The Canon
I recently read a paper by Kristofer Carlson on the development of the canon. As you probably already know, the real history of the Bible is nothing like the usual Sunday school teaching, and is often at odds with theological educators. Carlson’s work traces the details of the controversies and decisions that brought about our contemporary Protestant Bible. I have cited only a few pages from his work (which you can download online) that demonstrate how much more human influences are responsible for our Bible. You might find it quite interesting.
Kristofer Carlson, The Development of the Canon (2019), Hidden in Plain Sight, Part I: The Development of the Canon
Some citations:
Robert Alter cites the Israeli linguist Abba ben David (in a work available only in Hebrew) as saying that a “new kind of Hebrew” emerged in the “pre-Christian” (or Second Temple) period.
It is widely recognized that this new Hebrew reflected the influence of the Aramaic vernacular in morphology, in grammar, and in some of its vocabulary, and that, understandably, it also incorporated a vast number of Greek and Latin loanwords. …Ben David, observing, as have others before him, that there are incipient signs of an emergent rabbinic Hebrew in late biblical books like Jonah and the Song of Songs, makes the bold and, to my mind, convincing proposal that rabbinic Hebrew was built upon an ancient vernacular that for the most part had been excluded from the literary language used for the canonical texts.[1]
The alphabet changed, the spelling changed, the language changed, and in some cases, the meaning changed. These language changes are important to understand both the Septuagint and the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scholar Martin Hengel notes some Dead Sea Scrolls are manuscripts written in the “paleo-Hebrew script” which dates from the early third century B.C. and seems to be the earliest biblical manuscript in existence. Hengel also notes the Masoretic text is “significantly inferior …to the LXX exemplar.”[2]
The Masoretes wrote using a different script than was used to write the Old Testament; if Moses were alive today, he would be unable to read the Pentateuch. Not only did the alphabet change, but scribes had altered the texts. First, the spelling changed; second, the manuscripts slowly began using consonants to represent vowels; third, the meaning itself changed.[3]
Of the textual recensions, one of the more noticeable examples is Psalm 14:3. In the King James Version, this verse reads: “They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” The Septuagint, by contrast, is much longer.
They are all gone out of the way, they are together become good for nothing, there is none that does good, no not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.[4] (Ps 14:3) [English translation by L.C.L. Brenton]
Deacon Joseph Gleason notes: “In Romans 3:10, St. Paul writes, ‘It is written,’ a common indicator in the biblicalliterature that the Scriptures are being referenced. Then, in verses ten through eighteen, he offers an extended quotation from the Psalm.”[5] This extended quotation, which the apostle Paul cites as Scripture, is quoting the longer passage from the Septuagint, rather than the shorter passage found in the Masoretic text.
Fundamentalists and Evangelicals may find this problematic. Because they read modern notions of literacy, authorship, and textual authority back into the ancient world, they are unable to comprehend a world in which an author was merely a person whose authority was the basis for which a text was written and maintained. They fail to realize the primacy of oral transmission of knowledge and the inferiority of the written text. They fail to understand a religion where sacred rituals took precedence over sacred text.
People often notice the New Testament quotations usually don’t match the Old Testament source texts, as we made clear in the examples cited above. What they don’t know is the manuscripts used to create the English translations did not exist; the Masoretic Text was created later. Scholars trace portions of the Masoretic Text back to textual variants within the Dead Sea Scrolls,[6] but the Masoretic Text is an edited version of those texts.
One of the more curious differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text is in the ages of the patriarchs. The Oxford scholar James Barr notes the ages of the patriarchs, “at the time when the first son was born …were different, and in most cases 100 years higher at each birth.” Barr goes on to say that the generations of the patriarchs are about 1,000 years longer in the Septuagint than in the Hebrew text. [7]
Oxford professor Jan Joosten writes concerning the conflicting exegetical tendencies in the Septuagint.
Even within each individual translation unit, a multiplicity of factors comes into play. While most Septuagint translators basically attempt to give a faithful rendering of their Hebrew source text in the target language, several other elements determine the outcome in the translation. To begin with the translators’ comprehension of the source text is in many places predetermined by existing interpretative traditions. In many instances, the traditions surfacing in the Septuagint later turn up in Rabbinic sources, which led Zecharia Frankel to speak of the influence of Palestinian exegesis on the hermeneutics of the Septuagint. Another factor influencing the work of the translators is their knowledge of the biblical context in the largest sense of the word. Many renderings reveal the more or less unconscious working of an enormous web of intertextuality, of which the harmonization of parallel passages is only the most prominent symptom. A third factor is the culture, world view and theology of the Diaspora Jews among whom the version came into being. Admittedly, little is known about the culture, world view and theology of Alexandrian Judaism – making it difficult to determine influences with any degree of certainty.
The multiplicity of factors – several others could be thought of – leads to a layering of meanings in the Septuagint as a whole. The plain meaning of a passage may stand in contrast to the vocabulary used; different meanings may emerge according to whether a phrase is read in light of the near or the larger context; a simple and straightforward passage may contain one puzzling expression throwing the meaning of the whole into doubt. [8]
The Koran (Quran) defines Jews, Sabians,[9] and Christians as being fellow peoples of the book,[10] which makes sense in an Islamic context. Muslims consider the Koran to be the Word of God made text. When Gabriel revealed the Koran to Mohammed, both Jews and Christians already had collections of inspired literature. Jews and Christians both had a way to preserve the inspired text relatively uncorrupted from additions and errors.
Most modern Christians have no trouble with thinking of themselves as people of the book; modern Christians have the Bible, a book which they refer to as the Word of God. Yet it is unlikely either the ancient Jews or the earliest Christians would have defined themselves as people of the book, for they had no such book.
Judaism was in flux at the time of Christ, with multiple canons and textual traditions. The Jews did not agree upon a single list of Hebrew Scriptures until the 3rd century AD. Moreover, the differing textual traditions were not merged into a single text until the 9th century AD. Apostolic Christianity described the Septuagint as Sacred Scripture, and the various New Testament writings only gradually became thought of as Scripture. Christians did not agree upon the canon of the New Testament until the 9th century.
This seems odd to us now, but in the ancient world, the oral word was primary; the written word was of little importance,
[1] (Alter, The Hebrew Bible 2019, xxv)
[2] (Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture 2002, 84-85)
[3] (Barrera 1998, 60-64)
[4] (Brenton n.d.)
[5] (Gleason, The Apostle Paul’s Reading of Psalm 14 2014)
[6] (Barrera 1998, 284)
[7] (Barr 1985, 582)
[8] (Joosten 2008)
[9] The term Sabians seems to refer to a variety of monotheistic faiths that are neither Jewish nor Christian, although they appear to have more in common with Christianity than with Judaism.
[10] The term ‘People of the Book’ is used throughout the Koran, but there is no single passage that defines who the People of the Book are. Instead, we have a few passages where these peoples are specifically addressed (as in Quran 5:69), and it is understood that this reference is to the ‘People of the Book.’
