Introduction

  

Introduction to

the Biblical Entries

Table of Contents

Section Name                                              Page Number

Preface                                                                                 i

Introduction                                                                         i

History of the Hebrew Old Testament Text                      i

        Scribes                                                                                         i

Masoretic Text (MT): Masoroth                                               ii

Masoretic Text: Vocalization                                                    ii

Masoretic Text: Scribal Error                                                  iii

Canon of the Old Testament                                             iv

Pre-canonical Literature                                                          iv         

Canonization of the Law                                                           v

Development of the Pentateuch                                             vi         

Canonization of the Prophets                                                 vii

Canonization of the Writings                                                viii

Alexandrian Jewish Canon                                                     ix

Christian Canon                                                                      ix

Hebrew Religion                                                                 xi

Patriarchs-750 B.C.                                                                  xi

Religion After 750 B.C.                                                          xii

Hebrew Language                                                            xiii

Section Name                                            Page Number

History of the Greek New Testament Text                    xiv

Sources and Printed NT Text                                                xiv

NT Study: Theory and Method                                             xiv

Westcott and Hort                                                                   xvi

Van Soden and Conclusion                                                    xvi

Canon of the New Testament (NT)                                xvii  

Apostolic Age (To 70 A.D.)                                                   xvii

Sources of the NT Documents                                             xviii

Emergence of the NT Canon                                                  xix

Greek and Latin Canon                                                           xx

Syrian Canon                                                                           xxi

Greek of the New Testament                                         xxi

Biblical Criticism                                                              xxii

Source Criticism                                                                   xxii

Form Criticism                                                                     xxiii

Biblical Theology                                                            xxv

Descriptive Task                                                                    xxv

Christian Interpretation of the OT                                       xxvi

History and Principles of Interpretation                      xxvi

Necessity of Interpretation                                                 xxvii

How many meanings?                                                        xxvii

Authority of Tradition                                                        xxviii

History and the Bible                                                     xxix

Methods of Historical Writing                                            xxix

OT Interpretation of History                                               xxix

NT Interpretation of History                                                 xxx

Section Name                                           Page Number

Preface  

                 This process of abstraction began as a minister's desire to better un-derstand the central written source of his faith, and the faith of his congrega-tion.  I started reading and underlining Abingdon's Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible in 1988.  While neither the congregation nor the role of church    minister remains, the desire for a better understanding of the Bible does. I   was & still am captivated by the wealth of information contained in these    four volumes.

                I was also frustrated by an excess of academic controversy, vocabu-   lary, and technical information, in which the essential information was lost.      And if I, with a 4 year Masters of Divinity degree, was frustrated and baffled    by this technical information and academic writing, how much more would   the average member of a congregation be unable to "glean"  the essence of  Biblical culture, concepts and characters from these volumes?   

           I looked at each paragraph.  I found what essential information there    was, if any, and wove that information into an abbreviated, essential version of each article. I see the process of "gleaning" this essential information as an integral part of my religious education, which will never end. Since I found that much of this essential information was missing from other Bible Dictio-  naries, I see the act of making this essential information accessible to the    lay faith community as a service and ministry to that community.  

 

Introduction to

the Biblical Entries

                In order to understand the approach used in these volumes, it will    help to understand something about how the biblical text survived to reach    us in its present form, how the books of the Old Testament (OT) and New    Testaments (NT) we have were chosen or canonized, the Hebrew & Greek    culture and language, biblical criticism, theology, and interpretation, & what part the modern concept of history plays in the Bible. What follows are se-  lected passages from the articles on: the history of the OT and NT text; the    OT and NT canon; Hebrew and Greek culture and language; biblical criti-   cism; biblical theology; interpretation; and the concept of biblical history.

HISTORY OF THE HEBREW OLD TESTAMENT (OT) TEXT—Traditionally,

     the textual study of the OT and how it survived to reach us in its present             form has been two-fold: the history of the transmission of the text and a             classification scribal errors.  More recent study consists of a far greater em-        phasis on the tendency to regard textual corruption as incidental to the his-        tory of the transmission.

                 In the study of the ancient versions we find strong contemporary indications of a change of how they are viewed as a result of a more adequate application of historical criticism than was formerly practiced.  There is a persistent stress on the individuality of each version and the interpretation of the parent text, and not thinking of it as a storehouse of possible “readings,” to be used for retranslation into an “original.”  Con-   sequently, caution is called for in the use of these texts.

     (See also Introduction in the OT Apocrypha/Influences Outside the OT section of the Appendix)

     Scribes—From the earliest times, the transmitting of scripture was the work of scribes or sopherim.  They were professionals beginning in Jere-   miah’s time, where the scribe is assumed to be learned in the law and capable of proclaiming its precepts.  The office is associated in a technical way with Ezra, must include a great number of people, and cover a long period coming down well into the Christian era. 

     Rabbinic tradition derives the Hebrew word sopher from the Hebrew word “to count.”  The scribes counted the number of letters, words and passages in the Torah, and the frequency with which words occurred.  This became a safe means of checking MSS and ensuring a standard trans-   mission.  They knew the precise letter, word or passage that marked the halfway point in the Torah and the Psalms.  So, scribal activity was always concerned with the need for a correct transmission.  Another feature of scri-   bal activity which presumably goes back to an early period is the division of the text into paragraphs.  The presence of paragraph division in the Qum-   ran MSS draws attention to its probable existence in rabbinic texts.  There is considerable divergence between the paragraph division in the scrolls and the MT.

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     The scribe did more than simply transcribe texts.  They indicated pas-sages concerning which there was traditional doubt by means of dots over or under consonants.  Scribal marks found in many printed editions of the MT, include the following 7 types.  There are 15 passages corrected by scribes, found in Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, II Samuel, Psalms, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. There are perpendicular strokes between words in about 480 places that have to do with the emphasis of certain words.  The inverted Nun’s function was argued among rabbis; it possibly indicated text dislocation. 

     The changes of the Scribes are listed in Masoretic records.  They are mostly attempts to avoid speaking of God in human form, and usually consist of a change of suffix to avoid direct reference to God.  There are 5 instances where a word not written is to be read, 5 instances where a word written is not to be read.  There are lists of “unexpected forms.”  Finally, a word in the text is frequently marked, instructing the reader to enunciate the word dif-   ferently.

      The one person who stands out in the scribal activity period is Rabbi Akiba (50-132 A.D.).  In many respects he was responsible for the rehabili-   tation of Judaism in the half century between the collapse of the Judean state and the Bar Cocheba Revolt.  There had long been preparation within Pharisaism for the survival of Yahwism independent of worship at the Jeru-salem shrine.  Such a survival was inherent in the Pharisaic attitude toward scripture.  After the collapse of the temple shrine the Bible took over authority of the shrine.  The letter of the Scriptures was of importance, down to the last “jot and tittle.”  Rabbinic teaching and Christian interpretation had a theory that in Akiba’s time and under his influence, a standard archetype & autho-   ritative text-form of the Hebrew Bible was created, and that this archetype was carefully and scrupulously transmitted by all scribes.  

      Masoretic Text (MT): Masoroth—Rabbi Akiba is believed to have said:  “The tradition is a fence around the Torah,” and the Hebrew word for tradition is Masora; the word was well known by the time of Akiba.  The use of the word “fence” implies that the Masora had a restrictive, as well as an interpretative, application.  Masora came to mean the massive collection of material by rabbinic copyists and text editors who were called ba’ali hama-   soret.

                Before we can correctly reconstruct the history of Judaism, we must stress Akiba’s death and the collapse of the Bar Cocheba Revolt, and the consequent scattering of the Jewish community into Babylon and throughout Palestine.  Judaism in Babylon was quite possibly a strict exclusive type of Judaism of which Nehemiah and Ezra had been worthy representatives.  From a later period we have considerably divergent traditions and interpre-   tations incorporated in the Babylonian and Palestinian Targums and Talmud.  It is in keeping with this that we find also Babylonian and Palestinian Masoroth.

                 This distinction provides a simple and adequate explanation for a confusing feature of the Masora. It was once assumed that Akiba had established an authoritative text form.  Since later copies of Masoroth are known to have shown divergence among themselves, it was assumed that the uniform Masora had become corrupted in the course of time.  The assumption is that the disagreements reflect earlier divergent traditions, traceable to different Masoroth, i.e. Palestinian and Babylonian Masoroth. 

     There were two especially important centers of transmission in Babylon, the one at Nehardea and later at Pumbedita, and the other at Sura.  Nehardea became a prominent academy in the 100s and 200s A.D.  Sura’s importance came later and was more concerned with Talmudic study than the actual transmission of the Bible.  The Palestinian center was at Yabneh (Jamnia), whither Judaism moved its seat of learning after Jerusa-   lem’s fall in 70 A.D.  By the late 200s, Tiberias had gained eminence and managed to retain its place as successor to the Great Sanhedrin.  It was from there that the Talmud’s Palestinian version was issued.

      Various collections of Masoroth are in existence. As a result of sepa-   rating eastern and western transmissions, interest has turned more on the Hebrew MSS themselves and the Masoretic notes in their margins.  The Masora states the number of times a certain word is used and draws atten-   tion to abnormal forms of script.  More significant are the notes concerning scribal interference with the text.  The interest of the Masoretes seems to have centered on peculiar and irregular forms, for the guidance of the pro-   fessional scribe; for our purposes they have little significance.  Compara-   tively early manuscripts (MSS) from the period following the final appea-   rance of vocalized texts show a tendency to disregard the Masoretic notes of the margins and ends of the column; they were transformed by the scribe into ornamental figures.

      Masoretic Text: Vocalization—We must go back some centuries in the history of the MT in order to see the vocalization of the text.  The conso-   nantal text had been supplied with vowel bearing consonants.  In the course of time, and largely under the influence of outside stimuli, the rabbis invented a scheme whereby a detailed and authoritative system of vocalization was attached to the text early in the Middle Ages.  Even after vocalization had been generally adopted there was strong opposition to it.  The first indication of vowel marks are in Masoretic notes and refer to dots or strokes attached to the conjunction and to inseparable prepositions.  This custom of attaching vowel signs was basic to the whole scheme of vocalization.

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     Three systems of vocalization had been in use at various times for the Hebrew text: Babylonian, Palestinian, and Tiberian; apparently there were rival formations and developments in the Babylonian and Palestinian aca-   demies.  The Babylonian method consisted of inserting above the text con-   sonants that stood for certain vowel sounds; it was known as supralineal pointing.  

      In the latter part of the 700s A.D., a Jewish sect appeared called    Qaraites, who laid great emphasis on text transmission & recitation.  Under    their influence, a more refined pointing scheme was invented which was     more carefully arranged; in due course it replaced the earlier scheme.     The Palestinian method was discovered in 1894 and tentatively identified    as primitive Palestinian pointing.  Like the Babylonian, the Palestinian    vocalization is supralineal, and has 8 vocalizing signs.  Dots were place    over different parts of words to show disjunctive and conjunctive accents. 

      The influence of the Qaraite movement forced the Masoretes to pro-   duce a complicated and refined form of pointing.  A completely new scheme was invented, consisting of marks which had nothing to do with the Hebrew alphabet but was composed of dots and dashes.  It has always been known as the Tiberian pointing, and the main period of its activity was between 780 & 930, the period during which 6 generations of a family of Masoretes, ben Asher, flourished.  Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher produced an edition of the Masoretic text, fully marked with vowels and accents.

     There was another Masoretic family of considerable renown in the same period in Tiberias, that of ben Naphtali. What's known is that the vocalization transmitted by them varied in details from that of ben Asher. The ben Asher and ben Naphtali variations postulate two distinct traditions of text transmission.  Ben Asher’s became the classical and standard form; ben Naphtali has been preserved in statements and in tabulations handed down in Masoretic collections and references.

     Traditionally, it has always been maintained that the ben Asher-ben Naphtali divergences deal with small details, such as the vocalization of Yissachar.  One scholar has argued for the existence of a complete version of the text, which should be attributed to ben Naphtali.  Its significance is that it shows that the whole level of the transmission had now reached such a height of refinement that not only the text, but also its pointing, was being finally established among the Masoretes. 

     The supremacy of the ben Asher edition of the text over that of ben Naphtali was acclaimed by Maimonides (died 1204).  It is generally assumed that four MSS can claim to be ben Asher texts.  Of them, the Leningrad Codex is now used as the text for Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica.  The general adoption in 1937 of the Leningrad Codex as the basic text form for a critical edition of the Masoretic Bible marks an important step forward in the story of Hebrew textual study, for the history of the text from the 1000s onward clearly shows that no attempt was made to maintain the textual integrity of the ben Asher text and punctuation.

       Masoretic Text: Scribal Error—The story of the Masoretic trans-   mission of the text makes it clear that there are sporadic traces of scribal interference.  The invention of both the Babylonian and the Tiberian vocali-zations and accents is part of the process of creating the Masoretic Text.     The scribes were aware of accidental textual corruption, particularly where   at the end of a line part of a word was written.  In order to avoid repetition,   any vacant space at the end of the line was filled with an elongated form of  one or other of one of five Hebrew letters.

      Scribal errors occur within the Masoretic tradition. The main sour-   ces of error include the following. First, there is confusion of similar conso-   nants, particularly ﬢ (d) and ﬧ (r), and ﬤ (k) and ב (b).  Until 1947 the Ara-   maic script as used for the Hebrew Bible in the pre-Christian era was un-   known.  The Qumran (Dead Sea) Scrolls contribute greatly to our know-   ledge of Aramaic lettering. Second, there is confusion in word-division,    stemming from the original manuscript not having spaces between words.     This led to two words being rendered as one, and three words rendered as    two or one. 

      Third, the history of textual transmission shows that the use of vowel letters varied considerably and was a fruitful source of scribal error.  Fourth, there is repetition of words or phrases or the omission of them.  Fifth, there are frequently visual slips and confusion between two words whose endings are similar.  Finally, there are errors stemming from dictation, especially regarding letters which have no sound of their own but have vowel sounds attached to them.

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     Scholars have two prevailing attitudes towards the MT.  For some, establishing a MT with a list of its possible variation is the stopping point.  For others who wish to consider other scrolls, in particular the Qumran Scrolls, the MT is used as a starting point in the search for the text that the MT was based on, with the distant hope of reaching the “original” form of the OT.  

CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (OT)—The great religions of the world have collections of writings which the faithful consider to be God's word and therefore the ultimate standard of faith and practice.  Judaism, to be followed by Christianity and Islam, became a religion of the book through the process of canonization, which began with the Pentateuch or first five books of the OT.  It became a religion wholly and exclusively founded on divine revelation fixed for all time in written documents.

                 The Greek word “canon” is derived from a Semitic root.  In Greek “canon” means literally the stave of a shield, a weaver's rod, a ruler, and metaphorically a rule, a standard, a model, a basic pattern of thought.  The term “canon” was first applied to the Scriptures perhaps as early as the mid-200s A.D., and certainly no later than the late 300s. 

                 The OT was, and remained, the official collection of the holy scrip-  tures of the Jews before becoming the first half of the Christian Bible.  The Hebrew Bible counts 24 books and arranges them in three divisions:  the Law (תורה, to rah), the Prophets (נבאים, ne bay eem), and the Writings (כתובים, keh too beem).  Christian Bibles divide the OT into 39 books, and arrange them as follows:

             a.  The Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deute-    

                    ronomy.

             b.  Historical books:  Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I-II Samuel,  I-II Kings,  
               I-II Chronicles, Ezra,  Nehemiah, and Esther.

             c.  Poetical books:  Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiates,  Song of     

                    Solomon

             d.  Prophetical books:  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, 

                    Daniel, Hosea,  Joel,  Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,

                    Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,  Zechariah, Malachi.     

                The translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, didn't know the rea-   sons for the threefold division of the Hebrew Bible, so they rearranged the books into a clear topical and chronological manner.  But the older arrange-   ment of Law, Prophets, and Writings, exhibiting clearly the 3 basic stages in the process of canonization, is basic for an understanding of canonization.     For it is here that we find a true recollection of the gradual canonization of the OT.

