ter, upon whom is
built the church of Christ, against which the gates of hell
shall not prevail, has left one acknowledged epistle; a second
also, if you will, for it is doubted of." In those of his works
which are extant only in the Latin version of Rufinus, Origen in
a number of passages quotes the present epistle as Scripture. It
has been suspected that these passages were interpolated by
Rufinus, who took many liberties with the text of Origen; but
one of them, which occurs at the beginning of his seventh homily
on Joshua, is so peculiar that we cannot well doubt that Origen
himself was its author. In allusion to the procession of priests
blowing with trumpets when the Israelites compassed the walls of
Jericho (Josh. chap. 6), he compares the writers of the New
Testament to so many sacerdotal trumpeters, assigning to them
trumpets for each book, and mentioning _every book_, as well the
disputed as the acknowledged: "First Matthew in his gospel, gave
a blast with his sacerdotal trumpet. Mark also, Luke, and John,
sounded with their single sacerdotal trumpets. Peter also sounds
aloud with the two trumpets of his epistles; James also, and
Jude. But John adds yet again to blow with the trumpet through
his epistles and Apocalypse; Luke, also, narrating the Acts of
the Apostles. But last of all that man came, who said: 'I think
that God has set forth us apostles last,' and thundering with
the fourteen trumpets of his epistles, overthrew to their
foundations the walls of Jericho, and all the engines of
idolatry and dogmas of philosophers." The "epistles" through
which the apostle John sounds are obviously his three epistles.
The "fourteen trumpets" upon which Paul blows include the
epistle to the Hebrews. In this remarkable passage, then, we
have an _exhaustive list_ of our present canonical books; and
there is no ground for imputing any interpolation to the
translator. It may be said, indeed, that this enumeration of the
books of the New Testament is made in a popular way, and does
not imply Origen's deliberate judgment that they were all of
apostolic authority. If this be granted, it still remains
evident from the form of the passage that _all the books of our
present canon were in current ecclesiastical use_ in Origen's
day, whatever doubts he may have had respecting some of