Stuff the Bible Just Made Up

Every now and then, the writers of the New Testament simply made words up.

Not often – but enough to make things interesting.

You see, as steady and stable as the language you speak feels, it’s really in a constant state of change.  If, for instance, you were to time-travel back to 1960 to tell your grandparents your employer “downsized” you, they might guess you’re on some new workplace diet; someone made that word up well after their time.  Jump to the 1980s and you’d get blinked at for calling anything “bodacious.”  And before the 2010s, you couldn’t be “ghosted” for being seen “vaping” in your “selfies.”

Language evolves.  A’ight?

 

NOT ONE MORE WORD, YOU!

This month we’re talking about hapax legomena (which in its singular form is hapax legomenon).   That term’s an eyeful – is it a new villain in the Transformer movies?  The latest strain of coronavirus?  Something RFK recommends as part of your diet?

Nothing so fanciful.  Hapax legomena are what Bible scholars call any words that occur only once in the biblical text.  That’s what those two ancient Greek words mean – hapax legomena, “once spoken.”  A handful of those Bible words are so distinct, you can’t find them anywhere else in the ancient Greek literature we currently know of.  They appear to have been coined by the writers themselves.

Weird.  Why would writers of the Bible – writers of truth, we Christians insist – use what sound like “made-up” words, terms they’ve just invented?

And that’s the very question that makes trained linguists like me all tingly.  Why, indeed?

 

HEY, HERE’S A THOUGHT …

Sometimes it’s obvious why someone has to create a new word.  For example, if I invent a communication device that interconnects everyone into a network of data sharing, I may spin a whole new term around it, at first calling it an interconnected network and then simplifying that to internet.  On the other hand, I might have an idea everyone already understands, but I want to freshen it up with a new term so that you think about it more deeply, as Robert A. Heinlein did with his new word “grok” in the novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

The first example is a blended term, a compound, and it’s the type you’ll see most often in the writings of Paul and in the book of Hebrews.  The second example, called a “neologism,” gives Bible translators the most trouble.  They have to figure out what that invented word means based on all the other words around it, and deriving meaning from context isn’t always the most reliable way to translate a word.

 

A QUICK PRE-QUIZ:

Which part of the Lord’s Prayer do you guess is from a hapax legomenon, a word invented by Jesus?  (Stay tuned!)

 

Consider: When Christianity is reaching into a pagan world to give it entirely new ideas, there will be times when the words you've got handy simply won’t suffice.  Paul says as much when he refers to God’s grace as “his inexpressible gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15).  You’ll simply have to create your own word so that readers and listeners can grok the new thoughts more deeply.

 

I’LL  TAKE MINE RARE, PLEASE

Let’s take a close look at five New Testament hapax legomena that are either new compounds, extremely rare terms, or pure neologisms.  Some were invented on the spot by the speakers or writers.  Others existed in earlier Greek writings but are used just once in Scripture, almost like a power-punch to drive a message home.

 

Hapax #1, “ektromati” – aborted fetus, miscarriage

In 1 Corinthians 15:8, Paul calls himself an ektromati, a word that occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.  We know what the word means, though, because plenty of other Greek writers had used the term before he did.  Paul is calling himself an “aborted fetus.”

You don’t remember reading that one?  That’s probably because your translation of the Scriptures tiptoes around it, having Paul call himself “one born out of time” or “born in an untimely manner.”  As far as I can tell, only the GOD’S WORD® Translation uses the literal “aborted fetus” translation in English.  It was a medical term, and it seems Paul made a deliberate choice to use it for its shock value.

Context: In this passage, Paul is speaking about the callings of the apostles.  He’s humbly putting himself last on the list, but rather than emphasizing the timing of his coming to Christ (“I came late to the party!”), he’s actually humbling himself more than most Bible translations make clear.  “Those other guys hung out with Jesus in his lifetime,” Paul seems to be saying.  “Me?  I was just a late-term abortion in this apostolic birthing process.”

