HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Muratorian Fragment on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 170 AD (an eighty-five-line Latin canon list, mutilated at both ends, surviving in an eighth-century copy; traditionally placed at Rome in the later second century) · Wikipedia
Verdict on the deuterocanon: YES — but only Wisdom, and out of place. The Muratorian Fragment is the oldest surviving list of New Testament books, so it is an odd entry on an Old Testament timeline. It earns a slot for one line alone: in the middle of its New-Testament reckoning it counts the Wisdom of Solomon — a deuterocanonical Old-Testament book — among the received writings. That makes it the earliest Western witness that a disputed Old-Testament book was received as Scripture. But it is a cross-over witness, not an OT-list: it receives only Wisdom (not Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Baruch, or Maccabees), and it files Wisdom among the New Testament, not as part of any deliberate Old-Testament catalogue.

Claims & evidence

The Wisdom of Solomon, counted among the received books

The fragment runs through the books it receives — the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline letters, Jude, two epistles of John — and then, in the same breath, slots in an Old-Testament wisdom book:

Moreover, the epistle of Jude and two of the above-mentioned (or, bearing the name of) John are counted (or, used) in the catholic [Church]; and [the book of] Wisdom, written by the friends of Solomon in his honour.

— lines 68–70, in Bruce Metzger's translation.¹ The Wisdom of Solomon is one of the deuterocanonical books — part of the Greek Septuagint, rejected by the later Hebrew canon. Here it is reckoned with the apostolic writings, "counted (or, used) in the catholic Church," with no hint that its standing is in doubt. The boundary the compiler is drawing has the disputed book on the inside.

Only Wisdom — and oddly placed

Two cautions keep this from being a sweeping "Yes" to the deuterocanon. First, it is a verdict on one book: the fragment names Wisdom alone, and is silent on Tobit (this timeline's bellwether), Judith, Sirach, Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees — it is a New-Testament list and never sets out to catalogue the Old. Second, Wisdom appears among the New Testament books, not in any Old-Testament section — one of the clearest marks that, in the late second century, the line between the Testaments (and between received and disputed) was not yet drawn where it later fell.² The garbled clause "written by the friends of Solomon" is a Latin corruption (likely of a Greek phrase about the book being written "by Philo" or "for Solomon"); the textual puzzle does not touch the point that a deuterocanonical wisdom book is counted here as Scripture.³

Notes

• Why it sits on this timeline at all. The fragment's main business is the New Testament — the four Gospels, the thirteen Pauline letters, the contested edges where the Apocalypse of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas sit. Its full treatment, including the dating debate (second-century Rome versus a minority fourth-century redating), is on the companion New Testament canon page. It is repeated here only for the single line that bears on the Old-Testament question: the reception of the Wisdom of Solomon.
• Set beside Melito. The other c. 170 witness on this timeline, Melito of Sardis, also names "Wisdom" — but on the usual reading Melito's "Wisdom" is a second title for Proverbs, not the deuterocanonical book, leaving his list with no disputed work at all. The Muratorian's Wisdom, by contrast, is unmistakably the deuterocanonical Book of Wisdom, received as Scripture. Two contemporaries, two different verdicts on the very same word — a fair picture of how unsettled the question still was.

Sources