                 Pre-canonical Literature—Every sentence in the OT was not reli-   gious writing before it became canonical sacred scripture.  Only one He-   brew author, Sirach, expected his writings to be canonized, and his were    only accepted by some into the status of apocrypha.  Before books were   canonized in 621 B.C., Israel already possessed great national literature    about the patriarchs, Moses, the judges, the kings, and a few of the pro-   phets. Originally, a sharp distinction was made between a prophet's spo-   ken words, which could be divinely inspired, and their written word, which    for centuries were not regarded as canonical even though they had been    inspired.  Some of these ancient writings are literary masterpieces, but    none of their authors expected to have his book canonized as scripture. 

     Some parts of the existing literature were collected in bodies of cano-   nical literature.  It is an accident of transmission that only this canonical literature has come down to us.  This is only a small portion of the Hebrew literature which is mentioned in the Bible.  Some unknown Hebrew and Aramaic writings dating from the years about the beginning of the Christian era were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in 1948.

                 There are three stages in the process through which the writings con-tained in the OT have come down to us—the labors of the original authors, the editing, arranging, and collecting of these writings, and their final cano-   nization.  The actual writing of parts of the OT took place from around 1150 B.C. with the Song of Deborah to around 125 B.C. with the book of Esther. 

                 The span of a millennium during which the OT was written, may be compared to the span from Homer to the New Testament (NT) in Greek literature.  In 1200 B.C., the Israelites were a group of tribes from the desert who were invading Canaan.  In the 1,100+ years after that Israel had:

            1.  The period of the Judges.                 

            2.  A short-lived kingdom begun by David.                                           

            3.  A splitting of the kingdom into Israel (North)  and Judah (South).     

            4.   Israel being absorbed by the Assyrian Empire.                            

            5.   Judah being absorbed by the  neo-Babylonian  Empire.   

            6.  Judah under Persian rule.

            7.  Judah under Greek rule.

            8.  Judah attaining independence under the Hasmoneans from 141 

                    to 63 B.C.

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                 The literature & religion of the OT reflect these political vicissitudes.  The golden period corresponds to the years when Israel conquered Ca-   naan and was independent.  The silver age corresponds to the Judean    subjection to Babylonians, Persians, & Greeks.  Out of a vast body of na-   tional Hebrew literature the OT’s books were selected because their lite-   rary beauty kept alive the worship of Yahweh or their nationalistic appeal  kept alive the hopes of the nation.  Those responsible for collecting and    canonizing the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings were convinced that    every word in them was divinely inspired by God.

                 Between Moses and Solomon the Song of Deborah and other poems were composed, and the stories of Adam, the patriarchs and the judges were circulating orally.  Prose writing at its best began in Solomon's time (975-935 B.C.), with anything from fiction to poems to brilliant historical writing.  From 935-722 the best literature of Israel in the North was preserved in poems, histories, stories of Elijah and Elisha, parts of the first five books written by the Elowhist source, etc.  During the same time, Judah produced the Jahwist source of the first five books & superb prophetic oracles from Amos, Isaiah,    and Micah.  The classical period came to an end in Judah with the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

                 After Jeremiah, prophecy began to decline.  With the exception of Job and the second part of Isaiah, the 500s B.C. lacks outstanding works.  The following two centuries lack literary masterpieces.  In the 200s and 100s, the best poetry is in the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Ecclesiastes and late psalms.  The finalizing of the prophetic books around 200 B.C. marks the end of prophecy.

                 Canonization of the Law—Since none of the literature preserved in the OT was written in a canon, we must ask how, in only Judaism, what started the idea that God dictated books for guiding humans.  According to Jewish doctrine, God revealed God's self to an unbroken series of inspired people from Moses to Ezra.  No ancient religion doubted that the gods could reveal themselves and their will, either “face to face,” indirectly through the interpretation of omens, or through divine inspiration as found in human oracles.  In Israel priest and prophets were the only recognized recipients of divine oracles. 

                 Therefore, canonical scripture had its origin in the priestly or the prophetic oracle, since dreams and visions belong mainly to prophecy.  The priestly oracle could not have produced canonical sacred literature.  The “oracle” was a sacred box with lots in it.  The priest requested an answer from the deity, which was limited to “yes,” “no,” “A,” “B,” or “no answer.”  Saul, David, and Solomon regularly inquired of Yahweh this way.  They could therefore contain nothing with permanent validity, worthy of preservation in a book.

                 The idea of canonical scripture could only have been derived from prophecy, from the spirit of God entering a prophet; the Hebrew word for “prophet” possibly means “entered.”  It was only in this overwhelming experience that the prophet’s words as they were being uttered were regarded as divinely inspired.  In principle the first scripture was a written record of the prophets’ inspired utterances in the 700s B.C. 

                 Officially, the book found in the temple in 621 B.C., was the first writing to be canonized.  It is generally admitted that the book found in the temple collection box was the bulk of Deuteronomy.   It was not written by Moses, but by a temple priest some 500 years after Moses, a contemporary of King Josiah, who made the book public. Nonetheless, the author explicitly states that the book was written by Moses.  This does not make the author a forger, as the literary conventions condemning such things did not then exist.  The Deuternomic author was absolutely honest, and assumed as did all his contemporaries, that truth is unchangeable—since Moses was divinely inspired, he knew and taught the true religion and the genuine law. 

                 And yet, the book is not a codification of the law, but a sermon in 3    parts, in which the preacher pleads and warns, with deep emotion and tender concern; it is utterly lacking in an objective and serene legislator.  In form and contents the book found in the temple was inspired by the prophe-   tic oracles of Amos and his followers.  So, the author did not substantially modify the ancient religion; rather, he gave to it a prophetic interpretation.  He stressed with Amos the justice of God in punishing Israel for its sins.  New, however, was the notion that the love for God is expressed in keeping his commandments. 

                 The author made sure by two means that his book would not be consigned to the flames:  First, by timing the discovery of the book when the state of Assyria and its cults were in a state of collapse; Second, by combi-   ning the ancient rituals of Israel with the more modern, moral religion in the doctrine of a divine covenant with Israel. The divine covenant between Yahweh and Israel is first mentioned in Deuteronomy. 

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                   Josiah and his contemporaries erred in attributing the book to Moses, in accordance with the explicit statements of its author.  Only the authority of the great founder could induce king and people to reform their faith.  No less long-lasting was a second error:  the book found in 621 B.C. was not regar-

     ded by Josiah as a prophetic book, but as “the book of the law,” even though it was inspired by the existing books of the prophets.  In principle, the whole of the OT is the transcript of the inspired words of the prophets.

                 In reality, all prophetic revelations after “the Law” were secondary and in principle merely confirmed and explained the original, basic revelation.  The misconception of Deuteronomy as Moses’ legal code has left a perma-

     nent impression on Judaism. The divine revelation consists primarily of law, not of prophetic sayings; and faith, hope, and charity are less important than unquestioned obedience to every article of the law. 

                 Development of the Pentateuch—Deuteronomy’s publication in 621 B.C. marks substantially the end of Israel’s old religion, the beginning of Judaism, and the beginning of the Bible’s canonization.  The immediate effect of the teaching of this book was Josiah's reformation of Judah.  The enactment of Deuteronomy made it possible to abolish the most objection-

     able heathen practices in worship.  

                Canaanite & Assyrian cult objects were removed from the temple and sacrifice was now distinguished from butchery.  All shrines except the temple in Jerusalem were destroyed; all sanctuaries dedicated to foreign gods were annihilated.   The royal chapel & its worship in Jerusalem became a unique & national institution.  Also, having a prophetic oracle of Moses as the king-

     dom’s constitution tended to form the state into a theocracy. 

                 Aside from Josiah’s reforms, this book had another influence.  Judah now possessed a permanent revelation of God's will and mind, regulating religion and morals.  Since the priestly and prophetic instruction could not contradict any statements of God’s revelation, and since there could only be one supreme authority, the priests interpreted and supplemented the written law.  Jeremiah, after preaching in favor of Josiah’s reforms, was disappointed when the people refused to listen to the prophets because they now had “the Lord’s law.”  The most fortunate and long-lasting results of these difficult re-

     forms is that they preserved the nation after the state dissolved, and began the process of the state becoming a congregation.

                 In 621, the stories from Abraham to David existed as national epics without the prophetic denunciation of sin that is familiar to the present reader of the Bible.  After 621 B.C., it was necessary to rewrite the history of Israel in the spirit and style of Deuteronomy.  In 600 B.C., the first edition of Kings denounces the pre-Deuternomistic years as defections of the law of Moses.  Half a century later, the books from Genesis to Kings were submitted to a Deuternomistic retouching.

                 When the book of the law was canonized in 621 B.C., it marked the beginning rather than the end of a process.  From the existing historical books it derived the national pride of the Judeans, and from the prophets, it derived a sense of national shame in the presence of Yahweh.  It did not preclude future revelations of God in written form.  Rather, the finding of the book of the law seems to have stimulated literary activity.  Beginning with Jeremiah and Ezekiel, prophets began writing books.  The author of the second part of Isaiah, who was not a prophet, soon imitated these prophets.

                 Gradually, Deuteronomy grew to the size of the whole Pentateuch, the first five books of the OT.  Around 550, the Deuternomistic editor inserted the book found in the temple into the national epics (i.e. the writings of the Jahwist and Elohwist writers that had been combined a century earlier).  Over a century later, sometime after 440, the Priestly Code was added to the other three units of writing.  It is distinguished by its full genealogies, meager narrative and exact artificial chronology, and it covers the period from the creation to the occupation of Canaan under Joshua.  Minor additions were made to the Pentateuch up until 400 B.C.

                 The Pentateuch embodies literary compositions dating from 1200 to 400 B.C.  It was only gradually that Moses was regarded as the author, not only of the laws, but also of the narratives surrounding the law.  The date of the Pentateuch’s canonization is unknown; some scholars use the years between 516 B.C. & 432 B.C.  The surest date is 400 B.C., because at that time the final editions of the 5 books ascribed to Moses’ inspired pen were issued mostly as they are now.  The Pentateuch’s final editors included everything Mosaic and pre-Mosaic; they were not striving to embrace every-

     thing that was then holy scripture, such as the prophetic books in circulation at the time.  This edition was a stage in the process of codifying the law.

                 No single event in the Judeans’ and early Jews’ religious history was as significant for the future as the Pentateuch’s publication and canoniza-

     tion.  Circulated among Jewish communities as no other book before or after, this edition’s content was fixed, although minor textual changes and errors crept in through errors in the manuscript’s transmission.  It was not kept in the temple, but was taught to every Jew.  This stress on universal education was one of several epoch-making effects of the Pentateuch’s codification.  Synagogues were established where there were Jews, for the primary pur-

      pose of reading and interpreting Moses’ law.  The Pentateuch enabled all Jews to know the details of their religion and what God expected of them. 

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                Judaism is consciously based directly on the Pentateuch, and not on the teachings of the prophets.  The prophetic theology was received and accepted through Deuteronomy and other parts of the Pentateuch, rather than through the prophetic writings, which were read as confirmations of Moses' teachings in times of ignorance.  It makes no difference that histori-

     cally Moses wrote practically nothing in his law, because its origin was regar-

     ded as a miracle without any relation to reality.  The Pentateuch speaks with 

     the authority, if not the actual words of Moses.

                Also, the scripture was not sufficient in the field of ritual, civil, criminal, and moral law; many of its prescriptions, such as those on divorce and sab-

      bath rest, required detailed clarification.  Thus around the Pentateuch the unwritten law grew up, applying the revealed words to particular cases and to new circumstances.  This law was transmitted orally for centuries, until it was committed to writing in the Mishnah (200 A.D.) and in the Talmud (500 A.D.).  The legalistic tendency of condemning violations of the divine law, whether unconscious or deliberate, whether done out of moral evil or indif-

     ference, and then assuming that they could be atoned for through ritualistic purification, was never able to silence a more spiritual tendency.  

                 Nevertheless, the Torah became central in Judaism & has remained the supreme standard and norm of the Jewish religion.  Since the Lord created wisdom before he made the world, the Law, which is identified with wisdom, was said to have been made before heaven and earth.  Likewise, repentance, paradise, Gehenna, the throne of glory, the heavenly temple, and the name of the Messiah were created before the world. 

                 Some said the Law was created 2,000 years before the world, others said 974 generations.  God alone was its creator and put it into writing, while human beings participated in the editing of the other scriptures. The Ten Commandments were proclaimed by the Lord with a loud voice at Sinai.  The rest of the Pentateuch came to Moses through divine revelation, but it was generally certain that Moses did not contribute a single thought to the Torah.  The Law revealed to Moses not only existed before the creation of the world, but will last unchanged for all eternity. 

                 The Torah is a divine revelation, but, it must be taught and learned.  There are many sayings throughout rabbinical literature that reflect the profound effect that study of the Torah had on scribes, Pharisees, and rab-

     bis.  “Torah,” which had originally meant the Sermon of Moses in Deutero-

     nomy, found in 621, and then the whole Pentateuch around 400, came to 

     mean the whole divine revelation, both written and unwritten.            

                  Canonization of the Prophets—The establishment of the Penta-teuch’s five books as the sacred canon of the Torah marks the second stage 

     of the process which began in 621 B.C.  In 400, the Jews had other ancient books which enjoyed considerable popularity but were not yet considered divinely revealed.  There were four historical books, also known as the For-

     mer Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), and several volumes of prophetic oracles which were later published in the 4 volumes of the Latter Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets.  Growing pub-

      lic interest in these volumes and their value for enhancing the national pride and hope for a better future eventually resulted in their canonization.

                 The Former Prophets stayed for almost 200 years in the realm of secular literature.  Eventually the history of the events following Moses’ death, where the cut was made, were supplemented with the Priestly Code account of Canaan’s division among the tribes of Israel, among other addi-

     tions. David’s glorification which was absent in Samuel, and desired by the public, inspired additions to Samuel and to Chronicles.

                David’s exaltation was due, first of all, to patriotic pride, and secondly to his success in war and peace.  Samuel was raised from the humble posi-

     tion of an obscure village seer to that of a judge over all Israel, a prophet and an anointer of kings.  The theory that the pious prosper and the wicked suffer is pervasive in the book of Kings; it is unknown in the sources earlier than 621 B.C.  These retouches helped to change objective historical accounts into lessons from history distorted by the theory of divine retribution on 

     earth. 

                 In other ways, the late annotations increased the historical books’ popularity by bringing the ancient record “up to date” with the patriotic and religious feelings of the masses.  After the Pentateuch's publication, the ritu-

     als described in Leviticus and elsewhere became standard for Israel.  It did not matter that these annotations, like Chronicles, utterly distorted the past given in the old historical sources and surrounded characters either in a glorious light or a deceptive fog.  Their growing popularity, their patriotic and religious significance, and their supposed prophetic authorship brought about canonization around 200 B.C.

                Popular interest in the oracles of the prophets of the 700s and 800s B.C. seems to have remained faint after the canonization of the Deuterono-

     mic Code of 621.  Moreover, the prophetic message had been a most unpo-   pular threat of doom for the nation.  The career of Jeremiah illustrates the violent hostility toward the prophets.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who had been most bitter in their denunciation of Judah before 586, tried to comfort their people by picturing a better future.  Then Haggai and Zechariah came with their prediction that a messianic king would restore peace & independence to the Jews. 

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                 The canonization of the Pentateuch tended to make the Jews a peo-

     ple of the book. The explanations added to the prophetic books, especially Isaiah and the minor prophets, enhanced the popularity of the prophetic books.  Denunciations against foreign nations are found in Isaiah 13-24; Jeremiah 46-51; and Ezekiel 25-32; 38-39; some of them are later additions.  The counterpart of the decimation of the heathen is the glorification of the Jews.  After the writings of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Zechariah, a messianic king descended from David was expected to restore the independence and the prosperity of the Jews.  According to other prophecies, the restoration would happen by God's action without a Davidic Messiah.

                 When prophecies had become silent from 350-300 B.C., one or more scholars made a diligent search for prophetic books and prepared the pre-

     sent edition of the prophetic books in 4 volumes.  The inclusion of the brief books of Obadiah, Jonah, & Nahum, shows that the search was thorough.  The Latter Prophets were edited between 210 and 180 B.C, when our edition was known to Ben Sirach.

                 In 200 B.C. the Bible consisted of “the Law and the Prophets.”  The Law was read for instructions about the present; the Former Prophets were read in a national celebration of Israel's past glories, and the Latter Prophets for glimpses of a better future. Sometime before 30 A.D. readings from the prophetic canon were part of synagogue worship.  Jesus may have selected Isaiah 61 himself or it may have already been chosen.

