beholding of God is productive of immortality, but immortality renders one near unto God.”[15] Irenaeus (from Smyrna, on the coast 50 miles by road from Melito’s inland Sardis) is writing around 180 AD, a few years after Melito wrote, and it is Irenaeus that Gallagher and Meade are using to confirm that the ancients sometimes called Proverbs “Wisdom.”
Otherwise, it is unclear who the “whole company of ancients” are when Eusebius is writing 150 years later.[16] Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen were, perhaps, all “ancient” to Eusebius, and all of them quote from the Book of Wisdom repeatedly, sometimes describing it as Solomon,[17] sometimes as Wisdom, and sometimes as both (the Wisdom of Solomon). We also know that there are many possible Biblical allusions to the Book of Wisdom, and some of them are quite strong. The point is not that such allusions and citations prove that Melito’s reference is to the Book of Wisdom, let alone that the Book is Scripture: the point is that the Book has a good case for being what Melito meant, just as Proverbs does.
But there is more evidence for Melito’s possible meaning from other canon lists as well. Gallagher and Meade go on to say:
The Muratorian Fragment contains a reference to the Wisdom of Solomon, and the book is also found along with the other deuterocanonical books in the Mommsen Catalogue, Augustine’s canon list, and the canon list contained in the Breviarium Hipponense, all from the later fourth century … (Footnote 40).
When we turn to their discussion on the Muratorian Fragment, we see that its dating is debated, and it could be contemporaneous with Melito. Obviously, authors are entitled to pick whatever dates they want to use whenever things are this debated, but I would point out that a different author could have chosen to present only two lists from the second century (i.e., rejecting an early date for the Bryennios List—let alone its authenticity—and accepting one for the Muratorian Fragment). Both Melito and the Muratorian Fragment include “Wisdom,” with one of them being a clear reference to the Book of Wisdom. That would put a very different “spin” on the question of whether Melito meant the Book of Wisdom.
In addition, as mentioned earlier, if you page through all the lists in Gallagher and Meade, you would notice that, between these three possible second century lists (Bryennios (erroneously), Melito, and the Muratorian Fragment) and the year 300, there is just one single list: Origen’s, which is a list of the Jewish canon, not the Christian canon. I.e., while those other references to the Book of Wisdom do, indeed, come in the fourth century as Gallagher and Meade note, there is also zero possibility that any references on Christian canon lists could have come before then.
Moreover, they say all the lists including the Book of Wisdom are from the “later” fourth century—but that is not true, even using their own dating. Putting aside the list from Eusebius (which, as a New Testament list, does not matter for our purposes), there is still one single fourth-century list dated before 350 AD: the Codex Claromontanus, which they claim is from the first half of the fourth century. And it lists the Book of Wisdom. (And all the other Apocrypha, too.)
As mentioned previously, the list-based case for the Book of Wisdom is no joke; you just have to look for it. Everything is debated, as it always is, but the point is that it has a good case that no one seems to be laying out. And with respect to Melito’s list, the evidence that he might have meant the Book of Wisdom is pretty strong and dovetails into the Christian lists that are closest to his in time (the Muratorian Fragment and the Codex Claromontanus).
I am not interested in guessing or assigning probabilities, but I think it is fairly considered a tossup between Melito meaning the Book of Wisdom versus the Book of Proverbs.
Another issue is that Esther is missing from Melito’s list, which means, firstly, that the earliest certain Christian list of certain date to include Esther comes in the early fourth century. Of course, it is arguable that the first certain Christian list of any kind comes in the early fourth century, since Melito’s list might be a Jewish list, and the Bryennios List was misdated—in which case, the first Christian list is the Codex Claromontanus. It includes Esther and all the Apocrypha.
Secondly, that Esther is missing, ultimately, means nothing to anyone. Esther ends up on everyone’s modern canon list, regardless.
Thirdly, that Ether is missing simultaneously means everything to the canon debate, because if Esther can be canon regardless of its absence on Melito’s list, then so can unmentioned Apocrypha. The point is that, in both cases, it is really a discussion of other evidence, not Melito, that is determinative.
One last thing, not to be forgotten: what tiny little possibility there is even for debate over the inclusion of Baruch and Susanna on canon lists begins and ends with Melito. From now on, we have quotes from the actual authors of the individual lists. We will still have a few anonymous lists and Council lists, where we do not have direct proof, but we have indirect evidence that every single person we do have evidence on was including them, without evidence of a single person who disagreed (until Jerome, and only on Baruch).
[1] Available at www.bible-researcher.com/melito.html
[2] Eusebius says he was, but Eusebius is not as reliable as historians wish he had been. I, personally, accept Melito’s Bishop-ness and see no real reason to speculate about it, but I point it out to show the extent of our ignorance.
