The Canon Debate (ecumenical)

In the last forty years interest has been growing not only in the origins of the biblical canon but also in its development, continuing viability, and future as a fixed collection of sacred writings. Despite the stability of the various biblical canons over the last four hundred years, the twentieth century brought significantly increased interest in canon formation. Much of this interest began with the earlier works of H. E. Ryle, Alexander Souter, Heinrich Graetz,Moses Stuart, and Edward Reuss. A brief look at the variety as well as volume of recent literature in this field in the Select Bibliography at the end of this volume will illustrate this growing interest.

More than a generation ago, Kurt Aland raised the question of reducing the biblical canon by omitting works that some scholars consider to be an embarrassment to the majority of the church, for example, the apocalyptic literature of the New Testament (2 Peter, Revelation, etc.) in order to promote Christian unity.

1 Not long after that Ernst Käsemann also asked whether there should be a “canon within the canon”—in essence, a reduction of the biblical text—in order to alleviate concerns over the diversity within the Bible.

2 James Sanders and Brevard Childs, for quite different reasons, in 1972 introduced “canonical criticism” or “canonical context” as distinct alternatives to the biblical theology movement.

3 More recently, some members of the Jesus Seminar have advocated both reducing the current biblical canon (especially eliminating the apocalyptic literature) and expanding the biblical canon to include such writings as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the “Unknown Gospel” of the Egerton Papyri.

4 Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar will address that issue and others below. Bruce 1Kurt Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon (London: Mowbray, 1962), 28–33.

2Ernst Käsemann, “The Canon of the New Testament Church and the Unity of the Church,” Essays on New Testament Themes (London: SCM, 1968), 95–107. J. D. G. Dunn (The Living Word [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987], 141–42, 161–74) also discusses the notion of a canon within the canon, albeit in a different sense, and, after describing four levels of canonical activity or four ways to view the canon, he concludes that the most important level of authority for exegesis and faith is the level of “final composition” (ibid., 172).

3 See J. A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (1972) and B. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (1972).

4 Jeffrey L. Sheler, “Cutting Loose the Holy Canon: A Controversial Re-examination of the Bible,” U.S. News & World Report 15, no. 18 (Nov. 8, 1993): 75. The Jesus Seminar has recently created a “Canon Seminar” which hopes to create a “Scholar’s Canon” that will, among other things, eliminate the book of Revelation and include the Gospel of Thomas. See also a new article by Kim Sue Lia Perkes, “Scripture Revision Won’t Be a Bible,” Arizona Republic (Sunday, Oct. 24, 1993, B1 and B4). See Jacob Milgrom, “An Amputated Bible, Peradventure?” BR 10, no. 4 (August 1994): 17,

Metzger contends that although in principle the Bible canon may be changed, in all practicality any changes in the present Christian Bible would undoubtedly cause more, not less, division in the church.5

Much of the recent discussion of canon formation has challenged well-known and widely held views. Some popular positions that are now being challenged include:

(1) the view that the Hebrew scriptures achieved canonical acceptance among the Jews in a threestage development beginning ca. 400 B.C.E. for the Pentateuch, 200 B.C.E. for the Prophets, and 90–100 C.E. for the Writings;

(3) that most of the New Testament canon was settled by the end of the second century C.E.; and

(4) that evidence of the latter is provided by a late second-century canonical list called the Muratorian Fragment.

1. What precisely is a biblical canon and how sure are we that such a notion flourished before, during, or immediately after the time of Jesus? As basic as this is, the reader will see presently that even here there is no universally accepted position. In the next chapter, Eugene Ulrich has made some interesting observations on this matter and his discussion may advance a common understanding of what a biblical canon is.

Some of the ensuing papers, however, show disagreement with his effort to seek a universally agreed on definition of the term “canon” as the final product of a canonical process. What complicates any discussion of canonicity in the various Judaisms of the first century of the common era and in early Christianity is the paucity of any clearly stated and universally accepted definitions of what constitutes scripture and canon. Most definitions available can be employed to show that there were more writings acknowledged as scripture in antiquity than those that were eventually included in the current biblical canon.

