The Biblical Illiteracy of Biblical Scholars

Today is the feast of St John the Apostle and Evangelist who has been identified in very ancient tradition as the Beloved Disciple of the Gospel that bears his name (basically on the strength of him being the Beloved Disciple) and I was tempted to write something on same-sex love and the relationship of Jesus and John/the Beloved Disciple. However I've been distracted by my reading.

I'm currently reading/reviewing a couple of books and today I've just finished reading one of them, Subverting Scriptures: Critical Reflections on the Use of the Bible. I'm still gathering my thoughts about it; suffice to say I enjoyed much of it and was put off by it in almost equal terms, not least because it is in many ways an imperialist, US imperialist, exercise. So many of the essays seem to have as their underpinning concern - there are people out there who don't subscribe to our bourgeois liberal order of reality; they are using religion and 'The Bible' or Scripture as the ideological base for their rejection of our nice liberal order; even worse, a substantial number of them live in these here United States. This last point I think is the main concern; Islamic terrorism and even ultra-Zionist settler terrorism in Israel (on the last point with the exception of the Jewish contributors) are of course foreign, outside, not us, and so not so surprising for its rejection rather than the extraordinary violent impact of that rejection. No what is most unnerving is the spectre of US fundamentalism, the apparent refusal of so many of 'us' to subscribe to the tenets of the liberal order. As both a gay man and a Catholic (not to mention a 'foreigner', outside the US) I find that US fundamentalism quite disturbing and both threatening, as someone both non-USan and gay, and thoroughly twisted and blasphemous, as a Catholic person. But perhaps the apparent 'liberality' of the order was really a mask to hide its ruthlessness and violence. After all, the liberal order is one based on a ruthless class and race based oppression at home and abroad. It is a violent and murderous order for all its pretence at reason and liberality.

But that's not what I want to write about tonight. Rather, I come back to the old question of canon and how astonished I am that scholars these days really are ignorant of the history of the anthologies we call Bible/s. In most of the essays 'the Bible' is accepted as a given without even the recognition that Bibles are multiple and various. Unsurprisingly, it's the Jewish authors who will acknowledge that plurality, but, perhaps unsurprisingly too, they can only see the plurality in terms of two (sometimes three, if the Qur'an is included). That was most strikingly exemplified in the final essay of the anthology, Subversion as Return, by Shaul Magid.

Magid is mostly writing for Jewish concerns and as part of his argument he wants to demontrate the constructedness of Biblical canons. So his essay first sets out to sketch a 'brief genealogy of what we today call the Bible' (218). He gives a relatively adequate account of the making of the Jewish canon (although there are parts of it I would dispute) before turning to the Bible in Christianity. Christian Bible-making reinforces his argument by showing analogous processes in Christianity and Judaism which produced their various Bibles. Magid makes his entry point into Christian scripture by highlighting the difference between the Hebrew Bible of Judaism and the Old Testament of Christians. The Hebrew Bible ends with Second Chronicles, which closes with King Cyrus issuing his decree to allow the return of Jews to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple there. As the final text of the Hebrew Bible, 2 Chronicles is placed after Ezra-Nehemiah which recount the return of exiles to Jerusalem and the work of rebuilding the Temple and the city walls. Magid then contrasts the Hebrew Bible ending with the ending of the Old Testament. He wants to highlight the contrast "the rabbinic and early Christian view of history and, by extension, the rabbinic and early Christian view about divine will" (219). He continues "The Christian canonizers had something quite different in mind when they concluded the Hebrew Bible, their "Old Testament," with the prophetic words of the prophet Malachi..." (220).

The problem here is that the 'early' Christian canonizers didn't end their Old Testament with Malachi. If they ended their Old Testament with one of the prophets it was Daniel (not counted as a prophet in the Jewish Hebrew Bible). That's the final Old Testament book in my Eastern Orthodox Study Bible. That's also how one of the oldest Christian Bibles, Codex Vaticanus, ends it's Old Testament. And presumably that's how the other ancient Christian Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, ends its prophetic component of the Old Testament, including Malachi in the Book of the Twelve as the first prophetic book (Sinaiticus is incomplete - the Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations survive intact but Ezekiel and Daniel are missing). However Sinaiticus follows the prophetic corpus with the four Books of Maccabees, ending its Old Testament with 4 Maccabees. The other ancient Christian Bible, Codex Alexandrinus, ends its Old Testament with Sirach, placing the prophets plus the four books of Maccabees in the middle of its Old Testament.

It's also important to note that these ancient bibles did not use the Hebrew Bible for their Old Testament but the Greek Bible referred to as the Septuagint. Over in the West, Jerome tried to revise the Latin Bible by basing it on the Hebrew Bible but he was unsuccessful being resisted by none other than Augustine. The result was that the Latin Vulgate Old Testament of the West was a kind of hybrid of both Hebrew and Greek Bibles. Augustine certainly closed his Old Testament with the prophets but for him it seems that Ezekiel went last (De doctrina christiana 2.13). Augustine understood the order of the prophets as The Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel.

Nevertheless, the Latin Bible came to order its prophetic corpus as we in the West are familiar with today - Isaiah, Jeremiah & Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea-Malachi (or the Twelve). However, the prophets were followed by 1 and 2 Maccabees. This was the ordering in the 15th century Gutenberg Bible and remains the order in Roman Catholic bibles to this day.

