How Was the Bible Passed Down to Us?
The word "Bible" comes from Greek to biblia, "the books" Although the Bible now commonly exists as a single volume, it is properly a collection of many different individual works, each with its own history of composition and literary development.
The Christian Bible is divided into two main parts: the Old Testament, those Scriptures Christianity inherited from Judaism; and the New Testament, which preserves the apostolic legacy of the early church. The two-part structure developed from the idea of a "new covenant" within the Bible itself (Jer. 31:31-34; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). Latin testamentum, "testament" or "will," translates the earlier Greek term for "covenant," diatheke.
For both testaments, a central core of written books came to exist first through custom and usage, in effect postponing more formal discussions about the boundaries of those collections. In addition, early Jewish and Christian communities were sometimes separated by great distances and therefore often unable to possess in their local collections every book thought to be authoritative. Jewish Scripture was usually written on separate scrolls, making discussions of the scope and order of the entire scriptural collection both less urgent and more complex. Christian Scripture appears from very early on to have been transmitted in book or codex form, which required more consideration to the length of the total material. (The number of pages had to be planned in advance.) Also, occasionally there was genuine disagreement between individuals or communities about the authenticity or religious merit of particular books.
A few substantial differences in the scope and order of the biblical books exist to this day. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions all accept the same 27 books of the New Testament. The Syrian church, however, does not fully recognize 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude, or Revelation. The Ethiopian church possesses a wider 35-book collection, including in its New Testament other ancient Christian texts such as the Shepherd of Hermas, 1-2 Clement, and the Apostolic Constitutions.
Broader disagreement exists in Christian tradition about the books of the Old Testament. Protestants hold to the same books as in Jewish tradition (arranged and counted differently, however). Catholics subscribe to an expanded 46-book collection, including seven "deuterocanonical" books also known as the Apocrypha. These books, together with 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, and the Epistle of Jeremiah, are also accepted in the 49-book Orthodox collection, but (unlike in Catholicism) with a lesser degree of authority. The Ethiopian Old Testament includes a few additional books (Jubilees, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and Pseudo-Josephus) among those otherwise known as the Pseudepigrapha, a loose collection of ancient writings that did not find a lasting place in Jewish Scripture.
A Library of Books
PENTATEUCH
. Genesis
. Exodus
. Leviticus
. Numbers
. Deuteronomy
HISTORICAL BOOKS
. Joshua
. Judges
. Ruth
. land 2 Samuel
. land 2 Kings
. land 2 Chronicles
. Ezra
. Nehemiah
. Esther
POETRY AND WISDOM LITERATURE
. Job
. Psalms
. Proverbs
. Ecclesiastes
. Song of Songs
PROPHETS
. Isaiah
. Jeremiah
. Lamentations
. Ezekiel
. Daniel
. Hosea
. Joel
. Amos
. Obadiah
. Jonah
. Micah
. Nahum
. Habakkuk
. Zephaniah
. Haggai
. Zechariah
. Malachi
APOCRYPHA/DEUTEROCANONICALS
. Tobit
. Judith
. Additions to Esther
. Wisdom of Solomon
. Sirach
. Baruch
. Letter of Jeremiah
. Additions to Daniel
. land 2 Maccabees
GOSPELS AND ACTS
. Matthew
. Mark
. Luke
. John
. Acts
LETTERS
. Romans
. land 2 Corinthians
. Galatians
. Ephesians
. Philippians
. Colossians
. land 2 Thessalonians
. land 2 Timothy
. Titus
. Philemon
. Hebrews
. James
. land 2 Peter
0 1, 2, and 3 John
. Jude
. Revelation
Although the early church in the West followed the lead of Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in recognizing the wider Old Testament collection (including the Apocrypha) as authoritative, the Eastern church favored the narrower scope of Jewish Scripture. A significant scholarly minority within both branches of the church continued to urge the superiority of the shorter 39-book collection, whose foremost advocate early on was Jerome (347- 419). In the Reformation, the work of Wycliffe, Luther, and others led to the rejection of the apocryphal books, a move that still typifies Protestant opinion today, although Anglican tradition does commend the use of the Apocrypha for instruction (but not for doctrine). Modern Protestant Old Testaments follow the basic order of the Greek Septuagint, grouped in a fourfold pattern of law, histories, poetry, and prophets rather than in the three-part division of the Hebrew Bible, Law, Prophets, and Writings.
Despite such continuing variety, there are good reasons to speak of one Bible shared by the entire Christian church. The vast majority of the biblical literature has been agreed upon for many centuries. Christian tradition considers the Bible to be something all Christians share, despite any differences in its precise form, language, or interpretation. Variations in the number or order of the biblical books do not necessarily make for a material difference in interpretation or doctrine.