Some ancient literature functioned in scripture-like manner, that is, similar to other longaccepted scriptures that were normative for a believing community, long before it was ever called scripture and placed in a biblical canon. Similarly, some ancient literature functioned this way (normatively) earlier, but never made it into the biblical canon.6

4 Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders 55, for a critique of one recently reissued abridgment of the Bible.Milgrom argues for the relevance of those very sections that were eliminated fromthe Hebrew scriptures as either boring or irrelevant (e.g., the book of Leviticus).

5 B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 275.

We should note here that Professor Metzger was invited to participate in this volume but because of other commitments was unable to do so.

6 Eugene Ulrich (The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible [SDSSRL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999], 53–61) discusses the problem of definition and precision in current use of the word “canon.”He concludes that the term

(3) that it pertains to biblical books and not the specific textual form of those books. In this sense, he concludes that Judaism had no biblical canon as such at least until the middle of the second century C.E. and that the church had none until the fourth century. James Sanders, following a different path, suggested the same (“Text and Canon: Old Testament and New,” in Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy [ed. P. Casseti et al.; Fribourg: Editions

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

3. Whenever an ancient writer cites a source from an even more ancient text, does that cited text automatically become a part of the ancient writer’s biblical canon?

7 More recently, one scholar has questioned whether the rabbinic sages of late antiquity ever discussed the issue of a closed biblical canon.8

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

5. That issue leads us to the next question, namely,what of the agrapha (or sayings of Jesus not found in the canonical gospels)? Some scholars have suggested that these sayings, at least, can help us understand more clearly who Jesus was. This is not a new proposal,

9 and it continues to surface here and there. The agrapha served as an authoritative resource for the ancient Christians who cited them. If we can with some assurance determine which of the approximately 200 known noncanonical sayings of Jesus are genuine,10 should they be added to the data base of information that informs us about Jesus?11 Should they be added to the biblical canon?

universitaires, 1980], 373–94; and “Stability and Fluidity in Text and Canon,” in Tradition of the Text [ed. G. Norton and S. Pisano; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991], 201–17).

7Roger Beckwith (“Formation of the Hebrew Bible,” inMikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity [CRINT II/1; ed. M. J. Mulder; Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988], 46, 48–49) seems to imply as much when he simply accumulates a writer’s references to earlier sources and calls that a biblical canon. (For more detail see L.M.McDonald, Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon [rev. and enl. ed.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995], 27–28, 99, 101.) Caution is required in discerning what ancient writers concluded about the divine status of earlier literature that they cited. How certain are we that the notion of a fixed biblical canon was already current in the first century? What if we delay the notion of a closed or fixed scriptural canon until we see it discussed or clearly presented, as we do in the fourth to the sixth centuries? Perhaps the notion of an unclosed biblical canon is present even though the ancient writers did not yet have a termavailable to identify it, but see E.Ulrich for arguments against an “open canon” in the next chapter.

8 Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 128–45. See also his Midrash in Context: Exegesis in Formative Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 1–22. He claims that the notion of Torah was expanded in the formative years of Judaism to include the Mishnah, Tosefta, the two Talmuds, and the various midrashim.

A canon was constructed by defining Torah in a new way that encompassed all the literature that followed it. It was tied together through exegesis. The notion of a biblical canon, however, is not prominent in second-century rabbinic Judaism or even later.

9Metzger (NT Canon, 272 n. 11) notes that E. Platshoff-Lejeune (“Zur Problematik des biblischen Kanons,” Schweizerische theologische Umschau 19 [1949]: 108–16) made just such a proposal. 10 Scholars differ on the matter. 11 Joachim Jeremias (Unbekannte Jesuworte [Zürich: Zwingli, 1947; 2d ed., Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951; 3d ed., 1961]; ET: The Unknown Sayings of Jesus [London: SPCK, 1957; 2d ed., 1964])

6. And what of the biblical text itself?With the recent advances in the investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient Greek and Latin translations of the Bible, which text of the Bible is more authoritative for the church and for the Jewish community?

