Bible, also called the Holy
Bible, the sacred
book or Scriptures of Judaism and of Christianity. The Bible of Judaism
and the
Bible of Christianity are different, however, in some important ways.
The
Jewish Bible is the Hebrew Scriptures, 39 books originally written in
Hebrew,
except for a few sections in Aramaic. The Christian Bible is in two
parts, the
Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. The Old Testament
is
structured in two slightly different forms by the two principal
divisions of
Christendom. The version of the Old Testament used by Roman Catholics is
the
Bible of Judaism plus 7 other books and additions to books (see the
accompanying table); some of the additional books were originally
written in
Greek, as was the New Testament. The version of the Old Testament used
by
Protestants is limited to the 39 books of the Jewish Bible. The other
books and
additions to books are called the Apocrypha by Protestants; they are
generally
referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics.
The term Bible is derived
through Latin from
the Greek biblia, or “books,” the diminutive form of byblos, the
word
for “papyrus” or “paper,” which was exported from the ancient Phoenician
port
city of Biblos. By the time of the Middle Ages the books of the Bible
were
considered a unified entity.
II
|
ORDER OF THE
BOOKS
|
The order as well as the
number of books
differs between the Jewish Bible and the Protestant and Roman Catholic
versions
of the Bible. The Bible of Judaism is in three distinct parts: the
Torah, or Law,
also called the books of Moses; the Nebiim, or Prophets, divided into
the
Earlier and Latter Prophets; and the Ketubim, or Writings, including
Psalms,
wisdom books, and other diverse literature. The Christian Old Testament
organizes the books according to their type of literature: the
Pentateuch,
corresponding to the Torah; historical books; poetical or wisdom books;
and
prophetical books. Some have perceived in this table of contents a
sensitivity
to the historical perspective of the books: first those that concern the
past;
then, the present; and then, the future. The Protestant and Roman
Catholic
versions of the Old Testament place the books in the same sequence, but
the
Protestant version includes only those books found in the Bible of
Judaism.
The New Testament includes
the four Gospels; the
Acts of the Apostles, a history of early Christianity; Epistles, or
letters, of
Paul and other writers; and an apocalypse, or book of revelation. Some
books
identified as letters, particularly the Book of Hebrews, are theological
treatises.
III
|
USE
|
The Bible is a religious
book, not only by
virtue of its contents but also in terms of its use by Christians and
Jews. It
is read in practically all services of public worship, its words form
the basis
for preaching and instruction, and it is used in private devotion and
study.
The language of the Bible has informed and shaped the prayers, liturgy,
and
hymnody of Judaism and Christianity. Without the Bible these two
religions
would have been virtually speechless.
Both the confessed and
actual importance of the
Bible differ considerably among the various subdivisions of Judaism and
Christianity, but all adherents ascribe some degree of authority to it.
Many
confess that the Bible is the full and sufficient guide in all matters
of faith
and practice; others view the authority of the Bible in the light of
tradition,
or the continuous belief and practice of the church since apostolic
times.
IV
|
BIBLICAL
INSPIRATION
|
Early Christianity inherited
from Judaism and took for
granted a view of the Scriptures as authoritative. No formal doctrine of
the
inspiration of Scripture was initially propounded, as was the case in
Islam,
which held that the Qur'an (Koran) was handed down from heaven.
Christians
generally believed, however, that the Bible contained the word of God as
communicated by his Spirit—first through the patriarchs and prophets and
then
through the apostles (see Revelation). The writers of the New
Testament
books, in fact, appealed to the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures to
support
their claims concerning Jesus Christ.
The actual doctrine of
the inspiration of the Bible
by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of its words arose during the 19th
century
in response to the development of biblical criticism, scholarly studies
that
seemed to challenge the divine origin of the Bible. This doctrine holds
that
God is the author of the Bible in such a way that the Bible is his word.
Many
theories explaining the doctrine have been suggested by biblical
scholars and
theologians. The theories range from a direct, divine, verbal dictation
of the
Scriptures to an illumination aiding the inspired writer to understand
the
truth he expressed, whether this truth was revealed or learned by
experience.
V
|
IMPORTANCE AND
INFLUENCE
|
The importance and influence
of the Bible among
Christians and Jews may be explained broadly in both external and
internal
terms. The external explanation is the power of tradition, custom, and
creed: Religious
groups confess that they are guided by the Bible. In one sense the
religious
community is the author of Scripture, having developed it, cherished it,
used
it, and eventually canonized it (that is, developed lists of officially
recognized biblical books). The internal explanation, however, is what
many
Christians and Jews continue to experience as the power of the contents
of the
biblical books themselves. Ancient Israel and the early church knew of
many
more religious books than the ones that constitute the Bible. The
biblical
books, however, were cherished and used because of what they said and
how they
said it; they were officially canonized because they had come to be used
and
believed so widely. The Bible truly is the foundation document of
Judaism and
Christianity.
It is commonly known that
the Bible, in its
hundreds of different translations, is the most widely distributed book
in
human history. Moreover, in all its forms, the Bible has been enormously
influential, and not only among the religious communities that hold it
sacred.
The literature, art, and music of Western culture in particular are
deeply
indebted to biblical themes, motifs, and images. Translations of the
Bible,
such as the Authorized Version (or King James Version, 1611) and Martin
Luther’s translation of the Bible into German (first completed in 1534)
not
only influenced literature but also shaped the development of languages.
Such
effects continue to be felt in emerging nations, where translations of
the
Bible into the vernacular help to shape language traditions.
VI
|
THE OLD
TESTAMENT
|
It is remarkable that
Christianity includes within
its Bible the entire scriptures of another religion, Judaism. The term Old
Testament (from the Latin word for “covenant”) came to be applied to
those
Scriptures on the basis of the writings of Paul and other early
Christians who
distinguished between the “Old Covenant” that God made with Israel and
the “New
Covenant” established through Jesus Christ (see, for example, Hebrew
8:7).
Because the early church believed in the continuity of history and of
divine
activity, it included in the Christian Bible the written records of both
the
Old and the New covenants.
A
|
Old Testament
Literature
|
The Old Testament may
be viewed from many different
perspectives. From the viewpoint of literature, the Old
Testament—indeed, the
entire Bible—is an anthology, a collection of many different books. The
Old
Testament is by no means a unified book in terms of authorship, date of
composition, or literary type; it is instead a veritable library.
Generally speaking, the
books of the Old Testament and
their component parts may be identified as narratives, poetic works,
prophetic
works, law, or apocalypses. Most of these are broad categories that
include
various distinct types or genres of literature and oral tradition. None
of
these categories is limited to the Old Testament; all are found in other
ancient literature, especially that of the Near East. It is noteworthy,
however, that certain types did not find their way into the Old
Testament.
Letters, or epistles, so important in the New Testament, are not found
as
separate books (except for the Letter of Jeremiah in some manuscript
traditions). Autobiography, drama, and satire are not found at all. It
is
particularly striking that most Old Testament books contain several
literary
genres. Exodus, for example, contains narrative, laws, and poetry; most
prophetic books include narratives and poetry in addition to prophetic
genres
as such.
A1
|
Narratives
|
In both outline and content,
a great many Old
Testament books are narratives; that is, they report the events of the
past. If
they have, as most do, a plot (or at least the development of tension
and its
resolution), characterization of the participants, and a description of
the
setting where the events occurred, then they are stories. On the other
hand, a
great many narrative works of the Old Testament are histories—although
they
would not fit a scholarly definition of the term. A history is a written
narrative of the past that is guided by the facts, as far as the writer
can
determine and interpret them, and not by some aesthetic, religious, or
other
consideration. The historical narratives of the Old Testament are
popular
rather than critical works, because the writers often used oral
traditions,
some of them unreliable, to write their accounts. Moreover, all these
narratives were written for a religious purpose; they may therefore be
called
salvation histories, because they are concerned with showing how God was
active
in human events. Examples of such works are the Deuteronomistic History
(Deuteronomy through 2 Kings; see below), the Tetrateuch (Genesis
through Numbers),
and the Chronicler’s History (1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah).
The
so-called Throne Succession History of David (see 2 Samuel 9-20, 1 Kings
1-2)
comes closer to the modern understanding of history than does any other
biblical narrative. The writer was sensitive to the details of
historical
events and characters, and he interpreted the course of affairs in the
light of
human motivations. Nonetheless, he could see the hand of God moving
behind the
scenes.
Other narrative books
are Ruth, a short story; Jonah, a
didactic, or teaching, story; and Esther, a historical romance or a
festival
legend. It is likely that such books developed from folktales or
legends.
Several didactic stories are found in the deuterocanonical books of the
Bible
and in the Apocrypha: Tobit, Judith, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon.
