Frequently Asked Questions (2)
Larry Hart
The following questions and responses (divided into four separate posts) are related to podcasts 19-24 on Larry’s Inklings. If you prefer listening to reading the questions and answers they can be found as audio on Larry’s Inklings (Podcasts 25-28).
Q) If the Bible is an anthology, who compiled the anthology? Who decided what should be included and what should be excluded; and, when and how did they make the decision?
A) Another way of asking this question is, “Who decided the canon?” The Christian canon of Scripture is the set of twenty-seven books considered authoritative by the Christian community for its life and work. Originally the word “canon” referred to a reed that was used as a measuring stick. The canon, then, is the rule or measuring stick which establishes the biblical books as legitimate and authoritative; that is, a book is canonical if found to meet a standard of measurement. This criteria, or standard of measurement, emerged slowly as a consensus. To be recognized as canonical a book had to meet four requirements: (1) It had to be apostolic in origin; that is, it had to be attributed to or based on the teaching of the first generation of the apostles or their close companions. (2) It had to have universal acceptance, meaning that it had to have been acknowledged by all the major communities or centers of Christianity in the ancient world (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Caesarea, Damascus, Greece, and Rome) by the end of the fourth century. (3) It had to have been used liturgically––read publicly in Christian communities as they gathered for worship. (4) It had to have a consistent message. It had to be similar to or complementary to accepted Christian writing.
The epistles of Paul circulated as a collection by 100; although they were, obviously, read individually much earlier. The Four Gospels circulated as a collection by 160, and by 200 a set of Christian writings very similar to the New Testament as we know it. In 367 Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of books exactly like that of the New Testament today and referred to them as canonized. Synods and councils meeting in 393, 397, and 419 all regarded the canon as closed. So, the process of canonization was a long, slow, organic process.
A number of non-confessing scholars have argued that the canon was a later creation of powerful bishops who imposed it on Christian communities by political force. That simply does not fit the historical facts. Scholarly evidence in the form of theological essays, letters, and histories from earliest Christianity into the fourth century points to a long process of canonization. There was no single church authority or council who authorized, imposed, or had the power to impose, an official set of books. It just didn’t happen, other than in Dan Brown’s fictional novel The Da Vinci Code. I reiterate: The Twenty-Seven books Christians recognize as sacred emerged slowly out of the spiritual dynamics of the faith. If you want to read more, I suggest C. E. Hill’s book Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy.
Q) You haven’t said anything about the early Christian communities which gave rise to the Four Gospels. What can you tell me about them, and their importance to interpreting Scripture?
A) I assume you are referring to the idea that the Christian movement did not begin from a single center –– a single faith community or church, in a particular city like Jerusalem, but, instead, there were many different centers where different groups of disciples, quazi disciples, groupies, opportunists, and the curious tried to make sense of Jesus’s teaching, presence, and gruesome end. Each of those groups had a different take on what the significance of Jesus was. They understood his life, crucifixion, and resurrection in a bewildering variety of ways. Some did not focus on the claims of his resurrection at all, but instead concentrated on his teaching and how those teachings could liberate them from political and economic oppression. Consequently, the non-confessing scholar Richard Horsley writes this: “The movements that formed around Yeshua Ben Yosef survived the Roman Crucifixion of their leader as a ‘rebel king’. In fact, his martyrdom became a powerful impetus for the expansion and diversification of his movement.” The origins of the Christian movement according to Horsley, are not to be found in the person of Jesus as the Christ, “but in the large number of ‘peasants’ who eagerly responded to the pronouncements of peasant prophets that God was again about to liberate them from oppressive rulers and restore cooperative community life under the traditional divine principle of justice.” According to people like Horsely and Baur, not only did these groups have different understandings and beliefs, but they were also in competition with one another. From the earliest days of Christianity, according to this view, there is no distinction between orthodoxy and heresy–– just “different strokes for different folks.” Each of the Four Gospels, it is claimed, was written by a leader or leaders of different communities, or churches to answer the questions and serve the agenda of their community; for example, the Gospel of John, it is asserted, emerged from within the church centered in Ephesus which was composed of Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the synagogue.
However, the most striking supposed difference was between those emphasizing a secret esoteric knowledge and the material world as inherently evil, the gnostics; and those we might think of as Apostolic Christians who emphasized God’s love and wisdom made alive, real, and available in the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ.