The process of Christian biblical formation can be said finally to have concluded at the end of the 4th century A.D., not because all Christians were then completely in agreement, but because a broad consensus did exist by this time and, more importantly, because a theoretical understanding of the whole collection as a "canon" had emerged. "Canon," from a Semitic root meaning "reed," can indicate both "norm" and "list." Until recently, the biblical canon was understood primarily as a list, a collection of writings which was "closed," or to which nothing else could be added or subtracted. From this perspective, the date for canonization would be correspondingly late, since the canon's precise delineation occurred only gradually. But when the authority of the biblical books already for ancient writers and sources is recognized (as "norm"), a functional, more inclusive, aspect of canon emerges, leading to an earlier date for canonization.
Critical biblical scholarship in the 19th century tended to assume that a canon was a nationally observed, legally binding, exclusive list of books that had been ratified in a public ceremony, similar to church councils such as the Council of Trent (1546), which reaffirmed the wider Catholic canon against the Reformers. On this basis, a reconstruction of the Old Testament canon developed in which a Kings as-a3 was interpreted as describing an initial act of canonization during the reign of King Josiah (639-609 B.c.) and the final "closing" of the entire canon was attributed to a rabbinic council in Jamnia (Yavneh), sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
The Pentateuch as a whole was usually thought to have been canonized in Ezra's time (ca. 440 B.c.), an act memorialized in Nehemiah 8. The Prophets were believed to have been "closed" sometime before 200, because the apocryphal book of Sirach (ca. 180) appears familiar with the prophetic corpus and refers to the Minor Prophets as a unified collection (Sir. 49:10). In addition, the later prologue to Sirach (ca. 12o) refers explicitly to "the law and the prophets and the other books of our fathers" The place of Daniel in the Writings rather than in the Prophets was thought to provide further evidence for the closure of the prophetic corpus by the beginning of the and century.
More persuasive is an organic view of canon formation in which the various books of all three collections - the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings - were edited and grew in authority roughly at the same time. Rather than a three-stage process, a more inclusive notion of "canon" seems to have preceded the exclusive understanding that most scholarship has assumed as original and standard.
The first page of the book of Luke in the Gutenberg Bible, the first substantial book printed with movable type (1454 or1455, Mainz, Germany). (Library of Congress)
A historical reconstruction based upon such an inclusive understanding produces the following alternative: the Law and the Prophets appear as twin scriptural authorities already within the biblical literature itself. In late conclusions to the Pentateuch (Deut. 34:10-12) and the Prophets (Mal. 4:46), the figures of Moses and the prophets serve together as a symbolic summary of scriptural faith. Although the roots of the Pentateuch reach back to the 9th century and ultimately to the time of Moses himself, and although core material from the prophetic books may be traced back to the 8th-century prophets (Hosea, Amos, Isaiah) and the 7th- and 6th-century Deuteronomistic writers (Deuteronomy-Kings), both collections probably reached a stable form simultaneously in the period following the exile (5th/4th centuries). Editorial work continued on each collection, including additions to both (especially to the prophetic collection because of the nature of prophecy), but by the time the Septuagint was begun in the 3rd century B.C. both collections were firmly established as twin expressions of Israel's scriptural identity.
Critical opinion about the "closing" of the Old Testament canon is currently split between two positions. According to the older consensus, the contents of the canon were finally delimited and fixed in Jamnia at the end of the ist century A.D. It has become clear, however, that the rabbinic "council" in Jamnia was actually a religious school and court, and not a canonical decision-making body, thus suggesting a date considerably later for the canon's "closure" This view regards the processes of canonization within Judaism and Christianity as separate and distinct from each other.
Books of Scripture actually were debated at Jamnia, the discussions turning on whether certain books already accepted as authoritative should be retired from public use (not whether books that had never possessed authority should be granted "canonical" status). Josephus states clearly that a canon of Jewish Scripture had already been in existence for quite some time by the end of the 1st century A.D. The canon's contents are likely to have been stable and authoritative by the time of Judas Maccabeus in 164 B.C. (cf. 2 Macc. 2:1415), although the reorganization of the canon into three-part form continued into the 1st century A.D., resulting in different canonical arrangements.
Central to the difference between these two positions is the role of the Old Testament for Jesus and the early church. Where the first view regards the Old Testament as not yet fully authoritative until after the completion of the New Testament writings at the end of the 1st century A.D., the second view insists that the early church inherited from Judaism a coherent and stable scriptural collection to which it granted a theological authority greater than its own experience but also viewed as ultimately consonant with its encounter with God in Christ Jesus.
For Jesus and the apostles, "Scripture" meant a particular body of texts, not a wide and uncertain variety of written traditions. In this sense, the Old Testament canon was already recognized in the New Testament period. In fact, in the New Testament "Scripture" usually refers to the Old Testament rather than to the entire Bible, for the simple reason that the New Testament only gradually took written form and found its place beside the Old.
