HKB
EPILOGUES AND CONCLUSIONS
Few of the great writings cherished and transmitted by the early church have escaped the natural tendency to attachments at beginning and end. In the later period such attachments took the form of prefixed argumenta, i. e. prefatory descriptions of author and contents, and affixed subscriptions, devoted to a similar purpose. These, like the titles, were clearly distinguished from the text itself, and in modern editions are usually not printed, though examples of 'subscriptions' may be seen in the King James version after the Pauline Epistles. Before the time when canonization had made such a process seem sacrilege they were attached to the text itself, with greater or less attempt to weld the parts together. We need not add to what has been already said as to certain superscriptions of the later epistolary literature, such as James and Jude, where the relation to the text impresses us as closer than is sometimes admitted; nor need we delay with the preamble to Revelation (Rev. i. 1-3). That which has been added at the close, in cases where real evidence exists of such later supplementation, is of special significance to our study, inasmuch as it tends to throw light where light is most required. For that is an obscure period, early in the second century, when not only the churches themselves were drawing together toward catholic unity under the double pressure of inward and outward peril, but were bringing with them their treasured writings, sometimes a collection of Epistles, sometimes a Gospel, or a book of Prophecy, sometimes, as in the groups of writings attributed to John and Peter, a full canon of Gospel, Epistles and Apocalypse, followed but little later by 'Acts' as well.
The most ancient list of books authorized to be publicly read that we possess is that of the church of Rome c. 185, called after its discoverer the Canon of Muratori. From this fragment, mutilated at beginning and end, we learn that Paul's letters to the churches were arranged in a group of seven[31] of which Romans stood last. It is probably due to its position at the end that Romans has been supplemented by the addition of Pauline fragments, which did not appear in some early editions of the text. The letter proper ends with ch. xv. though xvi. 21-23 probably followed, perhaps concluding with ver. 24, which some texts insert after ver. 19. Ver. 25-27 is another fragment omitted in some texts.
Footnote 31: The personal letters formed a separate group. Two letters to the same church (1st Cor., 2nd Cor.) were counted as one. Marcion (140) counted ten in all, and had a different order.
We have seen above (p. 200) how Revelation has received conclusion after conclusion, so that the relation of personalities has become almost unintelligible. We have very meagre textual material for Revelation, and can scarcely judge whether any of the process represented in Rev. xxii. 6-21 belongs to the period of transmission, after the publication of the book in its present form. Until the discovery of new textual evidence the phenomena in Revelation must be treated by principles of the higher criticism, as pertaining to its history before publication. At all events we know that the attribution to "John" (ver. 8 f.) was current as early as Justin's Apology (153).