Many of these and other
narrative genres are
found within the books of the Old Testament. The Book of Genesis is
composed,
as are most of the other narrative works, of numerous individual
stories, most
of which originally circulated independently and orally. The patriarchal
stories in Genesis 11-50 have been called legends, sagas, and—more
accurately—family stories. Many of them are etiological; that is, they
explain
some place, practice, or name in terms of its origin.
A2
|
Poetic Works
|
The poetic books of the
Old Testament may be
taken to include Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
(Songs),
and in the deuterocanonical books and the Apocrypha, Sirach and the
Prayer of
Manasseh. The Book of Wisdom has much in common with the poetic wisdom
books,
but it is not poetry. Most of the prophetic books are written in Hebrew
poetry,
but they are sufficiently distinctive to be considered separately.
A2a
|
General
Characteristics
|
Hebrew poetry has two
major characteristics, one
relatively easy to recognize even in translation and the other difficult
to
discern. The more obvious characteristic is the use of parallelismus
membrorum,
or parallelism of lines or other parts. For example, the meaning of one
line
may be restated or paralleled by a second line, as in Psalms 6:1:
“O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger,
nor chasten me in thy wrath.”
These two lines are synonymous. On the other hand, the second line in the unit may state the negative side of the first line’s point, as in Proverbs 15:1:
“A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
In other cases, the second line may extend or explain the first, and in still others, the parallelism is merely formal. Parallelism can in some instances extend to three or more lines. One major advantage of most modern English translations of the Bible is that they retain the poetic form of the Hebrew, enabling the reader to enjoy and understand the structure of the original.
“O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger,
nor chasten me in thy wrath.”
These two lines are synonymous. On the other hand, the second line in the unit may state the negative side of the first line’s point, as in Proverbs 15:1:
“A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
In other cases, the second line may extend or explain the first, and in still others, the parallelism is merely formal. Parallelism can in some instances extend to three or more lines. One major advantage of most modern English translations of the Bible is that they retain the poetic form of the Hebrew, enabling the reader to enjoy and understand the structure of the original.
The other major feature
of Hebrew poetry is rhythm,
which seems to have been based on the number of accents in each line.
One of
the more easily recognized meters is that of the qina, or dirge,
in
which the first line has three beats or accented syllables and the
second line
has two.
The poetic books include
a great many diverse
genres. The most widespread types are the various songs of worship
(Psalms) and
wisdom poetry. In addition, the Bible contains one book of love poetry,
the
Song of Solomon (Songs).
A2b
|
Lyrical Poetry
|
Israel’s worship literature
was lyrical poetry, that is,
poetry meant to be sung. Most, but not all, of these songs are collected
in the
books of Psalms. Many are hymns—songs in praise of God himself, his
works on
behalf of Israel, or his creation. Others are communal laments or
complaint
songs, which were, in effect, prayers of petition sung by the people
when they
were faced with trouble. Approximately one-third of the Psalms are
individual
laments or complaints, songs used by or on behalf of individuals facing
death
or disaster. When the nation or the individual has been saved from
trouble,
thanksgiving songs would be sung. A few Psalms, such as 2, 45, and 110,
celebrate the coronation of a king in Israel as God’s special servant.
A2c
|
Wisdom Poetry
|
The wisdom poetry includes
collections of wisdom
sayings and short poems, as in the Book of Proverbs, and long
compositions such
as Job, Ecclesiastes, and Sirach. The shorter wisdom materials are
proverbs,
sayings, and admonitions, commonly only two lines long. Some were
undoubtedly traditional
or popular sayings; others bear the marks of thoughtful and creative
composition. Proverbs 1-9 contains a collection of poems on the nature
of
wisdom itself, but the Book of Job is a lengthy poetic composition in
the form
of a dialogue framed by a folktale. Ecclesiastes is a somewhat
disjointed work;
Sirach is a book written by a Jewish teacher and later translated by his
grandson.
The subject matter of
the wisdom sayings ranges
from practical advice for living a good and successful life to
reflections on
the relationship between following the wise path and obedience to the
divinely
revealed law. Job, at least on one level, agonizes over the question of
the
suffering of the righteous, and Ecclesiastes meditates sadly on the
meaning of
life in the face of death.
A3
|
Prophetic
Materials
|
Prophets were known elsewhere
in the ancient Near
East, but no other culture developed a body of prophetic literature
comparable
to that of Israel. Ancient Egyptian writers produced literary works
called
“prophecies,” for example, but these writings are different in both form
and
content from the biblical prophetic books.
Most Hebrew prophetic
books contain three kinds of
literature: narratives, prayers, and prophetic speeches. The narratives
generally are stories or reports of prophetic activity, either
attributed to
the prophet himself or told by some third person. They include vision
reports,
reports of symbolic actions, accounts of prophetic activities such as
conflicts
between the prophets and their opponents, and historical narratives or
notes.
One book in the prophetic collection, Jonah, is actually a story about a
prophet, including only one line of prophetic address (see Jonah 3:4).
The
prayers include hymns and petitions such as Jeremiah’s complaints (for
example,
Jeremiah 15:10-21).
Speeches predominate in
the prophetic literature, for
the essence of prophetic activity was to announce the word of God
concerning
the immediate future. The most common addresses are prophecies of
punishment or
of salvation. Both of these are framed, as are most prophetic speeches,
by
formulas that identify the words as revealed by God; for example, “thus
says
the Lord.” The prophecy of punishment usually gives reasons for the
punishment
in terms of social injustice, religious arrogance, or apostasy and
spells out
the nature of the disaster—military or otherwise—to be visited upon the
nation,
group, or individual addressed. The prophecies of salvation announce
God’s
impending intervention to rescue Israel. Other speeches include
prophecies
against foreign nations, woe speeches enumerating the sins of the
people, and
admonitions or warnings. See Prophecy.
A4
|
Law
|
Legal materials are sufficiently
prominent in the
Hebrew Scriptures that the term Torah (Law) came to be applied in
Judaism to
the first five books, and in early Christianity to the entire Old
Testament.
Legal writings dominate in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.
The
fifth book of the Bible was called Deuteronomy (“second law”) by its
Greek
translators, although the book is primarily a report of the last words
and
deeds of Moses. It does, however, contain numerous laws, often in the
context
of interpretation and preaching.
According to biblical
tradition, the will of God was
revealed to Israel through Moses when the covenant was made at Mount
Sinai.
Consequently, all the laws—except those in Deuteronomy—are found in
Exodus 20
through Numbers 10, where the events at Mount Sinai are reported.
Scholars have recognized
in the Hebrew laws two major
types, the apodictic and the casuistic. Apodictic law is represented by,
but
not limited to, the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20:1-21, 34:14-26;
Deuteronomy
5:6-21). These laws, usually found in collections of five or more, are
short,
unambiguous, and unequivocal statements of the will of God for human
behavior.
They are either commands (positive) or prohibitions (negative). The
casuistic
laws, on the other hand, each consist of two parts. The first part
states a
condition (“If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it
...”)
and the second part the legal consequences (“... he shall pay five oxen
for an
ox, and four sheep for a sheep,” Exodus 22:1). These laws generally
concern problems
that arise in agricultural and town life. The casuistic laws are
parallel in
form, and frequently in content, to laws found in the Code of Hammurabi
and
other ancient Near Eastern law codes.
A5
|
Apocalyptic
Writings
|
The apocalypse as a distinctive
genre arose in
Israel in the postexilic period, that is, after the Babylonian Captivity
of the
Jews from 586 to 538 bc.
An
apocalypse, or revelation, contains the disclosure of future events by
means of
a lengthy and detailed dream or vision report. It makes use of highly
symbolic
and often bizarre images, which in turn are explained and interpreted.
Apocalyptic writings generally reflect the author’s historical view of
his own
era as a time when the powers of evil are gathering to make their final
struggle against God, after which a new age will be established.
Daniel is the only apocalyptic
book as such in
the Hebrew Scriptures, and its first half (chap. 1-6) is actually a
series of
legendary stories. Sections of other books, however, are similar in many
respects to apocalyptic literature (see Isaiah 24-27; Zechariah 9-14;
and some
parts of Ezekiel). In the Apocrypha, 2 Esdras is an apocalypse. Judaism
in the
last two centuries BC and the first century ad
produced numerous other apocalyptic works that were never considered
canonical.
These include Enoch, the War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of
Darkness, and
the Apocalypse of Moses. See Pseudepigrapha.
Until recently, most scholars
argued that the
development of apocalyptic literature and thought was strongly
influenced by
Persian religion. That view is being challenged by the recognition of
the roots
of apocalyptic literature in Israelite thought itself, especially the
prophetic
understanding of the future, and in older Near Eastern traditions. See
Apocalyptic
Writings.
B
|
The Development
of the
Old Testament
|
By no means did all the
books of the Old
Testament originate at the same time and in the same place; rather, they
are
the product of Israelite faith and culture over a thousand years or
more.