                 Canonization of the Writings—The canonization of the Law and the Prophets allowed the future inclusion of other books.  The third division of the Hebrew Bible is simply calledכתובים  (ket too beem), Writings.  No more pre-

     cise title was possible, since it was a miscellaneous collection.  The Torah is a single work in five volumes; the Prophets includes 2 works of 4 volumes each; the Writings consist of 10 separate works grouped as follows, along with the most likely time of their canonization:          

                a. poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, Job)- Psalms is known as a Davidic 

         Psalter by 180 B.C. All three were most likely included with the Law

         and the Prophets by 132  B.C.

                b. Five Scrolls (Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesia-

         stes, Esther) Ruth and Lamentations were canonized before Song of 

         Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and Esther.  No definite date of canonization     

         was suggested in this article.

                c. prophecy (Daniel) May have been regarded as inspired in 100 

         B.C.

                d. history (Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles (originally one work)).  

         Ezra &Nehemiah were separated from Chronicles because they had 

         unique information, whereas Chronicles' history was found elsewhere.  

         Ezra & Nehemiah was canonized before Chronicles; both were cano-

         nized sometime between 250 B.C., when they were probably written, 

         180 B.C., when they are mentioned in one of the Apocrypha books as 
    scripture. 

                 While the canonization of the Law and the Prophets consisted of the final, complete editions of certain types of literature, the Writings were sepa-

     rate works, each of which circulated separately until it was attracted like a satellite into the orbit of sacred scripture.  Two conditions had to be fulfilled before each book was canonized separately.  The first was survival; no book could survive for a few centuries unless it attracted readers.  Among the Jews, a book had to possess a strong appeal of some kind to survive; it must have attracted readers for its religious, nationalistic, or literary value.

                  The second condition was anonymous authorship.  Only Nehemiah (and perhaps Ezra) have the original author's name attached to the book.  The other Writings are attributed to an imaginary author (David, Solomon, Daniel), or are anonymous (Job, Lamentations, Esther, Chronicles).  The interest in the rebuilding of the temple and the return of the exiles resulted in the separation of Ezra-Nehemiah from I and II Chronicles, and their being canonized earlier than Chronicles. 

                  Since it was generally believed that prophecy came to an end soon after the death of Ezra, no book written after Ezra (around 444 B.C.) was deemed inspired, because at that time the Holy Spirit departed from Israel, and no inspired scripture could be written.  This helps explains the use of legendary authors for writings that were written long after the “author's” death.  The conviction was that prophetic inspiration, presumably forever, 

     set aside the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings as a closed body of holy scripture.  In any case, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D., as well as the Christian's use of scripture, forced the Jews to fix the canon of inspired scripture for all time at the Council of Jamnia in 90 A.D.  

                  The Pentateuch retained for the Jews its central position after the whole Hebrew Bible was canonized.  The rest of their Bible is considered tradition.  The rest of the OT is a supplement to the Torah.  The Pentateuch is an inner zone, a Holy of Holies.  The other scriptures are simply explana-

     tory.  Their divine origin was, of course, generally recognized, but 3 expla-nations of their origins were given.  First, God revealed the contents of these books to their authors by inspiration. Second, God revealed these scriptures to Moses on Sinai. Third, God revealed them to the pre-existent souls of the authors at Sinai.

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                  Alexandrian Jewish Canon—Palestinian Jews made a sharp dis-   tinction between inspired scripture and human writings. (The Dead Sea Covenanters at Qumran differed from most of normative Judaism between 50 B.C.-50 A.D. in recognizing some sacred books unknown or rejected by    the rabbis in Palestine.) In Alexandria, on the contrary, the Jews tended to   accept as scripture any writing in Hebrew or Aramaic which came from Pa-  lestine.  Since they spoke Greek, they tended to regard books translated  into Greek from the Hebrew as divinely inspired. We do not know what was   the canon of the Alexandrian and Diaspora Jews before the time when the Septuagint was condemned in 130 A.D. 

                 In this Greek Bible, the distinction between the Prophets and the Writings was completely disregarded, and after the Pentateuch the books    were arranged according to literary type (apocrypha are in itallics):

                a.  history: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, I & II 

        Esdras (Ezra-Nehemiah)

                b.  poetical  and didactic books: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 

        Song of Solomon, Job, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus.

                c. stories: Esther (with additions), Judith, Tobit

                d. Prophets:  the 12 minor prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, 
    Lamentation, Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel (with additions)

                e. I and II Maccabees

     Most of the Jews in Alexandria apparently regarded the apocrypha as sa-   cred writings.  Both Philo and Josephus quoted the Septuagint in their wri-   tings.

                 Christian Canon—The Bible of Jesus and his disciples was the   Hebrew Bible, but the Bible of Paul and his converts was the Greek Sep-

     tuagint, named for its 70 interpreters.  By far the great majority of Christians in the first century and later were Greek-speaking Gentile proselytes or pa-   gans.  So the Septuagint became through Paul the official Christian Bible in the early centuries.  The differences between the Hebrew and Greek Bible were explained as textual errors in the transmission of the Greek Bible, di-   vine modifications for the future church's use, or even Jewish correction in the Hebrew text.  80% of the uses of the Old Testament (OT) in the New Testament (NT) are from the Greek Bible.  The following OT books are cited or formally quoted as scripture in the NT:

                 Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, II Samuel, I     

         Kings, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel Jonah, Habak-

         kuk,  Zechariah, Malachi, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel

     There are also allusions to and quotes from apocrypha, some of which are quoted as scripture. 

                 After Paul had said that the law of Moses was less important than the promises to Abraham, and that it was only an “old testament or covenant” to be supplemented by a “new testament or covenant,” the early Christians searched the Prophets and the Psalms for promises that had been fulfilled in the birth, life and particularly the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  Jesus had not come to abrogate the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.  The Law was merely the first stage in the process, for it was given at times to correspond to human weakness.  Paul claimed that the divine promises to Abraham were made to the children of Abraham according to the spirit.  Paul thus claimed for the Christians the OT promises. The great ritual institutions of Judaism became mere images of spiritual, heavenly realities. 

                 Conversely, John sees no possible harmony between the law given by Moses, and the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ, al-

     though the OT did bear witness to Christ.  The ritual institutions of the OT are futile and useless.  In conclusion, although the various writers of the NT differ in their attitude, they agree that the OT is divinely inspired.

                 The Christians derived their understanding of the Scriptures, as well as their notions about canonicity, from the Jews.  The Bible has a body and a spirit, a literal meaning and a spiritual sense; it can be understood according to the letter or the flesh, and also according to the spirit.  The Church Father Origen believed that the whole OT, not merely certain passages, had a mea-

     ning deeper than the literal. It was to be explained through assigning a sym-

     bolic meaning to each passage, i.e. allegory. He went so far as to sometimes deny the validity of the literal sense.  

                At the same time, Origen founded the scientific study of the literal sense of the OT, and left us invaluable works on the geography of Palestine, sacred history, textual criticism, and the discipline of explaining the meaning of Biblical passages.  Augustine and Jerome shared similar views with Ori-

     gen, although Jerome regarded the spiritual sense as founded on the letter.  He believed that God did not dictate every word to the prophets, but by merely supplying the thought, left to the writer the choice of language.  That is why the style of the biblical authors vary.

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                  Although the total rejection of the OT by Marcion was declared he-   retical by the Christians, the Christian church never reached complete    agreement about the canonicity of the Apocrypha.  The Apostolic Fathers    allude to the Apocrypha, or quote them as scripture.  But beginning with    Origen, the church fathers who knew Hebrew realized that the books of the Apocrypha were missing from the Hebrew Bible.  Jerome also made a dis-  tinction between the Hebrew truth confined to the Hebrew Bible and the    books outside the Hebrew Bible. As a Christian believer he recognized the   books of the Apocrypha as scripture.

                At the Councils at Hippo (393), Carthage (397 and 419), Trent (1546), and the Vatican (1870), the anathema was pronounced against whosoever    did not regard the whole Vulgate Bible, which included the Apocrypha, “sa-

     cred & canonical.”  Eventually, except among the Nestorians, the influence   of the Greek Bible, which also included the Apocrypha, prevailed over the Hebrew Bible.  The Syriac and other oriental churches use translations of    books not included in the Greek Bible.

                 There is a certain parallel in the Jewish canonization from 400 B.C.- 90 A.D. and the Christian closing of its canon by 200 A.D.  Judaism was in danger from Greek influences, while Christianity was in danger from em-   peror worship.  The death of the faithful and the safety of the apostate,   which seemed to call into question God’s power and justice, moved noble    dreamers to promise God’s imminent intervention to reward the martyr &    punish sinners.  Both sets of scriptures have a superb apocalypse as a   result of this.

                 Both apocalypses were accepted as inspired scripture, but soon 

     other apocalyptic writings appeared and threatened to change the nature of Judaism and Christianity.  Jews and Christians used the same remedy: both groups drew up an official list of inspired books and excluded from this list writings declared uncanonical.  The Christian church did not deny that the Holy Spirit departed from Israel in Ezra’s times, but was certain that it had returned again and rested on the Christian apostles and prophets, “transmitted to us by God’s will in the Scriptures that it might be the foundation and the pillar of our faith.”  

                Both the prophets and the apostles distinguished sharply between their own words and the inspired words that God spoke through their lips. Christians after 200 A.D. refused to accept in their scriptures any book which was not apostolic, so the church fathers took special pains to prove the apostolic origin of every book in the NT.  

                 It is clear that the Apocrypha enjoyed a canonical status that was almost unchallenged during the Middle Ages.  Catholic scholars distin-

     guished four senses in scripture:  the literal sense teaches historical events; the allegorical teaches what you should believe; the moral sense teaches what you should do; the mystical sense teaches what you should hope. (e.g. Jerusalem means literally the capital of Judea, allegorically the church; morally a well-ordered commonwealth, and mystically the heavenly abode of the saved.). By these four manners of interpretation the church could force the OT to say whatever seemed desirable.

                 Then, the Reformers noticed that some Catholic doctrines unknown to Jesus and Paul were only confirmed in the Apocrypha. Since the Refor-  mers saw the Scriptures as their supreme guide, it was vital for them to fix     the canon of Holy Writ and to publish authentic translations from the inspired Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek OT and NT. In 1519, Luther set aside the authority of the church and the tradition, regarded the Word of God as the supreme authority.  

                He did not ascribe equal authority to all parts of the Bible; the su-     preme message was Paul's message of salvation through Jesus Christ.      “All stories, if they are rightly regarded, refer to Christ.” Luther relegated     certain books to the end of the OT with this written comment: “Apocrypha,      these are books which are not held equal to the sacred Scriptures, and yet    are useful and good for reading.”  In conclusion, except for the OT quota-    tions in the NT and for its alleged witness to Christ, Luther would have     tended to regarded the OT as a purely human book.

                 Other Reformers who stressed social righteousness and a community ruled by divine principles, esteemed highly the OT.  For Zwingli, Christ is not the center of scripture, but one of the ancient men revealing God to man. He denounced the Anabaptists rejection of the OT, but admitted the superiority of the NT.   Calvin, in editions of the Institutes, increasingly Christianized the OT and at times corrected the NT on the basis of the OT.  As popular as scientific reason became, it often had to yield before Scriptural infallibility.   

                 Beginning with 1629, some editions of the Bible appeared without the books of the Apocrypha, which have been omitted from most copies of the King James Version and from most Protestant Bibles in other languages.  The influence of the OT became pervasive in England on the Free Churches; OT personal names became popular among the Pilgrim Fathers and Puri-

     tans.  Through the Holy Ghost, God had dictated to the individual authors every word, so that they were actually only scribes putting God's work into writing.

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                 In the 1600s, historical and critical research on the OT began.  In the 1700s, the critical analysis of the Pentateuch into separate sources (See also Biblical Criticism in the Introduction) began.  In the 1800s, incredible progress was witnessed in the methods and results of the scholarly research of the OT.  Fundamentalists among both Jews & Christians reacted strongly against this movement. 

                All these attitudes were present in the 1900s.  In whole or in part, the OT is regarded as God's Word, inspired literally or merely in the thought; or the OT is not divinely inspired and should be studied and read like other non-biblical classics; or that the scholarly, objective study of the OT implies the recognition that it bears witness to Jesus Christ.  In the histories of religion written today, the point of view of faith and the point of view of objective his-

      torical research are not kept distinct, because they are regarded as insepar-able.  The human search for God and God's reaching out to humans is part of a single process. 

HEBREW RELIGION, HISTORY OF. The religion of Israel was a phenomenon 

     unique in the ancient world. Its history began with the Israelite people in the 

     1200s B.C., and spanned approximately 1,000 years.

       Patriarchs-750 B.C.—It was prepared for by the semi-nomadic patri- archs, from 2000-1500 B.C.  The patriarch's God was the unseen head of    the clan; this God's cult was simple and presided over by the clan father.  As the patriarchs entered Palestine, their cults were carried on at local shrines, and their gods were identified with gods already there.  The patriarchs wor-   shiped “El” as God.  Their religion & legal tradition, with its sense of a bond   supported by covenant & promise, profoundly influenced the faith of Israel.    

                 Israel's religion actually began, as Israel did, in the events of the Exodus and Sinai.  Its founder was Moses.  Israel's religion centered in the memory of a historical event as interpreted by faith.  In that event, some Hebrews were led out of Egypt by Moses.  During it, there were happenings so marvelous that they were never forgotten.  At Sinai they made covenant with Yahweh to be his people.   

                 The covenant form is one which resembles Hittite suzerainty treaties from a time before Moses.  The King mentions his benevolent acts, lays down stipulations, and sanctions in the form of blessings and curses.  The covenant was no bargain between equals, but a vassal's acceptance of the overlord's (Yahweh's) terms.  A note of hope and promise is also primitive.  This had been an original element in the patriarchs’ religion. 

                 Israel's religion had a notion of Yahweh (God) that was unique.  It is probably best to translate “Yahweh” as “God creates.” Eventually, Yahweh became just a proper name.  Israel was always forbidden by covenant to worship any god but Yahweh; Yahweh created the universe quite alone, so Israel created no myth.  Early Israel did not deny that other gods existed, but neither was their status as gods granted. Yahweh differed from the pagan gods of the ancient world in his essential nature.  No image of Yahweh could be made.  God was a historical, not a natural god; there was no ritual tech-

     nique for manipulating nature.

                 Israel's faith was the focal point of a tribal league with 12 tribes for 200 years. The clans were obligated to assist in the central shrine’s care and to respond to the call to arms.  In dangerous times they had charismatic lea-

     ders called judges. The league's focal point was the tent shrine in Shiloh, the heart of the covenant league; the tent housed the ark of the covenant.  This shrine had clergy, most of whom claimed Levitic lineage.  Israel's cult in-   volved various kinds of sacrifice.   Her worship was enriched by borrowings,  which were given the rationale of Yahwistic faith.  At the heart of the Isra-

     elite cult were certain great annual feasts celebrating Yahweh's historic acts, such as Passover, Feast of Weeks, and Feast of Booths. 

                Covenant law was the most central factor in her life from the begin-

     ning.  Her laws were either casuistic (“if a man. . .”) or apodictic (“thou shalt [not]”).  The priest had the duty of deciding hard cases, & of giving instruc-   tion on the basis of the law.  Israel had to set up a monarchy when the tribal league was destroyed by Philistines near 1000 B.C. The monarchy brought the end of the old order.  Saul, was made the first king by popular acclama-

     tion. Saul failed to overcome tribal independence, but David partially suc-

     ceeded, and created a sizable foreign empire.  Since the state was created by David and centered on his person, it was necessary that a son succeed him.  The Sinai covenant idea was weakened in this process.

                Adaptation that had been going on since the Conquest brought Israel into contact with Canaan's material culture.  The monarchy speeded up the process.  David and Solomon added thousands of Canaanites to Israel; most of them became no more than nominal Yahwists. Solomon's temple, de-

     signed by Canaanites, introduced in its symbolism many features that were

     foreign to Israel.  The institutions of state that Israel adopted also  had to be

     borrowed from outside.