[3] Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:14 uses the phrase “old covenant,” and there are those who think the terms are virtually synonymous, but with Melito there is no way to know for sure that he is using it that way. The real question is whether he thought of the New in a way that a failure to mention Apocrypha as part of the Old excludes any possibility of their being part of his Bible.
[4] When discussing the Bryennios list, p. 72.
[5] Wisdom and other Books are in the New Testament sometimes, and Esther considered to be with the Apocrypha, etc. See below. The first reference to the Books of the New Testament comes in 190 AD—the New Testament is technically the covenant sealed by the sacrifice, not the Books.
[6] There’s an extra layer to this, as well, because it was apparently also Rufinus’ view when he translated Eusebius’ translation of Melito. Each link in that chain is separated by a long time period, so their views on how to read an old writing are interesting but not necessarily correct.
In addition, Eusebius might intend for ‘acknowledged’ to mean all agree; e.g., Eusebius has a “disputed” category in his own list, as we will discuss later. Notably, to Eusebius, disputed is still accepted. (But yet another complication is that Eusebius’ disputed category might have been meant to apply only to the New Testament; it is not clear.)
More than anything, understand that Eusebius wrote prolifically, and we still are not entirely certain what exactly he meant to say on this and much else. Melito left us practically nothing, so speculation is particularly dangerous.
[7] We will see that one scholar once claimed that the word ‘not’ must have been accidentally left out of a sentence. Imagine how dangerous that could be without an evidentiary hurdle.
[8] There may also have been a different way to treat it than just complete rejection. Athanasius, for example, lumps in Esther with Apocrypha in his “third category” of “not canon but to be read by catechumens” before they even read the Bible.
[9] Nothing in the letter says that he went East to talk to the Jews. He may have gotten his answers and his Books from Christians there.
[10] Something that we non-translators can see for ourselves from the list is that if this reference does mean Proverbs, it would be the one and only Book given two names on the list. No other canon list ever refers to Proverbs as Wisdom either.
[11] “Irenaeus and the whole company of the ancients called the Proverbs of Solomon All-virtuous Wisdom.” Church History, 4, 22, 8. www.newadvent.org/fathers/250104.htm. You can also read linguistic discussions on this issue. I have read enough to conclude that it is ambiguous and leave it at that. Gallagher and Meade say that “the titles in Melitos list are all anarthrous, suggesting that the Greek eta in the phrase … might not be an article but could be either a relative pronoun … or a conjunction [or].” But they support their linguistic argument with only a citation to a personal communication with Adam McCollum (a perfectly legitimate scholar who may be expressing ironclad proof, for all I know, but he did not do so in a published work). I view the lack of publication and the probability that such things are known to other scholars who have managed to disagree about the translation for the past 1700 years as signs that staring at the words will not achieve any additional clarity; it is just ambiguous.
[12] For example, when speaking for himself in his treatise The Preparation of the Gospel, Eusebius cites to the Book of Wisdom more than a dozen times as one of the “Oracles of the Hebrews” and asserts that it is Divine prophecy fulfilled by Christ.
[13] “Who shall say unto Him, What have you done? Or, Who shall resist the power of His strength?” which seems to allude to Wisdom 12:12: “For who shall say, What hast thou done? or who shall withstand thy judgment?” www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm
[14] “My friends I now refer to the Scriptures as the Seventy have interpreted them; … Accordingly, when the prophet says, ‘I saved you in the times of Noah,’ … he addresses the people who are equally faithful to God, and possess the same signs. … I mean, that by water, faith, and wood, those who are afore-prepared, and who repent of the sins which they have committed, shall escape from the impending judgment of God.” The allusion appears to be to Wisdom 10:4: “For whose cause the earth being drowned with the flood, wisdom again preserved it, and directed the course of the righteous in a piece of wood of small value.” www.newadvent.org/fathers/01289.htm.
[15] www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103438.htm.
[16] The quote is in the context of a discussion about something written by Hegesippus, d. 180, but we do not know when Hegesippus would have been writing (although since his now lost works were called “memoirs,” it may have also been late in life around 170).
[17] As noted elsewhere, “of Solomon” is sometimes just an idiom meaning something like “a book full of wisdom like Solomon’s” (which is how Sirach gets included as one of the five Books “of Solomon” by some ancients, even though Solomon clearly did not write it), but some people took it literally and thought the author of all the Books of Solomon was Solomon himself (even saying that about Sirach, which was written by Sirach and says so). The Wisdom of Solomon/Book of Wisdom alludes to the idea that Solomon is speaking (7:1-14; 8:17 – 9:18) but never actually says that it was written by Solomon and, in fact, includes other parts that would rule out Solomon as the author.