Consequently, another literary perspective examines the books and their
component parts in terms of their authorship and their literary and
preliterary
history.
Virtually all the books
went through a long history
of transmission and development before they were collected and
canonized.
Moreover, it is necessary to distinguish between traditional Jewish and
Christian views concerning the authorship and date of the books and
their
actual literary history as it has been reconstructed by modern
scholarship from
the evidence in the biblical books and elsewhere. It is not the aim of
this
survey to present a detailed account of the literary history of the Old
Testament. Many of the facts are not known, the history is long and
often
complicated, and older conclusions regularly are being revised under the
weight
of new evidence and methods. The general contours of that history can,
however,
be summarized.
For most Old Testament
books it was a long journey
from the time the first words were spoken or written to the work in its
final
form. That journey usually involved many people, such as storytellers,
authors,
editors, listeners, and readers. Not only individuals but different
communities
of faith played their parts. See the individual entries for each book of
the
Old Testament.
Behind many of the present
literary works
stand oral traditions. Most of the stories in Genesis, for example,
circulated
orally before they were written down. Prophetic speeches, now
encountered in
written form, were first delivered orally. Virtually all the Psalms,
whether
originally written down or not, were composed to be sung or chanted
aloud in
worship. It is not safe to infer, however, that oral transmission was
merely the
precursor of written literature and ceased once books came into being.
In fact,
oral traditions existed side by side with written materials for
centuries.
B1
|
The Pentateuch
|
According to Jewish and
Christian tradition, Moses
was the author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
Nowhere in
the books themselves, however, is this claim made; tradition stemmed in
part
from the Hebrew designation of them as the books of Moses, but
that
meant concerning Moses. As early as the Middle Ages, Jewish scholars
recognized
a problem with the tradition: Deuteronomy (the last book of the
Pentateuch)
reports the death of Moses. The books are actually anonymous and
composite
works. On the basis of numerous duplications and repetitions, including
two
different designations of the deity, two separate accounts of creation,
two
intertwined stories of the flood, two versions of the Egyptian plagues,
and
many others, modern scholars have concluded that the writers of the
Pentateuch
drew upon several different sources, each from a different writer and
period.
The sources differ in
vocabulary, literary style,
and theological perspective. The oldest source is the Jehovistic, or
Yahwist (J,
from its use of the divine name Jahwe—modern Jehovah—or Yahweh),
commonly dated
in the 10th or 9th century BC. The second is the Elohist (E, from its
use of
the general name Elohim for God), usually dated in the 8th century bc. Next is Deuteronomy (D,
limited to that book and a few other passages), dated in the late 7th
century
BC. Last is the Priestly Writer (P, for its emphasis on cultic law and
priestly
concerns), dated in the 6th or 5th century bc.
J includes a full narrative account from creation to the conquest
of
Canaan by Israel. E is no longer a complete narrative, if it ever was;
its
earliest material concerns Abraham. P concentrates on the
covenant and
the revelation of the law at Mount Sinai, but sets that into a narrative
that
begins with creation.
None of the writers of
these documents—if they
were individuals and not groups—was a creative author in the modern
sense.
Rather, they worked as editors who collected, organized, and interpreted
older
traditions, both oral and written. Therefore, most of the contents of
the
sources are much older than the sources themselves. Some of the oldest
written
elements are parts of poetic works such as the Song of the Sea (see
Exodus 15),
and some of the legal material was derived from ancient legal codes. One
recent
view suggests that the individual stories of the Pentateuch were
collected
under the heading of several major themes (Promise to the Patriarchs,
Exodus,
Wandering in the Wilderness, Sinai, and Taking of the Land) and took
their
basic shape by about 1100 BC. In any case, the story of Israel’s roots
was
formed in and under the influence of the community of faith. See also
Pentateuch.
B2
|
Deuteronomistic
History
|
In recent years the books
of Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings have been recognized
as a
unified account of the history of Israel from the time of Moses (13th
century bc) to the
Babylonian exile (the period
from the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC to the reconstruction in Palestine
of a
new Jewish state after 538 bc).
Because
the literary style and theological perspective are similar to those of
Deuteronomy, this account is called the Deuteronomistic History. On the
basis
of the last events it reports, among other evidence, it seems to have
been
written about 560 BC, during the exile. It is possible, however, that at
least
one edition was written earlier.
The writer (or writers)
of the work set out to
record Israel’s history and also to account for the disaster that befell
the
nation at the hands of the Babylonians. On the one hand, he worked as
any other
historian would, by collecting and organizing older sources, both
written and
oral. He used materials of many kinds, including stories of the
prophets, lists
of various sorts, earlier histories, and even court records. In fact, he
often
refers the reader to his sources (for example, see Joshua 10:13; 2
Samuel 1:18;
2 Kings 15:6). On the other hand, however, he worked as a theologian—and
one
who already had firm convictions about the course and meaning of the
events he
recorded. He expressed those convictions by the way he organized the
material
and by placing speeches, which he had written, into the mouths of the
major
characters (for example, see Joshua 1). He believed that Israel had
fallen to
the Babylonians because of disobedience to the law of Moses (as in
Deuteronomy), especially in its worship of false gods in false places of
worship; he also believed that the prophets had warned of the exile long
before
it happened.
B3
|
The Poetic Books
|
Both the cultic and wisdom
poetry of the Old
Testament are difficult to date or to attribute to particular
authorship,
primarily because they contain so few historical allusions. David is
regarded
as the author of the Psalms because of the tradition that he was a
singer and
composer; in fact, only 70 of the 150 Psalms are specifically identified
with
David, and far fewer than that originated during his era. The
attributions to
David and to others are found in the superscriptions, which were added
long after
the Psalms were written. The identification of Proverbs and other wisdom
books
with Solomon stems from the tradition of that king’s great wisdom, and
is
reliable to the extent that Solomon did encourage institutions that
developed
such literature. Wisdom poetry contains in the sayings some of the
oldest
material in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in compositions such as
Ecclesiastes and
Sirach some of the latest.
The Book of Psalms became
the hymn and prayer
book of Israel’s second temple, but many of the songs predate the second
temple. They contain motifs, themes, and expressions that Israel
inherited from
its Canaanite predecessors in the land. Many voices speak in and through
the
Psalms, but above all they are the voices of the community at worship.
B4
|
The Prophetic
Books
|
Few if any of the prophetic
books were
written entirely by the person whose name serves as the title. Moreover,
in
most instances even the words of the original prophet were recorded by
others.
The story of Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch (see Jeremiah 36; see also Isaiah
8:16)
illustrates one of the ways the spoken prophetic words became books. The
various utterances of the prophets would have been remembered and
collected by
their followers and eventually written down. Later, most of the books
were
edited and expanded. For example, when the Book of Amos (circa 755 bc) was used in the time of
the exile,
it was given a new and hopeful ending (Amos 9:8-15). The Book of Isaiah
reflects centuries of Israelite history and the work of several prophets
and
other figures: Isaiah 1-39 stems primarily from the original prophet
(742-700
BC); chapters 40-55 come from an unknown prophet of the Exile, called
Second
Isaiah (539 bc); and
chapters
56-66, identified as Third Isaiah, come from various writers of the
period
after the exile.
C
|
The Canon
|
The Hebrew Bible and the
Christian versions of
the Old Testament were canonized in different times and places, but the
development of the Christian canons must be understood in terms of the
Jewish
Scriptures.
C1
|
The Hebrew Canon
|
The idea in Israel of
a sacred book dates at
least from 621 BC. During the reform of Josiah, king of Judah, when the
temple
was being repaired, the high priest Hilkiah discovered “the book of the
law”
(see 2 Kings 22). The scroll was probably the central part of the
present Book
of Deuteronomy, but what is important is the authority that was ascribed
to it.
More reverence was paid to the text read by Ezra, the Hebrew priest and
scribe,
to the community at the end of the 5th century bc
(see Nehemiah 8).
The Hebrew Bible became
Holy Scripture in three
stages. The sequence corresponds to the three parts of the Hebrew canon:
the
Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. On the basis of external evidence
it
seems clear that the Torah, or Law, became Scripture between the end of
the
Babylonian exile (538 BC) and the separation of the Samaritans from
Judaism,
probably by 300 bc. The
Samaritans
recognized only the Torah as their Bible.
The second stage was the
canonization of the
Nebiim (Prophets). As the superscriptions to the prophetic books
indicate, the
recorded words of the prophets came to be considered the word of God.
For all
practical purposes the second part of the Hebrew canon was closed by the
end of
the 3rd century, not long before 200 BC.
In the meantime other
books were being compiled,
written, and used in worship and study. By the time the Book of Sirach
was
written (circa 180 bc),
an idea of
a tripartite Bible had developed. The contents of the third part, the
Ketubim
(Writings), remained somewhat fluid in Judaism until after the fall of
Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70. By the end of the 1st century ad the rabbis in Palestine had
established the final list.
