Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CANON, CRITICISM, AND INTERPRETATION
CANONICAL CRITICISM
When writings are gathered together into a collection with a unifying principle, some critical questions arise with regard to the collection as such, in the light of that unifying principle, which do not arise in the same way with regard to the individual writings which make it up. Where the canon of scripture is concerned, these critical questions have been comprehensively termed ‘canonical criticism’.
One of the most important critical questions has been formulated thus: ‘Which form of the text is canonical?’ The question is often asked in relation to the New Testament, and some of those who ask it are prepared themselves to give it a quite confident answer. But when it is asked in relation to the New Testament, it is helpful first to consider it in relation to the Old Testament.
Which form of the Old Testament text is canonical? If the question is put to orthodox Jews, their answer is not in doubt: it is the traditional form, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew scriptures. And many scholars, Jews and Gentiles alike, will agree that, of all the extant varieties of text, the Masoretic is most reliable. It is no doubt subject to correction here and there, but no rival variety of Hebrew text—for example, that which appears to underlie the Septuagint version—can hold a candle to it.
But which form of the Old Testament text was recognized as canonical, or at least authoritative, by our Lord and his apostles, or by the New Testament writers in general? No one form.
One might expect that writers in Greek would use an accessible Greek version of the ancient scriptures, that is to say, the Septuagint. The New Testament writers did this to a very considerable extent. Luke and the writer to the Hebrews in their biblical citations and allusions adhere quite closely to the Septuagint wording. But other New Testament writers exercise greater freedom.
In Matthew 12:18–21 there is a quotation from Isaiah 42:1–4 in a Greek form which is markedly different from the Septuagint. The Septuagint version of Isaiah 42:1 identifies ‘my servant’ as Israel, which would not have suited Matthew’s purpose. A New Testament writer may quote the Old Testament in a form closer to the Hebrew construction; he may even quote it in a form paralleled neither in the Septuagint nor in the traditional Hebrew text, bur in an Aramaic paraphrase or targum. For example, both Paul and the writer to the Hebrews quote Deuteronomy 32:35 in the form ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ (Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30). This follows neither the familiar Hebrew wording (‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense’) nor the Septuagint (‘In the day of vengeance I will repay’), but it agrees exactly with the targumic version. Occasionally, indeed, there is evidence of the use of a text resembling the Samaritan edition of the Pentateuch. It looks at times as if the New Testament writers enjoyed liberty to select a form of Old Testament text which promoted their immediate purpose in quoting it: certainly they did not regard any one form of text as sacrosanct.
In this they have provided a helpful precedent for us when we are told (especially on theological, not critical, grounds) that one form of New Testament text is uniquely authoritative. In the eighteenth century William Whiston maintained that what we call the ‘Western’ text was the true, ‘primitive’ form of the New Testament. In the second half of the nineteenth century John William Burgon vigorously defended the exclusive right of the ‘Byzantine’ text (the text exhibited by the majority of Greek manuscripts from the fifth to the fifteenth century) to be recognized as authentic and ‘inspired’. There are some who continue to maintain this position. In his day there were those who held, on the other hand, that the text established by a succession of leading scholars on the basis of the earliest manuscripts should displace the Byzantine or ‘majority’ text as ‘canonical’. A Scots Bible teacher of a past generation used to affirm in public that ‘Where Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort agree, there you have verily what the Spirit saith’. That viewpoint was widely shared; nowadays few would venture to speak so positively, even on behalf of such an excellent publication as K. Aland’s revision of E. Nestle’s edition of the Greek New Testament.
In more recent times the topic of ‘canonical criticism’ has been introduced, especially by B. S. Childs. In canonical criticism the techniques of critical study are practised in relation to the Old or New Testament canon as such, or to the form in which any one of the individual books was finally included in the canon. It is true that, for nearly all books of the Bible, the final canonical form is the only one directly accessible to us: any earlier form must be in some degree a matter of speculation or reconstruction. (Occasionally one can distinguish two ‘canonical’ forms of a book, as in the book of Jeremiah: there is the longer form preserved in the Masoretic text and a shorter Greek form preserved in the Septuagint, and both were canonized.)
