The Bibles (2)

As for God, his way is perfect: The Lord’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.  Psalm 18:30  NIV

The Lord’s word – My apologies.  This edition is a bit academic, but it needs to be since the issues surrounding the canon and the Bible require scholarly investigation.  For those who read the Bible as a devotional, my comments might not make much difference (although I hope they will at least spur you to reflection).

Most of us aren’t aware of the large amount of scared literature that was in circulation from the age of the prophets to the end of the first century.  We think that our present-day collection in the Bible is the extent of what ancient communities considered “God’s word.”  But scholarship and archeology prove otherwise.  Our canon is a distillation, a reduction, in the sources that were part of ancient religious communities.  Some of those other documents are lost.  Some still exist in the halls of academic study.  Some have been published (e.g., Charlesworth’s The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the material of the Dead Sea scrolls).  All of this calls into question our belief that the “word of the Lord” we have today is the same as the words ancient believers followed.

We could simply acknowledge this and move on, satisfied that what we have is sufficient, and, theologically, not essentially different than what they had.  We have all heard Christian exegetes claim that even though there may be slight differences in the manuscripts, there are no substantial differences in the theology.  Of course, that claim usually includes doctrines like the Trinity, original sin, and the replacement of Israel, all of which can be overturned with the same texts.  One wonders what would become of these theological positions if we incorporated all of the sacred texts that the ancients had (e.g., the impact of 1 Enoch on the “Son of Man” in the gospel of Matthew).

With this in mind, two citations from Bowley and Reeves are crucial:

“Instead of measuring all biblically allied or affiliated literatures against ‘the Bible’ and then assigning labels like ‘expanded Bible,’ ‘rewritten Bible,’ ‘paraphrased Bible,’ ‘distorted Bible,’ and the like to those renditions which depart textually and/or thematically from ‘the Bible’ of the Masoretes, we should rather consider the bulk of this material, both biblical and non-biblical, as a single culturally variegated literary continuum which juxtaposes a number of alternative or parallel ways of recounting a particular story or tradition.”[1]

“S. Talmon has eloquently endorsed just such an interpretive position: ‘The new evidence proves convincingly that not all variants in Hebrew non-masoretic and translational witnesses resulted from scribal mistakes or the deliberate interference of emendators, revisers and copyists. Rather, variants in an ancient version preserve at times pristine readings which were accidentally lost in the course of time or were designedly suppressed by later tradents. Accordingly, in tracing the transmission history of the biblical books and submitting them to critical analysis, the evidence of the ancient versions must be carefully weighed.’ He states further: ‘… it is my thesis that the presumably ‘re-told,’ ‘re-read,’ ‘re-written,’ etc. Bible-related works should mostly be viewed as crystallizations of ‘living’ literary traditions, which parallel presentations of these same traditions in the books of the Hebrew Bible, but do not necessarily spring from them.’”[2]

What does this mean?  First, it means that our “Bible” isn’t the same as the “Bibles” of the ancient followers of YHVH, not simply because we have more material than they had (e.g., the Gospels) but because we have less material than they had.  Their view of inspired and sacred texts was a continuum of literature with various perspectives, different believing communities, and occasionally divergent theological perspectives.  It all mattered.  In fact, until nearly the end of the first century, Jewish believers did not have a “canon.”  That was first and foremost a Christian invention.  Given the large amount of material excluded by canonization, one must ask, “Why was it so important to restrict the believers’ resources?”  The answer, I’m afraid, has more to do with Church politics than with divine revelation.

Second, we should recognize that the believing community decides what texts they follow, not some authoritative body of religious “professionals.”  Inspiration is what inspires, not necessarily what fits the Church’s agenda or doctrines (or the synagogue, for that matter).  Our objective is to incorporate as much of the ethos, culture, and texts of the original communities as we can—and that means looking outside the official canon.

Finally, this means that we will find differences, divergence, and in some instances, contradictions.  But it’s okay.  We know that the Masoretes attempted more than simply adding vowel pointing to the text.  They wanted standardization (what is essentially an early form of canonization).  They wanted everyone to read the same words in the same way.  But the variety of the texts resists this—and it still does if we stop looking at the “Bible” with theological blinders.

Explore!  Expand!  Extrapolate!  Energize your faith!  Raise your head and look beyond those sixty-six books into the world of faith.  You might be refreshed and invigorated.

Topical Index: Bible, canon, word of the Lord, Psalm 18:30

[1] James E. Bowley and John C. Reeves, “RETHINKING THE CONCEPT OF ‘BIBLE’: SOME THESES AND PROPOSALS,” HENOCH, VOL. XXV, 2003, p. 8.

[2] Shemaryahu Talmom, “Textual Criticism: The Ancient Versions,” in Text in Context: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study(ed. A.D.H. Mayes; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 141-70, at pp. 149-50 and 157 respectively.  Cited in James E. Bowley and John C. Reeves, “RETHINKING THE CONCEPT OF ‘BIBLE’: SOME THESES AND PROPOSALS,” HENOCH, VOL. XXV, 2003, p. 8.