Truth Unites - Was the Earliest Bible Canon Actually Protestant?!?

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Gavin Ortlund examines the earliest surviving Christian canon list from Melito of Sardis and explores why this second-century testimony may provide significant historical support for the Protestant Old Testament canon.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Protestants affirm a shorter Old Testament canon for multiple historical reasons. I've already talked about in other videos Josephus, the great first century Jewish historian and his testimony about the Jewish canon. I've also addressed Jerome, arguably the greatest biblical scholar in the early church, in multiple videos on him, and I've talked in those videos about other church fathers like Athanasius. Today I want to look at the earliest surviving canon list in all church history goes all the way back to the second century, coming from Milito of Sardis, a highly respected Christian leader, writing sometime around 170 AD. Melito's list of Old Testament books is preserved by Eusebius, the great historian in the early

church, and it aligns closely, though probably not exactly, with the Protestant Old Testament canon. There are two wrinkles to that we'll work through in this video. First, the possible exclusion of Esther, and second, some ambiguity in what he means by wisdom. Nonetheless, Milito's list certainly lacks Tobago. bit, Judith, first and second Maccabees, Syrac, Baruch, the letter of Jeremiah, and the additional material in Daniel and Esther. And for this reason, some people try to argue that, well,

Malito's just describing the Jewish canon here, not a Christian canon. At the end of the video, we'll work through that and show why that does not work. But let's start with the text itself preserved for us by Eusebius. And then I'll clarify some of these terms after we've read it through. Quote, accordingly, when I, that's Melito, went east and came to the place. where these things were preached and done. That's probably Jerusalem, by the way. We'll talk about that. I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament and sent them to you as written below. Their names are as follows. Of Moses, five books, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Lividicus, Deuteronomy, Jesus, Navet, Judges, Ruth, of Kings, four books, of Chronicles 2, the Psalms of David,

the Proverbs of Solomon, Wisdom also, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, of prophets, Isaiah Jeremiah, of the 12 prophets, one book, Daniel Ezekiel Esdras. Okay, let's start with five clarifications that are easier than the two that are more difficult. Number one, Jesus, Navi means Joshua. It's just the book of Joshua. Jesus, another form of the same name for Joshua and Navi, an older way of rendering, none, and you end. So that's Joshua, the sixth book in our Bible today. Second clarification, when he says, of King's four books, That refers to what we call First and Second Samuel and First and Second Kings. In some ancient reckonings, these were grouped together as four books of kingdoms or kings.

Of course, right after that, Chronicles, comma, two just means first and second Chronicles. I told you these first ones are easy, but just to be totally crystal clear. Third clarification, the 12 books, one prophet means the minor prophets from Hosea through Malachi. These were often reckoned together. Can you name them all? Josea, Joel, Amos Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zefaniah, Hegai, Zechariah, Alachi. It's like, you're thankful when you're later in life for these things you learn in Sunday school, right? Habakkuk is my favorite. I want to do a video on Habakkuk sometime.

Fourth clarification, you see that last term, Esdras. In this context that is usually taken to mean Ezra Nehemiah, those two books in our Bibles today. These were often reckoned together as one book in Jewish and early Christian lists. that is not totally beyond all dispute. Esdras gets complicated in some Greek traditions, but that is the pretty standard interpretation of Milito's list here. Fifth clarification, you will notice Lamentations. The book of Lamentations is not mentioned,

but that's not too surprising. It's likely coupled with Jeremiah here, which is listed. That was also common in ancient lists. So with those five clarifications in place, other than issues of order like Leviticus and numbers being, switched around, you basically have the Protestant canon and the modern Jewish rabbinical canon with two little wrinkles. Number one, there's no Esther. And some try to argue that that omission is an accident, or some have even proposed, though this is very speculative and less likely that

it would be included with Esdras possibly there. So I don't really have a fine-grained opinion on all these questions. This is not really my main area of scholarship myself, so I'm just trying to the scholarship on any fine-grained difficult point. We'll simply leave it open in this video, to try to give you the main conclusions. But I think we can say it's probably more common to see the book of Esther simply as excluded in this list. So that's interesting. Esther has a curious reception history. You may recall that Athanasius also omitted Esther in his canon list in his famous letter. And Gregory Vnazianz does so as well. Amphalokius talked about how Esther is disputed. He said some ad ester. The second wrinkle we want to work through here is the term wisdom,

