Canon derives from a Greek word that means “reed”
One sense of the Greek word implies ruler—something by which
straightness could be measured. The rule or norm of the faith (canon),
first 3 centuries, was widely accepted, but not applied to texts we
consider sacred until about 367. The Christian church has designated a
group of books as the norm or rule of faith, though before it designated
the sacred books, it designated various councils of the church as canon,
and even various clergy attached to a church. We’re going to restrict
our study to the canon recognized by all the church. However, some
traditions have a larger canon—the Orthodox and Roman traditions
recognize additional books as “canonical”—such as the Apocrypha. This
shows you that our canon is still in debate as Christians…though we
recognize the canon as closed—no more sacred texts allowed!— the
church continues to have disagreements on what made it in the door in
the first place!
Getting Your Hands Dirty: The Making of The Old Testament or Hebrew
Scriptures
(1) must remember that the Old Testament is actually the Hebrew
Bible. And that Jews don’t accept the contrast of OLD AND NEW that
Christians do, because they do not accept the New Testament as sacred
Scripture.
(2) In the Jewish Bible, there are 24 books; In the Christian version
of the Jewish Bible, there are 39 books, because we divide up the books
more (1 & 2 Chronicles, etc, and we divide up the minor prophets into 12
separate books)
(3) a lot of scholars believe that the Hebrew Scriptures were
probably already pretty much in place about 2 centuries before the birth
of Christ. There doesn’t seem to be much debate about this.
(4) a new movement sprang up in Judaism that sought to respond to
the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE by the Romans. The movement
sought to reconstruct Judaism on the basis of biblical interpretation and
the codification of traditions now that the Temple had fallen and the
Jewish people no longer controlled their ancestral land. This movement
away from Temple based Judaism came to be known as rabbinic
Judaism, the kind of Judaism that most of us are familiar with.
(5) Council of Jamnia is often considered the moment when Judaism
decided its Canon, its sacred Scripture, among many other things. This
was not the case. THERE WAS, however, a discussion on which books
made your hands unclean, ritually impure. This is unclear—magical
thinking? Way of instilling reverence, or something else. Records of a
discussion on whether the books of Ecclesiastes or Song of Songs made
ones hands unclean: test of whether it counted as sacred scripture. It
was concluded that it did indeed make the hands unclean, thus it was.
(6) there were reports from this movement about debates among
some rabbis about whether or not 5 particular books were sacred
scripture:
Ecclesiastes: because it is so negative towards life.
Song of Songs: because of its incredible eroticism
Ezekiel: because parts of it contradicted the Torah/Pentateuch (the
first 5 books of the Bible)
Proverbs: because of some of its internal contradictions
Esther: because the text never mentions God.
(7) Still, it seems that these debates were not too widespread—but
questions were raised, showing that the canon was still even up for
debate in the first and second century among Jews.
(8) the reality is that we don’t know for sure how the books of the
Hebrew Bible came to be understood as canon or sacred scripture.
Canonical status probably started with the Pentateuch/Torah and was
extended to Prophets and the Writings by the second century BCE.
Anyone Up For A Fight? The Making Of The New Testament
(1) The first followers of Jesus, his disciples, were Jewish, so they
already had a canon—the Hebrew Scriptures. However, most Jews
during Jesus’ time relied on the Septuagint, a Greek Translation of the
Hebrew Scriptures. Traditions has it that 70 translators translated it.
Meant for Greek speaking Jews of the world. So, when the New
Testament quote the Old Testament, they quote the Septuagint. The
earliest Christians already had a Bible—the Greek Old Testament, or the
Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint. We know it
was read in public gatherings of Christians, as well as when followers of
Jesus went to synagogue—they saw themselves as simply Jews who
were following the Messiah, the savior of Israel. The Old Testament was
important because it showed that Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures, that he
was foretold in the Old Testament. There doesn’t seem to be a
conscious effort on the part of early church to create a new collection of
sacred books.
(2) As the writings of the New Testament were being written
between 70 CE—95 CE, the church continued to keep these writings as
records of their founders. Most of the New Testament was written in
response to a need—the writings of Paul to the churches, the Gospels
for the communities who wanted to know the stories of Jesus, etc.
(3) As the church came to realize that Christ was not going to come
back as quickly as was expected (Paul expected Jesus to come very
quickly, as did most of the church), two things happened: first there was
a need to determine what the Christian faith would be, since there were
many version of Christianity running around in the first two centuries;
secondly, it was important to keep the memory of the early church intact,
those who had close contact to Jesus and his early disciples.
