Christian scripture

Scripture derives from the Latin word scribere ("to write") and is a general term referring to something that has been written. In Christian or Hebrew writings, scripture is generally used as a shorthand for a more specific terms (especially Canonical Scripture and ecclesiastical scripture). Strictly speaking, however, scripture could refer to any of the writings of all the peoples in all the world, hence it is the least descriptive term one could use to refer to a class of writings or a particular work.

Early Christians generally employed four categorizations of scripture: Orthodox scripture (which was an implicit rather than explicit category), ecclesiastical scripture, Canonical Scripture, and apocryphal scripture. These categories are apparent in multiple church fathers’ writings (like Athanasius, Cyril, and Jerome), but Rufinus is the one whose usage of these categories seems the most developed:

The descriptions of the four categories of Christian scripture are as follows:

(from SWORD, pp. 1-2, with permission [1])

Orthodox is a term deriving from the Greek words orthos, meaning right or correct, and doxa, meaning glory or worship, hence Orthodox scripture is writing that does NOT conflict with a right or correct glorification or worship of God. More specifically, this category of writings can include fictitious works, commentaries on other works, analogies/parables, historical works, instructional books, etc, so long as those works do not teach anything contrary to what was considered to be an essentially correct view of the God of Christianity.

Interestingly, most of the so-called lost books of the New Testament belong to this category in that many of them are Orthodox (they don’t teach anything outside of the set of accepted historical Christian beliefs). Some of these so-called lost books include many of the various Infancy Gospels, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Vision of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, etc. These Orthodox scriptures are not included in the New Testament because they are extrapolations and/or were composed after the New Testament time period; it is NOT the case that these particular books are excluded because they teach things which Christians necessarily oppose. In fact, some of the Traditional churches still use some of the Orthodox scriptures from time to time (such as the Greek Orthodox Church’s use of the Proto-Evangelion of James).

As far as specificity is concerned, Orthodox scripture is the most general term a person can use to refer to writings which would be classified as Christian in some way, shape, or form.

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