The Canon Debate

McDonald, Lee Martin, Sanders, James A., Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780801047084
• eBook ISBN: 9781441241634
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

What does it mean to speak of a "canon" of scripture? How, when, and where did the canon of the Hebrew Bible come into existence? Why does it have three divisions? What canon was in use among the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora? At Qumran? In Roman Palestine? Among the rabbis? What Bible did Jesus and his disciples know and use? How was the New Testament canon formed and closed? What role was played by Marcion? By gnostics? By the church fathers? What did the early church make of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha? By what criteria have questions of canonicity been decided? Are these past decisions still meaningful faith communities today? Are they open to revision?

These and other debated questions are addressed by an international roster of outstanding experts on early Judaism and early Christianity, writing from diverse affiliations and perspectives, who present the history of discussion and offer their own assessments of the current status.

Contributors
William Adler, Peter Balla, John Barton, Joseph Blenkinsopp, François Bovon, Kent D. Clarke, Philip R. Davies, James D. G. Dunn, Eldon Jay Epp, Craig A. Evans, William R. Farmer, Everett Ferguson, Robert W. Funk, Harry Y. Gamble, Geoffrey M. Hahneman, Daniel J. Harrington, Everett R. Kalin, Robert A. Kraft, Jack P. Lewis, Jack N. Lightstone, Steve Mason, Lee M. McDonald, Pheme Perkins, James A. Sanders, Daryl D. Schmidt, Albert C. Sundberg Jr., Emanuel Tov, Julio Trebolle-Barrera, Eugene Ulrich, James C. VanderKam, Robert W. Wall.

Part One

Introduction

1

Introduction

Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders

In the last forty years interest has been growing not only in the origins of the biblical canon but also in its development, continuing viability, and future as a fixed collection of sacred writings. Despite the stability of the various biblical canons over the last four hundred years, the twentieth century brought significantly increased interest in canon formation. Much of this interest began with the earlier works of H. E. Ryle, Alexander Souter, Heinrich Graetz, Moses Stuart, and Edward Reuss. A brief look at the variety as well as volume of recent literature in this field in the Select Bibliography at the end of this volume will illustrate this growing interest. More than a generation ago, Kurt Aland raised the question of reducing the biblical canon by omitting works that some scholars consider to be an embarrassment to the majority of the church, for example, the apocalyptic literature of the New Testament (2 Peter, Revelation, etc.) in order to promote Christian unity.[1] Not long after that Ernst Käsemann also asked whether there should be a “canon within the canon”—in essence, a reduction of the biblical text—in order to alleviate concerns over the diversity within the Bible.[2] James Sanders and Brevard Childs, for quite different reasons, in 1972 introduced “canonical criticism” or “canonical context” as distinct alternatives to the biblical theology movement.[3] More recently, some members of the Jesus Seminar have advocated both reducing the current biblical canon (especially eliminating the apocalyptic literature) and expanding the biblical canon to include such writings as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the “Unknown Gospel” of the Egerton Papyri.[4] Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar will address that issue and others below. Bruce Metzger contends that although in principle the Bible canon may be changed, in all practicality any changes in the present Christian Bible would undoubtedly cause more, not less, division in the church.[5]

1. Major Questions

Much of the recent discussion of canon formation has challenged well-known and widely held views. Some popular positions that are now being challenged include: (1) the view that the Hebrew scriptures achieved canonical acceptance among the Jews in a three-stage development beginning ca. 400 B.C.E. for the Pentateuch, 200 B.C.E. for the Prophets, and 90–100 C.E. for the Writings; (2) that the early Christians received from Jesus a closed Old Testament canon; (3) that most of the New Testament canon was settled by the end of the second century C.E.; and (4) that evidence of the latter is provided by a late second-century canonical list called the Muratorian Fragment.

Other emerging questions also call for a reasoned response. For example:

1. What precisely is a biblical canon and how sure are we that such a notion flourished before, during, or immediately after the time of Jesus? As basic as this is, the reader will see presently that even here there is no universally accepted position. In the next chapter, Eugene Ulrich has made some interesting observations on this matter and his discussion may advance a common understanding of what a biblical canon is. Some of the ensuing papers, however, show disagreement with his effort to seek a universally agreed on definition of the term “canon” as the final product of a canonical process. What complicates any discussion of canonicity in the various Judaisms of the first century of the common era and in early Christianity is the paucity of any clearly stated and universally accepted definitions of what constitutes scripture and canon. Most definitions available can be employed to show that there were more writings acknowledged as scripture in antiquity than those that were eventually included in the current biblical canon. Some ancient literature functioned in scripture-like manner, that is, similar to other long-accepted scriptures that were normative for a believing community, long before it was ever called scripture and placed in a biblical canon. Similarly, some ancient literature functioned this way (normatively) earlier, but never made it into the biblical canon.[6]

2. Why were discussions about the scope of the Old Testament biblical canon going on in the church well into the fourth through the sixth centuries and even later if the matter was largely settled before the time of Jesus? And further, why did it take the church three to four hundred years to establish its twenty-seven book New Testament canon?