The Old Testament order that Magid refers to only came into existence with the Reformation; it is the standard Protestant Old Testament but I'm wondering if the intent was to end with Malachi or whether it was the accidental result of the removal of the 2 books of Maccabees and other texts (such as Baruch) and their relegation to the so-called Apocrypha (they aren't apocryphal for Roman Catholics and Orthodox). So Magid has actually confused the Protestant Old Testament and its canonizers with the various Old Testaments of early Christianity and the canonical processes of their day. Protestantism is the dominant religious form in the US and indeed one could even say that the US is a grand Protestant, even Calvinist, experiment. Magid's understanding of Christianity and Christian Bible making processes has been heavily refracted through that Protestant lens, despite the fact that Magid is himself a Jew.

Magid's error is all the more striking because he actually set out to relate a biblical genealogy to highlight the constructedness and diversity of biblical canons. And is that one of the key problems of this book, that it doesn't really address the key assumptions and ideological constructs underpinning US society and that frame the entire culture wars scenario that so many of the contributors are attempting to remedy, or even worse, 'manage'.

Bible, Canon and Liturgy

At the funeral I attended recently, the priest commented in her sermon on the differences between Anglicanism and some other forms of Christianity. What she had to say related to the liturgical nature of Anglicanism. I can only paraphrase from memory but the gist of it was that Anglicanism was not a very doctrinal Church; it had no founding statement of doctrines, instead it had a prayer book, the Book of Common Prayer. I remember being struck by her saying "We Anglicans believe that the most important things we can say about God should first of all be said to God." What struck me most about her words was that they pretty much encapsulated what Catholic Christianity is all about when it comes to scripture - and by Catholic I mean, of course, not just the Roman communion but the broad framework of liturgical, sacramental Christianity, of which the Roman communion is the largest example. It is that liturgical dimension of scripture and the formations of canon that I want to address today.

Last month I wrote two posts here about the biblical canons of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. My usual practice is to crosspost these pieces on Facebook. Often times there's more discussion about what I write on Facebook than here. The Facebook discussion on the Christianity post generated this response from Albertus which I want to use as the springboard for my discussion:

You write that the Jews began to determine the canon of the Hebrew scriptures during the christian era. I remember from my studies in Rome at the Pontificia Universita Lateranense, that, indeed, the Jews first began to perceive the need to determine which books were ''scriptural'' in reaction to the use by christians of the Septuagint Old Testament to ''prove'' that Jesus Christ is the promissed Messias, and other christian beliefs.

In Catholic and Orthodox christianity - in spite of some modern ecumenical tendencies in some quarters to approach Protestantism in this and other matters - it is not the Holy Scriptures at all which stand at the centre of our religion - but rather, the God-man Jesus Christ, whose mysteries are celebrated and relived in the Mass and the Sacraments. The Scriptures were written to serve the Liturgy. The traditional Liturgies therefore use texts of Scripture as needed to make a liturgical point, even going so far as to paraphrase texts, such as the ''Epistle'' of a Bishop Confessor: Eccli 44:16-27; 45, 3-20....

...Interesting too, and contrary to the strict ''canonical thinking'' of some, esp. in protestant quarters, is the fact that the New Testament quotes not only the ''deuterocanonical'' OT books found in the Septuagint, but also books presently held to be Apocryphal by Jews, Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. And the NT does not quote or refer to several books which are found in all present-day official OT canons

It's his point about the links between Scripture and liturgy that interest me now. He's absolutely correct to say that for Catholic Christianities, Scripture does not hold the central place. Instead, as he says, it is "the God-man Jesus Christ" who is encountered and celebrated in the Liturgy, most centrally in the Eucharist. He's also correct, I would say, that the "Scriptures were written to serve the Liturgy." I remember being told many years ago by someone (can't remember who now) that what had made a text canonical was the fact of its use in the liturgy. I would suggest then that the various canon lists issued in the first centuries of Christianity are lists of texts that were being used in the liturgy of the local communities. Hence when, much later, the Councils of Trullo and 2 Nicea made decisions endorsing previous and apparently contradictory canon lists, they are in fact affirming the Orthodoxy and Catholicity of those various communities. Catholicism, especially in its Eastern forms is very much a religion that thinks globally but acts locally. Consequently Trullo and 2 Nicea were also not closing the canon either but giving ecumenical approval to flexible and open canonical practice grounded in the liturgy and life of the community. That ecumenical approval makes such canonical flexibility and openness the hallmark of what it means to be Catholic, Orthodox. I would argue that the ongoing canonical variety in the medieval West and Byzantine East derived from that understanding, perhaps even that ecumenical authority. I would further argue that the subsequent Western Councils of Florence and Trent did not have the authority to over-ride that older ecumenical warrant, not least because of its ecumenicity.

But back to liturgy. In my post on the Canon in Judaism, I pointed out that process of forming a Jewish Canon, took place at pretty much the same time as the process in Christianity. I'm sure too that, as my commenter observes, in part the Jewish canonical process was in reaction to Christian claims, most likely after the integration of Christianity by the Roman state in the 4th and 5th centuries.. I've thought that the canon forming processes in both religions would likely have a lot in common, including the importance of liturgical practice. Recently I found this discussion on the formation of the Jewish canon by Gerald Larue from his Old Testament Life and Literature (1968) in which he identifies four principles guiding the Jewish canonical process.

1. The writing had to be composed in Hebrew. The only exceptions, which were written in Aramaic, were Daniel 2-7, writings attributed to Ezra (Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26), who was recognized as the founding father of post-Exilic Judaism, and Jer. 10:11. Hebrew was the language of Sacred Scripture, Aramaic the language of common speech.

2. The writing had to be sanctioned by usage in the Jewish community. The use of Esther at Purim made it possible for it to be included in the canon. Judith, without such support, was not acceptable.

3. The writings had to contain one of the great religious themes of Judaism, such as election, or the covenant. By reclassifying the Song of Songs as an allegory, it was possible to see in this book an expression of covenantal love.

