Five Models of Scripture

Mark Reasoner

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781467462723
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

"To relish the feast that is Scripture, we need to use multiple models." 

A Christian never gains all that Scripture offers by reading it with just one approach. Yet too often this is attempted—whether through an academic obsession with the historical-critical method or through a consumerist approach that seeks only the motivation of the moment. Mark Reasoner broadens the options for scriptural engagement by describing five models of Scripture: documents, stories, prayers, laws, and oracles. To illustrate each, he uses examples from throughout the history of interpretation. While he concedes that certain books of the Bible will naturally lend themselves to particular models, Reasoner shows how an appreciation for all five will enrich one's scriptural insights while also bridging divides between the various branches of the Christian family. 

In addition to the five models, Reasoner surveys Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant constructions of the biblical canon and addresses specific issues relevant to their respective interpretations of Scripture, including scriptural metanarratives, the use of the Bible in Christian worship, and the principle of  sola Scriptura. Through it all, Reasoner remains unequivocally focused on his goal: "to help readers grow in their love for Scripture in ways that will help them plant this love in those to whom they minister."

part one

HOW GOD SPEAKS in SCRIPTURE

1

CANONS

It seemed good to me also, having been urged thereto by true brethren, and having learned from the beginning, to set before you the books included in the Canon, and handed down, and accredited as Divine, to the end that any one who has fallen into error may condemn those who have led him astray; and that he who has continued stedfast in purity may again rejoice, having these things brought to his remembrance.

—ATHANASIUS¹

In our extended family we Christians operate with explicitly different Old Testament canons, so our study best begins here. In our day-to-day use of the New Testament, we may be operating with functionally different canons as well, but that is an idea we will consider in the metanarratives chapter below. The goal for this chapter is to leave you with a clearer idea of how we came to have different Old Testament canons and how the difference matters in the way we live out our faith.

CONTENTS OF OUR OLD TESTAMENT CANONS

Most people are aware that there are more books in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments than in a Protestant Old Testament, but fewer people know why. The books that are found in the more expansive canons are called “deuterocanonical,” which means “secondarily added to the canon.” At times the word “deuterocanonical” can carry the connotation of a lower level of inspiration. The term “apocrypha,” which according to its etymology means “hidden things,” has a little more negative connotation than the term “deuterocanonical.” Protestants often use “apocrypha” for the “extra” books in a Catholic Old Testament.

The following chart shows the contents of the Old Testament in the categories and order maintained by the Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic/Orthodox communities.²

COMPARISON OF THE HEBREW BIBLE, THE PROTESTANT OLD TESTAMENT, AND THE CATHOLIC/ORTHODOX OLD TESTAMENT

Hebrew Bible	Protestant Old Testament	Catholic/Orthodox Old Testament
Torah Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Former Prophets Joshua Judges 1–2 Samuel 1–2 Kings Latter Prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel The Twelve: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi Writings Psalms Proverbs Job Song of Songs Ruth Lamentations Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) Esther Daniel Ezra-Nehemiah 1–2 Chronicles	Pentateuch Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Historical Books Joshua Judges Ruth 1–2 Samuel 1–2 Kings 1–2 Chronicles Ezra Nehemiah Esther Poetry/Wisdom Job Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) Song of Solomon Prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel The Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi	Pentateuch Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Historical Books Joshua Judges Ruth 1–2 Samuel 1–2 Kings 1–2 Chronicles Ezra (Greek/Russian Orthodox also include 1 Esdras and Russian Orthodox includes 2 Esdras) Nehemiah Tobit Judith Esther (with additions) 1–2 Maccabees (Greek and Russian Orthodox also include 3 Maccabees) Poetry/Wisdom Job Psalms (Greek and Russian Orthodox include Psalm 151 and Prayer of Manasseh) Proverbs Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) Song of Solomon Wisdom of Solomon Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Sirach) Prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Baruch (includes Letter of Jeremiah) Ezekiel Daniel (with additions) The Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

The headings for the left column in the table above are different than those of the middle and right columns, beginning with the name of the collections. Judaism calls its Scripture the Hebrew Bible. Another term used for the Hebrew Bible is Tanak, sometimes spelled TaNaK to show that the term is an acronym, based on the terms Torah (Law), Neviim (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The terms “Hebrew Bible” and “Tanak” designate more than simply the books included in the canon; they also denote how the books are categorized and grouped together, and how they are traditionally read. “Hebrew Bible” is not interchangeable with “Old Testament,” for the canonical organization of these collections is very different, and the reading traditions behind each of them is very different. By concluding with 1–2 Chronicles, which contain a narrative of David’s preparation for the temple and end with Cyrus’s call to rebuild the temple, the Hebrew Bible, which Jews read, is temple-oriented. By concluding with Malachi, which refers to a “messenger of the LORD” and the “LORD coming to his temple,” the Old Testament, which Christians read, is messiah-oriented.

