Antilegomena


Antilegomena, a direct transliteration of the Greek ἀντιλεγόμενα, refers to written texts whose authenticity or value is disputed.
Eusebius in his Church History used the term for those Christian scriptures that were "disputed", literally "spoken against", in Early Christianity before the closure of the New Testament canon. It is a matter of categorical discussion whether Eusebius divides his books into three groups of homologoumena, antilegomena, and 'heretical'; or four, by adding a notha group. The antilegomena or "disputed writings" were widely read in the Early Church and included the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Book of Revelation, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache. The term "disputed" should therefore not be misunderstood to mean "false" or "heretical". There was disagreement in the Early Church on whether or not the respective texts deserved canonical status.

Eusebius

The first major church historian, Eusebius, who wrote his Church History c. AD 325, applied the Greek term "antilegomena" to the disputed writings of the Early Church:
The Epistle to the Hebrews had earlier been listed:
Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century text and possibly one of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine, includes the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. The original Peshitta excluded 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. Some modern editions, such as the Lee Peshitta of 1823, include them.

Reformation

During the Reformation, Luther brought up the issue of the antilegomena among the Church Fathers, and none of the New Testament books of the Canon of Trent was rejected from Luther's canon. The terminology remains in use today. Since he questioned Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation, these books are sometimes termed "Luther's Antilegomena". Current Lutheran usage expands this to also include 2 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John.
F. C. Baur used the term in his classification of the Pauline Epistles, classing Romans, 1–2 Corinthians and Galatians as homologoumena; Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1–2 Thessalonians and Philemon as antilegomena; and the Pastoral Epistles as "notha".

Hebrew Bible

The term is sometimes applied also to certain books in the Hebrew Bible.