As to the canonicity and apostolic authorship of the Johannine Apocalypse no doubts were ever entertained in the West; indeed an Apocalypse of Peter was still retained in the canon in the 3rd century.
Thus though it insisted on the exclusive canonicity of the 24 books, it claimed the possession of are oral law handed down from ivloses, and just as the apocryphal books overshadowed in certain instances the canonical scriptures, so often the oral law displaced the written in the regard of Judaism.
External Evidence and Canonicity, and Century.-It is possible that the Apocalypse was known to Ignatius, Eph.
There was also a useful collection of texts by Prof. Charteris of Edinburgh, Canonicity (1880), based on Kirchhofer, Quellensamm- lung (1844), but with improvements.
The assured canonicity of the whole New Testament resulted in its use by the medieval theologians, the Schoolmen, as a storehouse of proof-texts.