4. The writing had to be composed before the time of Ezra, for it was popularly believed that inspiration had ceased then. Jonah was accepted because it used the name of an early prophet and dealt with events before the destruction of Nineveh, which occurred in 612. Daniel, a pseudonymous writing, had its setting in the Exile and therefore was accepted as an Exilic document.

Unfortunately, Larue gives no source for these principles.

In my opinion, none of the literature was composed before the time of Ezra (early Persian period) but certainly that principle could be a handy way to eliminate texts that clearly date themselves later such as the various books of Maccabees. The Hebrew language requirement likewise would rule out many texts, too, both those written in Greek, and those, like Greek Jeremiah, that were markedly different to the Hebrew edition. The third principle is sufficiently nebulous and elastic but clearly, as Larue notes, could be deployed to save a text like the Song which on first reading might be considered insufficiently 'religious' in its content (there were plenty of Christian debates about the Song as well). Ultimately we are left with principle 2, community usage. Central to community usage is the synagogue liturgy. So in other words, the rabbis in creating their canon based it on the texts in common liturgical usage in the Jewish communities that accepted rabbinic authority (not all did, of course). As with Christians, I would argue that liturgical usage, then, was a key factor for canonicity in the making of the Jewish Bible.

The rabbis had another trick up their sleeve too. In my post on Canon in Judaism, I observed that the "Mishnah stands beside Tanakh as equally Scripture for Jews. And furthermore, the subsequent texts of Judaism, Talmudim, Midrashim, Targumim, even the much later Zohar come to be counted as part of that Oral Torah Tradition that ends up in writing and so all share to some degree in the authority of Scripture." Many of the narratives in the discarded scriptures, especially Jubilees, Maccabees and Judith, were subsequently retold as commentary by the rabbis and thus inscribed in the Oral Torah Tradition. Scripture becomes commentary to become scripture.

One question I keep pondering which I might take up at a later stage. Given how important liturgy was for the shaping of biblical canons, how important was it for the shaping, even the composition of texts?

Council and Bible Canon in Judaism

Earlier this month I wrote on the history of Christian biblical canons, of which there are several in use today, and the role of Church Councils in the making of Christian Bibles. Today I want to write about the Jewish Bible and what we know about how it came into existence. Just as there is a myth linking Christian Bibles/canon and council, in particular the Council of Nicea, so too with the Jewish Bible, there's a (scholarly) myth that it came into existence following a council of rabbis.

Many Christians assume that the Jewish Bible, is nothing more than the Old Testament. As most Christians are also unaware that there is a plurality of Old Testaments, they also assume that their Old Testament is the one that makes up the Jewish Bible. That's the way I used to think in my younger years until I entered the world of biblical studies.

The standard Protestant Old Testament is the one that most resembles the Jewish Bible. That's because the Reformers, following Jerome's example, took the Hebrew canon as the model for their old Old Testament canon on the notion that original language means original text. Nevertheless the Protestants kept the traditional Christian ordering derived from the old Greek Bible, a four part arrangement of Torah, historical books, wisdom literature and prophets. In contrast the Hebrew Bible has a tripartite structure of Torah, Prophets and Writings (Torah, Nebi'im, Kethubim, hence Tanakh as another name for the Jewish Bible). The Prophets comprise the four 'historical' books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (the latter two not divided into 2 books as in Christian Bibles but each counted as one book/scroll) plus the four prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets (counted as one book/scroll in traditional Judaism). The Writings comprise the rest, (150) Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra/Nehemiah (counted as one book/scroll in traditional Judaism), Chronicles (likewise counted as one book/scroll in traditional Judaism). Christian Old Testaments usually end with Malachi, the last of the Twelve Minor Prophets and thus look forward to the Christ event. Jewish Bibles end with Chronicles and thus end with the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. The central revelation for Judaism is the giving of Torah to Moses; the Prophets and Writings are understood as commentary on Torah. The endpoint is the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon which also evokes the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the final Roman destruction of Jerusalem as a Jewish city in 136 CE. In traditional Rabbinic Judaism, Jerusalem is destroyed and the people banished from the land for failing to fully observe Torah. So the Jewish Bible is structured with the main revelation at the start and closes with the reminder of what happens when that revelation is ignored.

So what are the origins of this canon? When was it defined? The short answer is we don't know. The most traditional answer is that the canon came into existence with Ezra, in the early Persian period, at "the end of prophecy". Some scholars, such as Phillip Davies, have suggested the Hasmonean period, late 2nd century - early first century BCE as the time of canonisation. The only problem is that all the evidence from the time of Christ and before indicates that only the five books/scrolls of the Torah had achieved a canonical status amongst most Jews and Samaritans.

There are a number of references to scriptures as a whole in ancient Jewish texts: Sirach 39.1 and in the Prologue; 4QMMT (4Q397 14-21 ii 10-12); 2 Maccabees (2:13); Philo of Alexandria (de Vita Contemplativa 25). Most commonly they are referred to as law(s) and prophets/prophecies/oracles. (In his writings, Philo wrote commentaries only on the 5 Books of Moses and, more broadly, cites mainly from the 5 Books of Moses but also from Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon.) This same pattern is found in the Gospels where Jesus regularly refers to Moses and the prophets or the law and the prophets. The Letter of Aristeas, which recounts the myth of the miraculous translation of the scriptures from Hebrew into Greek, clearly intends the Torah and not a wider collection of scriptures.