Both positive and negative
forces were at work in
the process of canonization. On the one hand, most of the decisions had
already
been made in practice: The Law, the Prophets, and most of the Writings
had been
serving as Scripture for centuries. Controversy developed around only a
few
books in the Writings, such as Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon
(Songs). On
the other hand, many other religious books, also claiming to be the word
of
God, were being written and circulated. These included the books in the
present
Protestant Apocrypha, some of the New Testament books, and many others.
Consequently, the official action of establishing a Bible took place in
response to a theological question: According to which books would
Judaism
define itself and its relationship to God?
C2
|
The Christian
Canon
|
The second canon—what
is now the Roman Catholic version
of the Old Testament—arose first as a translation of the earlier Hebrew
books
into Greek. The process began in the 3rd century BC outside of
Palestine,
because Jewish communities in Egypt and elsewhere needed the Scriptures
in the
language of their culture. The additional books in this Bible, including
supplements to older books, arose for the most part among such
non-Palestinian
Jewish communities. By the end of the 1st century ad, when the earliest Christian
writings were being
collected and disseminated, two versions of Scripture from Judaism were
already
in existence: the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Old Testament (known as the
Septuagint). The Hebrew Bible, however, was the official standard of
belief and
practice; no evidence indicates that an official list of Greek
Scriptures ever
existed in Judaism. The additional books of the Septuagint were only
given
official recognition in Christianity. The writings of the early Fathers
of the
Church contain numerous different lists, but it is clear that the longer
Greek
Old Testament prevailed.
The last major step in
the history of the
Christian canon took place during the Protestant Reformation. When
Martin
Luther translated the Bible into German, he rediscovered what
others—notably
St. Jerome, the 4th-century biblical scholar—had known: that the Old
Testament
had originated in Hebrew. He removed from his Old Testament the books
that were
not in the Bible of Judaism and established them as the Apocrypha. This
step
was an effort to return to the presumed earliest—and therefore best—text
and
canon, and to establish in opposition to the authority of the church the
authority of that older version of the Bible. See Apocrypha;
Apocryphal
New Testament.
D
|
Texts and
Ancient
Versions
|
All contemporary translators
of the Bible attempt to
recover and use the oldest text, presumably the one closest to the
original. No
original copies or autographs exist; rather, hundreds of different
manuscripts
contain numerous variant readings. Consequently, every attempt to
determine the
best text of a given book or verse must be based on the meticulous work
and
informed judgment of scholars.
D1
|
Masoretic Texts
|
With regard to the Old
Testament, the chief
distinction is between texts in Hebrew and the versions, or translations
into
other ancient languages. The most important, and generally most
reliable,
witnesses to the Hebrew are the Masoretic texts, those produced by
Jewish
scholars (called the Masoretes) who assumed the task of faithfully
copying and
transmitting the Bible (see Masora). These scholars, active from
the
early Christian centuries into the Middle Ages, also provided the text
with
punctuation, vowel points (the original of the Hebrew text contains only
consonants), and various notes. The standard printed Hebrew Bible in use
today
is a reproduction of a Masoretic text written in AD 1088. The
manuscript, in
codex or book form, is in the collection of the Saint Petersburg Public
Library. Another Masoretic manuscript, the Aleppo Codex from the first
half of
the 10th century ad, is
the basis
for a new publication of the text in preparation at Hebrew University in
Israel. The Aleppo Codex is the oldest manuscript of the entire Hebrew
Bible,
but it dates from well more than a millennium after the latest biblical
books
were written, and perhaps as much as two millennia later than the
earliest
ones.
Extant, however, are older
Hebrew
manuscripts—Masoretic and other texts—of individual books. Many from as
early
as the 6th century were discovered during the late 19th century in the
genizah
(storage room for manuscripts) of the Cairo synagogue. Numerous
manuscripts and
fragments, many from the pre-Christian era, have been recovered from the
Dead
Sea region since 1947 (see Dead Sea Scrolls). Although many of
the most
important manuscripts are quite late, the Masoretic texts in particular
preserve a textual tradition that goes back to at least a century or
more
before the Christian era.
D2
|
The Septuagint
and Other
Greek Versions
|
The most valuable versions
of the Hebrew Bible are
the translations into Greek. In some instances the Greek versions
actually
offer readings superior to the Hebrew, being based on older Hebrew texts
than
are now available. Many of the Greek manuscripts are much older than the
manuscripts of the full Hebrew Bible; they were included in copies of
the
entire Christian Bible that date from the 4th and 5th centuries. The
major
manuscripts are Codex Vaticanus (in the Vatican Library), Codex
Sinaiticus, and
Codex Alexandrinus (both in the British Museum).
The major Greek version
is called the Septuagint
(“seventy”) because of the legend that the Torah was translated in the
3rd
century BC by 72 scholars. The legend is probably accurate in several
respects:
The first Greek translation included only the Torah, and it was done in
Alexandria in the 3rd century bc.
Eventually the remaining Hebrew Scriptures were translated, but
obviously they
were translated by other scholars whose skills and viewpoints differed.
Numerous other Greek translations
were made, most
of them extant only in fragments or quotations by the early Fathers of
the
Church and others. These include the versions of Aquila, Symmachus,
Theodotion,
and Lucian. The 3rd-century Christian theologian Origen studied the
problems
presented by these different versions and prepared a Hexapla, an
arrangement in
six parallel columns of the Hebrew text, the Hebrew text transliterated
into
Greek, Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotion.
D3
|
Peshitta, Old
Latin,
Vulgate, and Targums
|
Other versions include
the Peshitta, or Syriac, begun
perhaps as early as the 1st century AD; the Old Latin, translated not
from the
Hebrew but from the Septuagint in the 2nd century; and the Vulgate,
translated
from the Hebrew into Latin by St. Jerome at the end of the 4th century ad.
Also to be considered
with the versions are the
Aramaic Targums. In Judaism, when Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the
language of
everyday life, translations became necessary, first accompanying the
oral
reading of Scriptures in the synagogue and later set down in writing.
The
Targums were not literal translations, but rather paraphrases or
interpretations
of the original. The two major Targums are those that originated in
Palestine
and those that were revised in Babylon. Recently a complete manuscript
of the
Palestinian Targum has come to light—Neofiti I of the Vatican Library.
The
best-known Babylonian Targums are Onkelos for the Pentateuch and
Jonathan for
the Prophets. See Targum.
The versions often are
good, sometimes even the
best, witnesses to the original text. Moreover, they are important as
evidence
for the history of thought among the communities that took the Bible
seriously.
E
|
The Old
Testament and
History
|
On virtually all its pages
the Old Testament
calls attention to the reality and importance of history. The Pentateuch
and
the historical books contain salvation histories; the prophets
constantly refer
to events of the past, present, and future. As the history of Israel was
told
in the Old Testament, it came to be organized in a series of pivotal
events or
periods: the exodus (including the stories from the patriarchs to the
conquest
of Canaan), the monarchy, the exile in Babylon, and the return to
Palestine
with the restoration of the religious institutions.
E1
|
Separating
Interpretation
from History
|
It is important to distinguish
between the Old
Testament’s interpretation of what happened and critical history. In
order to
write a reliable account, the historian needs more or less objective
sources
contemporary with the events themselves. The major source of information
concerning Israel’s history is the Old Testament, and its writers
generally are
concerned primarily with the theological meaning of the past. Moreover,
most of
the documents are later—sometimes by centuries—than the events they
describe. A
significant body of written evidence does not exist before the time of
the
monarchy, which was established with the anointing of Saul as the first
king of
Israel in the 11th century BC. Other evidence, both written and
artifactual,
has been recovered through archaeology, but all the evidence—both
biblical and
archaeological—must be evaluated critically (see Biblical
Archaeology;
Biblical Criticism). To be sure, all biblical texts that can be dated at
all
furnish important historical information. They reveal facts concerning
the
period in which they were written, but they do not necessarily contain
literally accurate accounts of the events they report.
E2
|
The Historical
Core
|
Israel’s life was a part
of the history of the
ancient Near East. Like the other small nations of the eastern
Mediterranean,
Israel was at the mercy of the major powers of Egypt, Assyria, and
Babylonia
and could prosper independently only when they were in decline or
preoccupied
with struggles among themselves.
E2a
|
Early History
and
Development of Israel
|
A considerable body of
information concerning the
history of the ancient Near East is available from the 3rd millennium bc on, but a detailed history
of Israel
can begin only about the time of David (1000-961 BC). This does not mean
that
nothing at all can be said about the preceding eras, or that all the
reports of
events before David are inaccurate. It does mean that historical
evidence can be
separated from later interpretation only with difficulty, and that
relatively
few details can be known with certainty. The Genesis stories of the
patriarchs,
for example, are not intended as history. History deals with public
events; the
accounts of the patriarchs are family stories, concerned for the most
part with
private matters. Archaeological evidence, however, has shown that the
background or setting of the stories gives a reasonable picture of life
in the
late Bronze Age. The stories suggest that the ancestors of Israel were
seminomads and provide an indication of their religious beliefs and
practices.
