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The Synod of Laodicea - A.D. 343/381

Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival

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Page 56

We may therefore leave this question wholly out of account, and merely consider the matter from the evidence we possess.

In 1777 Spittler published a special treatise [199] to shew that the list of scriptural books was no part of the original canon adopted by Laodicea. Hefele gives the following resume of his argument: [200]

(a) That Dionysius Exiguus has not this canon in his translation of the Laodicean decrees. It might, indeed, be said with Dallaeus and Van Espen, that Dionysius omitted this list of the books of Scripture because in Rome, where he composed his work, another by Innocent I. was in general use.

(b) But, apart from the fact that Dionysius is always a most faithful translator, this sixtieth canon is also omitted by John of Antioch, one of the most esteemed and oldest Greek collectors of canons, who could have had no such reasons as Dionysius for his omission.

(c) Lastly, Bishop Martin of Braga in the sixth century, though he has the fifty-ninth, has also not included in his collection the sixtieth canon so nearly related to it, nor does the Isidorian translation appear at first to have had this canon. [201] Herbst, in the Tübingen Review, also accedes to these arguments of Spittler's, as did Fuchs and others before him. Mr. Ffoulkes in his article on the Council of Laodicea in Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities at length attempts to refute all objections, and affirms the genuineness of the list, but his conclusions can hardly be accepted when the careful consideration and discussion of the matter by Bishop Westcott is kept in mind. (History of the Canon of the New Testament, III^d. Period, chapter ii. [p. 428 of the 4th Edition.])

[199] See new edition of his collected works, vol. viij., pp. 66 et seqq.

[200] Hefele. Hist. of the Councils, Vol. II., pp. 323, 324.

[201] Leonis, Opp., Ed. Ballerini, tom. iii., p. 441, n. xlviij.



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