Editing Muratorian fragment (section)

==Authorship and date==
[[File:Muratorian Fragment.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Muratorian fragment preserved in Milan, Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, Cod. J 101 sup.]]
The original author of the fragment is unknown.  The text of the list itself is traditionally dated to the second half of the second century because the author refers to [[Pope Pius I|Pius I]], [[bishop of Rome]] (140—155), as recent:
<blockquote>But Hermas wrote [[The Shepherd of Hermas|''The Shepherd'']] "most recently in our time", in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after their time.</blockquote>

Another reason suggesting a date toward the end of the second century is the concern with denouncing [[Marcion]], a Christian bishop whose influence was the strongest in the second century, as well as Gnostics, who were also more prominent in the 2nd century than at later dates.<ref name="eckhardt" /><ref name="ferguson" />

The document contains a list of books the Roman church of his era considered authoritative &mdash; a predecessor to what would become the [[New Testament]].  A similar list concerning the Old Testament likely preceded it, but if such a section was written, it was not preserved in the fragment.  The fragment is in barbarous Latin which has probably been translated from an original in Greek, the language prevailing in the second century Christian community of Rome.  [[Bruce Metzger]] has advocated the traditional dating,<ref>{{harvnb|Metzger|1987|pp=193&ndash;194}}</ref> as has Charles E. Hill.<ref>{{cite web|title="The Debate Over the Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon," Westminster Theological Journal 57:2 (Fall 1995)|url=https://earlychurch.org.uk/pdf/fragment_hill.pdf|access-date=16 April 2018|website=earlychurch.org.uk}}</ref>  A reason to suspect an origin in the Western church, other than the obvious of the manuscript being found in Italy, is the absence of the [[Epistle to the Hebrews]] in the list, which appears to have been more widely accepted in the Greek-speaking east of the Roman Empire than in the Western, Roman church.<ref name="eckhardt" />

Other scholars disagree with this dating, however.  Albert Sundburg proposed a rival interpretation in 1973: that the fragment did not originate from Roman Christians, but rather the Greek-speaking east of the empire, and is dated to the [[Christianity in the 4th century|fourth century]] due to its mention of the Apocalypse of Peter.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Hauser|first1=Alan J.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KQih-WGT_YIC|title=A History of Biblical Interpretation, Volume 1: The Ancient Period|last2=Watson|first2=Duane F.|publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing|year=2003|isbn=978-0-8028-4273-2|pages=410|language=en}} ; see Hahneman, Geoffrey Mark. ''The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon.'' (Oxford: Clarendon) 1992 or Sundberg, Albert C., Jr. "[https://www.jstor.org/pss/1509348 Canon Muratori: A Fourth Century List]" in ''Harvard Theological Review'' '''66''' (1973): 1–41.</ref>  In this interpretation, the reference to the Shepherd of Hermas merely meant "recently" in a broader sense of "not stretching all the way back to the 1st century", in this view.  Another option propounded by Clare Rothschild is that the fragment was written in Latin originally in the 4th century, possibly even later, and the reason for the awful Latin style was not poor translation but rather the copyist being unfamiliar with the abbreviation style used in the older manuscript.  Rothschild also sees the fragment as a forgery attempting to portray itself as being written in the 2nd century, to explain the reference to the Shepherd and Pius.   As an example, most scholars do not believe the [[Gelasian Decree]] to have been written by Pope Gelasius or even during his reign; similarly, it is possible that the writer was merely backdating their work by saying Pius was recent.<ref>{{harvnb|Rothschild|2022|pp=9–10, 168–169, 184–185, 188–189, 309–310}}</ref>

The theories for a later composition date have in general not prevailed over the existing scholarly consensus suggesting a second century date as the most likely.<ref name="ferguson">{{cite book |title=Studia Patristica, Volume 17, Part 3 |date=1982 |first=Everett |last=Ferguson |author-link=Everett Ferguson |editor-first=Elizabeth A. |editor-last=Livingstone |editor-link=Elizabeth Livingstone |chapter=Canon Muratori: Date and Provenance |pages=677–683 }}</ref><ref>{{ill|Jens Schröter|de}}, ''Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament''. Studien zur urchristlichen Theologiegeschichte und zur Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons. Tübingen 2007, p. 310, note 60.</ref><ref name="eckhardt" />  The Rothschild theory in particular has been criticized by scholar Christophe Guignard on many aspects.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://journals.openedition.org/rsr/6220 |title=The Muratorian Fragment as a Late Antique Fake? An Answer to C. K. Rothschild |last=Guignar |first=Christophe |date=2019 |website=Revue des Sciences Religieuses|access-date= November 8, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://michaeljkruger.com/ten-basic-facts-about-the-nt-canon-that-every-christian-should-memorize-6-at-the-end-of-the-second-century-the-muratorian-fragment-lists-22-of-our-27-nt-books-2/|title=Ten Basics Facts about the NT Canon that Every Christian Should Memorize: "At the End of the Second Century, the Muratorian Fragment lists 22 of pur 27 NT books"|last=Kruger |first=Michael J.|date=2013 |website=canon fodder|access-date= November 8, 2023}}</ref>