Careful analysis of the
biblical record and
judicious use of archaeological evidence suggest a date for the exodus
from
Egypt in the second half of the 13th century bc.
Even the route of the exodus, however, is unknown; the Old Testament
preserves
at least two major traditions on that point. Not all of Israel would
have been
involved, and most likely only the Joseph tribes.
Joshua 1-12 and Judges
1-2 present two different
versions of Israel’s entrance into the land of Canaan. The summary
statements
in Joshua report a sudden conquest by the Israelites under the
leadership of
Joshua; but Judges 1-2 and other traditions support the conclusion that
individual
tribes moved into the land gradually and that it was decades if not
centuries
before Israel acquired its territory. The period of the conquest and
that of
the Judges thus overlap. For the most part, during the two centuries
after 1200
BC individual tribes were sometimes on their own and sometimes together,
only
gradually becoming one nation, Israel.
E2b
|
The Monarchy
|
The monarchy arose during
the 11th century bc in
the midst of internal strife and
external threat. The internal strife concerned the question of the
proper form
of government for the nation. Some favored the more traditional form of
charismatic leadership in times of crisis; others wanted a stable
kingship.
Kingship won out because of the external threat from the militarily
superior
Philistines, who occupied five cities on the coastal plain. Saul united
the
tribes and established a monarchy, but was killed, along with his son
Jonathan,
in a battle with the Philistines. David then became king, first in the
south
and then of the entire nation. It was left to him to put an end forever
to the
Philistine threat and then to establish an empire that exerted control
from
Syria to the border of Egypt. His reign was long and prosperous,
although not
without internal conflict over his throne. He was succeeded by his son
Solomon,
who set up a court after the manner of other oriental monarchs. Solomon
built a
palace and the great Temple in Jerusalem, and overtaxed the resources of
the
country for his luxurious programs.
E2c
|
The Kingdoms of
Israel
and Judah
|
After the death of Solomon,
the northern
tribes rebelled under his son Rehoboam. The two nations, Israel in the
north
and Judah in the south, were never again reunited, and they often fought
each
other. In Judah the dynasty of David continued until the Babylonians
took the
country (597 and 586 BC), but in Israel numerous kings and several
dynasties
came and went. The period of the divided monarchy was marked by threats
from
the Assyrians, the Arameans, and the Babylonians. Israel, with its
capital
Samaria, fell to the Assyrian army in 722-21 bc,
its people were deported, and foreigners settled in their place. Judah
suffered
two humiliations at the hand of the Babylonians: the surrender of
Jerusalem in
597 and its destruction in 586 BC. Captives were carried off to Babylon
on both
occasions, but because foreigners were not settled in Judah, and the
captives
were allowed some measure of freedom—at least to associate with one
another—the
life of the people continued both in Babylon and in their native land.
The
exile was a disaster long announced by the prophets as a divine
judgment, but
the experience led the Israelites to a reconsideration of their own
meaning as
a people, and to the writing down and interpretation of their old
traditions. See
Babylonian Captivity or Exile.
E2d
|
The Postexilic
Period
|
The people were set free
from Babylon in 538 bc,
when the Persian king Cyrus
established the Persian Empire. The prophets Ezra and Nehemiah were
leaders in
the era after the exile when institutions were reestablished and the
Temple was
rebuilt. Judah became a province of the Persian Empire, and the people
had
relative autonomy, especially in religion.
At some point during the
postexilic period,
the history of Israel became the history of Judaism, but at precisely
what time
is debated. For further information, see Jews; Judaism. By the
beginning
of the Christian era the people had survived the rise of the Hellenistic
empire
(333 BC), the Maccabean revolution (168-165 bc)
and rule, and the establishment of Roman control in Palestine (63 BC).
After an
abortive revolution in ad
70 that
led to the destruction of Jerusalem, their life changed dramatically.
F
|
Theological
Themes of the
Old Testament
|
The theological themes
of the Old Testament are rich,
deep, and diverse. No single theology is found in these writings,
because they
emerged from many individuals and groups over several centuries. They
reflect
not only a development of thought but also differences of opinion and
even
conflicts. For example, different interpretations of creation are
preserved side
by side, and prophets on more than one occasion challenged the views of
priests. The themes of the Old Testament are coherent with and related
to one
another, but they are not a systematic theology. The canonization of the
Bible,
while establishing an official list, also recognized substantial
diversity.
F1
|
The God of
Israel
|
The most obvious theological
theme of the Old
Testament is both the most pervasive and the most important one: Yahweh
(the
personal name of God in the Old Testament; see God; Jehovah) is
the God
of Israel, of the whole earth, and of history. This theme echoes from
Exodus
20:3 (“You shall have no other gods before me”) throughout the Hebrew
Scriptures, and it is the basis for all other theological reflection. It
would
be misleading, however, to identify this theme as monotheism; that term
is too
abstract for the texts in question, and in all but some of the latest
materials
the existence of other gods is taken for granted. Generally the other
gods are
held to be subordinate to Yahweh, and in any case Israel is to be loyal
to only
one God. That God is affirmed to be the creator of the earth, the king
active
in history to save and to judge, all-powerful but concerned for his
people. He
is known to reveal himself in diverse ways—through the law, through
events, and
through prophets and priests.
The distinctive Old Testament
language about God
links the name of Yahweh with events: “I am the Lord [Yahweh] your God,
who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”
(Exodus
20:2). Israel confesses who God is in terms of what he has done or will
do,
rather than in terms of his nature. History then takes on special
importance as
the sphere of divine action and interaction with his people. The only
significant exception to this use of historical language is the wisdom
literature.
F2
|
Covenant and Law
|
Two other themes fundamental
to the Old Testament,
covenant and law, are closely related. Covenant signifies many things,
including an agreement between nations or individuals, but above all it
refers
to the pact between Yahweh and Israel sealed at Mount Sinai. The
language
concerning that covenant has much in common with that of ancient Near
Eastern
treaties; both are sworn agreements sealed by oaths. Yahweh is seen to
have
taken the initiative in granting the covenant by electing a people.
Perhaps the
simplest formulation of the covenant is the sentence: “I will take you
for my
people, and I will be your God” (Exodus 6:7). The law was understood to
have
been given as a part of the covenant, the means by which Israel became
and
remained the people of God. The law contains regulations for behavior in
relation to other human beings as well as rules concerning religious
practices,
but by no means does it give a full set of instructions for life.
Rather, it
seems to set forth the limits beyond which the people could not go
without
breaking the covenant.
F3
|
The Human Person
|
The Old Testament stresses
an understanding of
human beings in community, something important for the people of such a
covenant. The individual human being was conceived of as an animated
body, as
Genesis 2:7 suggests: “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the
ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living
being.” That “breath” should not be viewed as a “soul” but simply as
“life.” In
the Old Testament, the human being was seen as a unity of physical
matter and
life, the whole a gift from God. Consequently, death was a vivid
reality; views
of afterlife or resurrection appear only rarely and late in Israelite
thought.
Another theme that appears
in the prophets and is
basic elsewhere is that Yahweh is a just God who expects justice and
righteousness from his people. That includes fairness in all human
affairs,
care for the weak, and the establishment of just institutions.
With these and other themes,
it is small
wonder that the Hebrew Scriptures provided the foundation for two world
religions, Judaism and Christianity.
VII
|
THE NEW
TESTAMENT
|
The New Testament consists
of 27 documents written
between ad 50 and 150
concerning
matters of belief and practice in Christian communities throughout the
Mediterranean world. Although some have argued that Aramaic originals
lie
behind some of these documents (especially the Gospel of Matthew and the
Epistle to the Hebrews), all have been handed down in Greek, very likely
the
language in which they were composed.
A
|
Text, Canon, and
Early
Versions
|
For a time, some Christian
scholars treated
the Greek of the New Testament as a special kind of religious language,
providentially given as a proper vehicle for the Christian faith. It is
now clear
from extrabiblical writings of the period that the language of the New
Testament is koine, or common Greek, that which was used in homes and
marketplaces.
A1
|
Manuscripts and
Textual
Criticism
|
Extant Greek manuscripts
of the New Testament—complete,
partial, or fragmentary—now number about 5000. None of these, however,
is an
autograph, an original from the writer. Probably the oldest is a
fragment of
the Gospel of John dated about AD 120-40. The similarities among these
manuscripts is most remarkable when one considers differences of time
and place
of origin as well as the methods and materials of writing.
