ve proceeding was adopted, as they wished to insure as far as
possible the permanence of ancient Christian writings regarded as
inspired. In other words, they sought, wherever practicable, to proclaim
all these writings to be apostolic by giving a wider meaning to the
designation and ascribing an imaginary apostolic origin to many of them.
This explains their judgment as to the Epistle to the Hebrews, and how
Barnabas and Clement were described by them as Apostles.[119] Had this
undertaking succeeded in the Church, a much more extensive canon would
have resulted than in the West. But it is more than questionable whether
it was really the intention of those first Alexandrian collectors to
place the great compilation thus produced, as a New Testament, side by
side with the Old, or, whether their undertaking was immediately
approved in this sense by the Church. In view of the difference of
Clement's attitude to the various groups within this collection of
[Greek: graphai], we may assert that in the Alexandrian _Church_ of that
time Gospels and Apostles were indeed ranked with the Law and the
Prophets, but that this position of equality with the Old Testament was
not assigned to all the writings that were prized either on the score of
inspiration or of apostolic authority. The reason of this was that the
great collection of early Christian literature that was inspired and
declared to be apostolic could hardly have been used so much in public
worship as the Old Testament and the Gospels.

Be this as it may, if we understand by the New Testament a fixed
collection, equally authoritative throughout, of all the writings that
were regarded as genuinely apostolic, that is, those of the original
Apostles and Paul, then the Alexandrian Church at the time of Clement
did not yet possess such a book; but the process which led to it had
begun. She had come much nearer this goal by the time of Origen. At that
period the writings included in the New Testament of the West were all
regarded in Alexandria as equally authoritative, and also stood in every
respect on a level with the Old Testament. The principle of apostolicity
was more strictly conceived and more surely applied. Accordingly the
extent of "Holy Scripture" was already limited in the days of Origen.
Yet we have to thank the Alexandrian Church for giving us the seven
Catholic Epistles. But, measured by the canon of the Western Church,
which must have had a share in the matter, th