The Muratorian Fragment

The event

Named after the eighteenth-century scholar Ludovico Antonio Muratori, who discovered and published it in 1740, the Muratorian Fragment is a damaged Latin manuscript - almost certainly a translation of an earlier Greek original - that gives the oldest surviving list of New Testament books regarded as authoritative Scripture by the church. Though the beginning is missing, the fragment as it survives names the four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, Jude, two letters of John, and Revelation, while explicitly rejecting several popular but spurious writings circulating at the time.

What makes the fragment so valuable is what it shows about how the church actually approached the question of canon: not as a late, arbitrary decision imposed centuries after the fact, but as a process of sifting and confirming, already well underway by the late second century, around books that had already been functioning as authoritative Scripture in the churches for generations. The fragment's author explains, for instance, why the church accepted four distinct Gospel accounts rather than one harmonized version, and gives reasons for excluding books like the Shepherd of Hermas from the same category as apostolic writings, on the grounds that it was written too recently and lacked apostolic authority.

Most scholars date the fragment's composition to around AD 170-180, likely from the church at Rome, making it a critically important witness to just how much of the New Testament was already settled as Scripture barely a century after the apostles themselves. A minority have argued for a much later, fourth-century Eastern origin, but this remains a minority position. Either way, the fragment stands as solid historical evidence against the popular but mistaken idea that the New Testament canon was invented or radically reshaped centuries after it was written - the core collection Christians read today was already substantially recognized within living memory of the apostolic age.

Dating

Most scholars date the list to the late 2nd century, c. AD 170-200, likely at Rome, based on its statement that the Shepherd of Hermas was written 'very recently, in our times' during the episcopate of Pius I (d. c. AD 154-157). A minority view (Sundberg, Hahneman) argues for a 4th-century Eastern origin, but the late-2nd-century dating remains the well-defended consensus. The surviving Latin manuscript itself is much later (7th-8th century).

Other witnesses

• Muratorian Fragment (Codex Muratorianus)

Further reading

• Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): The Muratorian Canon
• Bible Odyssey (SBL): The New Testament Canon
• Text & Canon Institute: How Can You Know We Have the Right Books in the Bible?