(4) The first attempted list of Christian Scriptures was done by the
heretic Marcion. Marcion was a firm believer in Paul’s message of grace
and he came to believe that the god of the Hebrew Bible was NOT the
father of Jesus Christ. He believed that the god of the OT to be mean,
vindictive, jealous god who had made the world. Yet, it was the different
god of Jesus and Paul that gave us grace and forgivingness. The Old
Testament is true revelation, he believed, but the one it revealed is not
the supreme God of the gospel. Saw Christianity and Judaism as two
different religions—something Christians rejected, but ironically, Jews
believed.
(5) Marcion joined with a lot of people and sects who held negative
views of the Old Testament. When you get rid of the Old Testament, the
difficulties you find in the Hebrew Bible—like God ordering the slaughter
of Jericho, and of the people of Canaan, or the strange laws and rituals
of Leviticus or Jehovah who punishes children for the sins of their
parents, to the third and fourth generation. Very attractive.
(6) But the church rejected Marcion’s views because it denied the
oneness of God, the goodness of creation (Marcion saw all physical
things as evil and all spiritual things as good), and a religion devoid of
history, of being rooted in the world. Tertullian, early church father,
made fun of Marcion’s God—the God of Jesus hadn’t made a vegetable,
but the supposedly inferior god was making and ruling the world.
(7) Until Marcion, no one had thought to compile and define a list of
specifically Christian Scriptures. Marcion emphasized the letters written
by Paul, with Luke as his focal point. Marcion put together this list as an
alternative to the Old Testament.
(8) The entire NT can be seen as a process in which the early
church was doing the same thing as Marcion was doing, but in a more
positive light—that is, interpreting the event of Jesus of Nazareth in light
of the OT.
(9) After Marcion and a whole slew of people of people later labeled
as heretics by the mainstream church, the need for a definitive list of
sacred texts become more important. Gnosticism, which is an umbrella
term that emphasized a duality between the body/physical world and the
spirit. Humans had a divine spark imprisoned by the physical body.
Salvation came through secret knowledge given by a Savior, like Christ,
which would free people. This led to two paths—one direction said that
morality didn’t matter and so we could do anything since the body was
simply a shell for what really mattered; the more common, but opposite
direction, was the renunciation/denial of the body and all its pleasures—
food, lovemaking, any physical pleasure. Both movements were
denounced by the church as heretical either because it denied the need
to be ethical or because it denied the goodness of God’s creation. re
were a lot of writings floating around in the early church.
(10) The church began to look towards it early history to see what
the apostles taught about and began to compile lists of its earliest
writings as a weapon and a correction to the excesses of the fringe
Christian movements.
So, historically the development of the canon looks like this
First Phase: 50CE—100CE—The creation of the documents of what we
know as the New Testament; letters written to specific churches by the
apostles or attributed to the apostles; early attempts at sacred history in
telling the story of Jesus.
Second Phase: 100CE—150CE—Growing recognition of certain writings
as being important to the life of the church; focused on the Gospels and
the letters written by Paul.
Third Phase: 150CE—190 CE: The New Testament Canon Become A
Reality, primarily in response to Marcion and fellow Gnostics.
Uncertainty about what books would become the canon was in flux—
different church fathers put together slightly different lists.
Fourth Phase: The Closing of the Canon: 190CE—400CE: In 367 CE,
Athanansius of Alexandria listed all of the present New Testament in a
pastoral letter.
The criteria for including writings in the early canon:
1) The texts were written by the apostles or believers who had some
sort of contact with Jesus
2) Rule of faith: the writings adhered to the basic teaching of most
Christians
3) The churches agreed that the writings were important for
teaching and preaching
It’s JUST Your Interpretation! Hermeneutics and The Bible
Hermeneutics: defined as “theory of interpretation”
No one comes to the text without a theory of interpretation, without a
hermeneutics, without an agenda, even if we are unaware of it or we can’
t quite put it into words. We bring assumptions to every text we read; we
bring life experiences that color everything we see or that colors all that
we will ever attempt to paint.
So its important to remember how the church has interpreted its sacred
texts, so that we can be both aware of the variety involved as well as be
cognizant of how personal hermeneutics may contrast with the way the
church has interpreted the text.
Begin with Jewish Interpretation of Scripture:
When the canon closed sometime in the second century CE, it became
important pull out the meaning of the text for application to Jewish life.
(1) Midrash was a response to the closed canon, to what was
believed to be the end of God talking directly to the Jewish people. It is a
teaching, or sermon, that is derived the word-play between the teacher’s
words and one or more of the biblical texts. An investigation of the text
that is performed by the reader. These teachings were recorded for
future generations. Could become very speculative, go off on wild
tangents, but the beginning point was the text. The midrash wasn’t
considered sacred itself, but it was an important conversation to have
and continue. Rabbis and their students were conducting a dance,
getting to know the sacred text by dancing with it.