Dissimilarities,
however, involve omissions, additions, terminology, and different
ordering of
words.
Comparing, evaluating,
and dating the manuscripts, placing
them in family groups, and developing criteria for ascertaining the text
that
most likely corresponds to what the authors wrote are the tasks of
critics.
They are aided in their judgments by thousands of scriptural citations
in the
writings of the early Fathers of the Church and by a number of early
translations of the Bible into other languages. The fruit of the labor
of text
critics is an edition of the Greek New Testament that offers not only
what is
judged to be the best text but also includes notes indicating variant
readings
among the major manuscripts. The more significant of these variants
usually
appear in English translations as footnotes citing what other ancient
authorities say (see, for example, Mark 16:9-20; John 7:53-8:11; Acts
8:37).
Critical editions of the Greek New Testament have appeared with some
regularity
since the work of the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus in the 16th
century.
A2
|
Precanonical
Writings
|
The 27 books of the New
Testament are only
a fraction of the literary production of the Christian communities in
their
first three centuries. The principal types of New Testament documents
(gospel,
epistle, apocalypse) were widely imitated, and the names of apostles or
other
leading figures were attached to writings designed to fill in the
silence of
the New Testament (for example, on the childhood and youth of Jesus), to
satisfy the appetite for more miracles, and to argue for new and fuller
revelations. As many as 50 Gospels were in circulation during this time.
Many
of these noncanonical Christian writings have been collected and
published as
New Testament Apocrypha (see Apocryphal New Testament).
Knowledge of the literature
of the period was
greatly increased by the discovery in 1945 of the library of a heretical
Christian group, the Gnostics (see Gnosticism), at Naj‘Ḩammādī,
Egypt.
This collection, written in Coptic, has been translated and published.
Major
scholarly attention has been focused on the Gospel of Thomas, which
purports to
be sayings of Jesus, 114 in all, delivered privately to Thomas, one of
the 12
apostles.
A3
|
The Canon
|
No clear records are available
documenting
what determined the church’s decision to adopt an official canon of
Christian
writings or the process by which this occurred. For Jesus and his
followers,
the Law, Prophets, and Writings of Judaism were “Holy Scriptures.”
Interpretation of these writings was, however, governed by the work,
words, and
person of Jesus as he was understood by his followers. The apostles who
preserved the words and deeds of Jesus and who continued his mission
were
regarded as having special authority. That Paul, for instance, expected
his
letters to be read aloud in churches and even exchanged among the
churches (see
Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:26 ff.) indicates that a new norm for
belief
and practice was developing in the Christian communities. This norm
consisted
of two parts: the Lord (preserved in the “gospels”) and the Apostles
(preserved
primarily in “epistles”).
Tracing the history of
the development of the New
Testament canon by noting which of the books were quoted or cited by the
early
Fathers of the Church is an uncertain process. Too much is made of
silence. It
seems that the earliest attempt to establish a canon was made about ad 150 by a heretical
Christian named
Marcion whose acceptable list included the Gospel of Luke and ten
Pauline
Epistles, edited in a strong anti-Jewish direction. Perhaps opposition
to
Marcion accelerated efforts toward a canon of wide acceptance.
By AD 200, 20 of the 27
books of the
New Testament seem to have been generally regarded as authoritative.
Local
preferences prevailed here and there, and some differences existed
between the
eastern and western churches. Generally speaking, the books that were
disputed
for some time but were finally included were James, Hebrews, 2 John, 3
John,
Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation. Other books, widely favored but finally
rejected, were Barnabas, 1 Clement, Hermas, and the Didache; the authors
of
these books are generally referred to as the Apostolic Fathers.
The 39th festal letter
of St. Athanasius, bishop of
Alexandria, sent to the churches under his jurisdiction in 367, ended
all
uncertainty about the limits of the New Testament canon. In the
so-called
festal letter, preserved in a collection of annual Lenten messages given
by
Athanasius, he listed as canonical the 27 books that remain the contents
of the
New Testament, although he arranged them in a different order. Those
books of
the New Testament, in their present-day order, are the four Gospels
(Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John), the Acts of the Apostles, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2
Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1
Thessalonians, 2
Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1
Peter,
2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. See separate
articles on
the books of the New Testament.
A4
|
Early Versions
|
Because the New Testament
was written in Greek, the
story of the transmission of the text and the establishing of the canon
sometimes neglects the early versions, some of which are older than the
oldest
extant Greek text. The rapid spread of Christianity beyond the regions
where
Greek prevailed necessitated translations into Syriac, Old Latin,
Coptic,
Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic. Syriac and Latin
versions
existed as early as the 2nd century, and Coptic translations began to
appear in
the 3rd century. These early versions were in no sense official
translations
but arose to meet regional needs in worship, preaching, and teaching.
The
translations were, therefore, trapped in local dialects and often
included only
selected portions of the New Testament. During the 4th and 5th centuries
efforts were made to replace these regional versions with more
standardized and
widely accepted translations. Pope Damasus I in 382 commissioned St.
Jerome to
produce a Latin Bible; known as the Vulgate, it replaces various Old
Latin
texts. In the 5th century, the Syriac Peshitta replaced the Syriac
versions
that had been in popular use up to that time. As is usually the case,
the old
versions slowly and painfully gave way to the new.
B
|
The Literature
of the New
Testament
|
From a literary point
of view, the documents of the
New Testament are of four major types or genres: gospel, history,
epistle, and
apocalypse. Of these four, only gospel seems to be a literary form
originating
in the Christian community.
B1
|
Gospels
|
A gospel is not a biography,
although it
bears some resemblance to biographies of heroes, human and divine, in
the
Greco-Roman world. A gospel is a series of individual accounts of acts
or sayings,
each having a kind of completeness, but arranged to create a cumulative
effect.
The writers of the Gospels apparently had some interest in chronological
order,
but that was not primary. Theological concerns and readers’ needs
strongly
influenced arrangement of materials. One would expect, therefore, that
even
though all four New Testament Gospels center on Jesus of Nazareth and
all four
are gospels in literary form, differences would still exist among them.
And
that is the case. Apart from the accounts of Jesus’ arrest, trial,
death, and
resurrection, which are strikingly similar in all four, the Gospels
differ in
important details, perspectives, and accents of interpretation.
In all these ways, the
Gospel of John stands
most noticeably apart from the others. In this Gospel, Jesus Christ is
portrayed more obviously as divine, all-knowing, all-controlling, and
“from
above.” The other three are called synoptic (viewed together) Gospels
because,
despite differences, they can be viewed together. Placed in parallel
columns,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke impress the reader with such similarities that
they
have spawned many theories about their relationships. The most widely
held
scholarly opinion is that Mark was the earliest written and became a
source for
Matthew and Luke. Most likely, Matthew and Luke each had other sources
as well
as a common source, a conjecture made on the basis of much shared
material not
found in Mark. This theorized but as yet unidentified source has simply
been
called Q, or Quelle (German, “source”). In a preface, the author of the
Gospel
of Luke speaks of having researched many narratives about Jesus (see
Luke
1:1-4).
B2
|
History
|
Historical narrative is
best represented in the New
Testament by the Acts of the Apostles, which is the second of two
volumes
(sometimes called Luke-Acts) ascribed to St. Luke. These two books tell
the
story of Jesus and the church that arose in his name as one continuous
narrative, set in the history of Israel and of the Roman Empire. The
history is
theologically presented; that is, it interprets what God is doing in
this event
or with that person. Acts is unique in the New Testament in its use of
historical narrative for purposes of proclamation.
B3
|
Epistles
|
The epistle or letter
in the Greco-Roman world was
a fairly standardized literary form consisting of signature, address,
greeting,
eulogy or thanksgiving, message, and farewell. St. Paul found this form
congenial to his relation to the churches he had established and
convenient for
an itinerant apostle. The form became widely accepted in the Christian
community and was used by other church leaders and writers. The epistles
that
they wrote, some of which appear in the New Testament, are really
sermons,
exhortations, or treatises thinly disguised as epistles.
B4
|
Apocalyptic
Writing
|
Apocalyptic writing appears
throughout the New Testament
but is most extensive in the Book of Revelation. Apocalypses are usually
written in times of severe crisis for a community, times in which people
look
beyond the present and beyond human sources for help and hope. This
literature
is highly visionary, symbolic, pessimistic about world conditions, and
hopeful
only in terms of the invisible beyond the visible and the victory beyond
history. Just retribution and reward characterize the visions of the end
of the
world. Apparently, Revelation was written during the persecution of
Christians
under the Roman emperor Domitian, who reigned from 81 to 96. See Apocalyptic
Writings.