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                 As a clan society, she had no class distinctions or extremes of wealth and poverty; this all changed with David.  The royal court grew rich; aristo-

     cratic notions and class distinction began to intrude.  David sought to link his state with the old order by installing the ark in Jerusalem, and by appointing a priest from the old house of Eli.  Dogma was developed that Yahweh had chosen Zion as his seat and promised to David an eternal dynasty.  The northern tribes rebelled when Solomon died, and became the kingdom of Israel.

                 In Judah (southern kingdom), steadfast loyalty to the house of David meant a further shift from the ancient notion of covenant.  The Davidic cove-

     nant was of a different type from that of Sinai.  The people's obligation to God was obscured.  As the promise in Israel's faith was shaped by the dynastic ideal, the seeds of hope in the Messiah were sown. 

                 The northern state of Israel began without dynastic tradition or official cult.  Jeroboam I chose Bethel and Dan, as official shrines.  At both, Yahweh was conceived as standing or enthroned on a bull, and Yahweh's promises were regarded as unconditional.  The tendency towards fertility cults was magnified by the many Canaanites in Israel.  Shrines other than Bethel and Dan were equally popular, so it was easy for thinking contrary to the national religion to infiltrate it.  Society meanwhile slowly disintegrated; moral stan-

     dards were lost.  The national religion was more and more influenced by non-Jewish thinking and obligations to God were satisfied by ritual; covenant law ceased to have meaning. 

                 Religion After 750 B.C.—Protest against these trends began around the middle of the 700s B.C. with the flowering of the prophetic movement in classical form.  Prophets had been active in Israel since Saul.  Later we find them on good terms with the state, yet still criticizing it.  Their opposition to Jezebel's policy was met with persecution.  The classical prophets criticized both the state and the professional prophets who sided with it. Amos and Hosea, addressed the northern state in the generation before its fall.  Rejec-

     ting the empty cult, which had been corrupted by thinking that was foreign to the cult, and the idea that Yahweh's promises were unconditional, both preached a message of judgment and doom.

                 As northern Israel collapsed, the prophetic movement was carried forward in Judah by Isaiah and Micah, who also preached a message of judgment.  Isaiah was influenced by the theology of the Davidic covenant, and particularly in the promise of a just and victorious king of David's line. The hope for a Messiah began here.  Judah had always alternated between religious laxity and efforts at reform.  In the late 700s, the reform movement gained momentum, beginning with Hezekiah.  The closing of the Assyrian cults was popular not only with loyal Yahwists, but with all patriotic citizens as well.  But Hezekiah's reform did not endure, and non-Jewish ways of thinking returned in Manasseh's reign. 

                 Assyria's collapse during the reign of Josiah left Judah open to swee-

     ping reform.  The reform was aided by the discovery of a “book of the law,” most likely some form of Deuteronomy.  The reform resulted in a purge of all pagan cults, both native and foreign.  The written law, which dealt with cultic reform and ritual, was elevated at the expense of the prophetic word; many believed that national safety had been secured. 

                 Josiah's violent death and the end of independence in 587 B.C., seemed to call the truth of the national religion into question.  Israel's faith was saved largely by prophets who addressed the nation in its darkest hour.  Jeremiah rejected any trust in the temple and dynasty, and insisted on a repentant heart rather than cult ritual. Ezekiel declared that the calamity was God's vindication as sovereign Lord, and based divine justice on an indivi-

      dual's actions.  Exiled Israel's faith was left with the hope of divine grace, and a new form.

                 During the Exile, Israel's faith persisted with an amazing tenacity, but Jewish life in Palestine was totally disrupted.  The Jews around Jerusalem were few and poor.  Israel's faith in Exile could no longer continue as a na-

     tional cult, if it was to survive; it had to adapt.  The writer of the second part of Isaiah wrote with comforting assurance that sin's penalty had now been paid, and declared that the Exile was soon to end.  Israel's role is to be Yahweh's servant, to bring the light of Yahweh's rule to the nations.  The prophet's “Servant of the Lord” gave the national suffering and hope profound reinter-pretation.

                 The resulting community after Cyrus allowed the Jews to re-establish their life in Palestine was a church, not a nation.  It understood itself as Isra-

     el’s remnant.  The monotheism in Judaism, with its implied appeal to Jew & 

     non-Jew alike, triumphed completely, but Judaism didn't become an actively

     missionary religion.  The divine name, Yahweh, came to be considered too sacred to be spoken, and the figure of Satan developed from an accuser of evildoers into the great adversary of God who tempts all to evil. 

                 Hope for the future, always present in Israel's faith, continued.  The old national hope of the messianic king was attached to the new order which God  would establish at the end of history.  There gradually emerged a litera-

     ture, called apocalyptic, which sought to describe the final cosmic struggle between God and evil.  It included the figure of the Son of Man, and the bor-rowed idea of resurrection. 

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                  Judaism’s most characteristic feature was its stress on keeping the law; The Exile was explained as a result of breaking covenant law, which consequently became virtually the whole content of the covenant obligation. Judaism gradually developed a fixed canon of scripture.  The first 5 books of the OT had authoritative status from Ezra’s time.  By the 100s B.C. most of the OT we use now was regarded as holy scripture.

                 There was also the desire to build a “fence” around the law, lest it be broken inadvertently.  The Pharisees were a class of scribes who developed the oral law into “a fence” or the Talmud. The New Testament, however, af-

     firms that the Jewish faith’s whole history found its conclusion in Christ, the fulfillment of law and hope.  Christ gave to the Christian church, the Israel according to the Spirit, the awaited new covenant. 

     (See the Biblical Entry For a more in-depth look at the Hebrew religion,)

HEBREW LANGUAGE (עברי ('ib ree), from the root meaning to “pass over” ) In order to understand the Old Testament (OT)’s Sitz im Leben, its "life situa-

     tion,”  we must understand its culture, which was the Hebrew culture.  The name of the ancestor Eber, son of Shem, is probably a construction from the name of the people.  Eber's descendants included Abraham, Nahor, and Lot.  The genealogies we have are constructions, and individuals appearing in them may reflect ancient ethnic groups, towns, or countries.  The Biblical tradition is that the Hebrews were once associated with the incoming Arame-

     ans, who entered southern Palestine.

                 The Hebrew language is a merging of the ancestral dialects of Cana-anite and Amorite, which grew into biblical Hebrew.  With the exception of the small sections in the Aramaic language, and other foreign words, the OT’s canonical books are in the Hebrew language.  Some of the passages in the OT may have been composed in the 900s B.C. Hebrew is from the Cana-

     anite branch of the northwestern Semitic languages and shares with them the characteristics of 3-letter roots, of an alphabet made up of mainly conso-

     nants, and a simple sentence structure.  Canaanitish had several very diffe-

     rent regional dialects.

                 The earliest known Hebrew writing used the old Canaanitish alphabet of 22 characters, which were written from right to left, and which represented more than 22 sounds.  In its oldest form, consonants alone were written, and what vowels were to be used was not indicated. Quite often, the words were not separated from one another, and there were 5 letters that had special forms to indicate the final letter of a word.  As Hebrew was spoken less, a way of indicating the vowel sounds was necessary.  This was done by “poin-

     ting,” putting small signs by the consonants to indicate what vowels went with them.

                 The early writers of Hebrew would not have been very conscious of grammar. For later Hebrew, the Jerusalem dialect became the standard form of the language; we do not really know the “when” or “how” of this process.  Historically speaking, the language of the poetical books, is often archaic.  The language of later books (e.g. Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Eccle-

     siates) reveals a later form of Hebrew with foreign influences. While Hebrew was developed as a written language from the 900s B.C. to the present, there is little evidence that Hebrew was a spoken language during the whole period.

                 Grammatically Hebrew words are combined into sentences of nouns, verbs, and particles. Masculine and feminine are used as genders, and there are 3 persons: the speaker, the one addressed, and the one absent; nouns 

     are singular or plural.  The nouns include pronouns, adjectives, and nume-

     rals.  Personal pronouns are either separate from the word or are added as a suffix.

                 There are 3 states rather than tenses for the Hebrew verb—perfect (e.g. “I wrote,”), imperfect (e.g. “I write,” “I am writing,” “I will write,”), and command (e.g. “Write!”).  Different aspects of the verbal action are shown most often by adding a letter.  Particles are also added to words by adding letters.  They indicate a question or preposition, and they sometimes modify the noun by indicating the negative.  There are no real adverbs in Hebrew.

                 Hebrew, with its limited grammar, can't express thoughts with Greek's flexibility and adaptability.  The sentence order normally is predicate, subject, object. There's no verb “to have,” nor does it have the preposition “of”; it uses the form of adjective + noun instead.  Sentence formation in early Hebrew was mostly strings of sentences being connected by “and.”  Monotony is re-

     lieved by skillful use of perfect and imperfect states.  Sometimes, the imper-

     fect expresses an action yet to take place, and the other actions are regar- 

     ded as a result of that action.  Hebrew poetry has no regular rhyming, but there is a rhythmic structure, and there is parallelism.  There is vocabulary borrowed from other languages with very little sense of their original mea-

     ning.  The words originated mostly in the Akkadian, Egyptian, Indian, and Iranian languages. 

     (See the Biblical Entry For a more in-depth look at the Hebrew language.)

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HISTORY OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT TEXT

           No other writing which has come to us from the ancient world has 

had so great an influence upon Western life and culture as has the NT. 

Textual criticism’s ultimate task is to recover the original text [Note abbre-viations: manuscript(s) = MS(S)]. The NT is now known in nearly 5,000 

Greek MSS alone, 10,000 MSS of the early versions, and in thousands of quotations of the Church Fathers. They come to us in the form of papyrus, uncials, and minuscules. Not one NT sentence is wholly uniform.

                 It has been estimated that these MSS and quotations differ among themselves between 150,000 and 200,000 times.  Many variations arose in the very earliest period; most have no effect upon the text’s meaning.  Du-

     ring the MS period no rigid control was ever exercised, nor was an official revision made.  Thus, many variations that do have an effect were intro-

     duced into the text intentionally, put there for theological or dogmatic rea-sons, to conform to what the copyist believed to be the true rather than the original reading. 

                Canonization did not prevent more revisions in the NT Text being made after the text was “fixed.”  The variations took place, because the NT was a living body of literature which was enriched by interpretation and reinterpretation by each succeeding generation.  (An expanded version of the following discussion appears in the Text, NT entry in the main section).

                Sources and Printed NT Text—They were printed on perishable papyrus, and the original NT books were not scripture to the early Christian church, so they have long since disappeared.  The Greek MSS, the many versions, and quotations provide our knowledge of the original text.  The official list of Greek NT MSS was divided into 6 classifications according to writing material, kind of letters, and their use.  These classifications are:  ostraca (stone monuments); talismans; papyri; uncials; minuscules; and lectionaries. 

                In a little over a century, 64 papyrus NT MSS have become known, 

     all of them found and written in Egypt.  Portions of 20 books, just over 40% 

     of the NT, are now known on papyrus; no one type of NT text was dominant.  The 241 surviving Uncial MSS are written in a style descended from Greek capital letters; NT MSS were written only in this form until the 800s.  These MSS date from the 300s to the 900s or 1000s, and the more important ones were given a name.  Sinaiticus, Alexandinus, Vaticanus, and Bezae are among those most relied on by scholars. 

                 (See Text, NT entry in the main section for a list of important papyrus and unicials.)         

                 2,533 miniscules MSS were written in a cursive or running hand.  They date from the 800s to the 1700s.  Over the years they have been grouped into “families” or types.  The 1,838 lectionaries are service books with lessons for every day from the Gospel and the Apostles.  The mostly unicial lectionaries date from the 200s or 300s to the 1600s, and are of great value for studying the transmission history of the NT text. 

                 The most significant NT versions are those made from the 300s to 1000 directly from the Greek.  They are:  Latin (2 versions); Syriac (4 ver-

     sions); Coptic (at least 5 versions); Armenian; Old Georgian; Old Slavic; Gothic; Arabic; Ethiopic; Nubian; Sogdian; Frankish; Anglo-Saxon; and Persian.  The NT quotations of the Church Fathers help give a definite time and place for certain readings. 

                 The first portions of the Greek NT to be printed were the Magnificat and the Benedictus (parts of Luke 1).  The first complete Greek NT was that of Erasmus, who was invited to Basel to edit the Greek NT in 1515.  He used texts from the 1100s, translated the last 6 verses of Revelation from Latin into Greek, and “corrected” the older Greek text to conform to the later Latin.  In 1516 the entire NT had been printed. In spite of its many flaws, it became the text of authority, the generally accepted text which other texts were com-

     pared to for over 300 years, simply because it was published first.

                 The 1^st complete Greek NT, The Complutensian Polyglot, was printed in Alcala, Spain in 1514; Pope Leo X did not allow its publication until 1520.  Editors of this edition say that the MSS they used were “very ancient and correct ones”; they used their MSS well.  The NT text in this publication is better than that of Erasmus. (See the Introduction to the Versions of the Bible section of the Appendix for later editions).

                 NT Study: Theory and Method—Any NT text study should begin with Origen, the first great textual critic of the church.  Origen’s textual work was based upon church traditions, and the equal authority, importance, and inspiration of the OT and the NT.  Origen attributed the great variety of rea-

      dings to: careless scribal copying; rash additions and subtractions; and heretics.  Origen seems to have based his best readings upon dogmatics, geography, harmonization, etymology, and the MSS. Origen’s method was correction, knowledge, use, and combining different textual traditions. Origen avoided changing NT copies in use.

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                 Editors and publishers of the early Greek NT editions used late Greek MSS uncritically.  The Greek text was often “corrected” to the Latin.  These editors and publishers printed the generally accepted text and recorded any variant readings separately to avoid charges of heresy or even death threats. As people saw that the current Greek NT differed from the early Greek MSS, they sought the original Greek text.  Editions raising doubts about the generally accepted text were considered evil and hostile to the Christian religion. 

                 Richard Bentley criticized the mindless defense of the generally ac-cepted text.  “[The presence of] so many surviving Manuscripts demon-

     strates that . . . altering of copies . . . must not be risked . . . based only on a particular MS.”  Bentley was urged to edit an NT edition.  “The present Text is not the Text as left us by the Apostles . . . the Text should be revis’d by an abler Hand and by the help of more and better Manuscripts.”  Bentley unfol-

     ded his plan for a new edition of the NT in 1716.  He said that he had found close agreement between the oldest Latin and Greek MSS.  “I find that by taking 2,000 errors [each] out of the Pope’s Vulgate, and Stephen’s edition, I can set out an [accurate] edition of each in columns using books [no less] than 900 years old.”  

                 In 1720 Bentley issued his Proposals for Printing:  “The author of this edition observes that the printed copies of the NT [in] . . . Greek and . . . Latin, were taken from Manuscripts of no great antiquity . . . a new edition of the Greek and Latin . . . [based on] the most ancient and venerable MSS may do good service to common Christianity.”  The author . . . [looks to] St. Jerome . . . [who] adjusted and reformed the whole Latin Vulgate to the best Greek [texts, i.e.] those of the famous Origen . . . The author believes that he has retrieved Origen’s [text].”

                 “[When] these Greek and Latin MSS [are compared to] the 30,000 various readings . . . there will scarce be 200 that can deserve the least consideration. . . The author also makes use of the old versions of Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, and Aethiopic . . . Greek and Latin within the first 5 centuries. . . He does not alter one letter . . . without the authorities [stated] in the notes . . . In this work he is of no sect or party; his design is to serve the whole Christian name. . . To publish this work . . . a great expense is requisite . . .”  Bentley’s proposed edition was never published.  He brought to the study of the NT text’s history the need for care in choosing the Greek MSS used.  He was ready to discard the late witnesses, which would also discard ancient texts preserved there.  Bentley is wrong in assuming that there had been one Latin version.

                 John Albrecht Bengel was anxious to know the precise form in which the NT had been given.  He came to the conclusion that a Greek text was needed which was based upon sound principles of criticism.  Bengel’s prin-

     ciple was “The more difficult reading is to be preferred.”  Bengel also ad-

     vanced the theory of textual families or versions.  He grouped documents into Asian and African families.

                 The next important step in the study of the NT text was taken by John James Wettstein.  Wettstein was constantly accused of holding unorthodox beliefs and always protesting his orthodoxy.  In 1730, while Wettstein was in Basel, he published anonymously at Amsterdam in 15 chapters his research and rules followed in printing his edition.  He discussed MSS in general: “The Apostles were not literary purists.  They spoke and wrote according to the manner of the common people.”  He used 8 MSS written in the oldest lette-

     ring; 12 MSS of a later uncial type; MSS written by Latin copyists; and 152 miniscule MSS. 