The other evidence we have from the turn of the era is the collection of scrolls discovered at Qumran. Copies of all the texts comprising the Hebrew canon were found at Qumran, with the exception of Esther. Esther is likewise omitted from some early Christian canon lists too. However at Qumran copies were also found of Sirach (in Hebrew), Tobit (in Hebrew and Aramaic) and the Letter of Jeremiah (in Greek). All three are excluded from the Jewish Bible and counted as Apocrypha by Protestants but are included in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments. Furthermore, the various Psalms scrolls not only included Hebrew texts for Psalms 151, 154 & 155 but quite a number of other unknown psalms and two thirds of a poem included in Sirach 51. It's also clear that at Qumran the Psalms and David were regarded as prophetic, an understanding also seen in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles. So when we read ancient references to the Law and the Prophets we can't be certain what texts the designation Prophets includes and refers to. Does it include the Psalms and does it include Daniel (Jesus refers to Daniel as a prophet in Matthew), both of which are included in the Writings in the Jewish Bible?

And does the term Prophets include other texts and figures too? As well as the three Deutero-canonical texts and Psalms 151, 154, 155, multiple copies of two texts included in the Ethiopian canon were also found at Qumran, fifteen scrolls of Jubilees (in Hebrew) and 20 scrolls of 1 Enoch (in Aramaic). Just to put that in context, only four canonical biblical texts were found in equal or greater numbers: Genesis (20), Isaiah (24), Deuteronomy (27), Psalms (34), the last, of course, including non-canonical and hitherto unknown psalms. Jubilees is itself cited in a number non-biblical texts at Qumran and was used extensively; it seems to have been regarded as scripture there. Furthermore many traditions found in later Jewish literature make their first appearance in Jubilees. 1 Enoch was not only important for early Christianity but is likewise probably the oldest text of Jewish esoteric tradition. 1 Enoch gives us a glimpse not only at the mystical (and apocalyptic) gestalt from which Christianity was born but also the matrix from which would come not only Jewish Merkabah mysticism but subsequently mystical traditions including Kabbalah. Neither of these texts made it into the standard Jewish biblical canon but they are pivotal for subsequent Jewish traditions that enframe that canon.

Do ancient references to Law/Torah and Prophets include these two texts? Jubilees is a retelling of Genesis and part of Exodus; it presents itself as a revelation from Sinai given by an angel to Moses. Do ancient references to the Law include Jubilees alongside the five books of Moses? It's quite possible some do. And does 'the Prophets' include Enoch, the great primal prophet of the antediluvian world? If David and the Psalms were counted as prophetic and given the importance of 1 Enoch for ancient Judaism and early Christianity, it's hard to rule out the possibility.

The earliest glimpses of a defined canon in Judaism can be found in Josephus and 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) both from the late 1st century. In Against Apion (1. 38-43) Josephus declares

We have but 22 books, containing the history of all time, books that are believed to be divine. Of these, 5 belong to Moses, containing his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind down to the time of his death. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes the prophets who succeeded Moses wrote the history of the events that occurred in their own time, in 13 books. The remaining 4 books comprise hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. From the days of Artaxerxes to our own times every event has indeed been recorded; but these recent records have not been deemed worthy of equal credit with those which preceded them, on account of the failure of the exact succession of prophets. There is practical proof of the spirit in which we treat our Scriptures; although so great an interval of time has now passed, not a soul has ventured to add or to remove or to alter a syllable; and it is the instinct of every Jew, from the day of his birth, to consider these Scriptures as the teaching of God, and to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to lay down his life in their behalf.

But there are several problems here. The standard Jewish canon has 24 books with the Prophets comprising 8 books and the Writings comprising 13 books. Furthermore the biblical texts existed in differing editions some of which, such as Greek and Hebrew Jeremiah, were quite markedly different in size and ordering.

With 2 Esdras we get the first reference to a 24 book canon: "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people" (14:45-46). However in 2 Esdras, we actually find a two-tier, inner-outer, greater-lesser canon with the outer/lesser one being the 24 books and an inner/greater canon of 70 additional books! 2 Esdras also gives no details of what books are included in either of these canons.

The earliest canon listing of the Jewish Bible comes from several centuries later, roughly 550-600CE, in the Babylonian Talmud (Baba Bathra 14b-15a):

Our Rabbis taught: The order of the Prophets is, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. Let us examine this. Hosea came first, as it is written, God spake first to Hosea. But did God speak first to Hosea? Were there not many prophets between Moses and Hosea? R. Johanan, however, has explained that [what It means is that] he was the first of the four prophets who prophesied at that period, namely, Hosea, Isaiah, Amos and Micah. Should not then Hosea come first? — Since his prophecy is written along with those of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, and Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi came at the end of the prophets, he is reckoned with them. But why should he not be written separately and placed first? — Since his book is so small, it might be lost [if copied separately]. Let us see again. Isaiah was prior to Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Then why should not Isaiah be placed first? — Because the Book of Kings ends with a record of destruction and Jeremiah speaks throughout of destruction and Ezekiel commences with destruction and ends with consolation and Isaiah is full of consolation; therefore we put destruction next to destruction and consolation next to consolation.

The order of the Hagiographa is Ruth, the Book of Psalms, Job, Prophets, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther, Ezra and Chronicles. Now on the view that Job lived in the days of Moses, should not the book of Job come first? — We do not begin with a record of suffering. But Ruth also is a record of suffering? — It is a suffering with a sequel [of happiness], as R. Johanan said: Why was her name called Ruth? — Because there issued from her David who replenished the Holy One, blessed be He, with hymns and praises.