B5
|
Literary Forms
|
Within these four major
types of literature, many
forms appear: poems, hymns, confessional formulas, proverbs, miracle
stories,
beatitudes, diatribes, lists of duties, parables, and others. Recent
scholarship has given a great deal of attention to literary form not
only as
necessary in understanding content but also as a vehicle by which the
reader
can share the experience created in a given passage. Forms have the
power to
create worlds and to define relationships; they are not mere accessories
to
content.
In the writings of biblical
scholars, much
attention in the past was focused on the parable, which for centuries
was
regarded as an allegory. At the close of the last century, the German
biblical
scholar Adolph Jülicher (1857-1938) took a new direction in the
interpretation
of parables. He insisted that the New Testament parables be understood
as real
similes, rather than as allegories. Thus, he held that Jesus’ stories
should be
understood as illustrations, the meanings of which could be restated in
single
themes or propositions.
More recently, parables
have been respected as works of
literary art, having a force and function similar to poetry, and
therefore not
to be destroyed by paraphrase or summary or propositional digest. As
literary
art, a parable does not simply make its point, but it does its work on
the
reader—creating, altering, or even shattering a particular view of life
and
reality. Scholarly explorations into other literary forms in the New
Testament
are also under way.
C
|
History in the
New
Testament
|
The New Testament is not
a collection of maxims,
reflections, and meditations dissociated from historical concreteness.
On the
contrary, its documents focus on a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth,
and
address the problems faced by his followers in a variety of specific
contexts
in the Roman Empire. This concern with historical events, persons, and
situations does not mean, however, that the New Testament submits itself
to
purely historical and chronological interests.
C1
|
Determining the
Broad
Chronological Outline
|
A number of difficulties
are encountered in a
historical reconstruction of the period as revealed in New Testament
sources.
First, the documents are arranged theologically, not chronologically.
The
Gospels are first because they tell the story of Jesus, but they were
written
between 70 and 90, as much as 60 years after his death. The Acts of the
Apostles is also from this period. The Epistles of Paul, however, are
earlier;
they date from the decade between 50 and 60 because they were written at
the
very time Paul was involved in missionary work. The remaining books,
which can
be dated between 90 and 150, reflect church conditions of the
postapostolic
period. Second, the documents do not evidence much interest in history
as a
chronological process, partly because their authors believed in the
impending
end of history. Third, the New Testament is not one book but an
ecclesiastical
collection, preserved for the specific purposes of worship, preaching,
teaching, and polemics. Fourth, all the documents were written by
advocates of
the Christian faith for purposes of proclamation and instruction; hence,
although they contain historical references, they are not pieces of
historical
reporting. Add to these difficulties the lack of many references to
Jesus and
his followers from other contemporary sources, and the possibility of a
detailed history grows dimmer.
Nevertheless, scholars
are in general agreement as to the
broad chronological outline. The major anchor points are provided by
Luke and
Acts, which set the story of Jesus and the beginning of the church in
the
context of Jewish and Roman history. The Gospel of Luke states that
Jesus began
his ministry in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius (see Luke 3:1),
which
would be ad 28-29. All
four
Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified when Pontius Pilate was governor
(AD
26-36) of Judea. Jesus’ ministry was conducted between 29 and 30,
according to
the view that he ministered one year; between 29 and 33, according to
the
theory that his work extended three to four years.
C2
|
The Infancy
Narratives
|
Before his public life,
little is known of Jesus.
He was from Nazareth of Galilee, although both Luke and Matthew place
his birth
in Bethlehem of Judea, the ancestral home of King David. Only the books
of Luke
and Matthew contain birth and infancy stories, and these differ in
several
details. Luke (see 1:5-2:52) relates the stories in poem and song woven
from
Old Testament texts that highlight God’s concern for the poor and
despised.
Matthew (see 1:18-2:23) patterns his story on that of Moses in the Old
Testament. Just as Moses spent his childhood among the rich and wise of
Egypt,
so was Jesus visited and honored by rich and wise magi. As Moses was
hidden
from a wicked king slaughtering Jewish male children, so was Jesus saved
from
Herod’s massacre. (Since Herod the Great died in 4 bc, Jesus was probably born
between 6 and 4 BC.)
The remainder of the New
Testament is silent
about Jesus’ miraculous birth. Throughout the history of the church,
some
Christians have insisted that the infancy narratives be taken literally;
others
have regarded them as one among many ways of expressing belief in Jesus’
relation to God as Son. The tendency of the New Testament to proclaim
the
meaning of events without giving a reporter’s account of the events
themselves
has always provided much room for disagreement among those involved in
the
historian’s quest.
C3
|
The Apostles and
the
Early Church
|
Following the ministry
of Jesus, which is described in
the four Gospels, the religious movement he had launched came under the
leadership of the 12 men he had chosen to be his apostles. Most of the
Twelve
faded into obscurity and legend, but three of them are mentioned as
continuing
leaders: James, who was killed by Herod Agrippa I sometime before 44,
the date
of Herod’s own death; John, his brother, who apparently lived to old age
(see
John 21:20-24); and Peter, who was an early leader of the Jerusalem
church but
also made several missionary journeys and, according to tradition, was
martyred
in Rome in the mid-60s. In addition to these three, James, called the
brother
of Jesus, was prominent in the Jerusalem church until he was killed by
mob
violence in 61. Before the Jewish revolt against Rome erupted in
Jerusalem in
66, the Christians left the city and were not involved in the violence
that
destroyed Jerusalem in 70.
Major attention in the
record provided by the Acts
of the Apostles is focused on Paul, a Jew from Tarsus, who became a
convert to
Christianity near Damascus about 33-35. After 14 silent years, Paul
began to
write his Epistles, marking a missionary career that took him through
Syria,
Galatia, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Rome. Apparently his life
ended in
Rome in the early 60s. Paul’s Epistles and the Acts offer the reader
some
understanding of the life of these early Christian communities and their
relationship to the larger cultures.
The remaining books of
the New Testament provide
little historical information and almost no basis for exact dating.
Generally,
they seem to have been written for a second- or third-generation
community. In
these documents, the immediate followers of Jesus are dead, early
enthusiasm
and high expectation of the final return of Christ to end history has
now
waned, and the need for preservation, entrenchment, and
institutionalization is
evident (see Eschatology; Second Coming). Heretics and apostates
are
identified and attacked, and the membership is called to a tenacity of
faith
adequate for the persecution soon to come. The second Epistle of Peter,
probably the last of the New Testament books to be written, makes a
vigorous
effort to rehabilitate the earlier expectancy of an imminent end to
history.
This attempt to recover the zeal and conviction of a former era is
itself an
indication of the end of an age.
D
|
Major Themes in
the New
Testament
|
Like the theological themes
of the Old Testament,
those of the New Testament are varied and rich in content.
D1
|
God
|
Nowhere is the continuity
of the New Testament with
the Old more clearly or more consistently presented than in its teaching
about
God. Any view that the God of Jesus or of the early church was different
from
the God of Judaism was rejected as heresy. The God of the New Testament
is
creator of all life and sustainer of the universe. This one God, who is
the
source and final end of all things, takes the initiative to seek with
love all
humankind, entering into covenants with those who respond, and behaving
toward
them with justice and mercy, with judgment and forgiveness. God has
never left
himself without witnesses in the world, having revealed himself in many
times,
manners, and places; but the New Testament claims in Jesus of Nazareth a
unique
revelation of God. The person, words, and activity of Jesus were
understood as
bringing followers into the presence of God. In the days of its
beginning
within Judaism, the church could assume belief in God and focus its
message on
Jesus as revealer of God. Beyond the bounds of Judaism, however, faith
in the
one true God became basic to the proclamation of Christianity.
D2
|
Jesus
|
The New Testament presents
its understanding of
Jesus in titles, descriptions of his person, and accounts of his word
and work.
In the context of Judaism, the Old Testament provided titles and images
that
the New Testament writers used to convey the meaning of Jesus for his
disciples. He was portrayed, for example, as a prophet like Moses, the
Davidic
king, the promised Messiah, the second Adam, a priest like Melchizedek,
an
apocalyptic figure like the Son of man, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah,
and
the Son of God. (For a full account of Jesus’ life, see Jesus
Christ;
for a theological understanding of his person, see Christology.)
The
Hellenistic culture provided other images: a preexistent divine being
who came
to earth, accomplished his work, and returned to glory; the Lord above
all
caesars; the eternal mediator of creation and redemption; the cosmic
figure who
gathers all creation to himself in one harmonious body.
The Gospels present the
ministry of Jesus as the
presence of God in the world. His words revealed God and God’s way for
his
people; his actions demonstrated the healing power of God bringing
wholeness of
body, mind, and spirit; his sufferings and death testified to God’s
relentless
love; and his resurrection was God’s sign of approval of Jesus’ life,
death,
and message. St. Paul and others developed views of Jesus’ death as
sacrifice
and atonement for sin and of Jesus’ resurrection as guarantee of the
resurrection of his disciples. Documents written during persecution (see
1
Peter, Revelation) interpreted Jesus’ suffering as the model for
Christians in
the hour of martyrdom.
