It seems that I have not mentioned Junillus Africanus on this blog before. He was a legal minister to Emperor Justinian during the 540s, so he lived a little later than the historical period to which I have devoted the majority of my attention. But Junillus wrote a treatise on biblical interpretation that has bearing on one of my major scholarly concerns because he included a biblical canon list. The date of the work disqualified it from inclusion in Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity, which concentrates on the first four centuries of Christianity. But my forthcoming book on the reception of the deuterocanonicals tolerates no such arbitrary chronological limitations.
And, by the way, that book is scheduled to be published in the UK in just a couple weeks! Apparently it's already available for Kindle, and at a greatly reduced price. It seems that amazon.com also has available now the Kindle version, though my book won't be available in print in America until July. But the British price for the Kindle version is much better than the American price. Is this a book that you would want to read on Kindle? I think it would work okay. It is basically a narrative account, much less of a reference book than Biblical Canon Lists.
Back to Junillus. As I was saying, my forthcoming book on the deuterocanonicals does mention his canon list, very briefly. (Even more briefly I mention Junillus in my "Latin Canon" essay in THB 2.) Here's the paragraph from chapter 6 of my book:
There were also other views expressed in medieval Latin sources that cannot be so clearly related to the earlier discussion. Junillus Africanus, under the influence of the Syriac tradition, published his Instituta regularia divinae legis in the 540s, in which he reported near its start a biblical canon with some distinctive features. Junillus excludes 1–2 Chronicles, Job, Tobit, Ezra-Nehemiah, Judith, Esther, and 1–2 Maccabees from the canonical books of history because, he says, the Hebrews also do, as Jerome attested (Instituta 1.3)—a misunderstanding of Jerome and the Hebrew tradition. Later (Instituta 1.5), he said that the only canonical wisdom books were Proverbs and Sirach, though he admitted that other people include the Wisdom of Solomon and Song of Songs. (Ecclesiastes appears as a book of “simple teaching” rather than a wisdom book; 1.6.) This striking arrangement seems to have had little influence on later Latin tradition.
The Latin text of Junillus is available in the old (1880) edition by Kihn (here), or in the reprint of Kihn's text, now with an English translation, in the study by Maas (2003). Or see this online text and translation. For a study of the biblical interpretation of Junillus, see also Martens and Bass (2016). Somehow I missed the study of the canon of Junillus by Haelewyck (mentioned here).
I also have just now discovered Tarmo Toom's essay from 2023 on the canon list of Junillus (pre-published form here), which discovery provided the immediate occasion for this post. I wish I had noticed this essay earlier; it is filled with erudition. This article arises from Toom's longstanding interest in ancient manuals on biblical interpretation (see his academia.edu page).
What Toom's article especially drives home to me is that I should have paid more attention to the paragraph immediately after Junillus finishes listing the books. Here's that paragraph from the online version.
7. De auctoritate scripturarum.
[Delta] Quomodo diuinorum librorum consideratur auctoritas? [Mu] Quia quaedam perfectae auctoritatis sunt, quaedam mediae, quaedam nullius. [Delta] Quae sunt perfectae auctoritatis? [Mu] Quae canonica in singulis speciebus absolute numerauimus. [Delta] Quae mediae? [Mu] Quae adiungi a pluribus diximus. [Delta] Quae nullius auctoritatis sunt? [Mu] Reliqua omnia.
2. [Delta] In omnibus speciebus dictionis hae differentiae inueniuntur? [Mu] In historia et simplici doctrina omnes; nam in prophetia mediae auctoritatis libri praeter apocalypsin non reperiuntur nec in prouerbiali specie omnino cassata.
7. Concerning the authority of the Scriptures.
D. How is the authority of the divine books viewed? M. That certain ones are of complete authority, certain of moderate, certain of none. D. Which are of complete authority? M. Those canonical works which in their several kinds we have completely enumerated. D. Which of moderate? M. The ones which we have said are added by many. D. Which are of no authority? M. All the rest.
[2] D. Are these distinctions found in all the kinds of discourse? M. All these distinctions are found in history and plain teaching; but in prophecy, books of moderate authority are not found, except for Revelation, nor in the proverbial kind are there works altogether devoid of authority.
There are writings with perfect authority and there are writings with moderate authority. This sounds something like the Greek Orthodox distinction between canonized writings and anaginoskomena, a distinction deriving from Athanasius. Which writings belong to which group? Junillus says that the writings that he named in each of his categories (history, prophecy, proverbs, simple teaching; see the previous paragraphs of his work) have perfect authority, and the writings that he said were "added by some people" have only moderate authority.
Now let's list out the books of complete authority and the books of moderate authority, and I'll use Toom's chart on pp. 269–70. I'm not going to preserve Junillus' weird sequence of books (just look at the online text if you want that), and I have also destroyed his categories (history, prophecy, proverbs, simple teaching) so that I can present the books in a sequence more familiar to us so that we can the more easily see to which category the books belong.
