Canonizing Paul’s Epistle to the Laodiceans Paratextual Negotiations of Authorship and Authority in the Latin Bible

Abstract Paul’s Epistle to the Laodiceans, says Jerome, was “rejected by everyone.” The putative authorities of early Christian history – bishops, councils, and scholars – denounced the letter as spurious. According to conventional histories of the Christian canon, therefore, the pseudonymous Laodiceans was almost always, already excluded. But the manuscripts of the Latin Bible tell a different story. Laodiceans is unique among Christian apocrypha for its preservation almost exclusively in biblical manuscripts. And these manuscripts carry paratextual traces of readerly encounters with the text. Prefaces, marginalia, chapter lists, and titles suggest that readers adopted a range of different positions on the status of Laodiceans. Readers debated, denounced, and defended Laodiceans on the very pages of their scriptures. From the periphery of Christian scripture, then, Laodiceans prompted centuries of readers to sometimes interrogate, sometimes reinscribe their notions of authenticity and authority.