                Wettstein’s rules were:  edit the NT correctly; use critical aids to clarify text; the generally accepted text has no special authority; conjectural chan-

     ges are never to be hastily admitted or rejected; the better sounding of 2 rea-dings is most likely not the true reading; Readings with peculiar expressions, those in the book’s/author’s style, and the more ancient reading is to be preferred; the more orthodox of two readings is not automatically preferred.  Wettstein waited 21 years to publish his NT after he wrote his Prolegomena.  Suspicions arose that the Greek text had been “corrected” to the Latin text.  Wettstein lamented the fact that all the most ancient Greek MSS had been influenced by the Latin.

                 From the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s there were 4 scholars who contributed to the developing method of studying the NT text: Griesbach; Lachmann; Tregelles; and Tischendorf.  Their contributions included:  the theory of a Western family of documents to go along with the African and Asian families; the goal of recovering the NT text of the 300s, without using the generally accepted text; developing “comparative criticism,” comparing the MSS and the ancient authorities; and the collecting and publishing of MSS, in particular the Codex Sinaiticus. 

                 The principles these 4 used are: readings must be supported by ancient witnesses; classes of documents, and not single documents are to be used in criticism; shorter readings will be preferred over the longer; more difficult readings are to be preferred; readings with a seemingly false sense are to be preferred; the agreement of the authorities is important; having agreement or disagreement of the same reading from widespread regions is more important than having it in a certain region; reading variations within the same region have weak authority; and antiquity of documents is more important than numbers in determining the best reading.

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                 Westcott & Hort—B. F. Westcott wrote:  “A corrupted Bible is a sign of a corrupted Church, a Bible mutilated or imperfect, a sign of a Church not yet raised to the complete perception of Truth . . . In the Church and in the Bible alike God works through men.”  Wescott and F. J. A. Hort wrote in their NT in the Original Greek:  “The best criticism is that which takes account of every class of textual facts & assigns to each method its proper use & rank.” 

               Their internal evidence of readings deals with each variation indepen-independently and adopting that which looks most probable, makes the best sense, and agrees with the author’s style.  The assumptions involved in this intrinsic probability are not to be implicitly trusted.  Transcriptional probability (t.p.) generalizes as to the causes of corruption.  A variant reading which makes better sense than others may have been introduced into the original reading.  This doesn't mean that inferiority is evidence of originality.  There-

     fore, t.p. carries us but a little way toward an ancient text.  Readings having both intrinsic and transcriptional probability are the most valuable readings.

                 Internal evidence of documents or the likelihood of a document pro-

     viding an accurate reading must be considered before the best reading can be chosen.  Where the internal evidence of readings agrees with internal evidence of documents a very high degree of probability is reached.  The most prominent fact known about a MS is its date.  Preservation of ancient texts in more modern ones forbids reliance on date alone.  Where one document contains mostly preferred readings, and another contains mostly rejected rivals, the first has comparative purity.  It is even better when the document thus found is also the oldest of the documents.

                 The next step of investigation is to examine documents for their historical relationships and their genealogical evidence.  Westcott and Hort found many NT passages in which there are 3 text forms; 2 were short and the third was a combination of the 2 shorter forms; they thought that the longer readings must be late.  The MSS which contained these combined readings were grouped together under the name Syrian.  This Syrian text is characterized by style changes, combined readings, clarifications, and har-

     monizing.  The genealogical method is limited because it cannot account for

     the mixture of source documents.     

                  Van Soden and Conclusion—Hermann Von Soden (1852-1914) made use of the genealogical method.  He classified the MSS into groups according to their text, and their form of the “adulterated text,” internal divi-

     sions, and uses.  Van Soden held that the I (Jerusalem) version was made 

     by Origen in the 200s, the H (Hesychian) version was made in Egypt by Hesychius in the 200s, and the K (Koine) version was made by Lucian of Antioch at the end of 200s or beginning of the 300s.  He concluded that [I] was the type of text that was used by Cyril of Jerusalem and Eusebius of Caesarea.

                 Von Soden’s H version was found in the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus MSS.  The K version of Van Soden approximates the Syrian text of Westcott and Hort.  It can't be proven that K existed before the 700s.  After he recon-

     structed the texts of the 3 great versions, I, H, and K, Von Soden proceeded to reconstruct their purely hypothetical I-H-K archetype.  In order to recon-

     struct I-H-K, Von Soden rejected harmonization; if there are 2 harmonized readings, the Matthew one was rejected; if there were no harmonized rea-

     dings, that reading found in two of the three versions was preferred.  The reconstruction of I-H-K took Von Soden only to the end of the 200s. 

                 Among the textual scholars of today, the tendency is to follow an “eclectic” method in order to reconstruct the earliest possible NT text.  It is now generally agreed that the genealogical method does not meet the needs of the student of the NT text. The principles of criticism which are most com-

     monly used are:  shorter readings are to be preferred; more difficult readings are to be preferred; readings which best suit the author’s style are to be pre-

     ferred; and readings which best explain the origin of other variants is to be preferred.  NT textual scholars must also be church historians, historians of Christian thought, and theologians.

                 Protestant critics must be aware that the NT writers selected from the early church’s growing tradition those items that enabled them to “bear wit-

     ness to God’s revelation.”  They must also realize that tradition and scripture stood side by side, supplementing the other, & influencing the other’s deve-lopment.  The collation, careful study, and classification of all the thousands of Greek MSS is needed, and will require the combined labors of several generations of scholars.  A new theory and method is needed to find the NT’s original writing.  That writing will bring us closest to the primitive church’s historical Christian doctrines. 

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                 The text historian must reconstruct not only the text of the originals, but many other texts as well.  Different passages may show the result of intentional alteration under the influence of different times and places.  The readings that stem from the most original NT text that we can reach need not be the oldest possible texts and readings in order to proclaim the faith of the church, and be scripture.  

CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (NT).—The collection of early Christian writings venerated as sacred scripture by the church, read in the liturgy, and recognized as the authoritative expression of the apostolic faith; or the list of the books so recognized. 

                 The purpose of researching the canon’s history is to find out why and how the church came to attribute authority to a limited number of books writ-

     ten by Christian authors during the first century of her history. It also sought to know why this recent addition to scripture was accorded an authority equal & ultimately superior to that of Judaic scriptures.  It also involves the history 

     of doctrine, and the conflict with heresies and schisms.  

                The importance of the creation of such a canon on Christian scriptures cannot be emphasized too much.  In this one area the church achieved a unity which proved able to endure through the schisms in the 400s, the divi-

     sion of the Greek from the Western, and even the Reformation 1400 years later.  In our own time, hopes of reunion could hardly be entertained, were it not that all churches concerned are in substantial agreement in recognizing

     the same 27 books as being the NT Canon. 

                 This agreement was attained in substance by the end of the second century.  The four gospels, the book of Acts, the Pauline letters (except He-brews), and two or more of the Catholic letters (I John, I Peter, and some-

     times others) were acknowledged as Holy Scripture.  There remained on the margin a number of books whose canonicity was still in dispute.  Hebrews, James, II and III John, II Peter, Jude, and Revelation would eventually join the canon.  Many others which enjoyed temporary or local canonicity would not. 

                By the end of the 300s, the limits of the collection were irrevocably fixed in the Greek and Latin churches.  The canon of the Syrian church still exhibited some differences, which limited their canon to 22 books by exclu-

     ding Revelation, II and III John, II Peter, and Jude.  The Ethiopic canon, on the other hand, was enlarged to include 8 additional books; and the Gothic NT never included the Revelation.

                Apostolic Age (To 70 A.D.)—Christianity from its very inception pos-sessed an extensive and precious sacred literature inherited from Judaism.  Jesus himself had accepted the Jewish scriptures as the vehicle of a true, though not final, revelation of God.  The apostle Paul and other early Chris-

     tian writers cite the ancient scriptures as God's very own words.  

                The scriptures which the men of the early church held in such honor formed a much more extensive body of literature than that with which we are familiar in the OT and Apocrypha of our own versions.  In them, far more than in the canonical books, we find the background of central themes of the NT, such as the kingdom of God and the Son of man, the resurrection of the dead, and the doctrine of angels and demons.  Almost all of the OT quota-

     tions in the NT are taken directly from the Septuagint (Greek) Bible without concern for the meaning of the Hebrew text.

                 In a sense then, Christianity was a book religion from its inception.  Yet there were three factors in the new faith which profoundly modified its attitude toward the ancient scriptures.  First, the Christians were persuaded that a new age of revelation had dawned; their ministers were “ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code, but in the Spirit.”  All Christians were inspired differently by one and the same Spirit.

                 Second, the oral tradition of the scribes was explicitly discarded.  Christians no longer regarded the content of the OT as centering in the “law of commandments and ordinances.”  What they sought in ancient scriptures was not a code of commandments regulating daily living, but a testimony to Christ and his gospel; their whole interpretation was governed by the con-

     viction that in him the scriptures were fulfilled.

                 Third, alongside the ancient scriptures, the Christians had from the outset another authority.  The words of Jesus were the words of eternal life.  Treasured in the first instance by his disciples, they were committed to me-

     mory by them, and they became the words of the Master who still lived in their midst and governed them.  Under the guidance of the Spirit, the words that he had spoken provided instruction, comfort, challenge, appeal, counsel, answering arguments of critics, and above all, penetrating insight into the will of God.  These words of Jesus, treasured in the memory of his followers and transmitted by word of mouth, carried final authority for the Christian believer and actually determined for them the sense in which they would understand the ancient scriptures.  The authority they acquired was accorded them, not as holy books at first, but as books containing the holy words of Jesus.

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                Sources of the New Testament (NT) Documents—Jesus himself left nothing in writing.  The earliest Christian writings that survived are the letters of Paul.  With the possible exception of Romans, they were not intended for general circulation in the church, and it certainly never occurred to Paul that a letter which he wrote for the Christians of Thessalonica or of Philippi would ever be read in Antioch or in Jerusalem, let alone treasured by the whole church.  Only after they had been gathered into a collection did they get wi-

      der circulation and become known throughout the church. 

                 There is good reason to believe that the author of Ephesians was also the collector and publisher of the Pauline letters, and that he wrote Ephesians under Paul's name as a general introduction to the whole collec-

     tion.  He was probably a man of Colossae, and the first Christian writer to make literary use of Paul's letters.  From his time on, every single Christian writer known to us makes use of the letters in a manner which shows that he knows the whole collection.  Even the author of the Revelation, who uses the device of introducing an apocalypse by a sequence of letters addressed severally to seven churches but issued together under cover of a general letter must have had before him a set of Pauline letters similarly constructed.

                 This earliest collection consisted of nine letters addressed to particu-

     lar churches.  The Pastoral letters were added to the collection many years later, and Hebrews later still.  Even while in general use, the collection of letters were not yet regarded as holy scripture.  There is nothing to indicate that in the first half of the 100s they were seen as any more important than the letters of the martyr-bishop Ignatius of Antioch.

                 Before any of the gospels were made part of a collection of gospels, 

     it must have first obtained a wide measure of acceptance.  All of them, with 

     the partial exception of the Gospel According to John, were made not only in and for the community, but in a sense by the community as much as by the individual author, from oral traditions concerning Jesus.

                 These traditional materials, especially insofar as they consisted of sayings of Jesus, carried his own authority from the outset.  The primary question is how the church came to acknowledge four gospels instead of one; and secondly how only four were chosen out of the many that were composed.  For not one of the gospels was written to supplement or be 

     used in conjunction with the others.  

                It is not too difficult to see why the church rejected most of those that came into existence at this time; the extraordinary thing is that she did not settle upon a single authoritative account of the story of salvation and of the Lord's teaching.  Each of the four sought to provide a unified manual for the church.  There was at least one notable and partly successful attempt to weave out of them a single harmonized account.  But somehow by the end of the 100s, the fourfold gospel collection was accepted as a settled pos-

     session everywhere except in Syria.

                 As late as 135 or 140, the words of Papias, bishop of Hieropolis lent greater weight to the oral tradition than to any written tradition, including the gospels.  Yet only a few years later, the evidence of Justin Martyr shows that passages from the “memoirs of the apostles (i.e gospels)” were being read liturgically, thus showing that there were still varieties of attitude and practice with respect to them.

                 The 4 canonical gospels are works of the second Christian genera-

     tion (around 70-100 A.D.).  Mark’s Gospel, apparently produced at Rome not many years after the outbreak of persecution under Nero, may represent the deposit of the traditions concerning Jesus at the end of the apostolic age.  It was used almost in its entirety in Matthew, a gospel composed in Palestine in a Jewish-Christian environment.  The Gospel of Luke, written around 80 A.D., most likely in Rome, used Mark in a similar way, although less of it.  

                The Acts of the Apostles was published as a sequel to this gospel in some regions of the eastern Mediterranean around 100 A.D.  The way in which Luke and Matthew treat the material from Mark, shows clearly that neither of them regarded the earliest gospel as inspired scripture that could not be altered.

                 The Gospel of John's author treated the whole tradition with infinitely greater freedom, following neither the general outline of the first three, or even the same teachings.  And it cannot be doubted that the many other gospels claimed for themselves at least an equal freedom.  The church of the early 100s had at its disposal a large number of gospels, but accorded to none of them anything like canonical authority.  There was at the same time a considerable mass of oral tradition, which was more highly valued than any written record by many.  The authority still rested in the words of the Lord.

                 None of the gospels outside of the 4 canonical gospels adds anything to our knowledge of Jesus.  They were either taken from our 4 or are inven-

     ted & distorted to support the religious views of some sect.  Some are merely fictitious tales of the infancy and childhood of Jesus, attempts of the pious imagination to supply missing information.  They are valuable in that they reflect aspects of the development of Christian thought.

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                 The period that saw the publication of all these gospels and of Paul’s collected letters (roughly 70-140 A.D.), witnessed also a large number of other Christian writings. Several of them joined Paul and the gospels in the canon.  The book of Acts was one; the 3 Pastoral letters are some of the others, issued under Paul’s name to combat the heresies of the time, they are generally dated between 100 to 150.

                 The 7 Catholic letters were formed into a group relatively late.  The Letter of James was probably written by a Jewish Christian steeped in Greek literature and philosophy, most likely early in the 100s.  It became part of ac-

     cepted Christian literature in the 200s. I Peter is credited to Peter, but written by someone else, and published in Asia Minor in the early 100s; it gained Western acceptance much later.  I John is closely related to John’s Gospel and may be the same author; this similarity won it early recognition. 

                 The four minor letters (Jude, II Peter, II and III John) were never widely used.  Hebrews is believed by some to be by a contemporary of Paul; others see evidence that place it in the generation after Paul's death. Reve-

     lation, probably composed near 100, quickly achieved a widespread popula-

     rity.  The four minor letters and Hebrews did not attain general acknowledge-ment as canonical until late in the 300s, at which time the Revelation was still in dispute in the East.  Some churches treated the writing of some of the Apostolic Fathers as scripture.  I Clement was a letter written by the Roman church to the church at Corinth around 95. II Clement was an anonymous homily, written around 150 and also preserved in early manuscripts, as was the Epistle of Barnabas, written early in the 100s.

                 The Didache, or Teachings of Jesus Christ through the Twelve Apos-

     tles, is of uncertain date, but it was probably written in the early 100s.  The Egyptians treated it as scripture in the 200s.  The Shepherd of Hermas, the letters of Ignatius, the Epistle to Diognetus were popular but never generally accepted as scripture.  At least five books attributed to Peter (II and III Peter, Gospel of Peter, Preaching of Peter, and the Apocalypse of Peter) were com-posed during these years, but only the 2 letters were ultimately recognized.

                  Emergence of the New Testament (NT) Canon—Near 150 A.D., the church was provided with a rich store of documents of her own creation; none of them was yet being treated as holy scripture on par with sacred Judaic scripture.  Only the words of Jesus, whether recorded in books or transmitted by oral tradition, carried the fullest authority.  At the same time, the apostles were gradually acquiring in the Christian mind a  collateral though subordinate, authority.  