Who wrote the Scriptures? — Moses wrote his own book and the portion of Balaam and Job. Joshua wrote the book which bears his name and [the last] eight verses of the Pentateuch. Samuel wrote the book which bears his name and the Book of Judges and Ruth. David wrote the Book of Psalms, including in it the work of the elders, namely, Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Yeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah wrote the book which bears his name, the Book of Kings, and Lamentations. Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. The Men of the Great Assembly wrote the Twelve Minor Prophets, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther. Ezra wrote the book that bears his name and the genealogies of the Book of Chronicles up to his own time. This confirms the opinion of Rab, since Rab Judah has said in the name of Rab: Ezra did not leave Babylon to go up to Eretz Yisrael until he had written his own genealogy. Who then finished it [the Book of Chronicles]? — Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah

I have quoted the text in full as it makes a strong contrast to the ancient passages on canon by its very specificity and detail. (Note that Ezra and Nehemiah are written together on one scroll and so the Book of Nehemiah is not specified in the list; also note the different order of the four Latter Prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and the Twelve) Given how late this passage is, it appears to me that the Jewish biblical canon was evolving at the same time as the Christian one(s).

Nevertheless, just as there is a popular myth about the Council of Nicea and the Christian Bible, there has also been a (scholarly) myth about a Rabbinic Council and the Jewish Bible. This Council was believed to have taken place at Jamnia/Yavne (near modern Jaffa in Israel) around 80 or 90 CE i.e. after the 1st Jewish War and the destruction of the Temple. This Council was believed to have both defined the Jewish biblical canon and also to have issued a prayer against the Minim, a category thought to have included Jewish Christians, designed to exclude them from the synagogue. For many years last century, Jamnia was important for scholars of both Old and New Testaments, the former understanding it as defining once and for all the standard (Protestant) Old Testament and Hebrew Bible, while the latter understood it as both marking the parting of Christianity and Judaism as well as giving a likely date for John's Gospel, believed to have been written for those Jewish Christians being excluded from the synagogues by the prayer against the Minim.

So big a mountain out of such a molehill, on both counts, but I will only address the canonical one here. Josephus wrote after Jamnia but seems not to have known about and neither do early Christians. Whatever might have been happening at Jamnia it was hardly a council like those of the early Church. Furthermore we only know about it from references in later rabbinic texts. Only one of them, Mishnah Yadayim (3:5), refers to scriptural matters but it does not define a canon as in Talmud Bavli quoted above but rather it describes a discussion about whether Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs are to be counted as scripture:

All the holy writings make the hands impure. The Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes make the hands impure.

R. Judah says: The Song of Songs makes the hands impure, but there is a dispute about Ecclesiastes.

R. Jose says: Ecclesiastes does not make the hands impure, but there is a dispute about the Song of Songs.

R. Simeon says: Ecclesiastes is one of the leniencies of Bet Shammai [who say it does not make the hands impure] and one of the stringencies of Bet Hillel [who say it does make the hands impure]..

R. Simeon b. Azzai said: I received a tradition from the seventy-two elders on the day when they appointed R. Eleazar b. Azariah head of the court that the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes make the hands impure.

R. Akiba said: God forbid! No one in Israel ever disagreed about the Song of Songs [by saying] that it does not make the hands impure. For the whole world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the writings are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies. So if they had a dispute, they had a dispute only about Ecclesiastes.

Johanan b. Joshua the son of the father-in-law of R. Akiba said: in accordance with the words of Ben Azzai so they disputed, and so they reached a decision.

Indeed, early rabbinic texts recount similar discussions about whether various other biblical texts are to be counted as scripture too. So rather than an account of a final ruling what we really have is an account of one of many discussions that would lead to the final canonical ruling recorded in the Talmud Bavli. And yet, ironically, three times in that same Talmud, Sirach is cited as scripture, one of them citing it as part of the Kethubim or Writings (Baba Kamma 92b, also Hagigh 13a and Yebamoth 63b). What's also overlooked by Christians is that the Mishnah, itself is regarded as Torah in Rabbinic Judaism, given to Moses on Sinai along with the Pentateuch and passed down orally by the sages until written down after the Jewish Wars and the destruction of the Temple. So Mishnah stands beside Tanakh as equally Scripture for Jews. And furthermore, the subsequent texts of Judaism, Talmudim, Midrashim, Targumim, even the much later Zohar come to be counted as part of that Oral Torah Tradition that ends up in writing and so all share to some degree in the authority of Scripture. So in reality the Jewish canon is bigger than anything that Christians can imagine in terms of sacred text, the Tanakh or Jewish Bible being part of a much broader (and open/expanding?) canon of sacred, inspired texts.

My discussion has mostly focused on ancient Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism. The Samaritans, famously, regard only the Five Books of Moses as canonical scripture. Curiously, however, the Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel (or Falashas), kept the Book of Jubilees in their Bible just like their Christian neighbours. Whether or not their Bible included other texts outside the Hebrew canon I've yet to ascertain.

Nevertheless the history of scripture in Judaism demonstrates the same principle found in the history of Christian biblical canons. Bible or canonical scripture did not just fall out of heaven one day but was created and shaped by the communities that cherish it. Furthermore there is no normative canon binding on all communities but multiple and overlapping canons shared by many different communities now and in the past. There is not and never has been and never can be a single normative canon binding on all. Such a singular and exclusive canon would in fact mark a serious breach, rupture, distortion of the richness of the biblical tradition itself.

Council and Bible Canon in Christianity

I recently had a discussion with a friend in Facebook about the question of biblical canons and Ecumenical Councils. The key point concerned the role of Nicea, the famous first ecumenical Council of the Christian Church convened by Emperor Constantine. My friend, a (Roman) Catholic, assumed that the standard Bible of the Roman communion had been first defined at Nicea. He'd also assumed that the Bible canon of The Eastern Orthodox Churches was the same as the Roman canon, and was surprised to discover that not only was that not the case, but that there is and always has been canonical variation in the various Churches of the East.