Now, as the question states, I haven’t said anything about all this, and I haven’t done so for several reasons. For one thing, while this wild hypothesis of communities is now widely assumed to be true by non-confessing scholars there is no real evidence for it at all. It is entirely conjecture, pure speculation. Because it does not rest on anything substantial it is nearly impossible to argue it with those who accept it without feeling like you are going mad. I watched the television series Ivanhoe while thinking about this, and it occurred to that trying to argue with non-confessing scholars on such matters is like trying to answer the cruel Grand Master of the Knights Templar when he has the Jewish physician Rowena on trial for witchcraft. Nevertheless, I find the following problems with this speculative proposal:
1) No one has ever found any such community that actually existed. There are real places with real Christian churches (actual centers of the Jesus Way) named in Acts of the Apostles, in the Epistles, and in Revelation ((Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Laodicea, Thessalonica), but there is no evidence of a concrete, physical, or real Matthean, Markan, Lukan, or Johannine community.
2) One main piece of evidence offered for these different groups, centers, or communities, is the disagreements between Christians reported in the New Testament itself. But to argue that disagreements within a community prove multiple communities simply defies the rules of logic. More reasonable is Hurtado’s observation that differences in the early Christian community, which are obvious in the canonical books, demonstrate a willingness to accommodate a certain amount of diversity as the Apostle Paul urges in the Corinthian correspondence.
3) It is further argued by non-confessing scholars that there could have been no
such thing as heresy because no one center, or group, or church community was in a position to claim its views alone were legitimate, correct, or orthodox; in short, there was no canon by which to measure orthodoxy. That’s really a little silly and unworthy of any serious lay student of the Bible much less a professional scholar. The canon for those who, in spite of his crucifixion, continued to give their heart to Christ, the canon for “those of the Way” as they were at first called, was Christ himself and the Apostles. To the Apostles Jesus entrusted the keys of the Kingdom saying: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19). Or, Ephesians 2:19-20, “You are. . . built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” Certainly, the little Epistle of 1 John is concerned with what it means to live an authentic Christian life. In five short chapters John provides the measuring stick for Christian orthodoxy, for Christian authenticity: Live with purity of heart if you want to see God. If you want to know God live love. Be honest with yourself and with God about your sins. Walk in the light. Do not continue in sin, but “acknowledge the exact nature of your wrongs;” and Christ, through his death and resurrection will forgive you and set right anything wrong between you and God. Keep Christ’s commandments––live his teaching. Acknowledge Christ, give your heart to Him as the “Word of Life” come in the flesh, the eternal life and light from God and which was from the beginning.
Now, we do know from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the Book of Acts, that there were people in Jesus’s own day trying to figure out who he was; as well as individuals doing their own thing in his name––some of them, like today, charlatans. But if there were whole groups or communities of independent disciples, we know nothing of them. But even if there were it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how many groups existed or how many different ideas there were about Jesus. The defining characteristic of orthodoxy is continuity with Jesus and his teaching through the apostles.
4) Every casual reader of the history of the Roman Empire is aware of how the Pax Romana, the common use of the Greek language, and Roman engineered roads throughout the Empire wove travel into the texture of the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond. And every casual student of Biblical history is cognizant of the impact of this relative ease of travel and communication on the rapid spread of the Christian message. It is well established that the earliest churches maintained close connections through the exchange of letters, messengers, separated families maintaining their ties, or those traveling for other reasons such as trade, government business, or holy pilgrimage. Yet, the theory that many of the earliest Christian communities were highly diverse, with little exchange between them and other Christian centers, and rather self-absorbed with little interest on how their spirituality impacted the larger world ignores this reality.
5) It seems to me that a fifth factor must be figured into this equation. Both Judaism and Christianity were highly exclusive faiths, and “their demands,” as Hurtado notes in The Origins of Christian Worship, “were at odds with all other religious attitudes of the Roman era.
Finally, I will add just two more very brief observations regarding the composition and transmission of Scripture––”The Book God Breathed.” First: If one regards the Biblical text as wholly corrupted, as does Bart Erhman, then it is impossible to form any intelligent hypothesis about the historical nature of events it describes, or, to deal decisively with such questions as authorship and dating on the basis of style, vocabulary, or grammar. One cannot have her cake and eat it too” (see: Larry Hart, The Annunciation, 2017, 144). Second: When earliest Christianity, and its literature, is reduced to what amounts to little more than small disparate groups of peasants led insurrectionists, or discussion groups of disgruntled Jews debating esoteric Greek philosophy, it is hard to imagine Christianity having the kind of impact on the world it has had.
This is why I haven’t had anything to say about the notion of “literary communities” as envisioned by non-confessing scholars. It is an intriguing and clever bit of sophism, but ultimately a distraction from our spiritual work.