It may be argued that the final canonical form is that which should be acknowledged as the valid standard of authority in the church. But the textual or historical critic will not be deterred from working back to the form in which the document first appeared, or as nearly as it is possible to get to that form. And it may equally be argued that, if apostolic authority is the chief criterion of canonicity in the New Testament, the form of the letter to the Romans (say) as Paul dictated it and Tertius wrote it down must be its most authoritative form. To be sure, where the Pauline letters are concerned, textual critics would be happy if they could establish the wording of the first edition of the Pauline corpus, but even that (if attainable) would be pre-canonical.
‘AS ORIGINALLY GIVEN’
It might be thought at first blush that insistence on the final canonical form stands at the opposite pole from insistence on the text ‘as originally given’, which finds expression in some present-day statements of belief. The Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, for example, confesses its faith in ‘the divine inspiration and infallibility of Holy Scripture, as originally given, and its supreme authority in all matters of faith and morals’. The phrase ‘as originally given’ does not imply that the qualities of inspiration and infallibility belong to some lost and irrecoverable stage of the biblical text; it implies rather that these qualities should not be ascribed to defects of transmission and translation.
In another context the phrase ‘as originally given’ might refer to earlier forms of a biblical book which have been discerned by the exercise of literary or historical criticism. For example, it has been argued persuasively by David Clines that the ‘proto-Masoretic’ book of Esther comprised the first eight chapters only; not only so, but he goes farther back and envisages a ‘pre-Masoretic’ form of the book. Could one say that one or other of these forms should be identified with the book of Esther ‘as originally given’? Or, to take a New Testament example, some scholars have held that, when Papias wrote of Matthew’s compilation of ‘the oracles in the Hebrew speech’, he referred not to our Gospel of Matthew but to an early collection of sayings of Jesus which constituted a major source for the evangelists Matthew and Luke (the source of the so-called ‘Q’ material). If they are right, could one say that this collection should be identified with the Gospel of Matthew ‘as originally given’? It is safe to say that such possibilities were not contemplated by the authors of the doctrinal basis. In fact, they had in view the canonical forms of the biblical books, with errors of transmission or translation removed. There is not so much difference as might appear at first blush between this position and that of Professor Childs (which is not to say, of course, that he takes the UCCF line on inspiration and infallibility).
In the ‘received text’ of the New Testament there are some passages which find no place in modern critical editions of the Greek Testament (or in translations based on these). Should such passages be recognized as canonical? There is no person or community competent to give an authoritative ruling on this question; any answer to it must be largely a matter of judgment.
There is, for example, the text about the three heavenly witnesses which appears in / at 1 John 5:7. This passage is a late intruder; it has no title to be considered part of the New Testament or to be recognized as canonical.
What of the last twelve verses of Mark’s Gospel (Mk. 16:9–20)? These verses—the longer Marcan appendix—were not part of Mark’s work. That in itself would not render them uncanonical—as we have seen, canonicity and authorship are two distinct issues—but their contents reveal their secondary nature. They seem to present, in the main, a summary of resurrection appearances recorded in the other Gospels. Some readers may like to have in verse 18 canonical authority for snake-handling; the clause ‘they will pick up serpents’, however, is probably based on Paul’s encounter with the viper on Malta (Acts 28:3–6). The following words about drinking poison without harmful consequences are reminiscent of a story which Philip’s daughters are said to have told of Joseph Barsabbas, surnamed Justus (one of the nominees for the succession to Judas Iscariot, according to Acts 1:23). The right of these twelve verses to receive canonical recognition is doubtful.
Then there is the story of the woman taken in adultery (Jn. 7:53–8:11). This certainly does not belong to the Gospel of John. It is an independent unit of gospel material, of the same general character as the Holy Week incidents in the temple court recorded in Mark 12:13–37. ‘The account has all the earmarks of historical veracity’, and as a genuine reminiscence of Jesus’ ministry is eminently worthy of being treated as canonical.
STAGES OF COMPOSITION
Even in its canonical form a biblical document may be better understood if account be taken of successive stages in its composition.
There can be no doubt, for example, of the canonical form of the Gospel of Matthew, nor yet of its canonical position. Ever since the fourfold gospel was brought together, the Gospel of Matthew has stood at its head. A few modern editors have displaced it—The Twentieth Century New Testament, for example, put Mark first and Ferrar Fenton put John first—but Matthew’s traditional primacy has not been imperilled. That primacy is due not to chronological considerations but to Matthew’s character: it is a proper catholic introduction to a catholic gospel collection and, in due course, to a catholic New Testament.