The fact is at the time of the Council of Nicea (313 CE) there was no fixed canon of Christian scripture. Most Christians then used the Septuagint Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures as their Old Testament. The Greek Old Testament was more of a gestalt, resembling both Roman and Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments today, with different versions of some Jewish texts such as Jeremiah, or with major additions to them such as in Daniel and Esther, or containing small variations and additions as with Joshua, Judges, Proverbs and some of the Books of Moses (Torah). There were a range of other books, not found in the Jewish canon because they were composed in Greek, or the prior Hebrew texts were 'lost' (the Hebrew version of Sirach was known in Judaism for many centuries, during which time Sirach sat on the edges of the Jewish canon; Origen also knows the Hebrew name for 1 Maccabees, Sarbeth Sarbaniel; Greek Tobit was translated from Hebrew, and a Hebrew plus Aramaic versions of it were found at Qumran). Most Syriac Christians, however, used a Syriac (Peshitta) Old Testament translated directly from the Hebrew and, initially, identical to the Jewish canon but the influence of the Greek would also change and expand it the particularly for West Syriac Christians within the Roman Empire. The overall Christian Old Testament gestalt generally consisted of Torah, plus historical, prophetic/apocalyptic and wisdom texts.

The New Testament was likewise fluid and not set in stone. At its core remained the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a collection of Pauline letters. Syriac Christians, however, used a harmony of the four gospels, the Diatessaron, that had been put together in the 2nd century by Tatian and they would continue to use it for another century or so until concerns about possible heresy meant that they reverted to the four individual gospels. Especially in the East (Greek and Syriac), there were doubts about texts such as Revelation, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2-3 John and Jude. The Church of the East didn't include them in their New Testament, but again the western Syriac Christian Churches would do so. But there were other texts associated with the New Testament gestalt, as well, such as Epistle of Barnabas, 1 & 2 Clement, Apocalypse of Peter and Shepherd of Hermas. The Shepherd, a wisdom/apocalypse text, was very popular in early Christianity, probably much more so than Revelation and for a long time was treated as a New Testament text in many local churches in and out of the Empire. Thus the New Testament gestalt at the time was the four gospels (individually or in a harmony), Pauline letters, other letters, A/acts and possibly apocalypses. Church 'constitutions' are also floating around the gestalt and eventually in Ethiopia (and apparently for a period in Armenia too) became incorporated into the local New Testament canon.

In the centuries before Nicea a number of individuals issued lists of texts they considered to be scripture. There's a list of them here, both those before and after Nicea, when local church councils also get into the act. The very fact of these lists shows that no canonical determination of scripture was ever made at Nicea. As far as Constantine goes, his main involvement in matters biblical was to commission 50 bibles for the new churches at Constantinople. Apparently, they were commissioned from the scripture academy at Caesarea in Palestine, which was where the Church historian and supporter of Constantine, Eusebius, was based. What texts were ruled in or out these Bibles we don't know because none survive. Eusebius had written his own listings of what were scriptural and what weren't and so perhaps we can get an idea of what Constantine's bibles looked like from there. However it has been suggested that maybe one or even all three of the oldest Christian Bibles in existence might have been part of that order of 50 Bibles. The one in question is Codex Sinaiticus and the other two, C. Vaticanus and C. Alexandrinus. All are in Greek and all date from the 4th/5th centuries. However Sinaitiacus included all 4 books of Maccabees in its Old Testament and ends its New Testament by adding Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas. Vaticanus is most like a Greek Orthodox Bible in that it includes 1 Esdras in its Old Testament. Alexandrinus includes all four books of Maccabees, plus Psalm 151 and the Book of Odes which includes the Prayer of Manasseh. The Alexandrinus New Testament ends adding 1 & 2 Clement and it also has an appendix which included a range of other texts but only one, Psalms of Solomon, remains. These three bibles from roughly the same period and from roughly the same region show just how fluid the Christian scriptural canon remained for a long time after Nicea.

And so in the centuries that follow Nicea, the production of lists continues and likewise the production of texts continues and again those which survive show a continuing fluidity. At the same time, Christianity spread widely outside the Roman Empire and so even if the state was interested in asserting a scriptural uniformity it could only apply to those churches within the Roman borders but not without. So the Armenian and Ethiopian Bibles developed with their own dynamic but nonetheless drawing from the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, just the same. The Ethiopian remains the most fluid to this day existing in both a broad and narrow canon. Nevertheless the narrow canon remains the biggest Christian canon in existence, including other ancient Jewish and Christian texts such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees and 1 Clement (thus perhaps making it the most conservative of the canons, nevertheless) as well as texts unique to Ethiopia itself, 1-3 Meqabiyya. As I said above the West Syriac Bible also gets expanded through Septuagint and other influence too and would incorporate at times 2 Baruch and Psalms 152-155 (and the Armenian Bible would include for a time Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and 3 Corinthians) .

You can get an idea of the current state of play concerning what's in and out of scripture across the various forms of Christianity from this Wikipedia table here.