(2) These teachings were compiled in Mishnah, a compilation of the
midrash of various scholars, sometimes unnamed. Edited in 200 CE by
a rabbi, and then another collection of Mishnah called the Talmud (200
CE to 500 CE) was collected.
(3) Very important idea: that Scripture had many meanings, even
contradictory meanings that could be both be true at the same times.
Didn’t mean that they didn’t believe that there might not be a single
correct interpretation, but there was a recognition that Sacred Scriptures
were always available for interpretation—the canon might be closed, but
interpretation never stops!
(4) This tradition of interpretation was part of Jesus’ world—you can
see it when he is in temple and the rabbis are discussing the text—Luke
2:41-52
Prophecy, Allegory, or Typology? Early Christian Interpretation Of
Scripture
First of all, Christians interpreted the Jewish Bible…keep in mind that the
early church didn’t have the NT like we do—they went to the Jewish
Scriptures to interpret the story of Jesus. THREE main ways Christians
interpreted the Jewish Bible:
(1) The first hermeneutical step they took was to interpret the Jewish
Scriptures/the Old Testament as predicting or prophesying the events
that surrounded Jesus’ life. Early Christians argued that the Hebrew
Bible was full of prophecies about Christ’s life, which they used to make
the case towards both Jews and non-Jews that Jesus was indeed the
Jewish Messiah, the Messiah that all of the Israel had been waiting for.
Indeed, the Gospel of Matthew is a good example of that Matthew 1:22, 2:
15-18. Some problems: it became very difficult to interpret EVERYTHING
that way and secondly, it makes as it seem as if that passage written
hundreds of years earlier has no meaning to the people of that time.
(2) The second style of interpretation early Christians dealt with was
allegory, which was looking for the spiritual meaning behind the words of
the text. Allegory is “The representation of abstract ideas or principles
by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial
form.” Its about using stories, characters, and pictures to make a point—
the blindfolded woman holding scales is an allegory for justice. In fact, it
was an attempt to take the words of the Bible and to try to see what
heach world might represent. So, the stories in the Bible are not meant
to be taken literally, but figuratively. They pointed to spiritual truths, not
literal history
Origen (182-251): “For who that has understanding will suppose that the
first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning,
existed without a sun, a moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as
it were, without a sky? And who is so foolish to suppose that God, after
the manner of husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the
east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one
tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one
was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from a
tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and
Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that any one doubts
that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history
having taken place in appearance, and not literally” Origen, De
princippiis, 4, 1, 16 (ANF, 4:365) Origen took this view to the extreme
(Horse means voice, today means the present age, etc.), and he is often
criticized for doing what the early heretics did—disconnecting Christianity
from history, as if Christianity wasn’t a faith rooted in time.
(3) Justin Martyr (100 CE-165 CE) became a vocal advocate of
different method of interpretation, typology, a pattern of things. He made
an argument that past events as recorded in the Bible or commandments
listed in the Bible pointed to a future event, most often to Jesus and the
Christian life. This is not same as prophecy, because the it’s the words
in prophecy that are emphasized—in typology, it is the events recorded
in the Bible which are emphasized. Both prophecy and typology point to
the future—but in one case what points to the future is the text itself, and
in the other (typology) it is the event of which the text speaks.
Example: Isaiah 53:7 (pull out your Bibles) Page 944 in Access Bible
Prophetically interpreted: this passage refers to Jesus and to no one
else. Before Jesus, it had no meaning, except to pointing to the future.
Matthew uses the passages he quotes this way.
Allegorically interpreted: would try to find hidden meanings of the words
like lamb or slaughter; might come to the conclusion that true virtue, like
a sheep, does not defend itself, but is willing to give of itself to others, as
sheep goes before the shearer in order to give up its wool, which will
comfort and warm others.
Typologically interpreted: the passage does refer to Jesus, but its
because God has created history in such a way that the just are
repeatedly killed and persecuted for the redemption of others. That
means that the text can mean two things: that this passage is referring to
the particular prophet’s persecution (Isaiah), and that this pattern, this
type, of persecution of prophets points to Jesus of Nazareth own
persecution.
Typology was the most popular interpretation, it still is, but each of these
types of interpretations were intermingled, so rarely was only one type
employed in interpreting the text.
Monks and Their Manual: Christian Interpretation in the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages saw the Bible going into the monasteries—the Bible
became the property of religious orders dedicated to its preservation.
Some things to note:
Most people couldn’t read
There was no printing press, so the monks copied the Bible by hand—
this practice kept the Bible in existence.
Because of this practice, it was monks who became the primary
interpreters of the text—they actually had access to the text.
And because monks were dedicated to a life renunciation and
contemplation, it was through that lens that they interpreted the
Scriptures.
