Welcome to five minutes in church history hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols, where we take a little break from the present to go exploring the past.

Travel back in time as we look at the people, events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity.

This is our story, our family history. Let's get started.

Lottavico Antonio Murotore.

With a name like that, this person had to do something of greatness.

And in fact, this person did.

Lottavico Antonio Mirotori

was an Italian historian and an archaeologist.

And he made a very significant discovery

of a manuscript that we call named for him the Muratorian fragment.

The Muratorian fragment represents the thinking of a group of Christians from around 170

AD and specifically their thinking on the issue of the canon.

It is in fact a canon list.

Now it's not the earliest canon list. We have some other canon lists in the

writings of the Church Fathers as they would write epistles. They would mention

different books and they would list different books. They would refer to the

four Gospels or they would

refer to Paul's epistles and they would identify specific books and so we can

read through their epistles and construct these canon lists in the early church.

But this is a crucial document.

It gives a significant insight not only to the list itself,

but it also gives us insight into some of the reasoning that went

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