Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol 5) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read the Fragments of Caius.
My summary
Today we read all the fragments of Caius.
He teaches us about:
(i) the death of early Christians;
(ii) the humanity and divinity of Christ;
(iii) the corrupting of Scripture;
(iv) the books of the New Testament canon.
What grabbed me
Although today's reading was brief, it was rather important particularly for establishing the place of New Testament books.
I also appreciated Caius' fierce criticism of those who tamper with the Scriptures: 'For this reason is it they have boldly laid their hands upon the divine Scriptures, alleging that they have corrected them. And that I do not state this against them falsely, any one who pleases may ascertain. For if any one should choose to collect and compare all their copies together, he would find many discrepancies among them. The copies of Asclepiades,at any rate, will be found at variance with those of Theodotus. And many such copies are to be had, because their disciples were very zealous in inserting the corrections, as they call them, i.e., the corruptions made by each of them. And again, the copies of Hermophilus do not agree with these; and as for those of Apollonius,they are not consistent even with themselves. For one may compare those which were formerly prepared by them with those which have been afterwards corrupted with a special object, and many discrepancies will be found. And as to the great audacity implied in this offence, it is not likely that even they themselves can be ignorant of that. For either they do not believe that the divine Scriptures were dictated by the Holy Spirit, and are thus infidels; or they think themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and what are they then but demoniacs? Nor can they deny that the crime is theirs, when the copies have been written with their own hand; nor did they receive such copies of the Scriptures from those by whom they were first instructed in the faith, and they cannot produce copies from which these were transcribed. And some of them did not even think it worth while to corrupt them; but simply denying the law and the prophets for the sake of their lawless and impious doctrine, under pretexts of grace, they sunk down to the lowest abyss of perdition.'
We can be fairly confident in the reliability of the Scriptures we have today because they are derived from copies that were closely guarded.
Next week's reading
Commence a 'Treatise of Novatian concerning the trinity' by reading up to Chapter XVII.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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