Paul, I suspect, meant for people to go, “Whoa!”  It’s the New Testament’s only use of Greek’s medical term for an abortion or miscarriage.  Even Paul’s traveling pal Dr. Luke probably sat up and took notice.

 

Hapax #2,  “theostyges” – God-hater or hated by God

In his powerful opening chapter in Romans, Paul calls to task those who have ignored the Creator to instead worship created idols, despite knowing God is real.  Paul describes those people with a brand-new word: theostyges, which can mean either “God haters” or “those hated by God” (Romans 1:30).  The grammar of the invented word is ambiguous, so it could mean either that they hate God or God hates them.  English translations seem to opt universally for the first version, even though all Greek translators are aware that it could mean either.

Given two translation options, I’m the sort of person who goes looking for a third.  My guess – and this is just my opinion here – is that Paul meant both.  After all, he invented the word by putting two other Greek words together, God (theos) and hate (styges).  Why do it that way if you don’t want your new term to carry fuller meaning?  These God-rejecting idolaters certainly hated God, and God could very well have hated them back since, as the passage makes clear, God had given them every bit of evidence they needed to believe in and worship their Creator.

Those young in the faith may be startled at the idea of God “hating” anyone.  However, most seasoned readers of the Scriptures understand that the God of love can also hate (mouse over these verses to take a look: Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Malachi 1:2-3, Proverbs 6:16-19).  What might startle the more seasoned readers of this passage is that all of Paul’s anger and argument in this passage is aimed at them, at all believers.  At me.  The very next thing Paul writes about those sinners (cut off, regrettably, by the chapter breaks later editors imposed on the Bible) is this:

Therefore, you have no excuse, O man,

every one of you who judges.

For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself,

because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

(Romans 2:1)

That follow-up hasn’t been appreciated by enough of us.  We’re slow to realize we’ve been lumped in with the God haters / those hated by God … we who need to continue our walk along the Romans Road to embrace the fullness of salvation found in God's love.

 

STOP TEASING US … THE LORD’S PRAYER NEXT!

Okay, okay, you’ve been very patient.  Here’s the answer to your pre-quiz.

Hapax #3,  “epiousios” – For existence or for tomorrow

The word epiousios occurs two times in the New Testament, but since it’s quoting Jesus twice in the same situation reported by different gospels (Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3), it’s often treated as a hapax in terms of unique usage.  It appears that Jesus made this word up for the Lord’s Prayer, using it as a description of the bread believers are requesting from God.  This is the most famous and most discussed of the hapax legomena.  Traditionally, it’s translated as “daily” for “daily bread.”  But as we’ve seen, there’s often more to the story when we’re translating any of the hapax legomena.

The trouble with translating epiousios – besides the fact that it occurs nowhere in Greek writings before we see Jesus use it – is that it could have either of two different origins:

• It could come from a combination of the Greek words epi (meaning “for”) and ousia (meaning “existence”).  That would make the meaning, “Give us what bread we need for existing, to survive!”  Considering Jesus’ “bread of life” messaging elsewhere in the gospels, a translation like that is more than acceptable.  It fits Christ’s macro-messaging.
• Alternatively, Jesus could have crafted it from the similarly spelled Greek word epiousa, meaning “upcoming” and tied to the idea of an upcoming day – tomorrow, in fact.  So, “give us today the bread we need for tomorrow.”

The first meaning above could be viewed as asking God for what is needed, and only what is needed, to survive for today.  The second communicates a sense of getting (before it’s needed) the bread we’ll be eating tomorrow, thereby granting us peace of mind in advance.  My trick back in the examples of Paul – embracing both translations to get a fuller, broader-reaching meaning of a hapax legomenon – can’t work here.  At a basic level, the two possible translations conflict with each other.  One asks, “give me enough to get by.”  The other asks, “Give me more now, so I won’t have to fret about tomorrow.”  And our current, traditional translation of “daily bread” fails to capture either of those concepts.  It sidesteps the conflict.