and this is debated whether this refers to the wisdom of Solomon, which is also called the Book of Wisdom, which Roman Catholics include in the Dutero canon and some other groups as well, or is this simply another way of referring to the Solomonic Wisdom literature connected with Proverbs? That ambiguity is one of the main interpretive issues in Milito's list. So let's address this a little bit, and then we'll talk about the significance of Milito's testimony as a whole. Perhaps the strongest and most intuitive argument that wisdom here simply refers to the wisdom of Solomon or the book of wisdom, is that it is listed separately from Proverbs. You can see on screen it's right after. You've got a comma and that says wisdom also. So on the surface,

it sounds pretty plausible to say, you know, two separate references, two separate books, right? On the other hand, there are many scholars who think wisdom means the book of Proverbs or Solomonic wisdom literature more generally, and there are several reasons why. Typically, though, the more common, though, is just it's another term for the book of Proverbs. That's what a lot of people think. First of all, nowhere else in this list do we have the other Deutero-canonical books. So if he meant the wisdom of Solomon, this would be the only Deutero-canonical book, which is a little bit eccentric. But more basically, and the stronger argument here is that early lists sometimes do repeat or vary titles like this, and Proverbs was sometimes simply called wisdom. The book we call

Proverbs are sometimes just called Wisdom. In fact, Eusebius writes just early, earlier in his ecclesiastical history from what we're quoting in this video, just a little bit earlier, that Hegasippus and Irenaeus and others who lived around the same time as Milito call Proverbs by the title Wisdom, as you can see on screen here. Furthermore, when Rufinus translated Eusebius's ecclesiastical history into Latin, he translated it as Solomonus Proverbia, the Proverbs of Solomon, Quay at Sapientia, which are also wisdom. This indicates that for Rufinus, he thinks Eusebius is giving two different names for one and the same work. Now, for more on that, see this newer and authoritative book by John Mead Danette Gallagher, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Great book on this whole topic.

I'll put a link to it in the video description. And they have discussion on this that goes into a little more detail and technicality than is probably fitting for a YouTube video. They discussed the Greek grammar here in Eusebius's text. And basically, they're arguing this may support this reading of two terms for one in the same book, because the Greek term sometimes translated as also might actually be better translated as or, or even as the relative pronoun. as Rufinus takes it. All that's a little, you know, but that's not decisive for anything. So I just want you to be aware of that.

We're going to leave that matter open. Again, in this video, try to only close the loop on things that are relatively secure, the contested issues I'll just try to make you aware of. Though I will note that among older scholars, it's much more common to say that this is simply another term for Proverbs. Way back in the 19th century at Princeton, you can find Archibald Alexander, making the claim that nearly all commentators have been of that opinion. But again, today this is much more disputed. I don't really know enough to have a 100% certainty on this myself or the issue

with Esther. So I just want to report to you these are the wrinkles, right? We can't, but here's the thing. We can simply leave this question open of what does Milito mean by wisdom and say, well, we are not 100% sure about that. I think we can say certainly though the most probable outcomes are one of these two. Number one, you have the Protestant canon minus Esther, or number two option, you have the Protestant canon plus the Book of Wisdom. Either way, it's very close to the Protestant canon. And it raises the question, if the Old Testament used by Jesus and the apostles and the earliest Christians included the Dutero-Canonical books, why are they excluded here, either entirely excluded or almost entirely, depending on how you take wisdom? And it's hard to overstate the significant

of this point because Melito is not a minor figure in the early church. He's been somewhat subsequently overlooked because so many of his works have been lost, but he was highly respected in his own day, late second century there. And Malito is so early. He's writing very early, before the later canon debates, some have argued that Melito may have personally known figures like Polycarp, who was a direct disciple of John, though that is not 100% certain. Nonetheless, Malito, testimony comes very close to the time of the apostles. The reason it's significant that the earliest surviving canon list in all church history is strikingly close to the Protestant canon is because the most important consideration in this dispute is simply what canon did Jesus and the apostles

use. And so testimony that comes so close to their time is significant. Now, although the testimony of Milito does not settle everything. So the answer to the text in the thumbnail, does this settle? I wouldn't say it settles it, but I would say it significantly moves the needle, especially when you combine it with other historical testimonies, like Jerome, like the Brienneas list. I'll do another video on that sometime, Lord willing. And then internal considerations in the text themselves. For example, in the prologue to Syrac, which contains an early tripartite description of the Hebrew scriptures, as you can see on screen. And this is likely the tripartite division that Jesus is also referencing in Luke 2444 under the term the law of Moses, the prophets, and the