Perfect authority:
Old Testament: Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Psalms (150 psalms, specified), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Minor Prophets
Sirach
New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Pauline Epistles (14, including Hebrews), 1 Peter, 1 John
Moderate Authority:
Old Testament: Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, Job, Song of Songs
Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, 1–2 Maccabees
New Testament: James, 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, Apocalypse of John
What does all this mean? As Toom notes, there is some relationship here with the New Testament canon list from Eusebius of Caesarea. The way Junillus has distinguished between the New Testament writings of perfect authority from those of moderate authority is very reminiscent of Eusebius. First of all, the New Testament writings of moderate authority for Junillus are precisely the same as the New Testament writings that Eusebius says are disputed, not universally accepted by the churches. (The Greek text of Eusebius puts Revelation in an awkward position, but the Latin translation by Rufinus simplifies the matter, and I assume this Latin translation of Eusebius has influenced Junillus, because he has resolved the difficulty of Eusebius' comments on Revelation in the same way.) For Junillus as for Eusebius, it is the reception among the churches that determines to which category a writing belongs.
Things are more complicated with regard to the Old Testament writings. Eusebius is not the model here. (Eusebius did not include his own Old Testament canon list in his Ecclesiastical History, but he did include three such lists from others: Josephus, Melito, and Origen. All three of these lists more-or-less reproduce the Jewish canon in 22 books.)
The books that became known as deuterocanonical were already more-or-less recognized as a unit, especially in Latin-speaking circles. (See my article here.) Junillus lists most of them as having moderate authority, which agrees with Jerome and Rufinus and others. Baruch is not listed anywhere, but that's presumably because it was considered a(n inauthentic?) part of Jeremiah. (See my essay on Latin Baruch in THB 2, or my notes here on an article by Bogaert.)
But what makes Junillus think that Sirach—alone among the deuterocanonicals—a place among the books of perfect authority? Nothing is coming to mind right now that similarly sets Sirach apart from the rest in the ancient period—in the Christian tradition. In the Jewish tradition, Sirach (i.e., the book of Ben Sira) was the only "apocryphal" book that continued to carry some level of authority into the rabbinic period and beyond. In the church, also, Sirach was probably more useful than most deuterocanonical (or protocanonical) books, in the sense that it provided more prooftexts for doctrines. So, my very tentative guess is that Junillus' positioning of Sirach among the books of perfect authority is based not on a tradition but on his own experience of seeing Christians use Sirach.
More peculiar to me is Junillus' statement questioning the reception of certain protocanonical books. For example, in his discussion of the books of history, he says:
Many people add two books of Paraleipomena, Job, Tobit, Ezra<-Nehemiah>, Judith, Esther, two books of Maccabees. ... Because among the Hebrews, too, they used to be excluded with regard to this distinction, just as Jerome and the others testify. (1.3)
He says something similar about Song of Songs in his discussion of the proverbial books. This is difficult to understand. I mean, I think I know what Junillus is saying, but he's wrong, and I find it difficult to understand how he got it wrong. Okay, definitely he's right that among Jews there was/is doubt about Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees, and Jerome testifies to as much. I could maybe see how Ezra and Esther got lumped in here with this category of books doubted among Jews, though I'm not sure Jerome gave any testimony in this regard. But what about Chronicles (Paraleipomena) and Job? Do we have any Jewish evidence of doubt regarding these books? I'm pretty sure Jerome does not provide such testimony.
By the way, what is "Ezra" in Junillus? In a footnote, Toom says: "In Junillus, Inst. 1.3, Maas translates Esdras legitimately as Ezra, and Collins as Ezra(-Nehemiah), but in the company of Tobit and Judith, perhaps it should be the Greek Esdras A (=3 Esdras in Vulgate)" (p. 267 n. 27).
The question is: would Junillus have been referring to Ezra-Nehemiah or to the LXX 1 Esdras? It's hard to know for sure, of course, but my guess is that he would have been referring to Ezra-Nehemaih. That's because he is writing 150 years after Jerome's translation of Ezra-Nehemiah, and, as we have seen, there is other evidence of influence from Jerome on Junillus. (On the reception of Ezra in Latin, Bogaert has written the most helpful studies; see, e.g., notes here.)
At any rate, Toom helpfully summarizes the big picture.
Junillus, however, distinguishes between the perfect authority of the canonical books, and the lesser authority of the books that not everyone considers canonical. At least, these books have no authority at all in the matters of faith. This, in turn, means that the sacred books demand a different kind of reading than non-sacred books. (Toom, p. 273)
This categorization of books with differing levels of authority based on reception in the churches was common in ancient Christianity, as Toom lays out and as I further argue in my article on the Shepherd of Hermas (here).
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