If we had no other gospel than Matthew, we should have to exercise our critical faculties on its own internal evidence as best we might. Happily, however, we can compare it with the other gospels (especially Mark and Luke) and thus reach firmer conclusions about its composition. We may conclude, as many have done, that this evangelist used at least two written sources—one being the Gospel of Mark or something very like it, and the other being the sayings collection which underlies the ‘Q’ material (‘Q’ being a convenient shorthand symbol for the non-Marcan material common to Matthew and Luke). Other sources have been discerned behind Matthew’s record: whether they were written or not is difficult to determine. One of these may have been a second collection of sayings of Jesus, preserved in a more conservative Jewish-Christian circle than the circle in which the other collection circulated. But, whatever sources lay at Matthew’s disposal, he treated them as an independent author, arranging his sayings material so as to form five bodies of teaching, each prefaced by a narrative section; the whole was introduced with a nativity narrative and concluded with an account of the passion of Jesus and his resurrection appearances (the main outlines of this last account having been largely fixed at an early stage in the church’s life). A consideration of the evangelist’s probable sources and of his treatment of them thus helps one to appreciate his workmanship, together with the value of his distinctive witness to Jesus and his special contribution to the New Testament.
VARIETY IN UNITY
When all the books of the Bible are brought together as parts of one canon, bound in one volume and recognized as the product of one divine Spirit, there is an inevitable tendency to emphasize the unity of the whole in such a way that differences of idiom and perspective between one writer and another are overlooked. This is the tendency that Harnack had in mind when he remarked that the process of canonization ‘works like whitewash; it hides the original colours and obliterates all the contours’. But there is no good reason for allowing canonicity to efface differences of date, authorship, outlook and so forth. Critical and exegetical study can be pursued as intensively with canonical literature as with uncanonical; indeed, the fact that a body of literature is acknowledged as canonical should serve as a specially powerful incentive to such study.
However, it is not always so. The danger of failing to give sufficient weight to such differences between one writer and another is one against which exponents of the theology of the New Testament should be on their guard, not to speak of exponents of biblical theology as a whole. Indeed, even a work on the theology of Paul may fail to do justice to the progress of Paul’s thought as it finds expression in his chief epistles, read in chronological order. Similarly, any one who would write on the teaching of Jesus must remember that his teaching, as we have it, is mediated through several witnesses. Quite apart from the issues raised by differences of emphasis among the synoptic evangelists, the difficulty of weaving his teaching according to them and his teaching according to John into a coherent whole makes most writers on the subject decide to concentrate on the synoptists’ testimony and leave John’s on one side—at least for the time being.
CANONICAL EXEGESIS
Canonical exegesis may be defined as the interpretation of individual components of the canon in the context of the canon as a whole.
Even in the pre-canonical period evidence of intra-biblical interpretation is not lacking. In the Old Testament it can be seen how later law-codes took over the provisions of earlier codes and applied them to fresh situations, or how later prophets took up and reinterpreted the oracles of their predecessors. Ezekiel, for example, makes it plain that Gog (under other names) was the subject of earlier prophecy in Israel (Ezek. 38:17): what had been said about him before was repeated and given fresh point with regard to a new situation. In Daniel’s visions especially one can see oracles of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel reinterpreted. Jeremiah’s prediction of seventy years’ desolation for Jerusalem (Jer 25:11f.; 29:10) is reinterpreted to cover a period seven times as long (Dan. 9:2, 24–27)—for Daniel, Jeremiah belongs to a collection called ‘the books’. The forecast of the decline and fall of Antiochus Epiphanes in Daniel 11:40–45 is a re-presentation of the downfall of the Assyrian invader as foretold by Isaiah (Is. 14:24–27; 31:8f.) and of Gog as foretold by Ezekiel (Ezek. 39:1–8).
In the New Testament writings many Old Testament texts are adduced and interpreted in the light of their fulfilment in the work of Christ and its sequel. Within the New Testament itself we find earlier gospel material reinterpreted by later evangelists, and we can see 2 Peter revising and reapplying Jude, omitting its allusion to the Assumption of Moses and its quotation from 1 Enoch, but retaining the reference to the fallen angels (Jude 6) who provide the main theme of the relevant section of 1 Enoch. Moreover, 2 Peter (as has been mentioned before) refers to a collection of letters of Paul, which are associated with ‘the other scriptures’, and warns against their misuse (2 Pet. 3:15f.).