They saw the Bible as a vast moral allegory—the Bible became a
guidebook/manual about how to get close to God and the many
temptations that confront a disciple along the way. Monks read the
Bible allegorically, but later the church began to distinguish between the
literal (the most important) and the spiritual meanings of the text.
Wanted to make sure the text remained rooted in history, but honor the
fact that it has something to say to us in the present day (the
spiritual).
Also, the Bible was read through prayer and worship. In the
monasteries, but most lay people and clergy only had contact with the
Scripture through the Biblical passages incorporated into the liturgy of
the church.
By the 12th century, schools centered around cathedrals sprang up,
which transformed the way the Bible was read. The Bible became to be
seen as a source of knowledge, and as a way/means to settle disputes.
The Bible became the way to settle theological disputes rather than the
guide towards the path of faith and devotion. Also, they began compiling
the notes in the margins of the Bible put their by earlier monks or
scholars from the Cathedral Schools—the beginning of what we know as
commentaries on the Bible.
I Thought We Had Settled This: The Canon Revisited In The Reformation
From about 1450 to 1600, the Western church (Roman Catholic)
experienced the upheaval of mass dissention, of mass “Protestors”
(Protestants) to its authority and its practices. Many people called into
question the use of indulgences—the selling of pardons for sin, used by
the church to fund itself. Also, mass printing became available, which
made the Bible more widely available to those who could read. This
mass availability of the Bible called into question some of the beliefs and
practices of the church.
In response, the Roman Church held the Council of Trent (1545-1563)
which actually DEFINED/named the canon officially for the first time. This
was not in dispute, but the Council decreed that tradition and the
Scriptures were equals in terms of revelation. Protestants rejected this
part
Martin Luther rejected this idea, saying that the church should rest on
“scripture only—sola scriptura.” Important to note that Luther believed
that the “word of God” was much more than Scripture—the word of God
is none other than God, (John 1). The word of God is an action, it does
something, and what it does is redeem the world. Luther had great
respect for the Bible, but he saw it as secondary—it was simply the
record of the actions of the word of God, Jesus himself. The Bible is not
a book of information about God and the world—it is a book of gospel
and redemption (saved by grace alone). He was aware of some of the
inconsistencies in the Bible, but that didn’t bother him—they do not touch
the heart of the Gospel. In fact, he felt that the letter of James in our
Bible should be thrown out because he could not find the Gospel in it.
Wanted to throw out the book of Revelation as well.
Later Protestant scholars became obsessed with issues around the Bible
inspiration and authority. Talk of full inspiration (God inspired Paul to
write about money being sent to the church in Jerusalem) and verbal
inspiration (God inspired the very words used in the Bible) flourished, but
then another movement came along, that saw the Bible as being to be
approached with devotion and discipline, with the purpose of the quality
of one’s discipleship—Moravians, Pietists, and the Methodists.
19th Century—The Historical Critical Study of the Bible. An attempt to
use science and historical methods to examine the Bible. First attempted
to use it as a way proving the Bible was rational, but then many scholars
found things that seem to contradict science. For many years, the bible
was seen as history—scholars came to question that assumption. Much
of what we now know about the Bible and its content has it roots in this
movement.
20th Century—a conflict between those who see the Bible as a text
without error, quite literally the very words of God, and those who see it
as a historical document. This has been the supreme conflict raging still
in the church.
Questions:
Laying My Cards On the Table: Kevin’s hermeneutics
Its important that you know where I come from, and when you go home, I’
d like to you to think about what you believe about the Bible. What kind
of hermeneutics do you bring to the Bible?
What I believe:
--Like Luther, I believe that the Bible tells the story of the Gospel, the
story of how much God loves the world.
--The Bible is the record of church’s earliest memories.
--The Bible needs to be taken seriously—that is, we need to listen to the
stories and words without getting too wrapped in the historical facts or
even discrepancies. Whatever the origins of the text, the church has
gone back over and over again to these texts—and there is a reason for
that.
--The Bible is the beginning point of revelation, but not necessarily the
ending point of revelation, of God’s will. “A Christian may disagree with
what he or she reads in the texts [African-Americans and the slavery
texts]; a Christian cannot refuse serious dialogue with the texts without
calling into question the right of using the term “Christian” as a self-
designation.” (The Bible as foundational document—page 23)
Means that the Bible is:
--Creator of Christian faith—the New Testament tells a story that we
have taken as our own
--Agenda Setter for Christianity—“early Christian documents ask the
basic questions that they who consider themselves Christian must also
ask.”
--Definitional for Christianity—provides the Church with the basic
definition of what it means to be a Christian.
--“A Christian may disagree with what he or she reads in the texts
[African-Americans and the slavery texts]; a Christian cannot refuse
serious dialogue with the texts without calling into question the right of
using the term “Christian” as a self-designation.” (The Bible as
foundational document—page 23)