3. Whenever an ancient writer cites a source from an even more ancient text, does that cited text automatically become a part of the ancient writer’s biblical canon?[7] More recently, one scholar has questioned whether the rabbinic sages of late antiquity ever discussed the issue of a closed biblical canon.[8]

4. What sources more accurately reflect the earliest strands of Christian faith? Again, some scholars today believe that other ancient sources relate the earliest traditions of Jesus more faithfully than the canonical gospels. In scholarly discussions these days it is not unusual to call for enlarging the traditional data base of knowledge of the historical Jesus to include, for example, the Gospel of Thomas and the “Unknown Gospel” discovered in the Egerton Papyri as well as several other noncanonical writings. (See Robert Funk’s chapter in this volume.)

5. That issue leads us to the next question, namely, what of the agrapha (or sayings of Jesus not found in the canonical gospels)? Some scholars have suggested that these sayings, at least, can help us understand more clearly who Jesus was. This is not a new proposal,[9] and it continues to surface here and there. The agrapha served as an authoritative resource for the ancient Christians who cited them. If we can with some assurance determine which of the approximately 200 known noncanonical sayings of Jesus are genuine,[10] should they be added to the data base of information that informs us about Jesus?[11] Should they be added to the biblical canon?

6. And what of the biblical text itself? With the recent advances in the investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient Greek and Latin translations of the Bible, which text of the Bible is more authoritative for the church and for the Jewish community? Tov, Epp, and Schmidt in their respective chapters in this volume raise some important questions in that regard. It appears that the ancient communities of Christianity and Judaism did not set aside one particular text of the scriptures to be included in their Bible. If that is so, as the available evidence suggests, then how does one determine what the most appropriate scripture text should be? Which text of scripture should be authoritative for the church? Is the text in its original and earliest form the focus of authority and exegesis for the church, or rather the later canonical or “received” form of the biblical text? See a discussion of this in Kraft’s, Epp’s, and Sanders’s papers below. The greater church admittedly has received many textual additions, some of which were intentional and others accidental. For instance, is the original form of Philippians canonical or authoritative, or the one that currently exists in the New Testament canon?[12] Does it make a difference in one’s reading if the two parts are separated for study and preaching? Is John best read as it was written, namely, as a single gospel, or as the Fourth Gospel? Is the final form of Isaiah authoritative for preaching and teaching, or do we look for an earlier First, Second, or even Third Isaiah? Should we receive Mark 16:9–20, John 21, and Acts 8:37 as canonical, even though most scholars agree that they were later additions to the text? Further, should we accept as our scriptures only the earliest texts available today, reflecting the original hand of the author? Our choice in this matter may be guided by the early church, which grounded its theology in the witness of the apostolic community.[13]

7. Recent studies of the various surviving biblical manuscripts show that not until very recently did all of the current twenty-seven writings that make up the commonly received New Testament canon emerge in the same manuscript.[14] In other words, if all of the literature that comprises our current biblical canon was important to the Christians in antiquity, why do we not find many manuscripts containing them? Eldon Epp, Robert Kraft, and Daryl Schmidt, and to some extent Emanuel Tov for the Hebrew Bible, address this problem in this volume.

8. What criteria were employed to determine which writings would make up the Christian biblical canon? There is little doubt among canon scholars that authorship by an apostle was the most important factor considered by the church leaders of the fourth and following centuries. If it was believed that an apostle produced a particular writing, that writing was accepted and treated as scripture. This also helps to explain the large collection of literature pseudonymously attributed to the apostles, the so-called apocryphal New Testament writings. There is no doubt that several books of the New Testament were placed in the canon of scripture because the majority of the church fathers believed that they were written by members of the apostolic community if not by apostles themselves. All of these questions, of course, concern the viability and integrity of the current biblical canon. Most canonical literature is anonymous and a considerable amount of it became pseudepigraphic under hellenistic influence, that is, attributed to great personages of the past. In semitic culture in antiquity the focus was on a text’s message, not its author, for its authenticity. This may have been the case for the Gospels and Acts. (See McDonald’s discussion of this topic below.)

Kent Clarke makes an important contribution to the question of whether any pseudonymous writings exist in the Bible. What if the one to whom a biblical writing was attributed is not the author of that work? What do we do with it then? Most, but not all, biblical scholars have concluded that such literature does exist in the New Testament. Does it matter? These too are important questions that share in the complexity of canon formation. What has commonly been called the canonization of scripture was, according to some students, in reality a canonical process involving the various parts of the present Bible over a long period of time. The literature that made it into the Jewish and Christian scripture canons had to be multivalent and adaptable to the conditions and needs of numerous communities just to survive and be included in a biblical canon. Once that literature was placed in those canons, it has continued to be multivalent and adaptable for two thousand years. A canon’s continuing adaptability or relevance to the lives of communities and of individuals is as salient a characteristic as its stability or “final shape.”[15]