There’s no consensus on this issue, and it’s been discussed by translators and scholars.  A lot.  Currently, I prefer the first interpretation.  I lean that way exclusively on linguistic principles.  Arguing for the second reading, that epiousios (Jesus’ hapax) is close in spelling to epiousa (“upcoming”) doesn’t convince me.  Let me show you why in English: The words “batter,” “better,” “bitter,” and “butter” are all one letter off from one another, nearly identical words in spelling.  But they have no commonality beyond that.  It’s a coincidence of orthography, not a connection in meaning, that makes the words even worth mentioning together.  I have the same reaction to two similarly spelled Greek words.  I’d need more proof.

For now, I’m happy to associate the word with the ideas embedded in Proverbs 30:8-9, where the writer asks the Lord for neither poverty nor riches, and asks for just enough food to get by so that he doesn’t become gluttonous and forget the Lord.  It’s a great passage.  Mouse over the link above to enjoy it in full.

 

A SECOND QUIZ: Which book of the New Testament would you guess has the most hapax legomena?  (Stay tuned!)

 

WHOA, THAT WAS LONG!

Yes, that last hapax is the most famous, so I had to give it more word count.  I promise that the final two are shorter.

 

Hapax #4,  “theopneustos” – God-breathed

As I mentioned earlier, theos is Greek for God.  You see that in words like theology (the study of God) and theocracy (a nation run by the religion of a god).  Pneustos relates to breathing, reflected in our medical terms apnea and pneumonia.  Theopneustos, a compound term very likely invented by Paul, is a hapax used in 2 Timothy 3:16, that famous passage about how all Scripture is God-breathed, inspired by God.

In case you wonder how “God-breathed” becomes “inspiration,” note that the word inspiration already has “breathing” built into it.  "Respiration."  "Aspiration."  "Perspiration" (sweat “breathing through” your skin.)  So, the breathing is already in there, both in the Greek word and the English word.

You probably already knew that.  Less well known, though, is the Greek word’s tie to the Spirit.  The Greek pneuma is a word meaning both “breath” and “spirit” (it means “wind,” as well) and Paul uses its verb form pneustos to build his new word: God-spired, if you will, breathed out from God and into the text.  Looking at it this closely makes it more of a reality that a whole Holy Spirit injection is going into the words of the Bible.  God exhaled into it to give it a Creator’s very life, just as Adam got life from that same Creator’s breath.  (You can see a similar connection between breath and spirit in English, too – “inspired by the Spirit” is actually a repetitive phrase.) 

 

Hapax #5,  “polypoikilos” – Many-colored

This last hapax (the last I’ll cover; Scripture has many more) is the one I find most beautiful.

Like our first example, it’s not what biblical scholars might call a “pure” hapax, since Paul didn’t make the word up.  It’s only in Scripture once, despite appearing regularly in earlier ancient literature.  In Ephesians 3, Paul delivers that word, polypoikilos, in a beautiful discourse on how all the spiritual powers of the universe will learn of God’s wisdom from the church on Earth.

I adore this passage, so indulge me as I quote it in full:

To me, though I am the least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the polypoikilos wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 3:8-10)

The riches … unsearchable.  The mystery … hidden.  The wisdom … polypoikilos. This is Paul at his most poetic, and his one-time use of this term reaches deeply into a Greek literary tradition.

On its face, the word simply means “multi-colored.”  But a Greek reader sees more.  Paul’s early readers knew that the poet Euripides used polypoikilos to describe strikingly dazzling garments and breathtaking, ornate objects.  They knew that Plutarch, the philosopher, used it as a way to describe profound, subtle, multilayered reasoning.  They knew that the comedy writer Aristophanes wielded it to overemphasize rich, dramatic scenery that went over the top.