Tov, Epp, and Schmidt in their respective chapters in this volume raise some important questions in that regard. It appears that the ancient communities of Christianity and Judaism did not set aside one particular text of the scriptures to be included in their Bible.

If that is so, as the available evidence suggests, then how does one determine what the most appropriate scripture text should be? Which text of scripture should be authoritative for the church? Is the text in its original and earliest form the focus of authority and exegesis for the church, or rather the later canonical or “received” form of the biblical text? See a discussion of this in Kraft’s, Epp’s, and Sanders’s papers below. The greater church admittedly has received many textual additions, some of which were intentional and others accidental. For instance, is the original form of Philippians canonical or authoritative, or the one that currently exists in the New Testament canon?12 Does it make a difference in one’s reading if the two parts are separated for study and preaching? Is John best read as it was written, namely, as a single gospel, or as the Fourth Gospel? Is the final form of Isaiah authoritative for preaching and teaching, or do we look for an earlier First, Second, or even Third Isaiah? Should we receive Mark 16:9–20, John 21, and Acts 8:37 as canonical, even thoughmost scholars agree that they were later additions

to the text? Further, shouldwe accept as our scriptures only the earliest texts available today, reflecting the original hand of the author? Our choice in this matter may be guided by the early church, which grounded its theology in the witness of the apostolic community.13

7. Recent studies of the various surviving biblical manuscripts show that not until very recently did all of the current twenty-seven writings that make up the commonly received New Testament canon emerge in the same manuscript.14 In other words, if all of

claims that of the 266 such sayings, some eighteen are genuine. If this is correct, what should be done with such sayings? The agrapha are introduced, listed, and discussed in the following works: W. D. Stroker (Extracanonical Sayings of Jesus [SBLRBS 18; Atlanta: Scholars, 1989]) offers the text of 266 of these sayings but does not sufficiently evaluate their contents nor pass judgment on their authenticity.

They have been discussed more recently in detail in Otfried Hofius, “Isolated Sayings of Jesus,” New Testament Apocrypha (2d ed.,Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed.; Louisville, Ky.:Westminster John Knox, 1991), 1:88ff. James H. Charlesworth and Craig A. Evans conveniently list and discuss the agrapha in “Jesus in the Agrapha and Apocryphal Gospels,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (eds. Bruce Chilton and C. A. Evans; NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994). In this article, Evans contends that there is essentially nothing new in the agrapha that should cause concern or that would alter the understanding of Jesus that is found in the canonical gospels. See also Otfried Hofius, “Unknown Sayings of Jesus,” The Gospel and the Gospels (ed. Peter Stuhlmacher; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), 336–60, and “Isolated Sayings of the Lord,” NT Apo (2d ed.) 1:90.

12 It is likely that the letter to the Philippians is a composite of Paul’s writings on at least two separate occasions, namely, chapters 1:1–3:1 and chapters 3:2–4:23.

13 Notice, for example, that Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.25.7) emphasizes both “apostolic style” and “orthodoxy” as criteria for genuineness, and even the MF (Muratorian Fragment) lines 73–80 excluded a work from consideration (Hermas) because it did not stem from the apostolic community. The rise of New Testament pseudepigraphy also demonstrates a desire to ground theology in the witness of the apostolic community.

The early church anchored its life and faith in God’s activity in Jesus. Writings that were believed to be closer in time to him and that reflected early tradition about him were passed on and became canon for the church.

