Scripture and Canon
St. Athanasius’s contribution to the Church’s reception of Scripture is twofold: in his 39th Festal Letter (367) he gave the first surviving list of the twenty-seven New Testament books exactly as later received, and in his Letter to Marcellinus he provided the classic Christian account of the Psalter as the prayer-book of the soul. This section treats both texts.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Overview
Athanasius is remembered above all as the defender of Nicaea, but his influence on how the Church reads and bounds its Scriptures is nearly as deep. Two documents stand out. The first, the 39th Festal Letter, is a landmark in the history of the biblical canon — though, as the file below shows, its categories do not map cleanly onto later Western or even later Orthodox distinctions, and the question of what “canon” meant for him repays careful attention. The second, the Letter to Marcellinus, is a small masterpiece of biblical spirituality that has shaped Orthodox psalmody to the present day.
Both must be read in concert with the repository’s general treatment of Holy Scripture, with which the canon discussion here is kept consistent.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The 39th Festal Letter | The festal-letter institution; the canon list of 367 (27 NT books; the OT list and its divergences from later Greek/Slavonic usage); the “read but not canonized” category (Wisdom, Sirach, Didache, Shepherd); what “canon” meant for Athanasius; the letter’s afterlife in canon history. |
| The Letter to Marcellinus | The Psalter as a “mirror” of the soul; psalm-by-psalm pastoral assignments; the letter’s place in Orthodox psalmody and the appendix tradition in Orthodox psalters. |
Why It Matters
The 39th Festal Letter is routinely cited (with qualifications) as the first authoritative list of the New Testament as the Church now has it; the Letter to Marcellinus gave the Church a durable theology of the Psalter as the place where every movement of the soul finds its voice. Together they show Athanasius shaping not only what the Church reads as Scripture but how it prays the Scripture it reads.
See Also
- Orthodoxy Guide: Holy Scripture — the canon question in the wider Orthodox frame
- The Life of Antony — Athanasius’s other genre-defining text
References
- Athanasius of Alexandria. Festal Letter 39 (367) [PG 26:1436]; trans. NPNF II/4.
- Athanasius of Alexandria. The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus. Trans. Robert C. Gregg. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.