Psalms. You see those three terms there. In its footnote dealing with Luke 2444, the Ignatius Catholic study Bible notes, Moses, prophets, Psalms reflects a classical division of the Old Testament into three parts. The third division is sometimes called the writings or the other books, as in the prologue to the book of Syrac. So putting Molito into coordination with other points of historical data yields very important testimony in favor of the shorter Old Testament canon. However, let's deal with one objection that is common and target this for the remainder of this video. Is Milito just describing the Jewish canon rather than the Christian canon. And this is sometimes maintained because Milito references going east to learn of these books. And this is taken as a reference to going to Jerusalem to learn

from Jewish sources. And therefore, it has claimed he's just describing the Jewish canon. Now, there are two problems with this. First, it's disputed whether Melito is simply pursuing Jewish sources and what exactly that means. And I'll talk about that. But second, more importantly, in any event, he frames his list as a Christian Old Testament. And I want to explain this point by quoting a little bit of scholarship here. The reason I quote scholarship is not because scholarship is infallible or because they're all in agreement on this topic. Nonetheless, I will do so because oftentimes I'll offer fairly basic standard observations

and then this will be portrayed as suspicious and sneaky. But I just want to show this is not Protestant special pleading. This is very standard. and I'm trying to reduce, I'm constantly trying to reduce the disconnect between the scholarship and popular level discourse, just at least that we are aware of what is common and standard. So the OUP, Oxford University Press book by Mead and Gallagher that I referenced earlier, puts it like this, quote, Malito does not inform us of the sources of his canon, whether Jews or Christians.

Some scholars have pointed out that had Melito wanted to ask Jews about their canon, he could have done so in his native Sardis, where a large Jewish community flourished. They give several examples of scholars who argue for that, and they continue. Moreover, it seems likely that Milito would have sought out a Christian source to inform him of the books of the Old Testament rather than a Jewish source. Now, what they do then is they discuss one effort to claim that Milito's canon is just the Jewish canon, and one of the points they make is that that runs contrary to Eusebius' whole usage of Milito.

Quote, Eusebius clearly does not share this interpretation of Milito's intentions, since he introduces Milito's preface by stating that it contains a list of the recognized books of the Old Testament. And what they're talking about there, Meade and Gallagher, are referencing, is how Eusebius introduces Malito. And you can see here the reference to the acknowledged books of the Old Testament. That's Eusebius's understanding of the significance of Melito's testimony. So if this is just a Jewish canon, that is totally lost on Eusebius, this great historian of the early church. Not only that, Malito himself makes comments that are suggestive that he understands this to be a Christian Old Testament. Remember that Malito is a Christian bishop writing to another Christian, he's writing a letter to Onesimus, another Christian leader when he gives this list of the Old Testament books.

And he describes this as concerning our entire faith, and then he's responding to this specific request from Onesimus for an accurate, statement of the number and order of the ancient books. A merely Jewish canon would not address Onesimus' pastoral need here, and Molito himself calls these books the Old Testament or Old Covenant. I think if I recall he may be the first Christian who uses that language for the Old Testament books, and this is explicitly Christian language. You can see where he uses this terminology on screen here. I'm putting up all, for those on the podcast, I'm putting up all these passages on screen on the YouTube video. But this is significant, obviously, because Jews wouldn't describe their own scriptures as the Old Testament. That's a category that only makes sense in relation

to the Christian claim of a New Testament. So even if Milito is investigating Jewish sources, he is doing so for the purpose of establishing books that belong to what he calls the Old Testament, which is a Christian category. And that is why in the scholarship on this point, Milito's list is routinely referred to as the earliest Christian canon and the earliest surviving Christian list of Old Testament books. In Chapter 8 of the Books and the Partraments, F.F. Bruce calls this list the earliest datable Christian list of Old Testament books. Here's the older Protestant historian Philip Schaff calling it the first Christian list of the Hebrew

scriptures. This is common. It's commonly recognized that Milito's interesting. is in a Christian canon, even if he's drawing from Jewish sources to that end. Moreover, there are also scholars who conclude that Milito isn't looking at the Jewish canon specifically. He's going to Christians in Palestine and specifically Jerusalem for the Christian canon. So again, there's two problems here, is even if Milito is drawing from Jewish sources. That doesn't mean he's not interested in the Christian canon, which is how he frames his conclusion.