14 The reader should be aware that the common New Testament canon is not the only one that exists. The Ethiopian church, which parallels to some extent the Coptic New Testament canon, the literature that comprises our current biblical canon was important to the Christians in antiquity, why do we not find many manuscripts containing them? Eldon Epp, Robert Kraft, and Daryl Schmidt, and to some extent Emanuel Tov for the Hebrew Bible, address this problem in this volume.

8. What criteria were employed to determine which writings would make up the Christian biblical canon? There is little doubt among canon scholars that authorship by an apostle was the most important factor considered by the church leaders of the fourth and following centuries. If it was believed that an apostle produced a particular writing, that writing was accepted and treated as scripture. This also helps to explain the large collection of literature pseudonymously attributed to the apostles, the so-called apocryphal New Testament writings. There is no doubt that several books of the New Testament were placed in the canon of scripture because the majority of the church fathers believed that they were written by members of the apostolic community if not by apostles themselves.

All of these questions, of course, concern the viability and integrity of the current biblical canon.Most canonical literature is anonymous and a considerable amount of it became pseudepigraphic under hellenistic influence, that is, attributed to great personages of the past.

In semitic culture in antiquity the focus was on a text’s message, not its author, for its authenticity. Thismay have been the case for the Gospels and Acts. (SeeMcDonald’s discussion of this topic below.)

Kent Clarke makes an important contribution to the question of whether any pseudonymous writings exist in the Bible.What if the one to whom a biblical writing was attributed is not the author of that work? What do we do with it then?Most, but not all, biblical scholars have concluded that such literature does exist in the New Testament. Does it matter?

These too are important questions that share in the complexity of canon formation.

What has commonly been called the canonization of scripture was, according to some students, in reality a canonical process involving the various parts of the present Bible over a long period of time. The literature that made it into the Jewish and Christian scripture canons had to be multivalent and adaptable to the conditions and needs of numerous communities just to survive and be included in a biblical canon. Once that literature was placed in those canons, it has continued to be multivalent and adaptable for two thousand years. A canon’s continuing adaptability or relevance to the lives of communities and of individuals is as salient a characteristic as its stability or “final shape.”15 Discussion of the limits or scope of the New Testament canon of writings first occurs in the fourth century in the writings of Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.3).

Many Christians had alreadymade their decisions about the contents of their New Testament scriptures by then, but the churches were never fully agreed. The catalogues and collections listed in Appendix C demonstrate the variety of opinion present in the churches in the fourth century. Here we first see terms used to identify this literature.

Although “Old Testament” and “New Testament” began to be used in some churches to designate their sacred writings in the late second century, it is only in the fourth century that they are referred to by Eusebius as encovenanted” and “recognized” writings (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.3.1–6; 3.25.1–7; and 5.8.1). Further it is not until 367 that we first hear themreferred to as “canon” (Athanasius, Festal Letter 39).

Athanasius is the first to list the complete 27 books that most Christians now call the New Testament canon, but he did not settle the issue for many other churches, as we can see from the variety in the subsequent lists of New Testament scriptures in Appendix C.His Old Testament canon was broader than the current Protestant Old Testament canon, which contains the same books found in the Hebrew Bible though not in the same order. Kalin, Balla, Ferguson, and Hahneman have all made significant contributions in this volume to our understanding of this question.

