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| A secretary who takes down a writer's words from dictation, sometimes using shorthand |
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| apocryphal- Protestant designation for the books which are in the Greek Old Testament but not in the Hebrew scriptures-- Protestant Bibles collect them together into a supplement called the Apocrypha |
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| The official list of the books accepted as Scripture in a particular church. |
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| A book bound between covers, read by turning the pages. Used in antiquity only for notebooks, the form became normal for scriptural books through (unexplained) Christian use. |
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| A harmony of the Gospels made by Tatian in the third century AD, and popular well into the Middle Ages in many languages. |
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| Older name for 'letter,' still commonly used in biblical studies. |
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| An ordered collection of rulings on matters of Torah, assembled in the second century AD by Rabbi Judah the Prince. |
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| The five 'books of Moses:' Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. |
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| A hypothetical document which many explain the material common to Matthew and Luke but not in Mark (from German Quelle, 'source'). |
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| The Hebrew name of the book of Ecclesiastes, where it is either the name or the title of the author. |
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| Like 'secretary' in English, a very wide term covering royal officials, administrators and professional writers. Sometimes used in the Gospels for those who taught the Torah, but in the Old Testament it usually implies someone who made a living by writing, not necessarily in the religious sphere. |
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| The main Greek translation of the Old Testament, produced primarily in Egypt between about the fourth and first centuries BC. |
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| The Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, which tell much the same story and share a common perspective on the life of Jesus, by contrast with John. |
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| Bishop of Alexandria, in Egypt. His Festal Letter of 367 is notable as the first complete listing of the New Testament books which corresponds exactly with our own. |
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| A Christian teacher in Alexandria, Egypt, who wrote extensively on all aspects of Christian faith. He commented on the Gospels, and is responsible for calling John the 'spiritual' Gospel, implying that its true difference from the Synoptics is in its style of teaching rather than in detailed factual discrepancies. |
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| The first Church historian, who played a critical role in many controversies about details of the Christian faith. Many quotations of early Christian writers have survived only as part of his 'Ecclesiastical History.' He records a number of opinions about the origins of the Gospels and other scriptural books. |
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| Bishop of Lyons but probably a native of Aia Minor (now Turkey). He wrote a detailed attack on gnosticism, a popular religious system of the day, in his work 'Adversus haereses' (Against Heresies). Importance for the canon of Scripture: he defended the need for the Church to have all four Gospels, and attested to the authority of most other books of the New Testament, while stressing that the Old Testament remained authoritative for Christians. |
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| Christian hermit who translated the entire Bible into Latin, having learnt Hebrew for the purpose (and already knowing Greek). He had a dispute with Augustine about the deuterocanonical books. |
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| A native of Palestine, who taught in Ephesus and Rome, where he was martyred. His 'Dialogue with Trypho' is a detailed attempt to persuade a Jewish rabbi that the Old Testament Scriptures point to Jesus Christ. He is one of the first to attest to the use of the Gospels in Christian worship, but shows no knowledge of John, which may mean that he did not know this Gospel. |
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| Developed a heterodox form of Christianity while teaching in Rome, became the subject of pwoerful attacks from Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Produced a 'canonical' list of the New Testament books, which he limited to Luke and certain Pauline epistles, all expurgated to remove references to Old Testament, which he rejected. Christian allegiance to the Old Testament probably owes much to the perceived need to combat his system. Some think that his New Testament became the model for the later; orthodox canon of 27 books. |
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| Probably the most outstanding scholar in the early Church, who taught in Alexandria, and wrote commentaries on many biblical books as well as philosophical and theological works. He collated manuscripts of biblical texts, in Greek and also in Hebrew. His writings show that he accepted more or less the New Testament as we now have it, and the Old Testament in its longer Greek form. |
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| Developed a heterodox form of Christianity while teaching in Rome, became the subject of pwoerful attacks from Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Produced a 'canonical' list of the New Testament books, which he limited to Luke and certain Pauline epistles, all expurgated to remove references to Old Testament, which he rejected. Christian allegiance to the Old Testament probably owes much to the perceived need to combat his system. Some think that his New Testament became the model for the later; orthodox canon of 27 books. |
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