It’s impossible for an English translation to capture all the nuance a Greek reader could have picked up from that single word.  To begin to do it justice, we’d have to say something like:

“God’s richly colored, multi-layered, intricately patterned and sublimely subtle wisdom …”

I kind of wish at least one Bible translation had tried that. 😊

 

AND HERE’S THE ANSWER TO QUIZ #2: Of all the New Testament books, Hebrews has the most hapax legomena. The author has a more elegant and more educationally advanced level of Greek than any other New Testament writer, thus allowing him to draw on a far wider vocabulary.  Roughly 15% of the words he uses occur nowhere else in the New Testament.

 

EVERY WORD.  EVERY WORD.

Whether the bread we pray for is daily, for survival, or saved up for tomorrow, we know that we don’t live by bread alone.  We live by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

Obviously, we can’t do these kinds of deep dives for every powerful word in our Bible translations.  We don’t have the time or the lifespan for that kind of study.

But when we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, we can do it sometimes.  A word might jump out at you.  You might wonder about it and ponder its surface meaning as well as its deeper ideas.  Words have meanings, yes, and English translations give us all we need for our salvation.  But when you dig deeper, there’s a lot more gold below the surface.  Not different, secret meanings, mind you; fuller meanings.

How can you do that digging for yourself?  Glad you asked!  Since you live in the digital age, you’re luckier than earlier eras of Christians.  Here’s a step-by-step guide for you to get started, including links to tools and a few suggestions from me.

DEEPER into the WORDS of the WORD

STEP 1: A New Testament verse jumps out at you.  Let’s say it’s that 1 Corinthians 15:8 one about Paul being an apostle by “untimely birth.”

STEP 2: Go to Google and type in “1 Corinthians 15:8 interlinear.”  You’ll want that “interlinear” word.  Memorize it.  It will get you to the Greek.

STEP 3: From the search returns, select Bible Hub.  It will be in your top several choices, most likely.

STEP 4: Find your Greek word in the verse!  You’ll see it spelled out in the Latin alphabet (that’s what English uses) above the Greek rendering.  Ektromati is a Latinized spelling of the Greek word you’ve found in this example.

STEP 5: Go back to Google and ask, “What do bible scholars say about the Greek word ektromati?”  Exactly like that.  Read Google’s AI overview.  Click on the side articles offered.  That’s how I first found that ektromati was a medical term for “abortion” and “miscarriage,” discussed in detail earlier.  You can do what I did.  Whatever word is intriguing you, you’re likely to uncover similar treasures.

STEP 6: Ponder prayerfully.  You’re now digging for gold, learning more than the simple translation can tell you.  Not different truths; deeper truth.  You don’t have to be a scholar of ancient languages to do this.  The scholars out there are happy to tell you what they’ve uncovered.

 

We, as believers, really do want to live by every word from the mouth of God.  And every Bible word has more to it than its spelling, its dictionary definition, and its translation when you look it up in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.

I have one hope for this blog post: That it has interested you enough to get you to start digging on your own.

You have the Bible.  You have the tools.  You have the Internet.

So, now you can get out there and start finding the fuller wonders of our gospel and of this beautiful, Spirit-inspired text.

A’ight?

Maran Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez

BOOTED FROM THE BIBLE?

Booted from the Bible?  Not quite ... but some books had a rough journey.

The internet is chock-full of articles about books “Banned from the Bible!”  This is not one of those articles.

Instead, it’s an article about the New Testament books that almost didn’t make it in … and why.

 

Those Who Made It In Early

If you’re one of the (sadly, small) minority of Christians who regularly reads the Bible for devotion and study, you’ve definitely noticed the stylistic differences between the various authors of the New Testament:

• John’s gospel soars to near-mystical heights with its language, as if rising on high to honor Christ’s declaration “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
• Paul’s style, while achieving John’s heights now and then, is usually pragmatic, feet firmly planted on the ground of practical matters.
• Luke sports an “international” flavor, with an abundance of stories in his gospel about Gentiles who interacted with Christ.
• Matthew, on the other hand, reveals a solid Jewish education, with far more references to the fulfillment of Hebrew Scriptures than the other gospels.