In the century after Nicea we start getting Church councils producing lists. We're in the era of the Ecumenical Councils but the councils producing scripture lists are local not ecumenical. There's one in the East, Laodicea, and the rest in the West and primarily in Africa at Hippo and Carthage. These African lists match the standard Roman biblical canon of today but the African councils were not ecumenical. But their decisions were subsequently confirmed by the Pope in Rome, under whose jurisdiction they were then subject, being Latin rite churches. The Roman Pontiff was their Patriarch. The issue was important for the Latin rite churches because all of this was happening at the time Jerome was working on a new translation of the scriptures into Latin. Originally he worked from the Greek, but Jerome not only knew of the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament texts, he accorded them a priority over the Greek - if they're in the original language then they must be the original or authentic texts, is the thinking here. That assumption turned out to be wrong (there are no original texts for one thing) but it would take the discoveries at Qumran in the 20th century to demonstrate that. Jerome not only wanted to translate from Hebrew not Greek but he also wanted to scrap those Old Testament texts like Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach etc that weren't in the Hebrew canon of Judaism. Jerome's position generated considerable controversy in the West and was opposed by none other than Augustine, bishop of Hippo. Augustine not only wanted to keep those texts not found in the Jewish canon but he also believed that the Greek as well the Hebrew versions of the Old Testament texts should have equal standing. Jerome's position was rejected by those Western Councils and consequently the Latin Vulgate emerged as a hybrid text, as far as its Old Testament was concerned, because it gave priority wherever possible to the Hebrew but remained overwhelmingly shared by the Greek.

The Council of Carthage was in 397 CE. It would be another 300 years before a decision scripture would be made by a Council with a claim for ecumenicity, although that claim was contested by Rome. In 692, the Council in Trullo met at Constantinople. Also known as the Quinisext Council, it met to finish off the work of the 5th and 6th Ecumenical Councils which had also met at Constantinople. On matters scriptural it confirmed both the decisions of the councils of Laodicea and Carthage, even though both produced different lists (e.g. Laodicea omitted Revelation from the New Testament but Carthage included it). It also confirmed the lists produced by various individuals, which likewise disagreed with each other (and the Councils) and further sanctioned the listing from the Apostolic Constitutions , which counted all four books of Maccabees as canonical. What seems to be happening at Trullo is that it is affirming the various scripture canons of the Church, endorsing local usage in the broader orthodox and Catholic context. Trullo is recognised by the Eastern Orthodox Church as sharing in the ecumenicity of the previous two Councils of Constantinople but it was rejected by the West.

And that's where matters stood up until the Renaissance and Reformation. In other words there was no Ecumenical Council that produced a single agreed on list of canonical texts that could be called The Bible. On the ground, though, was an even more interesting reality. According to the Council of Carthage the Vulgate Latin Bible of the medieval West should have looked like the standard Bible of the Roman communion today. The thing is, it didn't. It included some Old Testament extras some of which are found in the Greek Bible and one not. The Vulgate's extras included 1 & 2 Esdras, Psalm 151 and Prayer of Manasseh. All but 2 Esdras are found in the Greek Bible. 2 Esdras is however found in the Slavonic and Georgian Bibles. These extras were included in the Old Testament of the Gutenberg Bible, printed in the 15th century. However the Gutenberg did not include the Vulgate's addition to the New Testament, Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans as that had only recently been removed. But it seems that in the medieval period there was remarkable cohesion in the Old Testaments of the Byzantine and Roman communions. As far as the Greek Church was concerned the Roman Bible had one text they didn't, 2 Esdras, and lacked one text that they had, 3 Maccabees. Even more odd is that the Western Old Testament stayed this way after the Council of Florence had produced a canon list following the Carthaginian one as part of an attempt at reunion with the Byzantine Church under negotiation in 1439-41. This reunion was unsuccessful but while it resulted in a papal bull declaring the Carthaginian canon as normative for the Bible, it doesn't actually seem to have changed the Roman/Western Old Testament at all, despite the fact that Rome regards Florence as an Ecumenical Council. It was only the Reformation that would actually change the Western Bible .

Luther picked up on Jerome's complaint and in his translation of the Bible into German, he created new category, the Apocrypha, into which he placed not only 1 & 2 Esdras, Psalm 151 and Prayer of Manasseh, but also the other texts questioned by Jerome but endorsed by Carthage (and Trullo): Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, plus the Greek additions to Daniel and Esther. The Bible of the English Reformation followed Luther's lead too and the texts outside the Jewish canon were likewise collected into the Apocrypha. Luther also wanted to re-open the New Testament as well. It seems he would have preferred one like that used by the Church of the East, except that Luther would also have dumped the Letter of James. But Luther's proposed New Testament failed to win the support of the Reformation movement as a whole and thus the New Testament finally remained unchanged.

Luther's attempted revision of the New Testament was based on dogmatic grounds - James in particular could be used by Rome to critique Lutheran theology of justification. Similarly with the revision of the Old Testament. The so-called apocryphal (Protestant) or deutero-canonical (Roman) texts could be used by Rome in its arguments with the Reformers. Jerome, the 'father' of the Latin Bible, gave the Reformers the precedent to reject scriptural authority for those texts placed in the Apocrypha. Rome clearly turned to the Council of Carthage, especially as its decisions had been endorsed by the Pope of the day (and subsequently reaffirmed at Florence), and at the Council of Trent (which met in 25 sessions from 1545 to 1563) the standard Roman biblical canon was formally declared as the norm for the Roman communion. As I've written before, the other four texts, 1 & 2 Esdras, Ps 151, Manasseh, weren't dumped from the Latin Bible but transferred to an Appendix (together with the Epistle to the Laodiceans) where they remain, effectively as Roman Catholic Apocrypha. They were even included in the first Douai-Rheims English translation of the Latin Bible in an appendix to the Old Testament. But they have been dropped from subsequent translations of the Latin Bible so that most Roman Catholics have no idea these texts have been part of the scriptural legacy of the Western Church.

