HistoricalChristian.Faith

Innocent I on the Biblical Canon

Dates: c. 405 (Consulenti tibi, Ep. 6 to Exuperius of Toulouse, dated 20 February 405; Innocent was bishop of Rome 401–417) · Wikipedia
Summary: Answering a query from Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, Innocent I appends a canon-list that matches the present twenty-seven-book New Testament and the wider Old Testament with the deuterocanon — and then, in the sharpest Western papal language before the Gelasian Decree, names the pseudo-apostolic gospels and acts circulating "under the name of Matthias … or of Peter and John … or of Andrew … or of Thomas," declaring them "not only to be rejected but also condemned." His verb is damnanda — condemned, not destroyed — exclusion by formal repudiation, the documented register of the late rejection-lists rather than the legend's "banned and burned."

Claims & evidence

The canon-list appended for Exuperius

Which books really are received in the canon, this brief addition shows. These therefore are the things of which you desired to be informed. Five books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and Joshua the son of Nun, and Judges, and the four books of Kings together with Ruth, sixteen books of the Prophets, five books of Solomon, and the Psalms. Also of the historical books, one book of Job, one of Tobit, one of Esther, one of Judith, two of Maccabees, two of Ezra, two of Chronicles. And of the New Testament: of the Gospels four. Epistles of the apostle Paul fourteen. Epistles of John three. Epistles of Peter two. Epistle of Jude. Epistle of James. Acts of the Apostles. John's Apocalypse.

— Innocent I, Ep. 6 to Exuperius, ch. 7, trans. B. F. Westcott (A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament, 5th ed., 1881, pp. 570f.).¹ Innocent's list already holds the full twenty-seven-book New Testament — the same catalogue Athanasius had drawn in 367 and the African councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) had ratified — and on the Old-Testament side keeps Tobit, Judith, and the two books of Maccabees among "the historical books," the Western deuterocanon that the East and the Reformers would later dispute. The page's interest here is the New-Testament boundary: this is the closed-list backdrop against which the next sentence's condemnation of the apocryphal gospels falls.

The pseudo-apostolic gospels and acts — "not only to be rejected but also condemned"

But the rest of the books, which appear under the name of Matthias or of James the Less, or under the name of Peter and John (which were written by a certain Leucius), or under the name of Andrew (which were written by the philosophers Xenocharides and Leonidas), or under the name of Thomas, and whatever others there may be, you should know they are not only to be rejected but also condemned.

— Innocent I, Ep. 6 to Exuperius, ch. 7 (Latin: "Caetera autem quae vel sub nomine Matthiae, sive Jacobi minoris, vel sub nomine Petri et Johannis, quae a quodam Leucio scripta sunt, vel sub nomine Andreae, quae a Nexocharide, et Leonida philosophis, vel sub nomine Thomae, et si qua sunt talia, non solum repudianda verum etiam noveris esse damnanda"), trans. Westcott.² This is the backbone Western papal exclusion before the Decretum Gelasianum: the same apostolic-pseudonym names Eusebius had bracketed a generation earlier — Peter, Thomas, Matthias, with the heretical Acts of Andrew and John — now repudiated by a sitting bishop of Rome and tagged to their reputed forgers, the Acts of Peter and John assigned to "a certain Leucius" and those of Andrew to "the philosophers Xenocharides and Leonidas." Two features carry the weight. First, the verb: Innocent escalates from repudianda (to be rejected) to damnanda (to be condemned) — the sharpest term in the early exclusion vocabulary, yet still a verdict on the books' standing, not an order to burn them. Second, the title is again bare: "under the name of Thomas" is named with no contents, so this notice cannot by itself decide whether the Gnostic sayings gospel or the Infancy text is in view (see the argument below).

Notes

• Condemned, not destroyed. Innocent's damnanda is the strongest word the Western lists reach — and it is still the language of repudiation, of books "not to be received," not of a bonfire. It sits with the Decretum Gelasianum's title On books to be received and not to be received as the documented register of exclusion, set against the popular "banned and burned" framing weighed at Were the infancy gospels suppressed?
• The deuterocanon thread is distinct. The "apocrypha" Innocent condemns here are the pseudo-apostolic New-Testament writings — gospels and acts under apostles' names — not the Old-Testament deuterocanon, which he includes (Tobit, Judith, Maccabees) in the canon-list above. The two senses of "apocrypha" must not be run together: this witness bears on the New-Testament boundary. (Innocent's reception of the Old-Testament deuterocanon is treated on the companion Old Testament canon page.)
• An undescribed title names nothing. Like Origen's and Eusebius's bare lists, Innocent's "under the name of Thomas" gives no contents — one of the few early condemnations loose enough to admit the Infancy Gospel, yet proving nothing about it on its own. See the argument Which "Gospel of Thomas" did the Fathers condemn?
• Attributed forgers. Innocent's tags — the Petrine and Johannine acts ascribed to "a certain Leucius" (Leucius Charinus, the name later tradition attached to the apocryphal Acts), the Andrean acts to "Xenocharides and Leonidas" — show the Western church not merely listing the rejected books but assigning their authorship to named heretics, the same forgery-charge Eusebius leveled in branding them "fictions of heretics."

Sources