List of Contributors ix

Part One: Introduction

1. Introduction 3

Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders

Part Two: The Old/First Testament Canon

2. The Notion and Definition of Canon 21 Eugene Ulrich

3. The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective 36 Philip R. Davies

4. The Formation of the Hebrew Bible Canon: Isaiah as a Test Case 53 Joseph Blenkinsopp

5. The Septuagint: The Bible of Hellenistic Judaism 68 Albert C. Sundberg Jr.

6. Questions of Canon Viewed through the Dead Sea Scrolls 91 James C. VanderKam

7. Josephus and His Twenty-Two Book Canon 110 Steve Mason

8. Origins of a Tripartite Old Testament Canon 128 Julio C. Trebolle Barrera

9. Jamnia Revisited 146 Jack P. Lewis

10. The Rabbi's Bible: The Canon of the Hebrew Bible 163 Jack N. Lighthouse

11. The Scriptures of Jesus and His Earliest Followers 185 Craig A. Evans

12. The Old Testament Apocrypha in the Early Church and Today 196 Daniel J. Harrington, S.J.

13. The Pseudepigrapha in the Early Church 211 William Adler

14. The Codex and Canon Consciousness 229 Robert A. Kraft

15. The Status of the Masoretic Text in Modern Text Editions of the Hebrew Bible: The Relevance of Canon 234 Emanuel Tov

16. The Issue of Closure in the Canonical Process 252 James A. Sanders

Part Three: The New/Second Testament Canon

17. The New Testament Canon: Recent Research and the Status Quaestionis 267 Harry Y. Gamble

18. Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon: A Survey of Some Recent Studies 295 Everett Ferguson

19. Reflections on Jesus and the New Testament Canon 321 William R. Farmer

20. Marcion Revisited 341 John Barton

21. Gnosticism and the Christian Bible 355 Pheme Perkins

22. Evidence for an Early Christian Canon (Second and Third Century) 372 Peter Balla

23. The New Testament Canon of Eusebius 386 Everett R. Kalin

24. The Muratorian Fragment and the Origins of the New Testament Canon 405 Geoffrey Mark Hahneman

25. Identifying Scripture and Canon in the Early Church: The Criteria Question 416 Lee Martin McDonald

26. The Problem of Pseudonymity in Biblical Literature and Its Implications for Canon Formation 440 Kent D. Clarke

27. The Greek New Testament as a Codex 469 Daryl D. Schmidt

28. Issues in the Interrelation of New Testament Textual Criticism and Canon 485 Eldon Jay Epp

29. The Canonical Structure of Gospel and Apostle 516 François Bovon

30. The Significance of a Canonical Perspective on the Church's Scripture 528 Robert W. Wall

31. The Once and Future New Testament 541 Robert W. Funk

32. Has the Canon a Continuing Function? 558 James D.G. Dunn

Appendixes

A. Primary Sources for the Study of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible 580 Lee Martin McDonald

B. Primary Sources for the Study of the New Testament Canon 583 Lee Martin McDonald

C. Lists and Catalogues of Old Testament Collections 585 Lee Martin McDonald

E. List and Catalogues of New Testament Collections 591 Lee Martin McDonald

Select Bibliography 599

Subject Index 625

Index of Modern Authors 633

Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources 643

1. Old Testament/Hebrew Bible 643

2. Apocrypha of the Old Testament 647

3. New Testament 648

4. Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament 652

5. Writings from the Judean Desert 653

6. Rabbinic Literature and Targumim 653

7. Writings from Nag Hammadi 655

8. Other Ancient and Medieval Writings 655

Review

". . . the book considerably advances our knowledge of the process of canonization of Scripture." -- Theological Studies

". . . the volume contains a wealth of information on every important topic of canon debate. It should get good attention." -- Calvin Theological Journal

"Hendrickson is to be thanked for producing this attractive volume." -- International Review of Biblical Studies

"This collection of essays is a state-of-the-art articulation of issues related to the canon." -- Christian Century

"This is an important dossier on the canon of the Bible." -- Theoforum

Product Description

1 What does it mean to speak of a “canon” of scripture?

2 How, when, and where, did the canon of the Hebrew Bible come into existence?

3 Why does it have three divisions?

4 What canon was in use among the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora?

5 At Qumran?

6 In Roman Palestine?

7 Among the rabbis? What Bible did Jesus and his disciples know and use?

8 How was the New Testament canon formed and closed?

9 What role was played by Marcion? By gnostics?

10 By the church fathers?

11 What did the

12 By what criteria have questions of canonicity been decided?

13 Are these past decisions still meaningful faith communities today? Are they open to revision?

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

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