                This collective authority of the apostles was not exercised solely or even primarily through books, but through the tradition of sound teaching which they had received from Christ and transmitted to their successors the bishops.  Just as the authority of Jesus was to be transferred from the words which he spoke to books, so the authority of what the apostles left in the care of the bishops was to be shared in books written by the apostles or men close to them.

                 The gospels developed at this time by first being treated as holy scripture in the citations of church writers and in church worship.  II Clement is the earliest Christian document to cite passages from the gospels as holy scripture.  Justin Martyr describes Christian worship in which “the memoirs of the Apostles [gospels] or the writings of the Prophets are read.”  Thus, one group of Christian writings has been established in church usage in the place hitherto reserved for the inspired scripture of Judaism.  Very soon afterward the letters of Paul are associated with them in similar usage.  Before 200, a variable number of other writings gathered around the nucleus of "the gos-

     pels" and "the apostle."  What was apostolic was canonical; whatever cannot be recognized as stemming from the apostles is not canonical.

                  The second step of coupling letters with gospels was taken first by the heretic Marcion.  He came under Gnostic influence, and became per-

     suaded that the God of Hebrew scripture, the Creator, the God of justice, was an inferior god; and that Jesus had revealed the supreme God, one of love.  He was persuaded that the 12 had utterly corrupted the pure doctrine of Christ, that Paul was the only true apostle, and that Luke, as an associate of Paul, wrote the best gospel.  Even so, the text of the gospel suffered severe mutilation at his hands, as he sought to purge out anything which was in-

     compatible with his basic doctrine.

                 It is probable that the shape and scope of the canon as it finally emerged in Catholic usage was determined in large part by the reaction to Marcion.  It may have led to thinking in terms of a separate testament, rather than additions to Judaic sacred writings.  The publication of the fourfold gos-

     pel appears to be significantly related to Marcion's rejection of them.  In addition, the creation of new gospels in support of Marcionite doctrines forced a more and more exact prescribing of what was canonical and what was not.

                 Next, his exaltation of Paul could hardly fail to stimulate the whole church to accord him the same honor, but as the “first among equals,” not as the lone bearer of the truth.  In orthodox circles, the elevation of the Pauline letters occurred more slowly and less clearly.  Theophilus of Antioch, Athena-

     goras, and Tatian after 60 A.D., accepted the gospels without questions, and may have cited sentences from Paul, but not as holy scripture.  "Paul's" Pastoral letters found a ready acceptance into the Pauline collection be-

     cause they portrayed him as solidly against Marcionite doctrine.  Letters attributed to other apostles, giving wider testimony to the apostolic faith would be eagerly received and set alongside the Pauline collection.

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                 Though excommunicated by the church and repudiated by his father, Marcion achieved an extraordinary success in organization as in the propa-   gation of his teachings.  There were at one time some hundreds of churches in several provinces of the Empire, both East and West, which looked to him as their founder.  

                Gnostic schools existed on the margins of, or even within the great church. As such, they represented a substantial influence, because their doctrines, fantastic as they now seem, agreed with the popular mind of the age. They created documents in keeping with their doctrine: gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Philip, of “Truth,” acts of Peter, of Thomas, of John, etc. (See also list of Gnostic Writings in the introduction to the NT Apocrypha section of the Appendix).  But they had no difficulty in applying the canonical gospels themselves in support of their doctrines, by the limitless freedom of allegorical interpretation.

                 There is a list from the 700s A.D. of the NT books as they existed near 200 A.D.; three of the Apostolic Fathers also bear witness to the forma-

     tion of the NT canon.  On the four gospels’ unity, the list has this to say: Al-though various fundamentals are taught in the several books of the gospels, nevertheless this makes no difference to the faith of believers; for in all of them all things are declared by the one guiding Spirit concerning the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, Jesus' words to his disciples, and his two-fold coming. The list also mentions Acts, and Paul’s 13 letters as being "held sa-

     cred in the esteem of the catholic church in the ordering of church disci-    

     pline."  It affirms that “Jude and 2 epistles bearing John’s name are received in the catholic church.” An Apocalypse of John, and 1 of Peter complete the list of recognized books.

                The Apostolic Father Clement, as head of the great school of theolo-

     gical studies at Alexandria gives us the doctrine of the Egyptian church.  He employs the formula "the Gospel and the Apostle commands," and he distinguishes between the four gospels that have been handed down to us and the Gospel according to the Egyptians.  He does not quote Paul as scripture, but it is clear that the four gospels and the main part of Paul's letters constitute for him the substance of the canon.  He also has high regard for other writings we now consider apocrypha, but he distinguishes them from the gospels.    

                 Irenaeus, another Apostolic Father, was a native of Asia, grew up listening to Polycarp, came in middle life to Rome, and spent his last years as bishop of Lyons in Gaul.  He opposed the Gnostic schools, which had discarded the OT entirely, by making a more extensive use of NT than any earlier writer of orthodox views. He uses OT and NT without distinction; they are not in any sense secondary authorities.  He knows and values the Letter to the Hebrews, but does not seem to treat it quite as scripture. The most striking feature of his evidence is the absolute and exclusive honor he ac-

     cords to the four gospels as a God-given unity.  “The Church is scattered over all the earth and the Gospel is its pillar.  It is seemly that it should have four pillars, breathing immortality from all sides and kindling men to new life.”

                  Tertullian was a Carthage lawyer who converted to Christianity in middle life; as an Apostolic Father, he was the first great exponent of Latin Christianity.  For 20 years or more, he was the Christian champion against pagans, Jews, heretics, and the persecuting Empire.  Tertullian was a little later than Irenaeus; his writings carry us into the early 200s.  He confines himself to the 4 canonical gospels and treats them as a unit.  Together they form the “evangelic instrument.”  They were written by apostles (John and Matthew) or apostolic men (Mark and Luke), taught directly by the apostles Peter and Paul, respectively.  A single gospel could not be authoritative in itself, and certainly not Luke, who was only an apostolic man.  Tertullian was the first to use the term “NT”; for him it possessed exactly the same authority as the ancient scriptures.

                 The growing sense of the unity of the scriptures must have been fostered in some degree by a revolutionary change in the form of the book which took place during this period.  In the 100s, Christian scribes began to use the codex, an early form of the book, instead of the roll, which for prac-

     tical purposes had to be limited in size.  In the codex on the other hand, sheets were folded, then sewn together as in a modern book.  It thus be-

     came possible to put the contents of any number of rolls into a single book.  

                There is no reason to doubt that Irenaeus and Tertullian had before them the “fourfold gospel” in a single codex.  All the Pauline letters could likewise be included in a single codex, and the day was to come when the entire NT and even the whole of the Greek Bible would be brought within the covers of a single book.  Thus, the invention of the codex helped to hasten the fixing of the limits of the canon, as well as to promote the sense of its unity.

                  Greek and Latin Canon—The successor to Clement as head of the school in Alexandria in 203 was Origen, who became the greatest of biblical scholars.  For 50 years he contributed his unrivaled learning and his great theological powers to the service of the church.  He deals with Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT) scriptures in exactly the same way, seeing in them the same authority.  They are “divine scriptures . . . and the same Spirit, the Spirit of the one God has dealt in the same way with the gospels and the apostles as with the scriptures composed before Christ’s coming.”

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                  Origen had traveled widely, from Rome to Asia Minor, to the Holy Land and Egypt, and had observed the agreements and differences among 

     churches in regards to the NT writings.  Without passing judgment, he clas-

     sifies the writings as “acknowledged” or “disputed.”  Among the “acknow-

     ledged” he includes the four gospels, and the Pauline letters, including He-brews, although he knows that it is not by Paul, and not universally accepted. He includes Hebrews because the thoughts are the apostle's, even though the style and diction was someone else’s.  He also includes Acts, I John, I Peter, and Revelation. The disputed books he found were: James, Jude, II Peter, II and III John, and the Shepherd of Hermas.

                 Later, in 231, when Dionysius became the Alexandrian school's 

     head, he called into question the authorship of Revelation without denying its right to a place in the canon.  Dionysius would not deny that it was written by a man named John, or that he saw visions.  But a comparison of its style and diction and of its central ideas with those of the gospel and letters of John showed that it had nothing in common with them and could not be by the same author.  Most of the other disciples of Origen rejected the book entirely.

                Emperor Diocletian launched against the church the most systematic, widespread, and determined persecution that she had yet faced in 303 A.D.  Besides imprisonment, torture, &d death of countless leaders, & the whole-    sale destruction of church buildings, the sacred scriptures were sought out and burned.  Christian had to decide which writings could be surrendered and which must be guarded from destruction at all costs.  The persecution provided the ultimate test of the esteem in which various books were held.

                 Even the pressure of persecution could not bring universal agreement in all particulars.  In 325, Eusebius of Caesarea agrees with Origen as to “acknowledged” and “disputed” books, although he is not always consistent in his statements, especially about Revelation.  After 350, Cyril of Jerusalem lists 26 of our 27, excluding Revelation; his contemporary Epiphanius of Constantia in Cyprus includes it with the others.  Athanasius of Alexandria list our 27 books, but Hebrews is listed later in the list than its length would indi-

     cate; sometimes it is listed last.

                 In the Latin West, no writer after Tertullian (200s) or before Jerome (350-400) attempts to give a catalogue of the acknowledged books.  No Latin writer of the period makes any use of the apocryphal gospels, acts, or apo-

     calypses; they were seldom mentioned, and then only to condemn them.  Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, is the earliest Latin churchman to quote Hebrews as Paul's. 

      Jerome included in his famous translation of the Bible, which became the Vulgate of the Western church, the 27 books of our canon.  He held that those books once disputed became canonical through ancient, widespread, and ongoing testimony.  The Vulgate he wrote, with its complete NT, exerted a silent influence on the minds of men who were using it daily.  Two major church councils, one at Hippo in 393, and one at Carthage in 397, lent au-    thority to this list of 27 books, and closed the NT canon.  In the end, the canon was determined by usage, and by common consent of the Christian community, reached by daily use of the books over centuries, not by formal authority.

     Syrian Canon—The Syriac-speaking churches used a different ca-    non.  Little is known of its development before the 400s and the Peshitta‘s making. Until then they used the Diatessaron, by Tatian, which contained more than 4 gospels and the Western group of letters.  In the 300s, it is clear that the Syriac canon consisted of the Diatessaron, Acts, and the Pauline letters.  A Syriac list of around 400 A.D. puts 4 gospels in place of the Dia-   tessaron and omits III Corinthians; this may indicate that the Syrian churches were now moving toward conformity with the Greeks.

                 The Peshitta, by far the most enduring and influential of oriental versions, was made under the direction of Bishop Rabbula of Edessa, be-    tween 400 and 425.  The Syriac episcopate now made a determined and successful effort to end the use of the Diatessaron.  The christological con-troversies of the 400s destroyed the unity of the Syrian church and separa-    ted it from the catholic church of the West.  From Edessa eastward it be-    came Nestorian and continued to hold to the Peshitta; in the western parts of Syria, it became Monophysite and adopted the canon that had become established earlier in the West in 508.  Except for occasional oddities, no further developments took place in the canon.

GREEK OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (NT)—The Greek of the NT is the Koine, or common Greek of the first two centuries of the Christian Era.  The use of correct Greek grammar varies for two reasons: the strength of the Semitic element and the extent of the author's Greek culture.  In the NT, Luke ranks highest in approximation of Attic usage; Revelation ranks lowest.

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                 No one denies the presence of a Semitic element in the Greek NT. Its extent is what is vigorously debated.  At the minimum, all authentic sayings of Jesus in the Greek gospels are translations of an Aramaic original, and in the NT extensive quotations from the Old Testament (OT) were usually made from the Greek translation of it.  The general opinion as to the maximum ex-

     tent of Semitic influence traces it back to either Semitic originals or to the authors' habit of thinking in Aramaic while writing in Greek.

                 The variation in the amount of Greek culture of the various books is not as wide in the NT as in the primary Greek OT.  The NT has less of the classical Greek literary character than any other Greek literature of this age.  Matthew and Mark use something like the “indifferent” and nonliterary Greek of the OT.  John is not very far above using common Greek; Luke, Acts and Hebrews reveal a more advanced knowledge of Greek; Revelations ranks the lowest in the usage of the classical Greek literary style. Their common theological interest was a unifying factor in their writing.  Finding the meaning of the words in the NT must be sought in nonliterary Greek from that time & 

     from outside the Bible.  Greek sources from before NT times can be used only with caution, since changes in meaning have now been established for many words.

                 After the Christian movement had acquired educated leaders and entered the learned tradition of the Empire, it studied its Greek scriptures against the background of classical Greek literature and language.  There were found some 450 words which occur only in the NT and nowhere else.  These words were either identified as Hebraisms, or their form was thought to be due to the Holy Spirit's influence.  A German pastor named Deiss-   mann found a volume of Greek papyri in Egypt and noticed its similarities with the Greek of the NT.  His findings finally led to the general acceptance that the peculiarities of the Greek NT were to be explained by reference to the nonliterary Greek, the popular spoken language of the period.     

BIBLICAL CRITICISM  (See the article on “Biblical Criticism, History of., for a history of biblical criticism,”)

                All literature invites criticism; all important literature demands it.  For criticism in the widest sense is the power of discernment and the highest form of appreciation rather than the negative comments we associate with the everyday use of criticism or the gush of uninhibited first response.  Scrip-

     ture is addressed to humankind, the whole of the self:  heart and soul and mind.  But since it is language, it must be addressed through one's ears or eyes to one's mind.  Biblical criticism is one of the mind's responses to this address, for sooner or later the mind must answer certain questions:

             In what form is this addressed to me?          In what circumstances?

  From what time?                                           By or through whom? 

  With what intent?

          There is no neat formula for the orderly process of biblical criticism.  The nature and condition of the book itself sets the order of the problems to be faced.  And since biblical criticism concerns a literature, competence in the languages of this literature is the foundation for all serious work in it.  Since the ancient form of Hebrew and Greek are “dead,” deeper penetration into them is a never-ending task.  Those who concern themselves with the physical text and how ancient and accurate it is are dependent on those who concern themselves with the antiquity and accuracy of the content of the text, who in turn depend on those who concern themselves with the physical text.

     Source Criticism—Literary critics must ask themselves whether the writing before them was written as a unit or was put together from various pieces of writing.  They look for: striking alternation of vocabulary concen-   trated in smaller units; changes in writing style; change of point of view (e.g. 1st person to 3rd person); repetitions; a break in logic; a shift in logic away from the original logic.

                 It is these noticeable shifts that has inspired source criticism.  Main-stream biblical criticism has come to believe the first 5 books or Pentateuch of the OT were not written by Moses in the time of Moses, but by authors at a much later time, who were combined by yet someone else. This is also known as the document theory.  There are four general categories for these authors that are used in this dictionary's articles. 

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                 The Jahwists and Elohwists wrote the majority of the first five or six books of the OT.  The J source (for Jehovist or Yahwist) was so-named for its use of “Yahweh,” which traditionally is replaced by “The Lord.”  It is the oldest source and has been assigned to the 900s B.C. as a product of the Jerusa-

     lem court during the age of David, Solomon, or the early years of the sou-

     thern kingdom (Judah).  J begins with Genesis 2:4b and goes through the patriarch history in Genesis.  It continues in Exodus and Numbers.  Beyond that point its contributions to the OT is a matter of dispute. 

                Also questioned are fragments, traditionally assigned to the J source, which interrupt the main J narrative in Genesis.  These fragments, when taken together, constitute components of an independent narrative thread which runs parallel to the J material, and which concerns itself with what seem like folktales of the time before and during the patriarchs.  This thread may be designated as the “Lay” or “L” source out of consideration for the fact that it—by its outspokenness for the world of the profane, the world of the “laity”—forms a sort of counter-pole to P's preference for ritual and for priesthood.

                 The E source (for Elohist) was so-named for its use of “Elohim” to identify God. It is the second oldest source, in general paralleling and sup-plementing J.  E has been dated in the 800s and 700s B.C.  JE is used where J and E have been so combined as to make separation of them im-

     possible.  The D source is found mostly in Deuteronomy and concerns itself with the law and the covenant.  The Book of the Law in Deuteronomy 12-26 has been dated in the 600s B.C., while the writing of the present book of Deuteronomy has been placed somewhat later.  An editor combined JE and D not earlier than the 500s B.C.  