If this tendency is visible even before the documents finally formed part of a canonical collection, it is intensified after the completion of the canon, or even after the formation of smaller collections, such as the fourfold gospel or the Pauline corpus.
An individual gospel might have been designed as the gospel for a particular community, but when it was included in a collection with other writings of the same genre, the individual writings were viewed as complementary one to another, each presenting a distinctive aspect of the ministry of Jesus. Each was then interpreted in the light of the others. In the course of copying them, scribes tended to conform the text of the less frequently read to that of the more frequently read. Uncritical readers or hearers might be unaware of any problems raised by the coexistence of the four accounts: the impression left on their minds would take the form of a composite picture of Jesus and his ministry. Those who discerned the problems were moved to give some explanation of them. Clement of Alexandria explained the differences between the synoptic records and John’s by saying that the first three evangelists set forth the ‘bodily’ facts whereas John composed a ‘spiritual’ gospel.
Others tackled the problem of harmonization in different ways. Tatian tackled it by weaving the material of all four records into a continuous narrative. Eusebius and Augustine addressed themselves to the issue of detailed discrepancies, and endeavoured to solve them by chronological and other arguments. Eusebius, for example, points out that the ministry of Jesus in the synoptic accounts includes only what happened after John’s imprisonment (cf Mk. 1:14, etc.), while John relates much that Jesus did before that event (cf Jn. 3:22). Augustine deals seriously, among other things, with the chronology of the resurrection appearances reported by various evangelists.
Another kind of harmonization was achieved by means of the allegorical method of Origen and others. Convinced as he was of the divine inspiration of the four gospels (as of all scripture), Origen concluded that spiritual allegorization was the only worthy means of bringing their full meaning to light. But when discrepancies were allegorized, they ceased to be discrepancies: they were seen to be complementary aspects of higher truth.
But it was the formation of the fourfold gospel that made these harmonizing exercises necessary: Christians who used only one gospel had no such problems to concern themselves with.
Similarly, when the letters of Paul were gathered into one corpus, each of them began to be read in the context of the whole corpus. At one time the only letters of Paul known (say) to the church of Corinth were those which it received from him—four or five, probably, within the space of two or three years. Not all of these have come down to us, and at certain points in the surviving Corinthian correspondence there are problems of interpretation which might be solved without more ado if we could consult the missing letters or parts of letters. For example, the letter which Paul says he wrote ‘with many tears’ (2 Cor. 2:4) seems to have been lost; if it were still available, there are passages in 2 Corinthians which we should understand better than we do. But when Paul’s surviving Corinthian correspondence formed part of the same corpus as his letters to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians and others, fresh problems began to appear. Some readers have felt that the ethical guide-lines set out in (say) 1 Corinthians are in tension with the more libertarian tone of (say) Galatians. This tension is fairly easily resolved when the different occasions of the two letters are taken into account; but if both are read as holy scripture on one undifferentiated level, without regard to their historical background, problems are created with which the Corinthians and Galatians themselves did not have to cope. The injunctions in such occasional documents as Paul’s letters were never intended to be applied as canon law to personal or communal Christian life at all times and in all places.
Such tensions were multiplied when the earlier corpus of ten letters was enlarged to accommodate the Pastoral Epistles, because these three documents share a distinctive ethos and range of interest which is not found in the other letters. They were multiplied still more when, toward the end of the second century, the corpus was further enlarged to take in the letter to the Hebrews, a document which did not originally belong to the Pauline tradition.
‘ALL SCRIPTURE’
When the New Testament collection was received as a whole, whether in twenty-two or in twenty-seven books, further exegetical adjustments were made. When the Acts of the Apostles preceded the epistles, it was natural that the epistles, especially Paul’s earlier ones, should be read in the light of Luke’s narrative—although, when it is considered that Acts is later than Paul’s epistles, a strong case can be made out for reading Acts in the light of Paul’s epistles and testing its historical value by means of their evidence.
When the New Testament collection was read as part of the same Bible as the Old Testament writings, especially when both Testaments were bound together in one codex, ‘all scripture’ provided a still wider context within which ‘every scripture’ was to be understood.
