page_title: Christianity in the ante-Nicene period
section_title: Development of the Christian Canon
hierarchical_section_title: Christianity in the ante-Nicene period / Development of the Christian Canon
context_page_description: Christianity in the ante-Nicene period was the time in Christian history up to the First Council of Nicaea. 100 AD, to Nicaea in 325 AD.
  The second and third centuries saw a sharp divorce of Christianity from its early roots. There was an explicit rejection of then-modern Judaism and Jewish culture by the end of the second century, with a growing body of adversus Judaeos literature. Fourth- and fifth-century Christianity experienced pressure from the government of the Roman Empire and developed strong episcopal and unifying structure. The ante-Nicene period was without such authority and was more diverse. Many variations in this era defy neat categorizations, as various forms of Christianity interacted in a complex fashion. One variation was proto-orthodoxy which became the international Great Church and in this period was defended by the Apostolic Fathers. This was the tradition of Pauline Christianity, which placed importance on the death of Jesus as saving humanity, and described Jesus as God come to Earth.
context_section_description: The books of the canon of the New Testament, which includes the Canonical Gospels, Acts, letters of the Apostles, and Revelation were written before 120 AD, but not defined as "canon" by the orthodox mainstream until the 4th century.
  The writings attributed to the apostles circulated amongst the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early second century, mentions the "memoirs of the apostles", which Christians called "gospels" and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament. A four gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Ireanaeus, who refers to it directly.
  Debates about scripture were underway in the mid-second century, concurrent with a drastic increase of new scriptures, both Jewish and Christian. Debates regarding practice and belief gradually became reliant on the use of scripture other than what Melito referred to as the Old Testament, as the New Testament canon developed. Similarly, in the third century a shift away from direct revelation as a source of authority occurred, most notably against the Montanists. "Scripture" still had a broad meaning and usually referred to the Septuagint among Greek speakers or the Targums among Aramaic speakers or the Vetus Latina translations in Carthage. Beyond the Torah (the Law) and some of the earliest prophetic works (the Prophets), there was not agreement on the canon, but this was not debated much at first. 
  Some theorize that the split of early Christianity and Judaism in the mid-second century eventually led to the determination of a Jewish canon by the emerging rabbinic movement, though, even as of today, there is no scholarly consensus as to when the Jewish canon was set. For example, some scholars argue that the Jewish canon was fixed earlier, by the Hasmonean dynasty (140–137 BC). There is a lack of direct evidence on when Christians began accepting their own scriptures alongside the Septuagint. Well into the second century Christians held onto a strong preference for oral tradition as clearly demonstrated by writers of the time, such as Papias.
  The oldest list of books for the New Testament canon is the Muratorian fragment dating to c. 170. It shows that by 200 there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to what is now the 27-book New Testament, which included the four gospels. 
  By the early 200's, Origen of Alexandria may have been using the same 27 books as in the modern New Testament, though there were still disputes over the canonicity of Hebrews, James, II Peter, II John and III John, and Revelation, referred to as the  Antilegomena (following Eusebius).
caption: A folio from P46, an early 3rd-century collection of Pauline epistles.
exif: {}