                 The P source (for Priestly Writers) is identified by its concern with genealogies and descriptions of rituals.  It was compiled by a priestly editor from surviving temple records during the Exile in the 500s and 400s B.C.  It is the principal source of genealogical data, tribal data, and ritual procedures of the first five books of the OT, and is little more than a series of lists and tables containing genealogical and liturgical data.  A priestly editor combined P with JED, using P as the framework and distributing the other sources through it.  The process of putting together these five books occurred during the Exile, and was completed by around 400 B.C., into a form similar to what we have now.

                  Modern study has resulted in some changes in the theory.  There is a lot less certainty about the documents themselves.  The neat 4-source theory has disintegrated into many multiple-source theories.  Some scholars believe that the Priestly Writer was rather the Priestly editor, combining the older nar-

     ratives and attaching Deuteronomy as a conclusion to the story of Moses and Israel.  There is also a theory of a ground source behind the narratives that was originally oral and poetic in character, and from which J and E came. 

                  Form Criticism—So, behind the literary process stands oral tradition and its transmission.  The method called form criticism is used in dealing with folk material which at one time was an oral tradition.  The fundamental in-

     sight underlying this method is the recognition that folk memory operates with small units, often no more than a few lines.  A given folktale at a given time is likely to use a limited number of unit types. 

                 Such types grow out of the everyday life of their particular communi-    ty.  Tradition is never preserved for its own sake or for history's sake, but only because some need or interest of the community presses it into ser-

     vice.  Many examples of a single form may be studied side by side until they disclose the relatively pure form among less pure variants.  The forms them-selves have a history which in broad outline can be discerned.  Insofar as the Bible contains tradition that was once oral, it invites treatment by this me-

     thod.  The scholar who most fertilely applied form criticism to the Bible was Hermann Gunkel.  He concentrated on OT forms while Martin Dibelius at the same time concentrated on NT forms. 

                  The 5 forms that Dibelius used were paradigm, Novelle, legend, pa-renesis, and myth.  Paradigms, which turned out to be the most important form, were concise, self-contained and edifying stories concentrated about a striking saying or deed of Jesus.  Next in importance were words of practical guidance in personal ethics and community self-discipline preserved by the Christian community in the form of parenesii.  But here tradition hinged on the community‘s needs; there is no guarantee that this form goes back to Jesus. 

                   The novelle, typically relating some wonder and offering details that satisfy “worldly curiosity,” has much more of the Greek influence in it.  While some are historical, they also contain stories from other traditions that have been transferred to Jesus.  The essence of legend is not its lack of historical content, but its tendency to use the stereotyped mold of the man of piety, whether the historical person fit the mold or not.  And the myth's interest is never in history, but in the theological idea which it clothes with narrative form. 

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                 Rudolf Bultmann also worked with form criticism.  He systematically sorted all of the Synoptic (first 3 gospels) into a many-branched classification whose classes often overlap.  Bultmann's short, pithy sayings and wonder tale forms are very similar to Dibelius' paradigm and novelle; their assign-

     ment of passages to these categories agrees in large part.  Bultmann differs in that he is interested in distinguishing between Palestinian tradition and the tradition that is heavily influenced by Greek culture, recognizing that only within the Palestinian tradition can historical information about Jesus be found. 

                Since Gunkel, Dibelius, and Bultmann, more and more attention is being paid in form criticism to the various types of oral tradition and to the laws of modification in tradition.  Whoever takes form criticism seriously finds that they can still write and teach on "deeds and words of Jesus" but not on the “life and teaching of Jesus,” because there is no knowledge of connec-

     tion & development.  This knowledge was lost before Mark was ever written.

                 Involving both literary &  historical criticism is the question of author-ship.  Is the author named in the writing the genuine author, or simply one named by religious tradition?  The answer to such questions is and will re-   main a matter of educated opinion.  In general, historical criticism investi-   gates the consistency of data within the book, within the total writing of the author, and within the whole canon.       

                 What is also important here is an understanding of the idea and limi-tations of canon, and the puzzling and fascinating interplays of historical cir-cumstances and theological concerns that took place in the formation of the canon. The historical approach asks the question: Why is there a “New Testament (NT),” and not simply a fourth part of the Old Testament (OT)?  The NT rests on the return of the Spirit.  Judaism of Jesus' time believed that the Spirit & the scriptures had ceased with Malachi.  They recognized them-   selves as living in a period when Israel depended on the scriptural interpre-   tation of scribes, while they still cherished the hope and the promise of the return of the Spirit.

                 Closing the NT canon was not based on the argument that the Spirit had ceased, as in Judaism.  The development from diversified oral and writ-

     ten traditions to the 27 books of the NT was of a more historical nature, in order to protect the original from undependable elaborations and distortions.  In the early Christian traditions it was felt that a distinction had to be made between ongoing and clearly inspired writings and those which could trace their origins back to Jesus and the apostles.  This is what led to the canon.

                 What significance do these old writings have besides being sources for the past?  The answer rests on the act of faith by which Israel and its sister by adoption, the church, recognizes its history as sacred history, and finds in these writings the epitome of the acts of God.  To be sure, the church “chose” its canon. But it did so under the impact of the acts of God by which it was created.

                 The tension between present meaning and the meaning in the distant past that we find when we approach the OT is complicated for two reasons.  First, the OT material comes from many centuries of Israelite life; one pas-   sage is likely to contain many layers of meaning.  Thus any statement about what an OT passage meant has to say who it was for and what stage of Israelite or Jewish history it was in. The biblical theologian's and the biblical critic's path is thus that of Israel’s ongoing life of as the chosen people of God.

                 Secondly, the church was born out of a dispute between the interpre-

     ters in the early church and Jewish interpreters over the meaning of the OT. Both of these interpretations pursued the question of meaning beyond the material and the period of the OT texts themselves.  Today, there must be a distinction between what is actually in the Bible and what analysis and up-to-date translation produces in the way of present day meaning, in order for the original to act creatively on the minds of believers of our time.

                 In OT theology, history presents itself as the loom of the theological fabric.  What is unique about Israel was not its ideas about God or man, but in it being conscious of being elected by God; this is what made its pattern of thought distinctive.  Salvation is within Israel’s history, and Israel's history is part of its salvation.  The historical consciousness of Israel lives by the re-

     membering of the past and the ever new interpretation of it as a promise for the future.

                 The common theme in all this is the ongoing life of a people cultiva-

     ting the traditions of its history in the light of its self-understanding.  Going back far enough may lead us to patterns of thought and blocks of tradition originally quite unrelated to the historical consciousness of Israel.  Once we recognize them, we can see how they were changed to fit into the religion of Israel and how much of their original character remained.  When the OT is treated in this fashion as the living and growing tradition of a people, it yields a theology which brings us to the parting of the ways by Jews & Christians.

                 The announcement by Jesus that the new age is impending comes as a vigorous claim for fulfillment of the OT promises that is not accepted by the majority of the Jews, who emphasize instead obedience in the present under the law.  Who was right—the Jews or the Christians?  The answer remains what it always was, an act of faith.  History does not answer such questions; it only poses them.

                 It isn't always recognized that biblical criticism is itself a part of bibli-   cal theology.  The Bible is beautiful literature, but it was not written for aes-   thetic ends.  It is history but not history for history's sake; essentially it is a    book of faith.  Biblical criticism must take place before a biblical theology is formed. Biblical criticism is a necessary step on the way to asking each writer the questions that impelled them to write:  What of God?  What of human-

     kind?  What of the world?  What of life and death and salvation?  In other words biblical criticism is necessary before we can develop a biblical theolo-

     gy.  Biblical theology is the constructive phase of biblical criticism, which when it is responsible is “discriminating appreciation.” 

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BIBLICAL THEOLOGY (See the article on “Biblical Theology, History of” for the history of the beginning of biblical theology up to the start of contempo-

     rary biblical theology, See the article on “Biblical Theology” in the main section for an overview of contemporary biblical theology,)

     Descriptive Task—Biblical theology is a scholarly presentation of the witness to faith, and of the theological views of the biblical writers. It uses three disciplines: the exegetical (explaining the meaning); historical (the cir-cumstances under which the people of the Bible thought and acted; and systematical, which embraces faith in an ordered and unified statement.  One difficulty with biblical theology lies with the fact that the Christian church has continually made a system out of theology, when the Bible does not contain such a system.  It comprises rather a diversity of witness interrelated with history. 

                 Modern theologians have emphasized this diversity, as well as the gap between biblical times and modern times, and have two questions about meaning:  What did it mean?  What does it mean?   So, before we can “translate” the Bible into modern times, we must first have the “original” spelled out in its own terms. This requires a lot of competence in our inter-

     pretation of that “original,” which is the second stage in biblical theology.  Thirdly, we proceed toward some answers about its present meaning. Where these three stages are mixed together, there is little hope for realizing the full potential of the Bible's influence on our lives. 

                 There has been increasing interest in the theology of the New Tes-tament (NT) in recent years paralleling a rising interest in Old Testament (OT) theology.  The results of 20th century studies in biblical theology have brought a clear distinction between biblical times and modern times.  The distance and strangeness of biblical thought was seen as a creative asset rather than as a destructive, burdensome liability. The theologically minded student found a new and deeper relevance in the pre-Westernized meaning of sayings and events brought to their attention by religious historians.

                 The resistance to the “religious historians” disregard for theological meaning and relevance led to a descriptive study of biblical thought in which the various stages of development in biblical thought were compared with few value judgments.  More attention was paid to the function and signifi-

     cance of such an event to its contemporaries and less to historical fact. A balance was struck between those who looked at the Bible historically with no regard for modern day relevance, and those who sought an eternal truth unconditioned and untouched by historical limitations. 

                 The ideal of an empathetic understanding of the first century without borrowing categories from later times has never been an ideal before.  There has never been an objective attempt to describe OT or NT faith and practice strictly from within its original presuppositions.  Three theologians represent three approaches to NT theology.  First, Barth argues for a concentration on the subject matter, which bridges the gap between the centuries, because the subject matter (God, Jesus, grace, etc.) is the same now as it was then.  He agrees with Calvin that one must rethink and wrestle with the material until Paul speaks in his century and the man of the 1500s hears in his. Within the realm of systematic theology, it may be convenient to speak of this theo-

     logy as “biblical” rather than philosophical.

                 Second, Bultmann also finds meaning in the subject matter.  But there is only one subject matter which is valid: the self-understanding as it expresses itself in the NT.  For Bultmann, the intent of NT theological utter-

     ances is not to state a doctrine and not to give the material for a concept.  It is to challenge man in his own self-understanding in reference to the divine message.

                 Third, Cullmann finds the key to NT theology in its understanding of time.  He urges us to recognize how time and history, rather than essence, nature and eternal or existential truth, are the categories within which the NT moves.  He focuses on the descriptive task, and he does not clarify why he considers the NT meaningful in the present. On the other hand, the other biblical theologians who are concerned with the present meaning, seem to have lost their enthusiasm for the descriptive task.     

                 There are those who express serious doubts about the possibility of the descriptive task, because there is always human bias involved the se-

     lection of material, sometimes without an awareness of bias.  Actually, the descriptive task can be carried out by the believer and agnostic alike.  The believer has the advantage of automatic empathy with the believers in the text, but must guard against modernizing the material.  The agnostic has the advantage of objectivity, but must work at empathizing with the first century believer.

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                 The significance of the OT for the NT is inescapable, because the Christian claim to be the chosen ones of God depends on OT & its fulfill-

     ment in Christ. Descriptive biblical theology does consider the Bible as a unity in that Israel's election consciousness is transferred to and heightened by the Christians.  As Israel lives through its history as a chosen people, so are the Christians now gathered together as the chosen ones.  God is still the God of a people with an ongoing history, however short it may have been.  Thus, there is a unity of the Bible on a historical basis.

                  If we approach the unity of the Bible or one of the testaments from the point of view of concepts and ideas, we may still be able to discern a certain unity in its effect on culture, but it is different than the organic unity to which the testaments themselves witness. The first and crucial descriptive task of biblical theology thus yields the original in its own terms, limiting the interpretation to what it meant in its own setting. Any question of meaning beyond the one suggested by the sources themselves tends to lessen the challenge of the original to the present-day theologian.

                  Christian Interpretation of the OT—In a sense, the Bible was forced by the early church to answer questions that were not being directly asked in it. In NT Christology, significant strands of tradition displayed the concept of Jesus as being adopted by God through baptism, resurrection, or Ascension, rather than the doctrine of pre-existence and virgin birth that later prevailed and led to the banning of “adoptionism.”  The biblical witness cen-

     ters around the questions: Who is he?  Is he the Messiah or isn't he?  It does not ask what Jesus is or how human and divine nature goes together in him. 

                 And when Acts 3.18 is looked at through the eyes of those who lived when it was first written, it is not the Second Coming of later theology.  There is only one coming of the Messiah, the one at the end of time.  Those who claim that Jesus was aware of being the Messiah during his earthly ministry overlook the fact that messiahship was spoken of with a strong futuristic note. We also need to remember that even in studying the Greek gospels, we are already once removed from the Aramaic vernacular of Jesus' teaching.

                 The most common response to the challenge of descriptive biblical theology is called the semi-historical translation of sacred history.  Some-

     where along the line the sacred history found in the scriptures has stopped, and there is only plain history left.  In a semi-historical translation, sacred history is only remembered in the church, not continued. 

                 An alternative is a systematic theology where the bridge between the times of biblical events and our own was found in the church’s actual history as the still ongoing sacred history of God's people, where God is the God who acts in history when God leads the church to new lands and areas of concern.  Through the ongoing sacred history, the fruits of God's acts in covenant and in Christ are handed down to now.  The task of preaching and theology under the Holy Spirit’s guidance is part of an ongoing sacred histo-

     ry.  The chasm between the centuries is theologically and historically bridged by history itself. For such an approach, the literature written between the 2 Testaments is of equal or greater significance than some canonical material. 

                  With a sharp distinction between what the texts meant in their origi-

     nal setting & what they mean now, preachers must, in their studies, become truly bilingual.  They must be able to move through the Bible and ancient patterns of thought with the ease of one brought up in those traditions and times.  They must put themselves back into the life and teaching of the Bible, and look at ancient attitudes and activity from their own standpoint.  Their familiarity with the “language” of the contemporary world should reach a similar degree of perception and genuine understanding. Descriptive biblical theology gives the systematic theologian a live option to attempt a direct translation of the biblical material.  It is easy to see the need for such a pos-

      sibility in the theology on the mission field and in the young churches.

                 If the task of the pulpit is the true Sitz im Leben, the “life situation,” where the meaning of the original meets with the meaning for today, then it is clear that we cannot pursue the study of biblical theology adequately if the 2 tenses are not kept apart.  For the church’s life, such a consistent descriptive approach is a great and promising asset which enables the church’s teaching and preaching ministry to be exposed to the Bible’s original intention and intensity, as an ever new challenge to thought, faith and response today.

HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION.  Interpretation represents either of two technical words, “exegesis” or “hermeneutics,” which were origi-nally synonyms but now are arbitrarily distinguished.  Exegesis is the de-

     tailed, specific explanation of a text; hermeneutics is the theory behind that explanation.  This article will deal primarily with hermeneutics.

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                 Necessity of Interpretation—Any product of the human mind invites and perhaps demands interpretation, with the demand becoming more insi-   stent the farther the product gets from one’s own time or idiom.  The Bible presents us with four compelling reasons why interpretation is necessary: it contains thoughts that are now two and three millenniums old; it was for-

     mulated in an alien environment; it was written in two Semitic languages (Hebrew and Aramaic) and the Indo-European language of Greek; and that for Christians its claim to authority over their lives makes interpretation essential.

                 There is of course, already interpretation with the Bible, not merely of dreams, nor merely of the Old Testament (OT) within the New Testament (NT), but also of older OT and NT passage in later parts of the respective testaments (e.g. Jeremiah 31 in Ezekiel 18; the books of Samuel and Kings in Chronicles; Matthew 10 in I Timothy 5).  Furthermore, there is a subtle web of interpretation lying between the two testaments.  NT writers quote the OT in Greek rather than Hebrew.

                 Every translation is to some degree an interpretation.  Between the translator’s reading of the original and his transmutation of it there lies an act of interpretation.  Only what one thinks the original means comes through in one’s translation.  Also, there is likely more than one possible meaning for a passage, and there is disagreement as to whether interpretation must follow the guidelines of traditional interpretation.  