For example, since New Testament times Christians have been familiar with what we have come to call the ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah 40–55, and in particular with the fourth Servant Song (Is. 52:13–53:12), and have without further thought identified the Servant whom they portray with Jesus. Why should they do this? Because, from the beginnings of the Christian faith—indeed, from the teaching of Jesus himself—this identification has been standard in the church. One would not expect it to be standard in the synagogue: indeed, the synagogue seems to have reacted vigorously against it. At one time an acceptable Jewish interpretation identified some at least of the Servant references with the expected Messiah, and this could well have been in line with the prophet’s intention. But, because the church adopted this interpretation (with the corollary that the Messiah was Jesus), the messianic interpretation of the Servant Songs fell out of favour with the synagogue.
When both Testaments are read together as part of holy scripture, the importance for the church of reading the Old Testament in the light of the New might be regarded as axiomatic, but at some times and in some places it has been admitted only with qualifications. The abolition of animal sacrifices by the work of Christ has been almost universally taken for granted, but the New Testament teaching about food restrictions and the observance of special days still meets with some resistance. The law of exact retaliation, ‘life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth …’ (Ex. 21:23–25), was replaced for Jesus’ disciples by his principle of turning the other cheek and going the second mile (Mt. 5:38–42); but many of his disciples still invoke the law of retaliation when it seems appropriate: after all, Moses’ law and Jesus’ teaching are both in the Bible, are they not?
This is not to imply an incompatibility between Moses’ law and Jesus’ teaching: Jesus himself affirmed that his teaching did not abrogate but fulfilled ‘the law and the prophets’ (Mt. 5:17). It does imply the importance of the historical dimension in biblical interpretation. When this is borne in mind, it will be realized that even the law of exact retaliation marked an ethical advance on the earlier principle of vendetta or blood-feud, demanding as it did one life, and no more, for a life; one eye, and no more, for an eye, and so forth. Moreover, for an eye or some other part of the body monetary compensation was acceptable; only for a life deliberately taken could there be no such redemption (cf Deut. 19:13).
It is not enough to say ‘the Bible says …’ without at the same time considering to whom the Bible says it, and in what circumstances. One sometimes meets people who, in discussing the life to come, quote Ecclesiastes 9:5, ‘the dead know nothing’, as though that were the Bible’s last word on the subject, as though Jesus’ death and resurrection had not given his people a new and living hope to which the author of Ecclesiastes was a stranger.
Canonical exegesis does not absolve the reader from the duty of understanding the scriptures in their historical setting. Indeed, it reinforces that duty. Each part of the canon makes its contribution to the whole, but that contribution cannot be properly appreciated unless attention is paid to the historical setting of each part in relation to the whole. Historical criticism, rightly applied, is as necessary for canonical exegesis as it is for the exegesis of the separate biblical documents. Each separate document may take on fuller meaning in the context of the wider canon to which it now belongs, but that fuller meaning cannot be logically unrelated to its meaning in the original (precanonical) context. A study, for example, of the biblical doctrine of election could not be undertaken if there were no Bible, no canon of scripture; but it would be worthless unless it took into account the historical sequence of the relevant subject-matter.
This is bound up with what is often called progressive revelation. That the biblical revelation is progressive is obvious when one considers that it was given in the course of history until, ‘when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son’ (Gal. 4:4). To call it progressive, however, may be misleading if that adjective suggests that every stage in the revelation is more ‘advanced’ than the stages which historically preceded it. If one thinks again of the doctrine of election, the principle of election, implied in God’s call of Abraham, according to the narrative of Genesis 12:1–3, is more ethically and religiously ‘advanced’ than many of the ideas on the subject cherished by some of Abraham’s descendants at later stages in their history. (The principle revealed in the call of Abraham, that some are elected in order that others through them may be blessed, has not always been borne in mind by those who thought of themselves as the elect of God.)
To adapt words of Paul, the reader of scripture should say, ‘I will read with the spirit and I will read with the mind also.’ The inclusion of each scripture in the canon of all scripture helps one in the understanding of each scripture, but at the same time, since each scripture makes its contribution to all scripture, the understanding of all scripture is impossible without the understanding of each scripture.
This question forms the heading of a section in the last chapter of B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford, 1987), p. 267.
‘Jacob my servant, I will help him; Israel my chosen one, my soul has accepted him.’
The statement in Acts 7:4 that Abraham left Harran for Canaan ‘after his father died’ agrees with the chronology of the Samaritan text of Gen. 11:26–12:4 rather than with that of the Masoretic text or Septuagint version. See p. 54.