Curiously as I was writing this piece, I stumbled across a Roman Catholic apologetic site against the Eastern Orthodox Church. On that site there was an article on the Orthodox Bible by Mark Bonocore. He argues that the Roman canon was affirmed by an Ecumenical Council, accepted by East and West, and held at Nicea too. It's the second Council of Nicea, the 7th Ecumenical Council, held in 787 CE. His argument is that Nicea 2 affirmed the decisions of the Council at Trullo validating the decisons of the Council of Carthage. Consequently, the Roman Bible canon has been defined by an Ecumenical Council accepted by East and West and so should be adopted by the Eastern Orthodox communion. Unfortunately for Bonocore's argument, Trullo affirmed a range of biblical canon lists, as well as the Carthaginian one, in which case Nicea 2 has itself given ecumenical authority - an authority binding on West and East - to canonical diversity and fluidity.

And perhaps, too, the meme concerning the Bible and Nicea is unknowingly derived from Nicea 2. If that's the case, it's a meme that's not only misidentified the Council but also got the decision wrong too. Rather than setting a single locked down canon in stone it effectively defined plurality and diversity as the only possible norm.

This conciliar history further reminds us that *The Bible* in Christianity is not something that fell out of heaven but rather is something that, as the Russian theologian Georges Florovsky said, is created by the Church instead.

Eusebius and the New Testament Canon

I'm always interested in matters canonical. I'm a bit of an advocate for a much expanded "ecumenical" Old Testament canon for Christian bibles that recognises the diversity and plurality of Christian Old Testaments past and present. I'm also interested in New Testament canonical diversity as well. Over at Biblicalia, Kevin Edgecombe has an interesting post relating to New Testament texts and ancient (and modern) debates re the canon as we know it today. Eusebius of Caesarea, the bishop, theologian, church historian and contemporary of Constantine (amongst Eusebius' works is a Life of Constantine) is a key figure for contemporary discussions. To quote Kevin:

Most readers of Eusebius’ History of the Church are familiar with his interesting chapter (Book III, Chapter 25) devoted to discussing the canonical status of the books of the New Testament. After a recent re-reading of Eusebius, I thought it would be good to share some interesting things that have come up in light of this reading, informed as I am now by a wealth of further reading on the subject of the Biblical canon since I last read Eusebius. In such a case of re-reading, formerly innocuous words and phrases often take on new meaning. This is precisely the case here in regards to Eusebius’ interesting discussion of the books of the New Testament.

First, it is necessary to emphasize that the word “canon” (κανὼν, κανόνος) and its derivative forms are not used by Eusebius to refer to the books of the Bible, but primarily to the Rule of Faith of the Church.

Kevin then gives a detailed list of the 16 occasions when Eusebius uses the word canon(os), all of which as he says relate to the Rule of Faith of the Church. He then continues:

Reflecting upon this usage, we must notice that elsewhere Eusebius interestingly chooses to refer to what we would call the canonical books of the New Testament by terminology which ultimately describes these books in terms of their Apostolic origins. His discussion of the various books of the New Testament (III 25) is particularly interesting, and has garnered much commentary. His description involves a threefold categorization in which a book is described as ὁμολογουμένος, ἀντιλεγομένος, or νόθος, that is, agreed-upon, disputed, and spurious. This terminology does not refer to agreement or disagreement in terms of belonging to the Bible, but rather in terms of agreement or disagreement of Apostolic origins for the book. The distinction is a crucial one. There is no hypothesis here of a “Bible” to which a book is going to be either included or excluded. Rather, there are various books, and those which the churches agree in recognizing as of Apostolic origin belong to the “agreed-upon” category, those in which books are recognized by some as authentically Apostolic yet not recognized as so by others belong to the “disputed” category. To the “spurious” category belong those books which are generally recognized as not originating with the Apostles. So we see the criterion of organization here is not based upon an idea of what we now think of a Biblical canon, but was rather motivated by concerns for authenticity and authority. The Apostles are the foundation of the Church, and their writings are therefore considerered the protocanon of all ecclesiastical writings. The concern for ascertaining the proper list of those authentic works in order to safeguard against heresy and other failure is one that is shown throughout Eusebius’ work.

Kevin's reading fits with the plurality of New Testament collections in early Christianity and indeed today especially with the Ethiopian Bible which seems to have an inner and outer canon for both its testaments. In other words, the New Testament collections were not based on the criteria of apostolic authorship. However a text of agreed apostolic authorship was guaranteed a place in any such collection and there was also a place for non-apostolic texts as well.

Nevertheless, Eusebius' testimony as to what was accepted, disputed or spurious should not be taken at face value. In a subsequent post, Kevin explores the contradictory position Eusebius takes on the Book of Revelation. It's worth checking out.

Back to Bible

I almost deleted my last post but, too late, through the magic of time zone differences, it's out there now living it's own life. I don't have the heart to kill it now. Some Father's Day mercy perhaps? Then I found this at Ben Byerly's blog.




At last, an attempt to show just how complex this thing called Bible really is. It's pretty good but doesn't allow for the changes that occur over time. The Epistle to the Laodiceans, for example, seems to have been a fairly common part of the medieval Latin Bible until the 15th century when doubts of its authenticity caused it to be shunted to an appendix where it remains to this day. But it does give a good account of how the standard English language Protestant (i.e. sans 'Apocrypha') Bible is a pretty modern invention. It also doesn't allow for the text varieties within the traditions. The Greek Bible has variant forms of Joshua, Judges, Daniel, Tobit. And they've even included Samaritans. I know it's only five books for them but the Samaritan Torah is one of the three ancient text types for the Torah (i.e. there aint no single original version).

So it's a start. All we have to do now is get it into Intro Bible courses so people learn that if God was speaking this 'Word' she had lots of stenographers hearing the words in different ways. So there can't be a literal truth. Thank God for that, I reckon.