D3
|
Holy Spirit
|
Some of the prophets of
Israel had
characterized the “last days” as a time when God would pour out his
Spirit on
the whole of humanity. The New Testament claims that promise was
fulfilled in
the days of Jesus. The Spirit of God, an expression representing the
active
presence of God, is therefore used throughout the New Testament; this
entity is
variously referred to as the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the
Spirit
of Christ, or the Spirit of truth (see Holy Spirit; Trinity). The
Spirit
empowered Jesus, and it enabled the church to continue what Jesus had
begun to
do and to teach. Within the individual disciple, the Spirit produced the
qualities appropriate to that life and equipped the person to work and
serve
the good of the community. Understandably, the category “Spirit” was
subject to
a wide range of interpretations and created problems in many churches.
The New
Testament reflects the struggle to find clear criteria for determining
if a
congregation or a person really was influenced by the Holy Spirit.
D4
|
Kingdom of God
|
According to the New Testament,
the central
message of Jesus was the kingdom of God. He called for repentance in
preparation for the kingdom that was “at hand.” The kingdom of God
referred to the
reign or rule of God, and in Jesus’ ministry that reign of God was
announced as
present. The presence of the kingdom, however, was not full and
complete, and,
therefore, was often referred to as a future event. Students of the New
Testament have argued over whether Jesus and his followers expected the
kingdom
of God to be fully present in their generation. The unresolved state of
that
debate is registered in the two expressions often used to characterize
the New
Testament teaching about the kingdom: “already” and “not yet.”
D5
|
Salvation
|
The kingdom of God seems
not to have survived
as the central subject of the church’s message. According to the New
Testament,
the church did not identify itself as the kingdom, and in its preaching
it
began to speak more of salvation. The term generally referred to a
person’s
reconciled relationship to God and participation in a community that was
both
reconciled and reconciling. In this sense, salvation was a present
reality—but
not completely. The consummation of salvation would be in a fullness of
life
beyond the struggle, futility, and mortality that mark this world.
Paul believed that in
the ultimate fulfillment of
God’s purpose, salvation would be cosmic in scope. The realm of
redemption
would be coextensive with the realm of creation. This meant that finally
even
the hostile spirit powers that, according to the New Testament, inhabit
the
heavens, earth, and subterranean regions would be brought into harmony
with the
benevolent plan of God. This final vision differs from that of the Book
of
Revelation, in which the end is characterized by the vindication and
reward of
the saints and the damnation of the wicked.
D6
|
Ethics
|
In the meantime, the followers
of Christ are
to manifest in their conduct and relationships that they have been
reconciled
with God. This is the instruction of the entire New Testament and a
legacy from
the Old: the inseparable connection between religious belief and moral
and
ethical behavior. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings had insisted
on it,
and the New Testament continued that accent. This life is variously
referred to
as righteous, sanctified, godly, faithful. The books of the New
Testament are
filled with instructions about this life not only in an inward sense but
in
relation to neighbors, enemies, family members, masters, servants, and
government officials, as well as in relation to God. These instructions
draw
upon the Old Testament, the words of Jesus, the example of Jesus,
apostolic
commands, laws of nature, common lists of household duties, and ideals
from
Greek moralists. All these sources were understood as having one source
in a
God who expects his own faithfulness to be met with faithfulness in
those who
have been reconciled as the family of God.
VIII
|
THE BIBLE IN
ENGLISH
|
The history of the English
Bible is the
history of the movement of the Bible from its possession and use by
clergy
alone to the hands of the laity. It is also the history of the formation
of the
English language from a mixture of French, Anglo-Norman, and
Anglo-Saxon. Even
though Christianity reached England in the 3rd century, the Bible
remained in
Latin and almost exclusively in the hands of the clergy for a thousand
years.
Between the 7th and 14th
centuries, portions
of the Bible were translated into English, and some rough paraphrases
appeared
for instructing parishioners. In literary circles, poetic translations
of favorite
passages were made. Interest in translation from Latin to English grew
rapidly
in the 14th century, and in 1382 the first complete English Bible
appeared in
manuscript. It was the work of the English reformer John Wycliffe, whose
goal
was to give the Bible to the people.
A
|
Translations of
the
Reformation Period
|
In 1525 the English reformer
William Tyndale
translated the New Testament from the Greek text, copies of which were
printed
in Germany and smuggled into England. Tyndale’s translation of the Old
Testament from the Hebrew text was only partly completed. His simple
prose and
popular idiom established a style in English translation that was
continued in
the Authorized Version of 1611 (the King James Version) and eventually
in the
Revised Standard Version of 1946-52.
In 1535 the English reformer
Miles Coverdale
published an English translation based on German and Latin versions in
addition
to Tyndale’s. This was not only the first complete English Bible to
appear in
printed form, but unlike its predecessors, it was an approved
translation that
had been requested by the Canterbury Convocation. Shortly thereafter,
the
English reformer and editor John Rogers produced a slightly revised
edition of
Tyndale’s Bible. This appeared in 1537 and was called Matthew’s Bible.
In 1538 the English scholar
Richard Taverner
issued another revision. At about the same time, Thomas Cromwell
commissioned
Coverdale to produce a new Bible, which appeared in six editions between
1539
and 1568. This Bible, called the Great Bible, in its final revision in
1568 by
scholars and bishops of the Anglican church was known as the Bishops’
Bible.
The Bishops’ Bible was designed to replace not only the Great Bible,
which was
primarily a pulpit Bible, but also a translation for the laity, produced
in
Geneva in 1560 by English Protestants in exile, called the Geneva Bible.
The
Bishops’ Bible was the second authorized Bible.
B
|
The Douay and
Other Roman
Catholic Versions
|
The Douay or Douay-Rheims
(spelled also
Douai-Reims) Bible, completed between 1582 and 1609, was commonly used
by Roman
Catholics in English-speaking countries until the 1900s, when it was
considerably revised by the English bishop Richard Challoner. The Douay
Bible
was translated from the Latin Vulgate, primarily by two English exiles
in
France, William Allen and Gregory Martin. During the 19th and 20th
centuries,
the Douay and Challoner Bibles were replaced with other translations by
Roman
Catholics. In the United States, one of the most widely used is the New
American Bible of 1970, the first complete Bible to be translated from
Hebrew
and Greek by American Roman Catholics.
C
|
The King James
Version
and Its Revisions
|
In 1604 King James I commissioned
a new
revision of the English Bible; it was completed in 1611. Following
Tyndale
primarily, this Authorized Version, also known as the King James
Version, was
widely acclaimed for its beauty and simplicity of style. In the years
that
followed, the Authorized Version underwent several revisions, the most
notable
being the English Revised Version (1881-85), the American Standard
Version
(1901), and the revision of the American Standard Version undertaken by
the
International Council of Religious Education, representing 40 Protestant
denominations in the U.S. and Canada. This Revised Standard Version
(RSV)
appeared between 1946 and 1952. Widely accepted by Orthodox, Protestant,
and Roman
Catholic Christians, it provided the basis for the first ecumenical
English
Bible. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989) eliminated much
archaic
and ambiguous usage. The New King James Bible, with contemporary
American
vocabulary, was published in 1982.
D
|
Other Modern
Translations
|
In the first half of the
20th century
many modern speech translations, mostly by individuals, appeared:
Weymouth
(1903); Goodspeed and Smith (1923-27); Moffatt (1924-26); Phillips
(1947); and others.
Since 1960, major translation projects have been underway to produce
English
Bibles that are not revisions of the Tyndale-King James-RSV tradition.
The more
significant among these are the following: the Jerusalem Bible (1966),
an
English translation of the work of French Dominicans (1956); Today’s
English
Version (1966-76) in idiomatic English by the American Bible Society;
the New
English Bible, commissioned in 1946 by the Church of Scotland and
designed to
be neither stilted nor colloquial; the New International Bible
(1973-79), a
revision by conservative American Protestants based largely on the King
James
Version and similar to the New American Standard Version; and the Living
Bible
(1962-71), not a translation but a paraphrase into the modern American
idiom.
The latter was designed by its author, Kenneth Taylor, to make the Bible
interesting, but to propagate “a rigid evangelical position.” The
multivolume
Anchor Bible (1964- ), an international and interfaith project, offers
modern readers an exact translation, with extended exegesis
(exposition).
Jewish translations of the Hebrew Bible into English have been appearing
for
two centuries. A new translation, sponsored by the Jewish Publication
Society
of America, was published in three segments in 1962, 1974, and 1983. It
is
called the New Jewish Version.
The continuing flow of
new translations testifies
to the changing nature of language, the discovery of new manuscript
evidence,
and most of all the abiding desire to read and to understand the Bible.
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