Muratorian Fragment

Reflection

The Muratorian Fragment is the earliest known list of the books the church received as Scripture. Discovered by Lodovico Antonio Muratori in 1740 in the Ambrosian Library, the 85-line Latin text appears to be a copy of an original list composed in Rome around AD 170. The fragment is broken at its opening line — beginning mid-sentence with what is clearly a description of Luke as the third Gospel — so Matthew and Mark are presumed to have been named in the lost portion.

What survives is decisive. The list names the four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, Jude, two letters of John (1 and 2), and Revelation. The Shepherd of Hermas is mentioned as worthy of private reading but excluded from public reading in worship — meaning the line between Scripture and edifying literature was already being drawn. The Apocalypse of Peter is named with the note that some object to its public reading. Gnostic and Marcionite writings are explicitly rejected.

The fragment matters for the doctrine of canon. By AD 170 — within living memory of the apostles' disciples — the church already knew which books belonged to the New Testament. The canon was not imposed by Constantine, declared at Nicaea, or invented by a medieval council. It was recognized, preserved, and used in worship by churches that received it from those who received it from the apostles. The Muratorian list is the documentary proof.

Sources: Geoffrey Mark Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (1992); Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (1987); F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (1988).