Text and Transmission
All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; 2 Timothy 3:16 NASB
Inspired – Paul’s choice of the Greek word for “inspired” leaves us hanging. Why? Because the word isn’t used anywhere else in the apostolic writings. Theópneustos literally means “God breathed,” but that leaves a lot of room for the meaning. God breathes life, for example. Does that mean life is inspired in the same way that “Scripture” is inspired? “Scripture,” of course, leaves us with other dilemmas. What does Paul actually have in mind considering that there was no canonical collection of the Hebrew “Bible”? We tackled some of these issues in a recent study (add link here) and came up with the following conclusions:
- In the first century, believing communities had much larger collections of sacred materials and the boundaries between sacred and profane were much more flexible.
- There was no “Bible” as a codex of authorized texts until after the 2nd or 3rd centuries of the common era.
- In the first century C.E., the shape of the biblical books was almost in place, but the actual text of those books was still fluid.
- Scribes felt comfortable adding, expanding, or deleting material from the texts as they deemed necessary for the community.
- In general, the message of the text was accepted without concern about the details.
- Each community accepted its collection as sacred and authoritative. There was no official list of sacred books.
- The process of canonization did not begin until the 2nd century C.E. and was not completed for at least another hundred years or more.
- The process of canonization was an effort to limit the collection of sacred texts.
- The process of canonization was motivated by political and social concerns, not exclusively religious one.
- There is no possibility of discovering a single urtext of the Bible since there were multiple streams of source texts with different content.
- The LXX represents a separate, older, and different collection of material from the MT.
- Qumran documents show us variations in the text itself, all accepted as authoritative.
- Uniformity and certainty do not seem to be crucial considerations in believing communities prior to canonization.
- The “New Testament” collection follows that same pattern with one notable exception: it comes fully formed. There is no historical evidence of a progressive development.
- The MT was an attempt to standardize the text, the pronunciation of the text, and the use of the text in assemblies. It “froze” the text from that point forward.
- Translation of the text occurred within the linguistic worldview of the translator. This often led to changes in the meaning of the text (i.e., idiomatic phrases).
- The various sources of the biblical texts when combined present a collage, not a single stream or single original.
- How the text was vocalized (i.e., how it was read) in believing communities had a significant influence on the writing of the text since the speaker had to add vowels, syllabication, and intonation to a text that had none of these. This means the community’s tradition of reading was as important if not more so than the writing.
Essentially what this means is that the content of scared material in the first century was not fixed in final form or collection, but that doesn’t seem to have mattered. People believed on the basis of personal experience and tradition, not on the basis of the certainty of the text. In other words, whatever they accepted as Scripture, it was enough for teaching, rebuke, and correction. They didn’t seem to worry too much about its divine accuracy. But we do. We worry a lot about accuracy, so much so that our faith depends on it. Since that wasn’t the case for the believers of the ancient world, we might want to ask why it is so important for us. Maybe we’re a lot more like Greek Hellenists than Abraham’s children.
Topical Index: Scripture, inspired, theópneustos, text, certainty, faith, 2 Timothy 3:16
