Muratorian Fragment

Muratorian Fragment also spoken of as CANON OF MURATORI, is a treatise on Biblical MSS. of great importance to the history of the N.T. canon. It is believed to have been composed shortly after the production of the Shepherd of Hermas (q.v.), and therefore belongs to the second half of the 2d century. It is important, first, because of its remote antiquity, and also as an evidence as to what writings passed for canonical in the Catholic Church of that time. It enumerates as such the Gospel of Luke (as the third, the two others being presupposed), the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Pauline epistles, a letter of Jude, two epistles of John, the Apocalypses of John and Peter, the latter, however, with contradiction asserted. The Epistles of Jacob (James) and Peter are therein omitted, also the one to the Hebrews. The epistles to the Laodicaeans and Alexandrians are rejected. The fragment was noticed by Muratori in his Antiq. Ital. medii cevi, 3:854, and has been reprinted in the Introductions to the N.T. of Eichhorn and Guericke, also by Kirchhofer and Credner. An exhaustive treatise on the subject, with the original text, and a translation of it into Greek, by Hilgenfeld, is found in the Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, 1872, page 560. See also Gieseler. in Studien u. Kritiken, 1847 and 1856; Hesse, Das Muratorische Fragment untersucht u. erklart (Giessen, 1873);

Westcott, Canon of N.T. (2d ed.), page 184 sq.; Bapt. Quar. April 1868, page 282; Amer. Pres. Rev. January 1869, page 100.