W. Whiston, The Primitive New Testament Restor’d (London, 1745). The ‘Western’ text is represented by Codex Bezae (D) of the Gospels and Acts (see p. 12) and by Codex Claromontanus (Dp) of the letters of Paul (see p. 218), as well as by a variety of other witnesses.
Burgon’s best-known statement of this position is his learned work, The Revision Revised (London, 1883).
E.g. E. F. Hills, The King James Version Defended! (Des Moines, 1956); J. van Bruggen, The Ancient Text of the New Testament, E.T. (Winnipeg, 1976); W. N. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text (Nashville/New York, 1977).
The Bible teacher was John Brown (1846–1938), once well known among Christian Brethren in Scotland. K. Lachmann, S. P. Tregelles, C. von Tischendorf, and (together) B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort between 1831 and 1881 published successive editions of the Greek New Testament based on the text of the earliest witnesses then available.
Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece (Stuttgart, 1979). The critical apparatus of this edition is the work of K. and B. Aland; the text is practically identical with that of The Greek New Testament (United Bible Societies, 31975).
See B. S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (London, 1979). pp. 74–105; The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (London, 1984), pp. 521–530.
The shorter form was originally a variant Hebrew edition, which is represented by a fragmentary manuscript from Qumran (4QJerb). As the Septuagintal form it was ‘canonized’ by the Greek-speaking church.
See pp. 129f.
See Evangelical Belief (Inter-Varsity, 1935; 31961).
D. J. A. Clines, The Esther Scroll: The Story of the Story (Sheffield, 1984).
See p. 125.
So, e.g., T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester, 1962), pp. 68–104.
Universities and colleges Christian Fellowship
At one time the Holy See reserved to itself the right of passing final judgment on such questions: little has been heard of this right since the issue of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu (‘by the inspiration of the divine Spirit’) in 1943.
Authorized
King James Version (1611)
See F. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John (London, 1970), pp. 129f.
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.9f.
Their authenticity has been defended by J. W. Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to S. Mark (London, 1871); cf W. R. Farmer, The Last Twelve Verses of Mark (Cambridge, 1974).
B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London/New York, 1971), p. 220.
See F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Basingstoke/Grand Rapids, 1983), pp. 413–418.
See p. 153.
See R. H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on his Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids, 1982).
A. von Harnack, The Origin of the New Testament, E.T. (London, 1925), p. 141.
Because ‘the modern student cannot but feel that to turn from the Synoptics to the Fourth Gospel is to breathe another atmosphere, to be transported to another world’ (H. Latimer Jackson, The Problem of the Fourth Gospel [Cambridge, 1918], p. 82), words which would still be widely echoed. But now that the tradition of Jesus’ ministry preserved by John is increasingly recognized to be parallel to the synoptic traditions, although independent of them, it cannot properly be left out of account in any presentation of Jesus’ life and teaching.
See p. 85.
See p. 120.
In particular, there was a tendency to conform the text of Mark and Luke to that of Matthew; compare the wording of the Lord’s Prayer in Lk. 11:2–4, av/kjv (where it is conformed to the wording of Mt. 6:9–13a), with the original Lucan wording preserved in rsv, neb, niv and other modern versions.
Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.14.7 (see p. 189).
Hist. Eccl. 3.24.7–13.
On the Consensus of the Evangelists, 3.70–86 (see also p. 232).
See J. W. Drane, Paul: Libertine or Legalist? (London, 1975).
See F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids/Leicester, 31989), Introduction (‘Acts and the Pauline Epistles’).
But see M. D. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (London, 1959).
For example, in the Targum on the Prophets, those passages in Is. 52:13–53:12 which speak of the Servant’s triumph are applied to the Messiah.
See C. R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah (Oxford, 21956).
According to H. Loewe, it was sensitiveness to the Christian application of Is. 52:13–53:12 that was responsible for the non-inclusion of this passage in the regular synagogue readings from the Prophets, although the passages immediately preceding and following are included (C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology [London, 1938], pp. 544). In general it may be said that the combination of the Old Testament with the New (first as oral teaching and ultimately as a literary canon) made all the difference between the church’s understanding of the Old Testament and the synagogue’s (see pp. 63–67 above).
Such a study is found in H. H. Rowley, The Biblical Doctrine of Election (London, 1950).
Cf 1 Cor. 14:15.