                 How many meanings—Until the Reformation, the church’s scholars took for granted multiple meanings in scripture.  The first great exegete or interpreter was Origen (185-254); he lived and worked in Alexandria.  Origen worked in a literary milieu deeply conditioned by allegory, the treatment of ancient tradition whereby one ignores literal meaning and discovers hidden meanings in each term.  Origen was interested primarily in finding the “dee-

     per meaning,” which he was very willing to find everywhere.  He was interes-

     ted in deeper meaning when the obvious sense was untrue, unworthy, or impossible. 

                 Those who wrote about Origen leave the impression that he regularly set forth three meanings of a passage in order to instruct three kinds of peo-

     ple: the obvious sense, the “flesh of the text,” was for the simple person; the soul of a text was for those who had ascended to God in a certain degree; and the “spirit of the text” was for the perfect person.  This is the theory, while in practice Origen only rarely pursues a third meaning.  Both his formulated theory and his practice were fertilely influential after him. 

     Origen’s hermeneutic legacy was: unrestricted assumptions of at least a second meaning beneath the literal meaning, one that could only be found by allegory; a great fund of allegory to countless texts of both testaments; & a theory of the 3-fold meaning of scripture.  Even while the church heartily embraced the Origen’s traditional interpretation, it thoroughly condemned Origen the theologian 300 years after his death. 

     Within the ancient church there arose only one noteworthy protest against allegorical exegesis in Antioch. The protesters were Theodore Mop-   suestia (died 428) and Chrysostom (347-407) who popularized Theodore’s interpretations among others.  Theodore found many allegories to be inane or insane, and did his utmost to avoid allegories; he made his interpretation according to the literal account.  He insists that “the narratives of events of olden time are not fictitious,” and in his reaction against the allegorists he is often reluctant to find predictions of Christ, probably because allegorists found signs of Christ nearly everywhere. 

     Paul calls comparison of events by juxtaposing past and present events—‘allegory.’  But this is not allegory in Theodore’s sense.  Paul was speaking inexactly, and the allegorists, he says, abuse Paul’s inexact use of the word when they take it as authority for allegories.  A modern interpreter almost feels that he hears a colleague speaking when he finds such insights in Theodore.  But while Theodore and his school excluded the double mea-   ning found in allegory, their underlying assumption of dual meaning as typology is basically the same.  The Antioch school’s influence on the West comes from the ancient interpreter Jerome, where the many-sided and often self-contradictory Jerome seeks to unfold the literal or historical sense of passages.

     By and large, the exegesis of the church accepted Origen’s allegorical method.  Allegory’s goal is Christology and ecclesiology.  He also used the term theoria in the sense of “allegory.”  Within 200 years of Origen’s death, John Cassianus developed a 4-fold theory of interpretation.  One kind of interpretation was historical; the other 3 were spiritual: allegory; tropology; and anagogue.  

      Allegory’s goal is describing Christ and God; the goal of tropology is to describe ethical living; the goal of anagogue is to describe the individual and his place in the new age after Christ’s Second Coming.  The interpreter Jerome professes to follow a threefold scheme: history, tropology, and intel-   ligentia spirituali.  The third term is vague but probably equals allegory, and Jerome deals with anagogue in his work, and regards it as virtually synony-   mous with tropology, so his method could be thought of as containing four types of interpretation. 

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      For a 1,000 years the interpreter could choose either a twofold sense (historical or spiritual), a threefold sense (several different combinations of methods), or a fourfold (e.g. “The letter teaches the events, allegory what to believe, the moral sense what you are to do, and anagoge whither you are to strive”)—and still remain within the hermeneutic tradition of Alexandria.  It is interesting to note that medieval Jewish exegesis also used a similar fourfold method.  The word “PaRaDiSe contains 4 capitalized letters which stand for peshat (“spread out,” or literal), remez (“hint,” or allegory), derash (“search,”), and sod (“secret,” or anagogue).  Tropology does not fit well under derash, but the other three fit reasonably well.  Do these two four-fold methods re-    semble each other by chance or by dependence?

      The 1100s seems to have been a time of relatively peaceful discus-   sion between learned Jews and Christians.  Jewish scholars brought the church the first dawning of interest in the literal meaning of scripture through the work of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac or Rashi around 1050 A.D.  His com-   mentary on the first 5 books of the OT is a strong shift in emphasis to the literal meaning.  As he put it:  “. . . let Scripture be expounded according to its simple meaning, each word in its proper context. . .”  Among Rashi’s distin-   guished pupils is Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam), his grandson, whose com-   mentary on the first 5 books of the OT has been called the “most illustrious  product” of the school of Rashi.

     How did knowledge of the Rashi school of commentaries cross the barrier into Christian scholarship?  One tradition has Nicolas of Lyra as the mediator, but it is likely the school of St. Victor and specifically three of its teachers, Hugh, Richard, and Andrew were an earlier factor.  Hugh, while he was far from abandoning mystical meanings he had a clear grasp and insi-   stence upon the literal meaning as basic to understanding the Bible.  He frequently offered the exegetic insights which are to be found either in the works of Rashi or Rashbam; Hugh never gives the names of his Jewish authorities.

     Hugh’s ideas and methods lived on in 2 pupils, Richard and Andrew.  Richard stuck to his master’s mysticism, while Andrew was the heir and perfecter of Hugh’s hermeneutics.  Andrew’s method is to give first a Christian explanation, then a Jewish; he often gives more space to the Jewish view.  Andrew, though remaining a Christian, had become a disciple of Rashi’s literal method.

     After Hugh came Nicholas of Lyra (died around 1349), a Franciscan professor at Paris University.  He has the distinction of being the author of the first Bible commentary ever printed, published in five huge volumes.  All through the 1st 2 centuries after its printing it was reprinted in many coun-   tries, editions, and forms.  Actually this giant work is two commentaries: the first 50 books go through the whole of scripture using a literal interpretation.  The other 35 books cover scripture in a mystical commentary.

      Only the literal sense, not the mystical, can furnish an argument for proving or clearing up any doubt.  He openly acknowledged the contributions of Rashi, which he used “to clear up the literal sense.”  The literal interpre-   tation of the first 50 books was used to furnish a firm support for the 35 mystical books, which used all three of the traditional mystical meanings mentioned above.

      Martin Luther began interpreting the Bible using the allegorical me-   thod.  After his transformation, he cites Nicholas of Lyra and mostly avoided the use of allegory.  As Martin puts it: “I consider the ascription of several senses to Scripture to be not merely dangerous and useless for teaching, but even to cancel Scripture’s authority, whose meaning ought to be always one and the same.  But in some ways Luther was willing to tolerate allegory. “. . . allegories ought to be employed as . . . ornaments and amplifications.” 

     He refers to his own early use of allegory: “You, therefore, learn by my example and beware—and pursue everywhere simple stories [literal mea-nings].”  Luther himself seems to have exempted from his category of alle-   gory references that he considered christological.  Luther’s principle of sim-   ple literal meaning gained slow recognition and has never been lacking in the Protestant church since it was introduced.

      Authority of Tradition—The other main fact in the history of inter-pretation owes its importance largely to the uncertainties of Alexandrine hermeneutics.  If scripture has no certain meaning, some other authority beside or above it is necessary to guide faith; “tradition” was such an autho-   rity.  By the 100s A.D.  it meant the sum total of what was passed on by the apostles, written or unwritten; by the 200s and 300s tradition was understood as distinct from scripture, as something determined by the ongoing life of the church.  Indeed, for men like Augustine, tradition determined the canon of the gospel and not vice versa. 

     It was a young contemporary and theological opponent of Augustine, Vincent, a monk at Lerinum who wrote:  “Care is to be taken that we hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, by everybody.”  This as-    sumption of an authoritative tradition governing interpretation tended either to insulate the church’s scholars from interpreting the Bible itself or to distort every attempt to do so.  The Catholic view, as stated at the Council of Trent “. . . accepts all the books of the OT and NT and also the traditions with the same respectful affection and reverence.”  The same Council also said: “It is for the Mother Church to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures.”

     

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     On the Protestant side Wyclife said: “Though there were a hundred popes and every monk were made a cardinal, their opinion in matters of faith is to be valued only insofar as it is founded upon Scripture.” For Protestant interpretation the conditions necessary for critical understanding were pre-   sent when it had been accepted that scripture has one simple meaning and that there is no higher authority than scripture.

 HISTORY AND THE BIBLE—A theological approach to history seeks to outline  the biblical interpretation of history, conceived as a movement purposed &    controlled by God who is Lord of history.  But history is one thing; theo-    logical interpretation of history may be quite another; there is a difference     between history and “sacred” or “salvation” history.      

                  Methods of Historical Writing—For the modern historian, it is al-    most commonplace to say that “there are no bare facts for the historian.”      Any two observers can nearly always be relied upon not only to differ but to  contradict one another.  New Testament (NT) historical writing was done     near  to the events it records.  But whether or not we believe that the Re-    surrection took place, it would be unwarranted skepticism to base denial of   it upon the discrepancies between the gospels.  Unselfconscious indepen-    dence of the narratives is some testimony to the  story's essential truth.      

     Old Testament (OT) history is of events that took place over a long  period, and long before they were written.  As such, it is often difficult to de-    termine what is fact and what is interpretation.  Indeed, a nation’s life and     character can be even more powerfully influenced by what it believes to     have been its history than it is by events long past.  

      For example, the Hebrews escaped from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea.  The Egyptians may have seen no more in it than that.  The Hebrews believed that they owed their “deliverance” to Yahweh.  Those who hold strongly conservative views believe that every Bible narrative or statement is “fact.”  This means that duplicate stories must be made to agree by what is often forced and labored exegesis.  The “critic” finds many indications that history in OT times was not, and cannot be expected to have been, written in the manner of modern histories; it was not academic-scientific.          

     There are 3 types of historical literature: narrative or descriptive; di-  dactic or pragmatic; and scientific or genetic.  The simplest form of narrative history consists of annals, like the “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel,” mentioned in I Kings.  The finest historical writing is David’s “court history” (II Samuel 9-I Kings 2).  This reads as if it was written by at a near contemporary.  It is objective, it never moralizes, yet it leaves the impression that David’s trouble with his sons was due to his own lack of self-discipline. 

                 Most OT historical writing is didactic, “history with a purpose.”  The    

      Deuteronomic historians were more concerned to point out the moral for     their contemporaries than to give an unbiased account of the past.  In the     OT, there is nothing of the type of history that seeks to show how events are  related to the economic-social and spiritual movements from which they     derived.  This is because documentary sources were meager in the extreme  compared with the wealth of materials at the disposal of the historian today.   Such interpretations as these are found in the sagas of the Pentateuch and  in the prophetical writings.

                 OT Interpretation of History—The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not quite like anything else in the OT.  They describe the world’s creation and civilization’s beginnings.  Some of the Creation and Flood stories were al-

     most certainly derived from Babylonian mythology.  The materials in the primeval history are in duplicate; some parts are assigned to the Priestly writer, and other parts to the Yahwistic writer.

                 The world had its origin in God’s creative will. The human’s place in it is that of a creature.  His position in relation to God differs from that of all other creatures.  He is to have universal dominion, but he must not try to usurp the Creator’s authority.  His disobedience culminates in the Flood, from which only Noah and his family were preserved.  Immediately after the Flood, God is said to have established a covenant to never again flood the earth and destroy it.  The story continues with the dispersal of Noah’s descendants. 

                 The sagas are those stories in Genesis which are generally assigned to the combined Yahwistic-Elohwistic tradition.  Nevertheless, the difference between this combined tradition and the Priestly writer are clearly recogniz-   able.  The sagas begin with Yahweh’s summons to Abram/Abraham to leave Ur.  God said, “By you all the families of the earth will bless themselves.”  The conquest of the Promised Land is reached only after a long series of events.  First, Abraham has no son. He anticipates that one of his slaves must be his heir.  At long last Sarah bears Isaac, and Ishmael and the Arabs disappear from the story. 

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                  For a time, Isaac’s Rebekah also is barren, and of the twin boys she later bears, it is Jacob, the younger, who secures the birthright, by strata-

     gems of dubious morality.  Jacob in his turn must seek a wife among Ara-

     mean kinfolk and keep out of the way of Esau.  In his old age, Jacob mi-

     grates to Egypt to escape famine in Canaan.  There he and family are pro-

     vided for by Joseph.  After the Exodus, the Israelites for their persistent grumblings are condemned to wander for a generation in the wilderness.

                  The pre-exilic prophets have surprisingly little to say about the patri-archal tradition.  In Amos the names Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph stand for the nation Israel.  It is not until the Prophet of the Exile that the patriarchal tra-

     dition becomes prominent.  The Exodus and the wilderness wanderings are prominent in Amos.  Hosea and Jeremiah picture the wilderness wandering as a kind of honeymoon time in which Israel was married to Yahweh and entirely happy in him.  It may be that the idealization of the wilderness period was intended to throw into greater relief the later apostasy of Israel.  Promi-

     nent in the second part of Isaiah is the conception of the divine choice of “election” of Israel.

                The prophets were not cloudy idealists, now rhapsodizing, now la-menting, over Israel’s past.  They were uncompromising realists.  Yahweh was the Lord of history, now as well as in the past.  He was not concerned only with the domestic fortunes and morals of Israel.  The political extinction of the Hebrew kingdoms and the deportations of their peoples were not, as the prophets saw it, the work of ruthless military powers.  They were judg-

     ments of the “Holy One of Israel.”

                 History, for the prophets, began with Creation and had all along been under the control of Yahweh, and it was moving toward a purposed end.  The end is within the time series, and, speaking generally, is brought about on the plane of this world.  Prophetic conceptions of the future may be summed up in the expression “God‘s kingdom.”  Only in Isaiah 26 and the apocalyptic Daniel 12 does the expectation of a blessed future life find unambiguous expression.  The religious insight and depth of certain passages in Isaiah, Micah, and Zechariah is so profound that only Jesus perceives their real significance.  All in all, the OT leaves us with the impression of its incom-

     pleteness. It seems to look forward to a consummation that lies beyond itself.

                NT Interpretation of History—The OT ends, somewhat hesitantly, on a note of expectation.  The NT begins, without any hesitancy at all, on the note of fulfillment.  The two Testaments are a unity; neither is self-explana-

     tory nor can be properly understood without the other.  It is as if all the loose ends of the OT find their culmination in a unique event of history, the coming of Christ.

                 We are asked to believe that an assortment of writers, all of them (with the exception of Luke) Jews, none of them a scientific historian, had already discerned the meaning and purpose of history.  It is clear from the NT, that the first Christians believed that the coming of Christ was the cul-

     mination of history.  Christ was for them the full and final, revelation of God 

     to humans.  For the knowledge of God, the Bible is normative for as long as time shall last. 

                 For the pre-exilic prophets, Yahweh’s relations with Israel appear to have begun with the Exodus.  It is probable that the Genesis saga was pre-

     fixed, so to speak, to an Israelite salvation history whose primary impulse was the Exodus.  It is difficult to determine in any detail just what, or how much, history lies behind the salvation history of Genesis.  While Abraham is no doubt historical, it is probable that Jacob & Joseph were originally gods.  Some of the figures in Genesis may be types, rather than individuals.  The arch of the biblical interpretation of history is set firmly upon the two pillars of the Egyptian oppression and the Exodus in the OT and the Cross and the Resurrection in the NT. 

                 It remains to be asked whether the biblical interpretation of history is one to which an intelligent man can subscribe with an undivided conscience.  If we approach the question from the standpoint of Christian faith, our con-

     clusion may be that the biblical interpretation of history is, at least in broad outline, right.  We are to take the history as it is outlined in the Israel entry and ask whether the interpretation we ourselves put upon it accords with the biblical salvation history.

                 The Jews are an extraordinary people. Some part of the distinction may be due to their reactions to the harsh treatment meted out to them, but it is equally a heritage from OT times and from the OT salvation history.  There was not the variety of genius in Israel that there was in Greece, but the testi-

     mony of Israel is the more striking and significant because it was so domina-

     ted by intense awareness of God.  The NT is the record of events without parallel in history, and nothing since has been the same as it would have been if Christ had never come.  The history which produced the Bible is only explicable in terms of the biblical sacred, salvation history.  In short, biblical history is salvation history.

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