BACK STORY OF THE DEUTEROCANONICAL OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS

When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, some other books besides the thirty-nine books of the Tanak (Law, Prophets, Writings) began to circulate as additional parts of this Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures. These books were 1 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Ben Sira (Sirach), Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah (often published as the sixth chapter of Baruch), Prayer of Manasseh, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, and poetic and narrative additions to the book of Daniel—Prayer of Azariah, Song of Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. This is like what happens to translated works today. Often the translator will add a preface to the work, and the publisher might add one or more documents to provide a cultural or historical context for those reading the volume in translation. Most of the deuterocanonical additions contribute toward making sense of Jewish life outside the land and Jewish life under the rule of foreign powers.

The Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was produced with some or all of the books just listed. Since its manuscripts do not consistently include all these extra books and since Philo of Alexandria never quotes any of these extra books, it is inaccurate to speak of an “Alexandrian canon,” as if there were a fixed set of books different from the Palestinian canon of thirty-nine books, that Alexandrian Jews accepted as their Scripture.³ It is possible that the technological change of binding separate books into one codex—as distinct from keeping each biblical book, or accepted groups of books like the twelve prophets (Hosea to Malachi), separate in single, dedicated scrolls—may have led to the impression that all books within a given codex had canonical status.⁴

The Old Testament text that was translated into Greek was then translated into the Old Latin version, with the deuterocanonical books integrated among the Palestinian canon of thirty-nine books. Those church fathers like Origen and Jerome who knew some Hebrew, as well as Melito of Sardis, had at least learned what the rabbis considered canonical, and always held the deuterocanonical books such as Tobit and 1–2 Maccabees to be outside the canon, though they admitted that readers found them spiritually beneficial.⁵

Another book, known as 2 Esdras, was later included in Old Latin versions of the Old Testament, but it and 1 Esdras are not included in the Catholic Old Testament canon. Greek fathers of the fourth century, such as Amphilochius, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Eusebius, and Gregory of Nazianzus, distinguished between Old Testament books within (e.g., Genesis) and outside (e.g., Tobit) the Hebrew canon, even while quoting Old Testament books from outside the Hebrew canon as Scripture.⁶ This ambivalence continued in Orthodox usage for centuries to follow.

When producing his Latin Bible for the church, Jerome indicated in his prefaces to the deuterocanonical books that they were not to be regarded as authoritative for doctrine in the way that the thirty-nine books of the Palestinian canon were. His distinction was noted and echoed by such medieval scholars as Gregory the Great, Walafrid Strabo, Hugh of St. Victor, Hugh of St. Cher, and Nicholas of Lyra. But most medieval scholars probably did not observe this distinction. The status of these deuterocanonical books became more contested when the practices of praying for the dead and giving alms as a way of working out one’s salvation came under scrutiny during the sixteenth century.⁷ “Deuterocanonical” in the rest of this chapter refers to books that are within the forty-six-book Old Testament canon, though accorded a secondary value beneath books in the Hebrew canon.

The following survey of the varying canonical collections follows the summary by Bruce Metzger.⁸ In the Vulgate editions copied and printed from the fifth through the sixteenth centuries, the deuterocanonical books were interspersed among the thirty-nine fully accepted books of the Old Testament. The first Bibles to group the deuterocanonical books together were the 1527–1529 Swiss-German Bible produced in Zürich, which presents the deuterocanonical books in its fifth volume and begins with the notice that the books in that volume were not considered part of the Bible by people long ago and not in the Hebrew canon; the 1526 Dutch Bible published in Antwerp by J. van Liesvelt; and the Luther Bible of 1534, which groups the deuterocanonical books together in a section after Malachi. Luther did not include 1 and 2 Esdras in the group, explaining that they didn’t offer anything that could not be found in Aesop’s Fables or even in more inconsequential books. He called this section “Apocrypha,” labeling it as a group of books not at the level of Scripture, but holding good and useful content. “Apocrypha” and its adjective “apocryphal” therefore refer to books that are outside the canon, regarded as of lesser value than what Catholic and Orthodox readers ascribe to the deuterocanonical books.

Bibles published later in the sixteenth century followed suit. The 1535 Coverdale Bible placed Baruch immediately after Jeremiah but grouped most of the other deuterocanonical books together after Malachi. The 1560 Geneva Bible, the Bible used by John Bunyan, Shakespeare, and the Pilgrims, and the first English Bible to offer a text divided into verses, published the deuterocanonical books in a section called the “Apocrypha,” introducing them as books that were commonly considered not to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: How God Speaks in Scripture
• Part Two: Five Models of Scripture
• Part Three: Developments in Scripture Reading
• Part Four: Scripture in Real Life
• Bibliography