The Christian "gospel" consisted at first of oral traditions (cf. 1 Cor. 11:23-26; 15:3-7). Already within the New Testament literature, however, a functional New Testament canon is becoming evident. Colossians 4:16 tells how Paul's letters were to be read aloud in other churches (cf. 2 Thess. 2:15). 2 Peter 3:15-16 regards Paul's letters as established tradition (Scripture). The Gospels are quite straightforward in their intention to provide a selective (and thus authoritative) version of the traditions about Jesus, in the hope of fostering faith within the postapostolic church (Luke 1:1-4; John 20:30-31; 21:25).
When Paul wrote to particular congregations, he was not attempting to write "Scripture," but rather to address particular theological and practical concerns on which those congregations needed pastoral guidance. Conveying a keen sense of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, his writings claimed a certain status for themselves from the outset. The later two-testament format of the Bible is deeply implied within Pauline theology (2 Cor. 3:6,14).
Paul sent his letters mostly during the decades A.D. 50-70. Based on Col. 4:16, it seems likely that early collections of the letters were created by individual churches for the purpose of sharing Paul's writings with other Christian communities. An edition of Paul's letters may have been made even within his own lifetime, however. By the first half of the and century evidence exists of at least two different letter collections that were becoming standard.
If the Pauline Letters represent the earliest books of the New Testament canon, they did not precede the Gospels by long. Already in 65-100, the four canonical Gospels were written. It is possible that some written material containing sayings of Jesus (termed "Q" from German Quelle, "source") and an early account of the events surrounding his crucifixion may have circulated already in the period 50-65. Mark is usually considered to have been the first Gospel, written perhaps between 65-75. Both Matthew and Luke were composed between 75-90, basing themselves upon Mark and "Q" The Gospel of John was probably authored between 90-loo. At some point most Christian communities chose to include in their canon four different versions of the story of Jesus' life rather than a single exhaustive account. But the Syrian church's use of the Diatesseron (until the 5th century) indicates that the choice between these two alternatives was both real and intentional.
The basic two-part conception of the Old Testament ("the Law and the Prophets") probably exercised a strong influence on the shaping of the New Testament into a collection of Gospels and Epistles. Another contributing factor was probably the structure of Luke-Acts, designed to be a continuous account about Jesus and the apostles, but in two parts (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-2).
The middle of the 2nd century emerges as the time at which the contents and scope of the New Testament became increasingly defined. The heretic Marcion may well have compelled an increasingly Gentile church to remember and commit itself unswervingly to the Jewish heritage of its faith and to a two-part Bible. Other controversies and events (Montanism, Gnosticism, Roman persecution) probably also precipitated discussions about the shape of the emerging Christian canon. Some books that gained early acceptance, at least in certain communities, were later excluded from the mainstream canon (Shepherd of Hermas, Wisdom of Solomon, Enoch). Other books were hotly debated early on and only gradually came to be admitted in most quarters of the church (Hebrews, 2 Peter, Revelation). By the end of the 2nd century, however, a stable collection of 20 books (the four Gospels and 13 Pauline Letters, together with Acts,1 Peter, and 1 John) was recognized in the East and the West and called "the New Testament" (a term first used by Tertullian ca. 200). But it required another two centuries to reach broad agreement on the remaining seven books.
Even into the 4th century a strict consensus was lacking, although the general outline of the New Testament canon had long been clear by then (cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.25.1-7). The first list of the entire canon that gained widespread acceptance throughout the church is found in Athanasius's Festal Letter for Easter, 367. His list was taken up and in turn ratified by the North African church in the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and by the Western church in the Council of Rome (392).
As the early church sought to reach complete consensus regarding the boundaries of its canon, criteria such as apostolic attribution, orthodox content, and a tradition of widespread use within the church were employed in decisions about particular books. For the most part, however, these criteria were developed after most of the writings had already been recognized as authoritative and represent an effort to explain the rationale of a canon that already largely existed.
Since the use of Scripture has therefore always preceded its formal definition, neither Judaism nor Christianity can be said to have "created" the Bible. The authority of the biblical books has arisen out of their content, rather than being imposed by ecclesiastical mandate. By calling these books "canon;" Christians confess further that a unique authority inheres in their biblical legacy. This is not to suggest that they cannot or do not hear God speak elsewhere, but that in harmony with their forebears they continue to hear God's word persistently and reliably here. The Christian canon of Scripture is thus a fact of history, and a gift to the present church by past generations of the faithful in order to ensure that future Christians will preserve their identity, ground their activity, and rightly frame their common vision.
FOR FURTHER READING
Trebolle Barrera, Julio. The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
STEPHEN B. CHAPMAN