The Biblical Canon of
Codex Fuldensis

The Codex Fuldensis is a New Testament manuscript based on the Latin Vulgate made between 541 and 546.  The manuscript was prepared and revised under the direction of Victor of Capua; a bishop of Capua whose tomb inscription states that his episcopate of thirteen years ended in April, 554. He substituted the Vulgate text of the Gospels for an Old Latin Diatesseron, which he had found.  This resulting Codex was later acquired by the Benedictine monk, Saint Boniface, who then gave it to the monastic library in Fulda in 745 A.D., where it remains to the present day.

The codex is considered the second most important witness to the Vulgate text; and is also the oldest complete manuscript witness to the order of the early Gospel harmony known as the Diatessaron by Tatian. The four gospels are thus harmonised into a single continuous narrative, according to the form of Tatian’s Diatessaron. From the Codex Fuldensis, it can be determined that the Old Latin source that Victor of Capua had used as a substitute had lacked the Genealogy of Jesus but that this source had included the passage of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery; a passage found in John 7:53–8:11 that is absent from most early texts and was probably added sometime in the fourth century.  The Diatesseron is then followed by 15 Pauline Epistles as the Codex includes the Epistle to the Laodiceans; an epistle referenced in Colossians 4:16, but is generally regarded as a forgery, although it would later find its way into the English Bible of John Wycliffe.  Paul’s letters are followed by Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation.  

Sources: 

• Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford 1977)
• Bruce M. Metzger, Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Oxford University Press, New York — Oxford 2005
• Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity:  Texts and Analysis.  Oxford University Press. 2017