What is the Bible?
Part 5
How We Got “the Bible” – The Often-Untold Story
Having served as a
teaching pastor for almost 40 years in churches throughout North America it seems
to me that most Christians think, or at least act as if, the Bible came to us
out of heaven in its present form; that is, the 39 books of the Old Testament
and the 27 books of the New Testament. My experience indicates that very few
are aware of the realities of how the Bible came to be the collection of texts
that it is.
This makes some sense,
especially for those who hold to the conviction that “inspiration” equals
“inerrancy.” How the biblical books were brought together into the collection
we call the Bible is not concerning to those believers because their conviction
is that God inerrantly inspired the original writings (i.e., the autographs)
and then providentially protected and personally directed (via the Holy Spirit)
the processes of copying, transmission, preservation, canonization and
translation of each of the 66 texts (in the Protestant Bible). They acknowledge
that God used human beings every step along the way but are confident that he
providentially ensured the integrity and accuracy of their efforts. However, it
is important to note that this is a faith statement; one that I made and spoke
about with great conviction for three-quarters of my Christian journey. The
problem for me was that, for many years, I only read (or listened to) preachers
and biblical scholars who trusted wholeheartedly in the inerrancy of the biblical
texts. Thus, I only exposed myself to the evidence that, on the surface, seemed
to unequivocally support such a belief. I had all the ad hominem
arguments[1]
required to, out-of-hand, reject the so-called evidence of the “liberal scholars.”
However, fifteen years
ago, as I consciously chose to listen, as objectively as I could, to biblical
scholars of all stripes, it became clear to me that the processes of copying,
transmitting, preserving, canonizing and translation of each of the 66 texts of
the Protestant Bible demonstrates clearly the evidence of human involvement. As
we’ve already seen in this series of posts, we do not have anything even close
(in time) to autographs of any book of the Bible. What we do have are copies of
copies of copies that date, for most biblical texts, to hundreds of years later
than their originals and these copies are not identical to one another. In
fact, for some books, the manuscript copies we have are clearly quite diverse.
By the first century CE, we know from both the Dead Sea Scrolls and quotations
from the Hebrew scriptures found in the New Testament that Jews and Christians
were aware of, and utilizing, these divergent manuscripts. They did not seem to
be phased by the fact that the texts they held with respect existed in multiple
versions, which were sometimes quite divergent. We also know that the list of
texts that were considered authoritative varied from group-to-group and that
the “canons of scripture” were not set in stone until the early second century
CE (Hebrew Bible), the late fourth century CE (Catholic Bible), the sixth century
CE (Orthodox Bible) and the sixteenth century CE (Protestant Bible)!
How we got the
collections of books we call “the Bible” today (i.e., “canonization”) is a
complex and convoluted process about which we can mostly only speculate. In the
next post, I will briefly summarize what scholars believe to be the key steps
along the way. Whether or not, by faith, we choose to believe that God
providentially guided the process, the historical realities demonstrate clearly
the evidence of human fingerprints and DNA.
For those who are interested,
here are a number of brief summaries of the canonization process, written by
reputable Bible scholars that are worth your time.[2]
· Marc Zvi Brettler, “The
Canonization of the Bible,” in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele
Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
2072–2077.
· Michael Coogan, The
Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 7–11, 127–129.
· Marc Zvi Bretter and Pheme
Perkins, “The Canons of the Bible,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible:
New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, 4th
edition, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 2185–2190.
· Luke Timothy Johnson, The
New Testament: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 114–121.
· Michael R. Greenwald, “The
Canon of the New Testament,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New
Revised Standard Version, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),
557–560.
[1] Ad hominem (Latin for "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious
argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is
avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the
person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather
than attacking the substance of the argument itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
[2] The “A Very Short Introduction” Series
is generally excellently written, brief and relatively inexpensive, especially
in their Kindle Book version. The Study Bibles cited here are worth the price
for the sake not only of the introductions and notes for each book of the
Bible, but for the excellent array of short essays, maps and other
illustrations.
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