Muratorian Fragment, a very ancient list of the books of N.T. first
pub. in 1740 by Muratori (Ant. Ital. Med. Aev. iii. 851) and found
in a 7th or 8th cent. MS. in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. The MS. had come
from the Irish monastery of Bobbio, and the fragment seems to have been a
copy of a loose
leaf or two of a lost volume. It is defective
in the beginning, and breaks off in the middle of a sentence, and the mutilation
must have taken place in the archetype of our present copy. This copy was
made by an illiterate and careless scribe, and is full of blunders; but is
of the greatest value as the earliest-known list of N.T. books recognized
by the church. A reference to the episcopate of Pius at Rome ("nuperrime temporibus nostris") is usually taken to prove that the document cannot be later than c. 180, some 20 years after Pius's death (see infra). This precludes Muratori's own conjecture as to authorship, viz. that it was by Caius the presbyter, c. 196; and Bunsen's conjecture that Hegesippus wrote it has nothing to recommend it. It is generally agreed that it was written in Rome. Though in Latin, it bears marks of translation from the Greek, though Hesse (Das. Mur. Frag., Giessen, 1873) and others maintain the originality of the Latin.
The first line of the fragment evidently concludes its notice of St. Mark's
Gospel; for it proceeds to speak of St. Luke's as in the 3rd place, St. John's
in the 4th. A notice of St. Matthew's and St. Mark's must have come before, but we have no means of knowing whether the O.T. books preceded that notice. The document appears to have dealt with the choice of topics in the Gospels and the point where each began (cf. Iren. iii. 11). It is stated that St. Luke (and apparently St. Mark also) had not seen our Lord in the flesh. For its story as to the composition of St. John's Gospel see . The document goes on to say that by one and the same sovereign Spirit the same fundamental doctrines are fully taught in all concerning our Lord's birth, life, passion, resurrection, and future coming. At the date of this document, therefore, belief was fully established in the pre-eminence of the four Gospels, and in their divine inspiration. Next comes the Acts, St. Luke being credited with purposing to record only what fell under his own notice, thus omitting the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul's journey to Spain. Thirteen epistles of St. Paul are then mentioned. (a) epistles to churches, in the order: I. and II. Cor., Eph., Phil., Col., Gal., I. and II. Thess., Rom. It is observed that St. Paul addressed (like St. John) only seven churches by name,