ANALYSIS OF THE CANONS OF EUSEBIUS

Charles P. Poole, Jr.

In the early centuries of Christianity Eusebius divided each gospel into numbered pericopes or sections: 355 for Matthew, 233 for Mark, 342 for Luke and 232 for John. Some sections are very short, containing only one or two verses, while others are much longer with many verses. Each section was associated with what Eusebius called a Canon containing particular parallel sections. Canon I contained parallels from all four gospels, Canons II, III and IV have parallels from three of the gospels, Canons V to IX are for pairs of gospels, and the four Canons numbered X contain sections that only appear in one of the gospels. There are no examples of a section that occurs only in the three gospels Mark, Luke and John, so this Canon is missing from the classification. There is also no canon for the pair John and Mark. The thirteen Canons of Eusebius are as follows:

Canon I (4 gospels) Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

Canon II (3 gospels) Matthew, Mark, Luke

Canon III (3 gospels) Matthew, Luke, John

Canon IV (3 gospels) Matthew, Mark, John

Canon V (2 gospels) Matthew, Luke

Canon VI (2 gospels) Matthew, Mark

Canon VII (2 gospels) Matthew, John

Canon VIII (2 gospels) Mark, Luke

Canon IX (2 gospels) Luke, John

Canon X (1 gospel) Matthew

Canon X (1 gospel) Mark

Canon X (1 gospel) Luke

Canon X (1 gospel) John

Each section of each gospel appears in only one canon. The numbering system in each gospel is sequential in arabic numbers, with each arabic number associated with a Roman numeral. For example, the first seven sections of the gospel of Matthew are numbered as follows:

Section 1/III verses 1:1 to 1:16

Section 2/X verse 1:17

Section 3/V verse 1:18

Section 4/X verses 1:19 to 2:4

Section 5/VII verses 2:5 and 2:6

Section 6/X verses 2:7 to 2:23

Section 7/III verses 3:1 and 3:2

We see that some sections are very short, containing only one or two verses, while others are much longer with many verses. Sometimes the match between the gospels is direct. For example Sections 8 of Matthew, 2 of Mark, 7 of Luke and 10 of John are the same. Also Sections 11 of Matthew, 4 of Mark and 10 of Luke correspond to each other, but four sections of John, namely 6, 12, 14 and 28, must be put together to reconstruct this passage. The number of times the sections of the various gospels appear in each Canon is displayed in the following Table:

Canon Matthew Mark Luke John Total

I 46 47 51 68 74

II 92 92 110 111

III 9 9 22 22

IV 17 17 25 25

V 78 81 82

VI 47 47 47

VII 5 7 7

VIII 13 12 13

IX 8 15 21

X 62 62

X 19 19

X 72 72

X 96 96

Totals 356 233 343 232 1162

We notice that the numbers for John in a given row of the table often exceed those for the synoptic gospels since sometimes several sections of John must be combined to match one synoptic section, as was mentioned above.

The gospel of Mark is believed to be the oldest, and could have provided source material for Matthew and Luke. Some scripture scholars postulate that there was a fifth gospel called the Q-source circulating in apostolic times containing the sayings of Jesus, and available to the evangelists when they wrote their gospels, The name Q-source is derived from the German word Quelle which means source. This is supported by the fact that only 8% of the sections (Canon X) of Mark have no overlap with other gospels, compared to 17% for Matthew and 21% for Luke. In contrast to this 41% of the sections of John are in Canon X, having no overlap with the synoptic gospels, since John wrote independently of the others. The large number of combinations in Canon II support this speculation. .

The numbers in the table above can be used to construct the following Eusebian triangle which displays the extent of the overlap between the three synoptic gospels:

Mark

72 185 13

69 104 93

Matthew Luke

The numbers of sections of Synoptic gospels alone or in pairs with John (Canons VII, IX and X) are at the apices, the numbers in pairs with or without John (Canons III to VI and VIII are at the sides of the triangle, and the number in all three gospels with and without John (Canons I and II) is in the center. This Eusebian triangle emphasizes the extent to which all three synoptic gospels are closely related to each other. Another way to present this information is to display the numbers that include John in parentheses, as follows:

Mark

19 (0)

47 (25) 111 (74) 13 (0)

62 (7) 82 (22) 72 (21)

Matthew Luke

We see that the main overlap of John is with all three synoptic gospels together, and the second most important overlaps are with the pairs Mt-Mk and Mt-Lc. Only Luke by itself has a significant overlap with John.