Tag Archives: gothic canon

Carla Falluomini on the Bologna fragment

Of note in her article is the mention of Acts of the Apostles in the fragment. This leaves only a few books in the New Testament that have not been attested in the Gothic corpus. Five of these – 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation –  are known in the East as the Western Five. It is an argument from silence to say that the Western Five were not considered canonical by the Goths, but it is an argument from a pretty solid silence.

According to the book All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial (1969), published by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of NY, Amphilokios (bishop of Iconium in the second half of the 4th century, so contemporary with Wulfila) mentioned these five books as disputed and did not endorse them. He endorsed or alluded to all the other 22 books.

Similarly the Peshitta, a revision of the New Testament into Classic Syriac, included the books also attested in the Gothic corpus, but omitted the Western Five. It was probably made within a century before Wulfila’s translation to Gothic.

These were my comments.

Carla Falluomini’s article is available here at Evangelical Textual Criticism.

Edit: Haven’t checked if there are allusions to the catholic epistles.