Discussion of the limits or scope of the New Testament canon of writings first occurs in the fourth century in the writings of Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.3). Many Christians had already made their decisions about the contents of their New Testament scriptures by then, but the churches were never fully agreed. The catalogues and collections listed in Appendix C demonstrate the variety of opinion present in the churches in the fourth century. Here we first see terms used to identify this literature. Although “Old Testament” and “New Testament” began to be used in some churches to designate their sacred writings in the late second century, it is only in the fourth century that they are referred to by Eusebius as “encovenanted” and “recognized” writings (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.3.1–6; 3.25.1–7; and 5.8.1). Further it is not until 367 that we first hear them referred to as “canon” (Athanasius, Festal Letter 39). Athanasius is the first to list the complete 27 books that most Christians now call the New Testament canon, but he did not settle the issue for many other churches, as we can see from the variety in the subsequent lists of New Testament scriptures in Appendix C. His Old Testament canon was broader than the current Protestant Old Testament canon, which contains the same books found in the Hebrew Bible though not in the same order. Kalin, Balla, Ferguson, and Hahneman have all made significant contributions in this volume to our understanding of this question.

2. The Notions of Scripture and Canon

As we introduce this volume, we offer some preliminary definitions of both “scripture” and “canon” that will enable the reader to follow the debate over these terms in this volume.

A. The Meaning of Scripture

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the primary world religions that have defined themselves in terms of a sacred written text. The development of a collection of scriptures in these traditions appears to be related to a common belief in the notion of a “heavenly book” which contains both divine knowledge and decrees from God. This heavenly book generally contains wisdom, destinies (or laws), a book of works, and a book of life.[16] W. Graham has argued that this notion goes back to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the heavenly book indicated the future plans of God and the destinies of human beings. An example can be found in Ps 139:15–16 which says, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed” (NRSV). This notion is also carried on in the New Testament in Rev 5:1, 3 and in the description of the opening of that book in 6:1–17 and 8:1–10:11. Books are opened before the great white throne of God and “another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books . . . and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev 20:12, 15, NRSV). In Exod 32:33 the Lord says that those who have sinned will be blotted out of his book. The same notion occurs in Phil 4:3, where Paul speaks of Clement and the rest of his colleagues in ministry “whose names are in the book of life.” Graham claims that this belief gave rise to the notion in both Judaism and early Christianity that the repository of divine knowledge and heavenly decrees are contained in a divine book symbolized in written scriptures.[17] He also cites an example from the Qur’an which speaks of a divine book of destinies. Surah 57.22 reads: “No misfortune strikes on earth or in yourselves without its being [written] in a Book before we cause it to be. Truly, that is easy for God.”[18] Graham goes on to argue that for Judaism, long before the notion of a biblical canon, the Torah was believed to have come directly from God. Moses proclaimed the words and ordinances of God (Exod 24:3) and was commissioned by God to write them (Exod 34:4, 27). It was believed that God was the writer of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments (Exod 34:1 and Deut 4:13; 10:4) and this, according to Graham, gave rise to the notion that the law of God was written down in the form of scripture and played a significant role in the development of the idea of a revealed and authoritative scripture.[19]

For both Judaism and Christianity the final authority for faith is, of course, God, but especially in the later stages of the Old Testament the belief arose that the revelation and will of God were disclosed not only in mighty acts through which Yahweh invades history, for example, in the exodus, but also in written materials. See the Pentateuch for examples where the writing down of something was an important mark of revelation (Exod 24:12; 31:8; 32:15, 32; 34:1; Deut 4:13; 8:10; etc.). Just as Moses wrote down the commandments of the Lord in Exod 24:4; 34:27, so also does Joshua in Josh 24:26 and Samuel in 1 Sam 10:25. In the book of Deuteronomy, which was probably written toward the end of the Old Testament era, the king is called upon to write down for himself a copy of the law of God for reading all the days of his life to remind him of the statutes of God and to be humble in his dealings with his people (Deut 17:18–20). The people also were called upon to write the words of God on their door posts (Deut 6:9; 11:20). By way of contrast, the Gospels of the New Testament do not indicate that Jesus wrote anything down nor did he command others to write anything down. The only New Testament exception is found in the book of Revelation where Jesus commanded the angels of the churches to put his message in written form (Rev 2:1–3:14).[20]

James Barr has observed that in the Old Testament “the writers do not reckon with a written ‘scripture’ as a totally dominant, known and acknowledged factor and force in the life of Israel.”[21] He goes on to argue that even the prophets who say, “Thus says the Lord,” are not speaking on the basis of an already existing text. Almost nothing in the Old Testament suggests that there were sacred scriptures to turn to when guidance was needed.[22] Neither David, Solomon, nor Hezekiah had any focus or emphasis on any sacred books current and normative in the life of Israel. Rather, as Barr has observed, the Old Testament individuals related to God more thro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Part One: Introduction
• Part Two: The Old/First Testament Canon
• Part Three: The New/Second Testament Canon
• Appendixes
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources
• Notes