01 Chapter I The Origin and Growth of the Bible

Chapter I The Origin and Growth of the Bible study of the origin, of the Bible begins with definitions. The Bible, according to a contemporary dictionary, is the collection of books which Christians accept as divinely inspired and as possessing divine authority. Of these two elements inspiration and authority it is authority which is the more distinctive of the Bible. The Bible is Bible as an authoritative book; any separate book became Bible when its inspiration was recognized as ’ of such a quality as to give it authority. The study of the origin and development of the Bible as Bible is therefore limited to the study of books accepted as / inspired and authoritative.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN LITERATURE AND CANON

It is equally legitimate to study the books of the Bible as books. This study of the literature tries to answer such questions as: Who was the author of the book? When was it written? Where was it written?

What sources did the author use? etc. Such questions reach back beyond the existence of the books as Bible to the time when they existed simply as religious books. The discussion of this literary criticism of the Bible is postponed until the origin of the acceptance of the books as authoritative has been investigated. In technical jargon the study of the literary problems of the Bible is called “Introduction” short for “Introduction to Biblical Literature” and the study of the Bible as authoritative is called the “study of the canon.” It is this canonization of the Scriptures that is studied in this chapter. The word “canon” is used with a bewildering variety of meanings. It may refer to a support for bells, a bone in a horse’s foreleg, a cathedral official, an ecclesiastical law, etc. In terms of Bible study it

V usually indicates the books accepted as authoritative by the church; that is, it is used as a loose synonym for Bible. But it has other meanings here also. It is used to mean a list of the sacred books; e.g, the Muratorian canon is a Roman list of books accepted by the church about A.D. 180. It is used also of a group of books within the Bible; the manuals speak of “the prophetic canon,” “the gospel canon,” etc. And in a very broad sense the word “canon” is used to cover the study of the origin and growth of the Bible as Bible; here it is really shorthand for canonization.

Before the student is equipped to face the basic problems involved in a study of how the books of the Bible became sacred, he must assimilate the fact that the literature existed before it was canonized. The existence of the books as nonsacred through a period preceding their acceptance by the cult as authoritative literature has important implications for the study of the canon. It makes impossible the simple assumption that the Jewish people (or the Christian church) rushed to read and obey each new volume before the ink was dry.

We who were born into a church which has reverenced the Scriptures for centuries find it hard to lay aside this casual acceptance of the Bible and see the problems that exist. There have been four gospels in the New Testament since we first saw it but why four? why not three? or five? or, better yet, why not one? Why two testaments? Why didn’t the Christians expand the Jewish Scriptures instead of adding a new volume? How could the Christian church exist for a century without a distinctive Christian canon?

Why do the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Old Testaments differ in contents? When and why was the Old Testament Apocrypha dropped from the printings of the English Bible? Has the church ever limited inspiration to the Bible and refused to recognize it elsewhere? These questions are examples of the basic and baffling problems that face the student of the canon. They show clearly that the student must be constantly alert to overcome his familiarity with the Bible, to recognize problems when he meets them, and to travel back into the past back of the days when there was a Bible.

Most of the Bible was not written as Bible, nor did its first readers read it as Bible. When Paul wrote to his churches, he was so far from expecting that his letters would be accepted as equal in authority to the Jewish Scriptures that he sometimes despaired of having his wishes carried out. After writing a harsh letter to the Corinthians, he worries so much over how it will be received that he cannot rest but starts toward Corinth to meet his messenger as soon as possible and learn the fate of his letter. When he writes to Philemon about his slave Onesimus, he bolsters up this appeal by referring to it in a letter to a church group. The fiery, almost desperate, tone of his letter to the Galatian churches springs from the hope but not from the certainty of converting them to his position. These are not the attitudes of a man conscious of writing sacred scripture and sure of its acceptance as authoritative. No more dramatic demonstration of the nonsacred character of these writings in their early form can be found than the story of the book which Jeremiah dictated to Baruch to be read before all the people. As the story is told in chapter 36 of Jeremiah’s prophecy, it is plain that some of the leaders of the people were terrified by what was written in the book; but the king the Lord’s anointed was unmoved by its message, cut it in pieces, and threw it into the fire. This dramatic rejection is the more interesting in that the book was a deliberate attempt to influence the cult group and was written by an individual who held a recognized position in the life of the cult.

Another instance may be found in the Book of Amos. The only narrative in this short but vigorous prophecy relates a stormy interview between the royal priest and the prophet, in which the prophet is ordered out of the country. It is quite plain from this story that there was no overwhelming desire on the part of king and priest in Israel to accept the message of Amos as divinely authoritative. Somewhere between 750 B.C. and 200 (?) B.C, the Book of Amos acquired authority; and the exact period (if there was any exact period) was certainly closer to the later than the earlier date. Thus, this book must have existed for more than four centuries before it was accepted as part of the authoritative religious literature of the Jewish people. In the case of those sections of the Bible which had a long preliterary existence, the interval between creation and canonization was even longer. Much of the older material in the Old Testament has a remote past as folklore, poetry, story, and song. For example, it is generally agreed that the major part of the content of the Book of Judges is much older than the book in which we read it. The author, or editor, who compiled our book has such a distinctive and repetitious style that it is easy even for the novice to see the earlier elements within the framework. One of the oldest and most famous of these sections is the Song of Deborah, which may go back to the twelfth century B.C. It is a sweeping, partisan, brutal song of war and victory and exultation over the enemy a true war song. Our Book of Judges was written toward the end of the fifth century B.C. and was accepted as scripture by 200 (?) B.C. In the seven hundred years that Deborah’s Song was sung by Jewish patriots, was it accepted as an authoritative religious guide by the cult as a cult? To ask the question is to answer it with a negative.

Examples of this sort could be multiplied until the reader was lulled to sleep by their monotony. There are large areas in the Pentateuch whose composition is separated from their acceptance by an interval of many centuries. This is true also of most of the other books of the Old Testament. Sometimes in them we catch glimpses of the literature before our literature.

There are quotations from, and references to, other books; e.g, the Book of Jasher is quoted, but no one supposes that Jasher was ever regarded as an authoritative volume in the sense that Genesis later was.

Even some of the latest books in the Old Testament e.g, Chronicles give evidence of using ancient volumes as sources. The existence of these ancient books behind our biblical books shows how long a pre-biblical history much of the Bible had.

It is clear from even this sampling of the literature that the origin of the canon is not to be found in the study of the origin of the individual books as books. The process we study here is a secondary one. First, the literature is produced, used, edited, collected, reedited; then, after a longer or a shorter interval of time, it is accepted by the cult as sacred and authoritative as Bible.

WHY HAVE A BIBLE? But why? Why was it ever accepted as Bible? This is the basic and most baffling problem in the history of the canon. It must not be lightly assumed that the production and acceptance of a sacred authoritative book is inevitable in every cult simply because it is a cult. It is easy for a religion to exist without a book.

Many religions have so existed; some still do. One of the most vigorous competitors of Christianity in the Roman empire was the cult of the sun god Mithras. It swept through the legions and spread rapidly to the frontiers of the empire, yet it was in no sense a book religion. The answer to the question, “Why have a Bible?” must, therefore, b~e sought in some of the characteristic features of Jewish religion and life. The remote distance at which the process of canonization began adds to the difficulty of answering this primal question. The reason for later developments and for the formation of new canons is determined with relative ease; for in these later areas we have, as one influential element in the situation, the presence of the first sacred collection, and the amount of contemporary evidence as to the process increases as the story approaches modern times. It is easy to say why Mohammed produced an authoritative book for his cult, but the activity of pious Jews in the seventh century B.C. follows no well-known precedent and is shrouded in the obscurity of antiquity. The movement toward the creation of an authoritative religious literature rose out of the conception of the nation as the chosen people of a particular deity. Since this conception was not peculiar to Israel and existed in other nations before the Exodus, the ultimate source of the canon lies in the early history of cultures that were old before the Hebrews came to the promised land. If the nation exists in an intimate reciprocal relationship to the deity, it naturally follows that the laws of the nation are God’s laws and that the history of the nation is sacred history. Furthermore, the deity would not be so thoughtless of his people as to cut them off from the prospect of receiving additional messages from him as occasion demanded. Throughout the ancient world prophets appeared who spoke for God, whose words had a degree of sanctity derived from the source from which they came. It was, therefore, not only possible but natural that codes of law, books of history, and sermons of the prophets should attain to some measure of sanctity. A concrete representation of this is to be seen on.the Susa stele found in A.D. 1901 and written about 2000 B.C. Here the Babylonian king Hammurabi is shown in bas-relief, standing on a mountain top before his god, who hands him the laws inscribed beneath them. Several of the precepts of this code are strikingly parallel to items in the Code of the Covenant (Exodus 20:23; Exodus 23:19); e.g, the demand of an eye for an eye and the prescriptions as to liability for damages incurred by the owner of a goring ox. Thus the code of Hammurabi and the covenant code in Exodus alike possessed some degree of divine authority from the day of their codification at least. But their early users were still far from regarding them as part of a Bible.

CANONS ARE ADOPTED IN CRISES

Some light is shed on the origin of the Bible as Bible by the study of certain characteristics which are common to the various specific situations in which formal canonization emerges. One of these common elements is the presence of strife between parties within the cult. At least from the time when the Hebrew people settled in Canaan, there was conflict between the rigorous religion they brought with them from the desert which we later call “prophetic” and the softer cult of the people of the land with their Baalim. The influence of the Canaanite religion upon that of the Hebrews was ancient, strong, and persistent. One of the recent archeological discoveries emphasizes the extent of its influence upon even the early ritual. Our biblical history is written from the prophetic and priestly viewpoint; thus those kings are good who keep the cult “pure,” and those are bad who favor and foster Canaanitish elements and practices. One of the worst kings in this regard was Manasseh, who ruled in the first half of the seventh century B.C. He restored and enriched the hillside shrines and favored the Canaanitish elements in the cult. A few years after the death of Manasseh, the prophetic party greatly influenced his grandson, King Josiah. This influence culminated in the reforms of 621 B.C, which consisted of the abolition of all shrines except the temple in Jerusalem and the adoption of a book found in the temple as a religious authority for the people. This book with its anti-Canaanitish emphasis was written by some leader of the opposition to Manasseh in the dark days before Josiah came to the throne. This explains the rigorous nature of the legislation the destruction of all shrines but one.

Josiah’s acceptance of the teachings of the party opposed to Amon and Manasseh could not be transferred to the mass of the people as a casual or routine matter. The ruthless nature of the reversal of policy and the destruction of all shrines outside Jerusalem must have stirred the people deeply and unsettled many. In that time of disquiet the change was supported by a new authority the adoption of a sacred book. Scholars identify this book as the core of the present Book of Deuteronomy.

Another example of the emergence of formal canonization in situations marked by strife within the cult can be seen in the story of the New Testament canon in the second century A.D. In this century the vitality of the new cult was too exuberant to be stereotyped by the elementary controls that the church possessed at that time. The result was that division followed division in rapid succession: Docetism, Gnosticism, the Marcionite schism, Montanism. The second century has been well called the blossom time of the sects. The strongest of these sects, or heresies, was that led by Marcion. About the middle of the century, he attempted to convert the Ephesian and then the Roman church to his views. When he failed, he organized his followers into Marcionite churches.

He bitterly attacked the Old Testament, claiming that it was not inspired by the Father of Jesus but by an inferior deity. He claimed to be a true representative of the apostles, especially of Paul (the only true representative of Jesus); and he supplied his churches with a New Testament consisting of “Gospel and Apostle” (Luke and Paul) to replace the Old Testament. Thus he set an ancient authority (ancient in Christian history) which had already acquired some prestige, over against the authority of local ecclesiastical officials the bishop and presbyters of Rome and of other cities. Within a generation of his arrival at Rome, the Roman church set up a definite list of books which it accepted as authoritative. This earliest list of New Testament books, called the “Muratorian canon,” emerges in a situation characterized by strife within the cult.

CANONS ARE ADOPTED UNDER POLITICAL PRESSURE A second element common to the various situations in which the formal acceptance of the canon takes place is the presence of pressure upon the cult arising from the association of the cult with political life. This can be seen both in times of disaster and in times of triumph. The classic example from days of disaster is the “closing” of the Old Testament canon in Palestinian Judaism. Jerusalem had been captured by the Romans in the year 70, and the temple ritual abolished by the destruction of the temple. This mortal blow to the existence of the Jewish people in the sacred land raised questions of many kinds in regard to the continuing life of the cult. The leaders of the synagogue faced the trying situation and put forth desperate efforts to establish and strengthen the remaining resources of the cult.

One of the most valuable of these resources was the Sacred Book, which at that time consisted of three collections of books the Law, the Prophets, and the other writings. The first two were definite in content and accepted beyond question; the third group had no sharpness of outline, and about some books the question of inclusion or omission was a very live one. The weakening of the religion consequent to the disaster of A.D. 70 made this uncertainty as to the exact limits of the Bible intolerable; and the rabbis of Palestine began an intensive discussion of the Bible’s contents which led ultimately to agreement on its exact limits. In the second century B.C. the strenuous efforts of King Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria to stamp out the religion of his Jewish subjects introduced a period of conflict between cult and state of great significance for the canon. The attack was begun before the days of Antiochus, for the attractive features of Hellenism had drawn many Jews away from their loyalty to their own cult. The critical nature of the situation when Antiochus threw the military power of the state against Judaism cannot be overemphasized. Pious Jews did not underestimate the danger; under the military leadership of Judas and his family they repulsed invaders, threw off the Syrian yoke, and attained an approximate independence. Since the Syrian persecution deliberately singled out the sacred books of the Jews for destruction, and even forbade the reading of the Scriptures, it was important to know which books were Scriptures. This situation made a vital issue of the exact definition of the Bible’s contents. From it, in all probability, came the impetus to the final definition of the prophetic canon, the second division of the Jewish Bible.

Although we know little of the details of the action, there can be no doubt that Jewish leaders found in their military victories a victory for Torah, too. It is perhaps an oversimplification of the processes to point out that the three great national disasters of Israel (i) the Babylonian captivity, (a) the Syrian persecution, and (3) the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans are followed in turn by the closing of the three divisions of the Jewish Bible (i) the Law (2) the Prophets, and (3) the Writings. The pressure exerted upon the cult in regard to the formation of the canon by the association of the cult with political life was equally strong in days oftriumph. Early in the fourth century A.D, Christianity won tolerance and favor from the Emperor Constantine; and in A.D. 380 Theodosius I proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the state. That Constantine’s recognition sprang from a desire to strengthen the unity of the empire is shown by the strenuous efforts he made to bring the dissident groups of the church into harmony. Dislike of heresy (that is, of division) in the dominant cult of the realm has characterized other able rulers since Constantine; Theodosius’ denial to heretics of the right to make bequests indicates plainly the value he attached to a united church. That the pressure toward unification which the state brought to bear upon the church throughout the fourth century affected canon as well 1 as doctrine is certain, for the value of canon as a source of doctrine was unquestioned. It is not chance coincidence that this century which saw the church become the one religion of the state saw the church agree on one canon. That this agreement was still far from unanimous is true; it would, perhaps, be more accurate to say that the degree of agreement here reached its high point. The exaltation of the church at the right hand of the emperor takes place in the period which sees the Christian canon formally completed.

WHAT BOOKS ARE TO BE INCLUDED? The question raised above Why a Bible? is partly answered by the fact that in the crucial situations (like those described above) there was at hand a body of literature which had already acquired some prestige. This prestige was in part due to the antiquity of the literature at the time of its canonization. In the Roman Catholic church today no person is canonized until at least fifty years after the date of death. In the history of the growth of the Bible, the interval between the writing of a book and its canonization was always greater than that or was believed to be so. The first codes of laws to acquire prestige claim Moses as their author and are written against the birth of the Hebrew people (the Exodus) as a background. In the Christian Testament, literature that went back to Jesus and his circle gained prestige from the tremendous significance of Jesus for the church. From the moment of the resurrection appearances, Jesus loomed so large on the stage of Christian history that the Gospels, for example, from the time they were written possessed importance from the fact that they told about Jesus.

But, in the longer span of Old Testament history especially, the preceding point does not explain how these books came to be preserved long enough to acquire the sanctity of antiquity. The origin of the canon is not explained by quoting the venerable saying about religion’s habit of sanctifying everything more than five hundred years old, for the puzzling query still remains, “How did these books acquire enough prestige to attain such an advanced age?” The sanctity ascribed to a book as Bible was first, and most naturally ascribed to cult prescriptions. In Exodus, chapter 34, an ancient code describes the covenant made between Jahweh and Moses and contains a decalogue which is entirely cultic. Its ritual legislation prescribes the feast of unleavened bread, the offering of first-born males (except the first-born of an ass or of man), the Sabbath rest, the feast of weeks, the feast of ingathering at the year’s end, the use of unleavened bread, and the offering of the first of the crop. It forbids leaving the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover until the morning and boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. ’It is easily seen that prescriptions and proscriptions of this sort would early acquire a sacred authority from the intimacy of their association with the rites of the cult.

It is no accident that the first code formally accepted by the Jews as Bible (the Deuteronomic code) ’ included laws controlling the location of the temple, the observance of the religious festivals, the paying of tithes, etc. This code itself acquires antiquity and prestige through its ascription to Moses and the quotation of older laws, beginning with the Ten Commandments. Many of its prescriptions are much older * than 621 B.C.; Deuteronomy simply transfers the location of their observance from the country shrines to Jerusalem. The transference was due to the contemporary crisis; the prescriptions had already acquired antiquity through the vitality and conservatism of cult practice. But the services rendered to the cult by religious; books were not all of a liturgical nature. Other elements than liturgy survive or recur from generation; to generation. The problems met by one individual in his lifetime are not entirely and uniquely his own. Some of the righteous are poor and afflicted ih every generation; so many of the good persist in dying young that they have created a proverb. Neither false friends nor scolding wives are modern inventions, nor is the divorce of the wife of one’s youth a new device of the shyster lawyer of today. Short weights and measures and the exploitation of labor have ancient precedents. Religious books that championed the good life and tackled these problems interested more than one generation; the cult found enough value in them to keep them alive.

Liturgy and personal morality by no means exhaust the areas served through successive generations by religious books, but these two are significant examples of the values which won survival for the religious book in its precanonical days. Thus the first answer given to the question, “What books?” is, “A book already ancient, already revered from intimate association with the cult or from the enduring service of recurrent needs, and useful to the dominant element in the cult in days of crisis.” The question, “What books are to be included?” has often been answered too simply by saying, “those books which were read in public worship, whether of synagogue or church.” I say “too simply,” for there are books in the canon that were not read in the synagogue or the church service. The books of the Writings, or Hagiographa, the third section of the Old Testament canon, were not read in the synagogue service. That is to say, in the formal systems of lections for Sabbath reading throughout the year, no use was made of the Writings; the use of the five rolls in connection with the festivals is hardly analogous. The Revelation of John was not read in church service in early Christian days; the lection aries of the Orthodox church derive no lections from it. There are Gospel lectionaries and Apostle (Acts and Epistles) lectionaries, but no Apocalypse lectionaries. Not only are there books in the canon that were not read in church but there are some books that were read in synagogue or church only after they were accepted as canonical. Does anyone imagine that the Deuteronomic code was read in sacred service for a long time and thus became Bible? Of course not. Throughout the entire history of the development of the Jewish Bible it is difficult to establish clearly the chronological order of synagogue reading and canonization.

Moreover, some books were read in church services and probably also in the synagogue that never became part of the Bible. At an early point in the development of the liturgy, the stories of the martyrs were read in church service; they are still being read in the appropriate services of the ancient communions; but they are not in the Bible. Nor can any clear case be made for the claim that they ever came near to sanctity. The letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians is another instance of widespread and long-continued church reading which did not lead to canonization. Eusebius (Church History iii. 16) makes a strong statement as to this use of I Clement: “It has been read publicly before the congregation in very many churches from a long time ago, and [is so read], in our own time.” At least one important book, the Psalter, obtained its place not because it was read in synagogue or church but because it was sung in the temple at Jerusalem. This intimate association with the ritual of the cult gave it a prestige great enough to lead to its inclusion in the Jewish Bible after the Law and the Prophets were closed. It is quite probable that it was the importance of the Psalter that kept the Old Testament canon open after the collection of the Prophets had been completed. It led the way to the forming of the third group the Writings to be added to the Law and the Prophets. The primal importance of the Psalms in this area is shown by the way it dominates references to the Scripture outside the Law and the Prophets in the early Christian period. In fact, the only New Testament reference to the Old Testament which mentions the three sections refers to them as “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” Whether this be taken as an indication that the Psalter alone had been added to the Law and Prophets at this time, or it be assumed that a group of the Writings is referred to under the name of the Psalter, it is clear that the Psalter holds the leading position in this group.

BOOKS ARE ADOPTED IN GROUPS The selection of books for the Bible proceeded in waves, in the acceptance of a group of books at a time. Thus the Old Testament contains three groups: (i) the Law the Pentateuch; (2) the Prophets Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve “minor” prophets; (3) the Writings Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Esther, Ruth, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles and often other books in addition. The New Testament is essentially a twofold canon containing (i) the Gospel our four; (2) the Apostle the’ rest of the New Testament. But it must not be assumed that there are five groups within the Christian canon because the makers of the canon, those responsible for formal adoption, chose certain groups as groups. The groups did not exist as groups until their adoption. Each adoption was intended to be final. When the Law was canonized, it was not canonized as “Part I” of the Bible but as the Bible. The Law became a section of the Bible a group of books within the Bible only when more books were added. The Old Testament is no older than the New Testament, for before the New Testament was canonized, the Old Testament was the Bible. When the prophetic books were canonized, they were not chosen as a group from various rival groups of books but rather as a collection of all the books that were worthy of canonization. Thus each extension of the canon involved a rejection of books not included, a negative judgment on their value. And the possibility must not be overlooked that strong dislike of some recent religious writings or oral effusions may have been one of the immediate causes of the canonization of older works.

Every group of books accepted acted as a bar to the acceptance of other books of the same type or date. The acceptance of the Torah meant that no more legal codes would be accepted as such; and, in fact, Esther and Ezekiel were attacked because they did not harmonize with the laws of the Pentateuch. The acceptance of a group of prophetic writings practically closed the door to additional prophecies. From that moment on, no new prophecy could be accepted as authoritative. It was the general recognition of the fact that a definite group of prophecies had been accepted as Bible that led to the formulation of the dogma that prophecy was dead. This teaching arose from the closing of the second section of the canon, not from the disappearance of prophets and prophecy in Israel. The writings of Josephus, the New Testament itself, and the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha with their frequent references to prophets and prophecy, all clearly show that prophecy was still vital in Jewish religion in the first century B.C. and in the first century A.D.

After the closing of the prophetic canon, prophets wrote “prophecies” (apocalypses) in which the author borrows the mantle of some ancient worthy so that his book may reach back of the closing of the prophetic canon into a period when authoritative books of prophecy could still be written. The strong opposition to the inclusion of Daniel sprang from the fact that it won importance as a prophecy after the prophetic canon was closed. It was only when its disguise was accepted at face value that this prophecy was reluctantly included. That is to say, its claims to being an ancient work could only be accepted after the date of its appearance was forgotten, and it had to be accepted as ancient before it was accepted as prophetic. The argument over whether or not a disputed book of the Writings is “prophetic” is thus seen to rest on the determination of date. The same thing is true in the use of the term “apostolic” in New Testament controversy. For better or for worse, the second century A.D. saw the Christian churches accepting apostolicity as the test of a book’s right to a place in the canon. But to be apostolic a book had to be (relatively) old. Thus the Muratorian list (A.D. 180-2,00) rejects the Shepherd of Hermas, an apocalypse (prophecy). The reasons given are that it was written quite recently, “in our own times”; that it cannot be included with the Prophets, whose number is complete, or with the apostolic group since Hermas has just appeared.

How were groups of books collected, and the collection closed? The collecting began as a natural, that is, a spontaneous, movement; it ended in some formal authoritative action. For example, there can be little doubt that the captivity in Babylon led to a new appreciation of the message of Jeremiah. In a sense the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile confirmed his preaching. From the reading of Jeremiah to the reading of other prophets of doom was a natural and easy step. The collection grew slowly and irregularly from the exile to the second century B.C, as the Jewish people found inspiration and encouragement in the writings of these vigorous preachers of righteousness. The closing of this particular collection is shrouded in obscurity. The explanation often heard that the dying-out of prophecy finally led to the acceptance of these surviving prophetic books will not bear careful scrutiny, as we have shown above. A more probable situation for the formal closing of the prophetic canon existed in the Maccabean period after Antiochus’ attack on the Scripture had been beaten back. In the absence of direct evidence it is dangerous to speculate on the action that closed the prophetic canon. Yet it seems clear that it was closed not only out of reverence for the old prophets but also out of fear and dislike of the new ones. The post-Exilic period is one in which the priest and the scribe attain an ever increasing importance in the cult; they are themselves officialized and institutionalized the one in connection with the temple; the other, with the synagogue. That their leaders came to depreciate contemporary prophecy, always inclining toward independence of established authority, was natural. That had happened in the days of Amos; it happened in Jesus’ day; it probably happened in Jerusalem in the Ptolemaic period. The fanatical extravagance and independence of some “prophets” in the late third century B.C, or Jin the turbulent days of the Maccabees, was probably part of the cause of the official closing of the prophetic canon; and the closing was probably made official by the willing co-operation of the priesthood.

Toward the end of the second century A.D. the Christian church went through a similar experience. The Montanist movement placed a high value on spirit guidance and prophecy. These prophets set their direct inspiration over against the prestige slowly built up by local bishops and by earlier writings. That the officials of the church in this situation referred to the closed nature of the prophetic canon was natural; that they used the growing prestige of the apostles to shut out these books was equally natural; and in the Muratorian canon’s treatment of the Prophecy of Hermas we have an example of this exelusion in action. Ultimately, all prophecies but one were excluded from the New Testament; the inclusion of that one was due to its claim of apostolic authorship. This ultimate canon was, of course, a canon promulgated by councils and ecclesiastics. This was true also as we have already noted of the closing of the canon of the Writings in the Old Testament, closed for Palestinian Jews by the pronouncements of rabbis. The first canonical book was officially accepted by the people under the leadership of king and priest. All later books canonized came to their final acceptance in a closed collection through some official action. Yet the official action, generally speaking, is no more than the ratification of a popular choice manifested by the continuing use of the books in the private devotions of the individual as well as in cult usage. Let this fact be emphasized as it deserves (and it is the most important validation of the canon to the modern man), it must still be remembered that the acceptance of the same list of books by the vast majority of the membership of a cult is historically incredible without some formal authorization.

WHY DO CANONS VARY? The books chosen were not always the same; in fact, a brief survey of any elementary introduction to the canon leaves one with the impression that they were never the same. The amount of this variation may be indicated by the extreme and yet accurate statement that exactly the same Bible (as to books included) was never accepted at any one time by all the believers in the cult. The church member today is aware that there is some sort of difference in content between Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles; the student in college and seminary has a faint and accurate idea that there was an equal difference in the contents of the Jewish canon as it existed for the Jew of Palestine and the Jew of Alexandria in A.D. 30. It is not our purpose here to list all the known differences in Bibles’ contents the lists can be easily found in the books referred to in the bibliography but rather to raise as sharply as possible a question as to the reason for this variation and to suggest some of the possible answers.

Sometimes the difference in canonical lists is due to what may be called “historical accident.” Under this none-too-satisfactory heading various incidents and influences may be grouped; the discussion of examples will make the meaning of the term clearer than a wordy definition could hope to do. The Samaritans pride themselves on being the true Israel; their Sacred Scripture contains the Pentateuch and nothing else. The present tense is used in speaking of them because they still exist (although in dwindling numbers) as a distinct sect in Palestine. The division between Jews and Samaritans became final and irreconcilable in the days of Alexander the Great. The Pentateuch had been formally accepted by the Jewish people about a generation earlier; the Samaritans, therefore, naturally carried the Scripture with them in their separation from the Jews of Jerusalem. The propinquity and similarities between these two rival cults generated such bitterness that any transfer of sacred books adopted by the Jews after the split was an impossibility. Ill will began between the groups in Samaritan opposition to Jewish innovations, although the Jewish leaders regarded their work as reform and return to older patterns. This conservatism prevented the growth of the Samaritan canon; but, had the schism been delayed a century and a half, the Samaritan canon would consist of the Law and the Prophets.

Another example of the influence of “historical accidents” upon the process of canonization can be seen in the case of the Book of Esther. Esther was read in connection with the feast of Purim by the Jews of the Dispersion within a short time of its composition. But the Palestinian Jews celebrated as an important religious festival Judas Maccabaeus’ victory over Nicanor on the very day on which the Jews of the Dispersion first celebrated the feast of Purim: Consequently, this feast (Purim) did not enter Palestine until some centuries after its establishment. As a secondary consequence, since Esther gained religious prestige from being read in connection with the observance of Purim, Esther was accepted as canonical much sooner outside Palestine than inside Palestine.

But, if Judas had attacked Nicanor a day or a week sooner

Differences in content sprang also from the absence of a critical situation and consequent formal canonization in one part of the world and its presence in another section. We have already seen that the Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 were influential in leading to the closing of the scriptural canon in Palestine. But there was in the Dispersion no analogous crisis involving the Bible, and as a result the canon was not formally closed in the Dispersion at this time. Hence the extra-Palestinian Bible contained from eight to a dozen books not in the Scriptures accepted in the Holy Land.

We have seen that the irritating influence of Marcion and his creation of a New Testament at Rome did much to make the Roman church aware of the need of an authoritative pronouncement on the Bible. It was in large measure the presence of this aggressive and capable schismatic that made Rome conservative on the matter of the contents of the Bible. How would the story of the canon read today if Marcion had gone to the city of Alexandria instead of to Rome?

There was also a difference in the rate at which books were accepted as authoritative by the churches in the important cities, on the one hand, and the churches of the backwoods districts, the hinterland, on the other. The big cities were often in closer touch with one another than they were with the small churches scattered through the adjacent rural sections. One could travel easily and rapidly from city to city especially the cities on or near the Mediterranean Sea. In the big cities local judgment was easily influenced by the decisions made in other important churches; thus their canons at least kept within sight of one another. But in the backwoods the small amount of intercommunication left the local or sectional church more independent in its choice. As a result, the churches of these areas either lagged behind the majority in accepting new books as canon (as was the case in Syria outside Antioch) or continued to accept books unchecked by outside criticism (as was the case in Ethiopia and, to some extent, in Armenia).

These facts may be covered by the generalization [ that some areas were more cautious or conservative I in the matter of canonization than others. The outlying districts of Syria were more conservative than Antioch; Palestinian Judaism than the Diaspora; Rome than Alexandria. The conservatism of the Syrian territory is seen in both Old Testament and New Testament. Its Old Testament did not include Chronicles; through the fourth century its New Testament included neither Catholic Epistles nor Apocalypse. But, as Chrysostom’s usage shows, the city of Antioch had already accepted three of the Catholic letters: James, I Peter, and I John. This conservatism of Syria was in accord with the conservatism of Palestine in regard to the Old Testament canon. The canon as adopted in Palestine toward the end of the first century was identical with that of the present-day Protestant Old Testament. At that time there was still some hesitation as to the acceptance of even some of these books Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, and the Song of Songs. Jews outside of Palestine were much freer in their treatment of the canon, which they used in the Greek translation called the Septuagint. They accepted books more rapidly than the Palestinians; they amplified some of the books they both accepted; they were evidently less concerned about the limits of the canon than were their compatriots in the homeland. Thus we cannot be too confident that every book I found in a manuscript of the Septuagint was an integral part of the Bible for Alexandrian Jews. But the evidence is sufficient to indicate a much larger canon at Alexandria than was accepted in Jerusalem.

Among the books they received are the following, I and II Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, Additions to Daniel, Prayer of Manasses, I-II Maccabees. Of these, only Ecclesiasticus enjoyed any prestige in Palestine.

. In the Christian church of Alexandria an equally liberal view as to the contents of Scripture was dominant. In the writings of Clement we see the same inclusive and carefree attitude toward Christian Scripture that we have noticed in the Jews of Alexandria toward the Old Testament. Clement used half-adozen gospels; fourteen letters of Paul; six Catholic epistles including Barnabas and I Clement; three Apocalypses John, Peter, and Hermas the Acts of the Apostles; the Preaching of Peter; and the Didache. Except for his surplus gospels, most of these works are either explicitly or implicitly used as Scripture by Clement. Thus Alexandria was the home of, an extensive Scripture in both Testaments. It is no accident that it was also the home of allegorical interpretation. The use of this method of interpretation from pre-Christian times on made it possible for the Alexandrian to overcome difficulties in regard to canonical books very easily. In Palestine and Syria a more sedate, more literal and historical criticism was employed. This goes far toward explaining the variations in canon in the two sections.

Rome was early forced by Marcion into the definition of the Scriptures. Its New Testament never knew the exuberance of the Alexandrian, but its Old Testament grew into practical identity with that of Egypt. In the Christian books the affinities of Rome are in general with Syria and Asia Minor; in the Jewish Scriptures it reaches through North Africa to Alexandria and a “full” Old Testament. The student who faces the problems raised by these variations in the contents of the Bible can simplify his task by establishing a list of those books commonly accepted throughout the cult. In the Old Testament these unquestioned books include the Protestant Old Testament with the exception of Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, Daniel, Song of Solomon, and perhaps Job and Ecclesiastes. In the New Testament the unquestioned books are the Four Gospels, the Acts, and ten letters of Paul. The books which won their place in the final official canon only after the dissent of a minority had been overcome are the crucial points for study in the history of the canonization of individual books. The pronouncements of councils did more for these “disputed” books than for the rest of the Bible.

What these councils really ratified for these disputed books was their authenticity in terms of author and date. It was in the final period of canon formation that questions as to authorship played their supremely important part. If the letter to the Hebrews was the work of Paul, then it was apostolic and deserved a place in the Christian canon. It is doubtful if questions of authorship have had any vital importance for the Scriptures in any other period. Nor has any more artificial method of determining authorship been employed than the majority vote of a council of ecclesiastics. If these councils had made fewer mistakes, the work of modern scholarship would be much less “negative.”

AFTER THE LAST COUNCIL The minor role played by decisions of councils is shown by the precarious existence of those books which owed their position in the canon largely to the favorable verdict of some council. Not all books in the canon even if they had been formally and officially accredited were received by the faithful with the same degree of reverence and enthusiasm. The books which enjoyed the most prestige were those whose canonization was merely a recognition of general and long-established usage.

Thus, in the Hebrew Scriptures, no later book or books ever attained to the pre-eminence occupied by the Law. Within the Holy Book, the Law was the Holy of Holies. Next to it in general esteem came the Prophets, but the Prophets were definitely below the Law in sanctity. This is most dramatically shown in the prescriptions for the reading of the Bible in synagogue services. In New Testament times it was customary to read from the Hebrew in short passages which were translated at once into Aramaic by the Meturgeman so that the Scripture might be understood by the congregation that knew no Hebrew. The rule as given in the Mishna (Megilla iv. 4) follows, “He who reads in the Pentateuch must not read to the Meturgeman more than one verse, and in the Prophets three verses [at a time]. If each verse is a paragraph, they are read one by one. He who reads may skip in the Prophets, but not in the Law.” Equally significant as to the relative prestige of the various sections of the canon is the fact that the Writings the third section of the Old Testament was not read at all in synagogue services.

What Torah was to the Jew, the Gospel was to the Christian. Its pre-eminence is shown not only by its appearance in every Christian canon but also by the favor shown it by the members of the cult. This can be seen objectively in the number of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament in existence today. Manuscripts of the Four Gospels number more than two thousand; in addition, there are more than a thousand Gospel lectionary manuscripts. Manuscripts of the Acts and Epistles and their lectionary are less than half as numerous. There are. less than two hundred manuscripts of Revelation, aside from fragments. These totals accurately represent the relative prestige of these volumes in Eastern Christendom down through the Middle Ages. No decree of a. council could ever give to any Christian book the prestige enjoyed by the Gospel. No council of rabbis could ever lift any other volume to the level of Torah. Nor did formal acceptance by the, leaders of the cult always mean vital acceptance by the mass of the believers. It is sometimes said that the Jewish canon was closed in Palestine about A.D. 90 with the acceptance of Esther, Song of Solomon, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. Yet the Syriac version dominated by Palestinian ideals did not include Chronicles. Esther was not accepted by Theodore of Mopsuestia; by the Nestorians; by the Palestinians whom Melito visited about A.D. 150; by Athanasius of Alexandria in A.D. 365; by Gregory Nazianzen (fA.D. 389). The Talmud itself contains items that show Esther was not universally accepted after A.D. 100. The Babylonian Gemara (fol. ja) of the tractate Megi/Ia tries to meet the difficulties caused by R. Samuel’s statement that Esther was not canonical. The tractate Sanhedrin (fol. 1000) states that Esther does not need covers as canonical books do. It was only the association of Esther with the feast of Purim that gradually increased its prestige. In the Christian church, in periods of freedom of thought, Esther has once more been under attack.

Luther, in speaking of II Maccabees, said: “I am so opposed to this book and to Esther that I wish they did not exist, for they Judaize too much, and have many heathenish improprieties.” So far is the pious layman today from using his Bible as equally valuable in all its parts that he is willing to award some badge of merit to anyone who has read the Bible all the way through; he, himself, very naturally and justifiably, selects his readings from those areas which he finds most inspiring.

What we have seen to be true in the case of Esther was equally true in the experience of the Apocalypse of John in the New Testament canon. It was not popular in the Eastern half of the Roman world; Constantinople, Antioch, Syria, and Caesarea were not enthusiastic about it as part of the canon. Yet, under the wing of Rome, Africa, and Alexandria, it was formally declared canonical at Hippo and Carthage in councils at the end of the fourth century, by Athanasius of Alexandria (A.D. 367), by Basil the Great (A.D. 379), and by Gregory of Nyssa (\ca. A.D. 394), as by many others. In the West it first appeared in the Muratorian canon (ca. 180) and was an integral part of the canon throughout the Middle Ages. But in the East its position was never secure.

Two of the four Doctors of the Orthodox church (Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus) did not accept Revelation as canonical. It was not in the Old Syriac version or in the Syriac Peshitta (ca. 415). It was not in the original Armenian version. Theodore of Mopsuestia (fA.o. 428), Amphilochius of Iconium (fA.D. 394), the sixtieth canon of “Laodicea,” the List of the Sixty Canonical Books, all reject the Apocalypse. Even as late as A.D. 850, it is listed as a “disputed” book in the Stichometry of Nicephorus. In spite of formal canonization, the Revelation of John did not win widespread acceptance in the East.

We have already noticed that in number of manuscripts extant its total is about one-seventh of that of manuscripts of the Gospels. Moreover, many of these manuscripts are not part of larger New Testaments but often contain noncanonical material. Nor did the Orthodox church use the Book of Revelation in its preparation of lections for use in the liturgy; to this day it is not read regularly in church services. An unusual example of the lower level of canonicity enjoyed by the Apocalypse was noted in the study of a sixteenth-century Greek manuscript containing the Apocalypse and commentary, translated into conversational Greek of the period. In the comment other books of the Bible are quoted, but it is the author’s general rule not to translate them into the conversational idiom they were too sacred! Yet the main purpose of this work was to translate the Apocalypse into conversational idiom. In the Western world Luther’s opinion of the Apocalypse is well known; less familiar is the similar judgment of the Roman Catholic scholar Erasmus (expressed at the end of his notes on the first edition of the Greek New Testament). He comments on its vicissitudes in the past with keen discernment, raises questions as to its authorship, and concludes with an analogy whose accuracy cannot be concealed even by the decision of an ecumenical council. “Since even among jewels,” he says, “there is some difference, and some gold is purer and better than other; in sacred things also one thing is more sacred than another.” This discussion of the origin and growth of the Bible is designed to open up the field for study. It raises questions as to the ultimate origin of the canon and tries to indicate its process of growth. The part played by heresy and council in advancing the canon has been suggested with no attempt at comprehensive treatment. The important Council of Trent, for example, has been passed over in silence. For the pursuit of factual material, and a study of other problems, the student’s attention is called to the bibliography that follows.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON CANON

GENERAL LEWIS, F. G. How the Bible Grew. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924. This volume makes large use of the Bible’s testimony to its own development.

SLEDD, ANDREW. The Bibles of the Churches. Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1930. A stimulating presentation of the main factors in the building of the canon and of the basic problems with which the student is confronted.

SMYTH, J. PATERSON. The Bible in the Making in the Light of Modern Research. New York: James Pott & Co, 1914. A very simple treatment of the process of canonization with a fair statement as to objective data but little recognition of their implications.

ADVANCED BUHL, F. P. W. Canon and Text of the Old Testament (trans, by J. MACPHERSON). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1892. A careful study of the course of canonization of the Old Testament by, first, the Jews and, then, the Christians. The greater part of the book is occupied with textual criticism.

RYLE, H. E. The Canon of the Old Testament (2d ed.). New York: Macmillariy 1895.

More popular in form than Buhl and Wildeboer, which it uses critically; but a scholarly and exhaustive work.

WILDEBOER, G. The Origin of the Canon of the Old Testament (trans, by B. W. BACON). London: Luzac, 1895. A detailed study of the history of canonization of the Old Testament with citation and careful discussion of the ancient sources.

ZEITLIN, S. An Historical Study of the Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures. (Offprint from the Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 1931-1932.} Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1933. An independent and stimulating study which makes large use of rabbinic sources and reaches some conclusions at variance with those generally received.

ENSLIN, MORTON S. “On the Way to a Canon,” Crozer Quarterly, XIV (1937), 127-44.

Brief but stimulating survey of the origin of the New Testament canon, part of an introduction to the New Testament to be published soon by Harper & Bros.

GOODSPEED, EDGAR J. The Formation of the New Testament.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926. A brief chronological and geographical outline of the varying contents of the New Testament down to A.D. 400.

HARNACK, ADOLF VON. The Origin of the New Testament (trans, by J. R. WILKINSON). New York: Macmillan, 1925. The most stimulating definition of the problems involved in the making of the New Testament canon.

MOORE, E. C. The New Testament in the Christian Church. New York: Macmillan, 1904.

Still valuable for its thoroughgoing discussion of the origin and function of the Christian Testament in the cult.

WESTCOTT, B. F. A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (7th ed.). New York, Macmillan, 1896. A full presentation of the relevant data; most of the important sources are quoted in the original language. Useful as a reference work.