HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Gelasian Decree and the Greek rejection-lists on the Biblical Canon

Dates: c. 500 (the Decretum Gelasianum, a Latin catalogue of the early sixth century; with the Greek List of Sixty Books, c. 650, and the Stichometry of Nicephorus, c. 810) · Wikipedia
Summary: By the sixth century the boundary is no longer drawn book-by-book but as a formal catalogue of rejection — a list of titles "not to be received." The Western Decretum Gelasianum is the one early list that names the infancy texts by name: among some sixty rejected apocrypha it registers "the book on the infancy of the saviour" and "the book of the nativity of the saviour and of Mary or the midwife" (the Protoevangelium material), alongside — and kept distinct from — "the Gospel in the name of Thomas which the Manichaeans use." The Greek catalogues run a parallel record in the East, but a narrower one: they reject a "Gospel of Thomas" and a "Circuit of Thomas" without ever naming the infancy gospels or the Protoevangelium, and the "Gospel of Thomas" they list is most likely not the infancy book at all. Both registers speak the language of books to be avoided and not received — formal repudiation, not a bonfire.

Claims & evidence

The Decretum Gelasianum (c. 500) — the West names the infancy texts

The Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis — On the books to be received and not to be received — carries a canon-list (part II) and then, in part V, the longest early catalogue of rejected writings, naming some sixty apocrypha and condemned authors. Each title is tagged with the verdict "apocryphal." The rubric that opens the list reads:

The remaining writings which have been compiled or been recognised by heretics or schismatics the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church does not in any way receive; of these we have thought it right to cite below a few which have been handed down and which are to be avoided by catholics…

Among the rejected titles stand three that bear directly on the infancy material:

the Gospel in the name of Thomas which the Manichaeans use — apocryphal
…
the book on the infancy of the saviour — apocryphal
…
the book of the nativity of the saviour and of Mary or the midwife — apocryphal

— Decretum Gelasianum V, trans. Roger Pearse (checked against Hennecke–Schneemelcher), from Ernst von Dobschütz's critical edition (Texte und Untersuchungen 38.4, 1912).¹ This is the sharpest and most explicit formal exclusion of the infancy gospels in the early record. "The book on the infancy of the saviour" is the boy-Jesus miracle material that travels under the name Infancy Gospel of Thomas; "the nativity of the saviour and of Mary or the midwife" is the Protoevangelium of James, named here from its midwife-at-the-cave scene — the two infancy texts the popular legend imagines were "banned and burned," here simply catalogued as not to be received. Two cautions on what the list does and does not say carry the weight below.

Pseudonymous, sixth-century, and the language of non-reception

The decree takes its name from a tradition that it was a decretal of Pope Gelasius I (492–496), but it is none of his. Von Dobschütz showed it to be "a pseudonymous literary production of the first half of the sixth century" (between 519 and 553) — an anonymous churchman's private compilation, set down in Italy or, on the view of others, in southern Gaul; its first chapter quotes a work Augustine wrote in 416, so it cannot be the decree of a fourth-century Roman council it pretends to be.² What the misattribution does not touch is the document's register: its very title is On the books to be received and not to be received, and its verb for the apocrypha is that they "are to be avoided," "not in any way received." That is the documented language of the late exclusion-lists — repudiation, books set outside the canon — the same register as Innocent I's damnanda a century earlier, and the standing answer to the popular framing that the infancy gospels were rounded up and destroyed (weighed at Were the infancy gospels suppressed?).

The Greek catalogues (c. 650–810) — a "Gospel of Thomas," but not the infancy texts by name

The East kept its own rejection-catalogues, and they register infancy-adjacent titles without ever naming the infancy gospels. The List of Sixty Books (probably seventh-century, transmitted with the Quaestiones ascribed to Anastasius of Sinai) counts sixty canonical books, then a tier of nine "outside the sixty" (Wisdom, Sirach, 1–4 Maccabees, Esther, Judith, Tobit), then a closing list of rejected "apocrypha." Among those apocrypha stand two Thomas titles — "the Gospel of Thomas" and, separately, "the Circuit (or Travels) of Thomas" — beside the circuits of Paul, Peter, and John, the Didache, the books of Clement, and the writings of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Hermas. No infancy gospel and no Protoevangelium appears.³ The closely related Stichometry of Nicephorus (appended to a chronography under the name of Patriarch Nicephorus I of Constantinople, c. 810) likewise lists a "Gospel of Thomas" among the New-Testament apocrypha, with its length in stichoi (lines) noted — and the figure is far too large for the short infancy text, so that modern scholars doubt the entry refers to the infancy gospel at all.⁴ The Eastern record thus formally rejects a "Gospel of Thomas," but its evidence does not clearly reach the infancy material: it is the Western Gelasian list, naming the infancy and nativity books outright, that documents the exclusion of the infancy gospels as such.

Notes

• Not received, not destroyed. Both registers — the Latin "to be avoided / not received" and the Greek "apocrypha" appended below the canon — are the vocabulary of repudiation, not of suppression. The Gelasian title De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis says it plainly. This is the documented backdrop against which the popular "banned, gathered up and burned" image is weighed at Were the infancy gospels suppressed?
• The Decretum keeps the two "Thomas" books apart. Its list registers "the Gospel in the name of Thomas which the Manichaeans use" and "the book on the infancy of the saviour" as separate entries — the Manichaean sayings-gospel under one heading, the infancy material under another. That separation is direct evidence on the argument Which "Gospel of Thomas" did the Fathers condemn?: the famous condemnations of "the Gospel of Thomas" need not be read as condemnations of the infancy text, which this list excludes under its own, different title.
• West and East diverge on the infancy gospels. Only the Western Gelasian list names the infancy and Protoevangelium books outright; the Greek catalogues reject a "Gospel of Thomas" and "Circuit of Thomas" but not the infancy gospels by name, and their "Gospel of Thomas" is most likely a different (longer) work. The exclusion of the infancy gospels as infancy texts is, on the surviving lists, a Western datum.
• Documents, not a council. The Gelasian Decree is a private compilation wrongly dressed as a papal decretal, and the Greek lists are scholarly catalogues appended to other works; none is the act of a council. They witness a settled boundary already received, not the moment of a decision — the same point Eusebius's and Athanasius's testimony makes against the Nicene-canon legend.

Sources