But also, lots of people do argue that he actually is going to Christians. potentially Jewish Christians in and around Jerusalem. Let me read to you, again, because everything I'm saying here, I'm trying to report sort of what's common in the scholarship. Let me read a longer passage from chapter 5 of Roger Beckwith's book, the Old Testament canon of the New Testament Church and its background in early Judaism. That's the title of the book. This will give you a flavor of the argumentation here. Quote, it will appear from the following chapter that if Milito had been acquainted with the Jewish numeration of the books as 22, which some suppose him to have been, he would not have mentioned Ruth separately from judges. On the other hand, if he had been acquainted

with the alternative Jewish numeration of the books as 24, he would not only have mentioned Ruth as a separate book, but also lamentations. It seems, therefore, that he was acquainted with neither numeration, and this is confirmed by his division of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles each into two books. What then was the source of Milito's information? He does not claim to have obtained it from the Jews, only from the Holy Land. And the likelihood is that he obtained it from the Church of Syria, Syria in the broad sense, including Palestine. In this region where Jews were numerous and where dialects of Aramaic were spoken as well as Greek, the church had an excessive. exceptional knowledge of Jewish tradition. However, the church here was often in controversy with the Jews,

and in some matters it treated their tradition with considerable freedom. Nearly all the features of Milito's canon can be seen in later Syrian lists, as well as in certain other Christian sources. Further confirmation of the Christian origin of Milito's list may be found in the fact that doubt about the Old Testament canon was on the increase among Christians in the latter part of the second century, due especially to the breach with Jewish tradition and the growing popularity of apocryphal books, whereas doubt had at this date been almost entirely laid to rest among the Jews. If Milito had wished to consult Jews, he need only have consulted the Jews of his own city, Sardis, where there was a prominent Jewish community, to whom the canon was probably as well known as it was to the Jews of Palestine.

The reason why he looked to Palestine must surely be that he wished to consult Christians. and finding uncertainty and difference of opinion among Christians nearer home, he decided to refer his question to the mother churches of Christendom, in the land from which the gospel had first gone out there, so he considered lay the best hope of learning the primitive Christian canon. Bruce Metzger also regards Melito's list to come from Greek-speaking Jewish Christians, as you can see on screen here. Sometimes it's argued that Melito would have been looking ultimately at Jewish sources,

but in conversation with Christians in that region about the significance of that. Since the church receives the scriptures from God's revelation to Israel, the Jewish canon is not irrelevant background information. It's one source of information that helped the early church to determine the canon. Here's how Gallagher puts it in another publication. Molito fails to tell us whom he asked for this information, leaving scholars to guess whether he sought out Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Christians. regardless, most scholars have been willing to attribute the list ultimately to Jewish sources,

but nobody says next. It is likely that upon coming to the east, presumably on some official business, he would have questioned the local Christians rather than Jews. But the more intimate acquaintance of Eastern Christians with Jewish traditions would have assured him of obtaining what he considered the authentic canon. Hopefully you see the significance of what we're saying here. Even if he's looking at Jewish sources, he's doing so indefinitely. dialogue with Christians as well because his goal is to determine the Christian canon, and that's

pretty commonly recognized. So summing up, Milito is addressing confusion among Christians about the Old Testament books. And so he goes back to where Christianity began, in and around Jerusalem, to determine that question. Very unlikely that he's going to go there and only look at non-Christian sources rather than considering both Jewish and Christian testimony, but even if he were. It would not take away from his clear presentation of these books as a Christian Old Testament, as also was understood by Eusebius. And again, the significance of this is that Milito is only a few generations removed from the apostles. Again, Polycarp dies around the middle of the second century.

Molito is active in that region, in Asia Minor, right on the heels of that. This is within living memory of the Apostles' disciples. So does the testimony of Molito settle the canon question? No, it doesn't settle it fully, but it really moves the needle, especially in light of the fact that there's no counter testimonies of the alternative larger canon that are that early from that time period. And there's other supportive data as well. I mentioned the Briannaeus list, which may go back pretty early as well. And in my other videos, I've covered Jerome and some of the other testimonies like that. So yes, Malito really moves the needle and in favor of a shorter Old Testament canon that aligns with the Protestant recognition.

Let me know in the comments, if you want videos on the brianios list, thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments.