How Was the Bible Canonized? By CentrePlace

Overview

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The Bible is the best-selling book of all time and many people, including Christians, imagine that its authors were writing with a single voice with the final canon in mind. But, of course, the Bible is actually a library of texts written in different languages over the course of centuries, that reflect the diverse contexts of its authors, most of whom never imagined that their individual book would eventually be part of a “Bible.” While it’s often assumed that the final canon was approved at the Council of Nicaea, this is not the case. In fact, canonization was a slow and haphazard process, which resulted in different lists for different branches of Christianity (Catholic, Protestant/Anglican, Orthodox, and others). John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at criteria used to create the canon and the historical development of the Bible.

Presentation Slides

Exploring the Canonization of the Bible

Introduction

(00:03) Today, we shall delve into the process by which the Bible was canonized. The term "Bible" is commonly used to refer to a singular book; however, the name itself signifies a collection of books. It is, in essence, a library of texts composed at various times, in diverse languages, and from differing perspectives, often in competition with one another. Despite the fact that the books we possess collectively form the Bible, none of the authors of these individual works ever envisioned that their writings would become part of this larger compilation. (00:44) Each author was addressing their own community, within their specific historical and cultural context.

Christ on the Road to Emmaus

Talking about “the Scriptures" in the Bible

Evolving Definition of “the Scriptures”

What Books Are in the “Old Testament"?

• While its clear that the writers of the New Testament are talking about the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) when they speak of the "scriptures," the question is actually much more complex
• The evangelists were not walking around with copies of the Old Testament — each book was a scroll, and which counted as "scripture" was contested

Talking about “the Scriptures” in the Bible

The Greatest Commandment

• We have the same two categories of scripture books in the Greatest Commandment story (Matt 22:35-40):
• 35 One of [the Pharisees], an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
• 37 Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ (Deuteronomy 6:5). 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it:‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18).

The Law and the Prophets

The Law (Torah)

• Already in the 1 st century, there was broad agreement that "the Law" (Torah), the five books (Pentateuch) of Moses were at the core of authoritative scripture
• Hebrew names come from the first words of each book

Much Less Ancient than Ancients Assumed

• While ancient authors, including 1 st century Christians and Jews like Josephus and Philo assumed Moses was the author of the Law, modern scholarship has shown that the texts are the product of multiple authors and editors writing over centuries
• The final compilation was perhaps a little more than 500 years old in the first century CE

What About the “Prophets"?

NT Quotation of Various Prophets

• After the Law/Pentateuch and the Psalms, the prophet most quoted by New Testament authors is Isaiah (both the original prophet and his pseudonymous redactors)
• Daniel is also popular, despite being a very recent 2nd century bce text (also pseudonymous)
• Some books like 1 Enoch were later left out of the standard OT

Many More Bible-Like Books...

• The 1 st century ce Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 ce-c.1 00 ce) explains the problem of defining "scripture" in a book he wrote to respond to an earlier anti-Jewish polemic by Apion Pleistoneices, who was a Greek-speaking Egyptian sophist:

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death.This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time;and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them.

• This description by Josephus is the earliest example of separating "scripture" from other scripture-like books

What Books Are in Josephus’ List?

• Josephus saw 22 books as authoritative, beginning with the 5 books attributed to Moses, followed by 13 scrolls of the prophets, and 4 books of hymns and precepts (wisdom books)
• While the 5 books of Moses are clear (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy], he unfortunately does not list which of the others he recognizes

Older Prophets Are More Authoritative

• After the Law comes the prophets, but as Josephus points out there were innumerable prophetic texts by his day
• Josephus gives more esteem to those from the Persian period and earlier, believing that the "succession of the prophets" had not been exact since the reign of Artaxerxes and was now unclear in the Hellenistic period
• The first of four Persian Kings named Artaxerxes reigned 465-424 BŒ

Many More than 13 Prophets in the Hebrew Bible

When Books Were Scrolls by Default

• In contrast to the codex (what we now think of a bound physicial book), scrolls had a much shorter conveniently usable length
• As a result, some longer texts like Chronicles were divided into two scrolls (thus we now have 1st and 2nd Chronicles]
• In the same way, 12 short prophetic writings were grouped together on a single scroll

Minor Prophets: 12 on 1 Scroll

• Josephus may have included the books of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, as a single one of the thirteen prophetic scrolls he recognized
• This same grouping counts as just one of the eight prophetic books later recognizes as canon in Rabbinic Judaism

Law, Prophets, & “Other” (Writings)

• Like Josephus, Philo describes a three-fold division of Jewish scripture: the Law (Torah), the Prophets, and Other (writings), but he also does not give a list
• In his extensive writings, Philo never quotes Daniel, Song of Songs, Ezekiel, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, or any of the books that are later grouped into the "Apocrypha"
• Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria c. 20 BCE - c. 50 CE

An Early Collection of Scripture

• The Book of Sirach (also known as Ecclesiaticus), part of the Second Temple Period's wisdom tradition, was between 196 and 175 BCE by Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, probably in Alexandria
• The text includes a list of Biblical figures drawn from the Law and the Prophets which indicates that Ben Sira had access to a large collection of scriptures

Ben Sira's Possible Canon

• Extrapolating from Ben Sira's list, scholars have proposed that he had access to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets
• Excluded from his list are Ruth, Song of Songs, Esther, and Daniel — which could either mean that he did not he did not have access to these texts, he did not find them authoritative, or he did not find their subjects worthy of lionizing
• Sirach is excluded from the Jewish and Protestant Bibles

A Small Land Between Larger Neighbors

The First Temple Period (to 586 bce)

Exile Period (586-516 bce)

Persian Period (516-332 bce)

Helenistic Period (332-63 bce)

Roman Period (63 bce-70 bce)

Hellenistic Judaism

• While many Jews opposed Hellenism, others saw no conflict and sought to interpret their religion within its lens
• Christian writers of the 1st century ce (all of whom are writing in Greek) along with Philo and Josephus are all representative of Hellenistic Judaism of the 2nd Temple Period
• These writers regularly accessed the books of Hebrew scripture through the Greek Septuagint translation
• Alexandria was home to the largest Jewish population in the 1st century
• Under the patronage of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, Alexandria eclipsed Athens as the center of learning in the Hellenistic world and its great library at the original Museum (temple of the Muses) remains famous today

Ptolemy II and the Septuagint

• Ptolemy II heavily promoted the library and actively sought out texts far and wide
• According to tradition recorded in the pseudepigraphical Letter of Aristeas, Ptolemy II was the driving force behind the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, employing Seventy (or 72) translators who produced the Septuagint miraculously

Traditional Septuagint Story

• The Letter to Aristeas (likely composed in the early 2nd century BCE) includes a letter, purportedly from Ptolemy, announcing his intentions:

King Ptolemy sends greeting and salutation to the High Priest Eleazar. Since there are many Jews settled in our realm who were carried off from Jerusalem by the Persians at the time of their power and many more who came with my father into Egypt as captives, large numbers of these he placed in the army...Now since I am anxious to show my gratitude to these men and to the Jews throughout the world and to the generations yet to come, I have determined that your law shall be translated from the Hebrew tongue which is in use amongst you into the Greek language, that these books may be added to the other royal books in my library. It will be a kindness on your part and a regard for my zeal if you will select six elders from each of your tribes [6x12=72], men of noble life and skilled in your law and able to interpret it, that in questions of dispute we may be able to discover the verdict in which the majority agree, for the investigation is of the highest possible importance. I hope to win great renown by the accomplishment of this work.

• The High Priest agrees and sends 6 elders from each of the 12 tribes, all of whom are named in the text — despite the fact that all but three tribes no longer existed (one of many clear anachronisms)
• Septuagint: Traditionally Miraculous
• The Letter of Aristeus goes onto claim that elders completed the work of the translation in 72 days
• This miracle is recounted in Rabbinic Judaism's Babylonian Talmud, (compiled c. 500 CE)

King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one’s room and said: “Write for me the Torah of Moses, your teacher." God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.

Historically, A Much Longer Process

• While the Pentateuch was likely translated in the 3rd century bee, scholars now agree that the rest of the books of the Hebrew Bible were translated into Greek more slowly during the 2nd century
• Eventually, the Septuagint came to include many more books than are currently in the Jewish Bible or Protestant OT, divided into four broad categories

Division of Books in the Septuagint

Categories Beyond the Pentateuch

Prophets and “Histories"

Books Covering the Hellenistic Era

• Some of the texts, like the various Books of Maccabees and Sirach were overtly set in the Hellenistic period — and thus were clearly recent and therefore less authoritative

Hellenistic Books Pretending to Antiquity

• Many of the other books in the collection, like Daniel, 1 & 2 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the Wisdom and Psalms of Solomon were actually from the same era

Additional Books in the Septuagint

• Because the Septuagint was not produced all at once by 72 scholars, nor was it published together in a single collection, the precise contents of what should be included on the list remained unclear
• Some Hellenistic Jews and early Christians included texts like Jubilees and 1st Enoch, which did not make it on all the lists

Source for the Christian Old Testament

• While the precise outlines of which texts to include or exclude remained murky in the first few centuries of Christianity, the Septuagint formed the basis for the canons of Old Testament in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Churches

Other Second Temple Jewish Sects

• Second Temple Judaism included a wide diversity of practices and understanding of scripture
• In contrast to Greek-speaking Jews and Christians, sects like the Essene community at Qumran spoke Aramaic and studied scripture in Hebrew
• The Dead Sea Scrolls illustrate the distinct priorities and beliefs of the Essene community

Dead Sea Scroll Contents

Development of Rabbinic Judaism

• The Roman destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 ce ended the Second Temple Period
• Sects like the Essenes and Sadducees went extinct, leaving two main successors: Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity
• The rabbis emerged out of the Pharisee sect and reorganized Judaism in the wake of the Temple's destruction

Canonization of the Hebrew Bible

• Drawing from the Masoretic text (Hebrew and Aramaic) rather than the Septuagint (Greek), the Rabbis ultimately recognized 24 books as canonical/authoritative
• There is no scholarly consensus as to when this occurred
• There is little evidence for an early date — for example, Sirach is inconclusive and represents a Hellenistic Jewish tradition

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)

Shifting the Focus Earlier

• Although some Hellenistic Era books like Daniel made it into the Tanakh because the rabbis believed they were more ancient than they actually were, they largely shifted the focus of their canon to the Persian Period and the earlier First Temple Period
• Omitting Maccabees deleted any explanation for Hunukah from the Hebrew Bible

Pruning Out Late 2nd Temple Texts

• Apocalypticism, the world's end, elaboration of angels, demons, the levels of heaven, resurrection were major themes of the later Second Temple Period that were mostly unknown in First Temple Period Judaism
• By deleting most of these texts (with a few exceptions like Daniel), the Rabbis changed the focus of their movement
• The afterlife was more a focus of 2nd Temple Jewish sects than modern
• Jewish denominations

A Diversity of Early Christianities

• Turning back to Christianity, we have outlined in many lectures the diversity of Christian communities in the 1 st century — many were producing their own texts which they considered authoritative for their emerging religion

Significant Groups in the 2nd Century

• In our “Lost Christianities" lecture, we considered four 2nd Century Christian groups and we have had lectures on Gnostic and Ebionite scripture

Marcion of Sinope

• Marcion (c. 85 - G160) was an energetic theologian from Sinope in northern Anatolia
• After making an unsuccessful bid to lead the church of Rome, Marcion was excommunicated
• He returned to the East where he organized a rival church structure which flourished in the 2nd century in Anatolia but eventually died out

Marcionism: A Paul-Focused Christianity

• Marcion rejected the Old Testament and taught the God of the Hebrew Bible was a different, evil entity from the benevolent God of the New Testament
• Marcion focused on Paul’s teachings and created the first Christian canon: a list restricted to 10 of Paul’s letters and a redacted version of the Gospel of Luke (the most Gentile gospel)

Love the Concept/Hate the Conclusion

2nd-3rd Century Fathers of the Church

1. By the end of the 2nd Century, Proto-Orthodox leaders were recognizing as canon the four gospels now found in the NT
2. Origen was familiar with the 27 books that became the NT, but suspected correctly that 2-3 John and 2 Peter were forgeries; he included Barnabas, 1 Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas on his list of canonical books

How Did Texts Make It into the Canon?

What Kept Texts Out of the Canon?

Many Similar Texts Were Not Included

Still Not Finalized under Constantine

• Although we have seen that the answer is often "Constantine,” when looking at important moments in the development of Christianity, the Emperor did not solve this question
• The First Council of Nicaea (325) did not publish an approved list of Biblical texts (despite a later suggestion by Jerome that the question was considered there]

The Fifty Bibles of Constantine

• Constantine did commission 50 Bibles in Greek in 331 ce
• This may have led to further development of canon lists to decide which texts to include
• It is possible that the great Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus (among the earliest extant Christian Bibles) are surviving examples of these 50 Constantinian codices (see codex)

The Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus

• The codices contain almost complete versions of the Septuagint and most of 27 current NT texts
• From the Septuagint, the Vaticanus lacks 1-4 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh; 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation are now missing but a portion of the codex was lost
• The Sinaiticus lacks 2-3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Baruch, and the Letter of Jeremiah, but includes in the NT the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas
• I.e., mostly there, but some variations remain

The Synod of Hippo Regius

• Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in his Easter letter of 367ce gives for the first time the exact list of 27 books that now make up the New Testament canon
• The first church council to approve the list appears to have been a local synod in Africa, presided over by Augustine in 393 ce, which was confirmed by decrees in Rome in 414 ce

Eastern/Oriental Christianity

• Having only crystallized in the West in the 5th Century ce , the canon continued to maintain diversity in the Eastern churches
• While sharing the same NT canons, each of the Eastern churches maintained minor variations in their OT canon lists
• The Ethiopian church (longer isolated) has more significant additional inclusions

Protestants Reject the Apocrypha

• In the West at the time of the Reformation (16th century), Protestants emphasized translating the Bible into vernacular languages and studying the text
• Noting that the Catholic and Jewish canons differed, Protestants rejected disputed texts from their new canons, calling them "Apocryphal"

Peculiar Canonical Dividing Line

Apocrypha Books