Spirituality.  Practicality.  Broad outreach.  Depth of scriptural knowledge.  It’s easy to see why the gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul found early acceptance in the growing canon.

But reaching canonical status wasn’t as easy for other writings we now love and preserve in our Bibles.

 

Books in Dispute

If you had a chance to read last month’s blog, you’ll remember that several books of the New Testament made it into the canon by the skin of their teeth (a fun saying that’s derived from the Bible itself, Job 19:20).  The church father Eusebius dubbed this small collection of books the antilegomena, a word basically meaning “disputed.”  Which books made which church fathers’ disputed lists varied, but their doubts tended to include:

• Hebrews (questioned by churches of the West)
• James (accepted early by the East, but only very slowly by the West)
• Second Peter (perhaps the most disputed of all NT books)
• Second and Third John (too short, and no named author)
• Jude (probably not the apostle, so there’s that issue)
• Revelation (doubted for being just a bit wacky)

Complicating matters were the ancient books that were included in very early editions of the New Testament, ones no longer accepted as part of our canon.  They weren’t rejected for being heretical; they simply turned out not to be “apostolic” enough in nature to win a spot in the final New Testament:

• The Codex Sinaiticus, the name given our most ancient, complete edition of the New Testament, includes two books called The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, neither of which is accepted any longer as inspired text.  I’ve linked to online versions of them above, should you ever want to give them a read and consider why they may have been appealing to some early church fathers.
  
  
• The Codex Alexandrinus, compiled mere decades after the manuscript above, which tacks on the epistles 1 Clement and 2 Clement (Clement’s second letter has always struck me as moving and poetic – “For He called us, when we were not, and from not being, He called us to be” (2 Clem. 1:8).
  
  
• The second-century Muratorian Fragment, our oldest existing “list” of approved NT books, which speaks highly of The Shepherd of Hermas (hello, again) and mentions acceptance of the Apocalypse of Peter by some, rejection by others.  Interestingly, the Fragment also references Wisdom of Solomon, popular among Greek-speaking Jews who followed Jesus early on, as part of the Old Testament.  It retains a spot in the Roman Catholic canon to this day.
  
  
• Numerous lists and writings of the earliest church fathers cite other books as Christian scripture – the Acts of Paul, the fragmentary Gospel of the Hebrews, the much-respected Didache, and others.  They were all considered at least briefly by some church fathers for a role in the New Testament’s canon but in the long run were left behind.

 

Phew – Made It!

Obviously, there was final canon acceptance of Hebrews (the epistle, not the Gospel mentioned above), James, Second Peter, Second John, Third John, Jude, and Revelation.  They all appear in the 27-book list famously created in 367 CE by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and confirmed as canon by the church’s Council of Rome in 382 CE.  Those are the two dates, incidentally, most often cited as “We have a Bible!” moments.  But what hurdles did those books face, and how did they overcome their status as “disputed”?

I covered Hebrews and James last month, so let’s tackle the others.  I’ll put most of my effort into explaining how Second Peter found its way into the text, since its pathway to canonization will shed light on the paths of all the others.

 

Peter, Peter, Who Are You Really?

Maybe, said the church fathers amongst themselves, Second Peter wasn’t really written by the apostle Peter.

Second Peter had numerous obstacles to overcome before it was universally acknowledged as part of the New Testament canon.  Each concern it raised was a straw that might have broken the camel’s back on its long journey to acceptance:

• Would Peter Use That Word?  The ancient church fathers doubted that the vocabulary in Second Peter matched the vocabulary in First Peter, the more accepted of the two works.  That’s a fascinating linguistic observation, and I promise not to belabor it.  But consider: if someone texted you, I have received an additional convocation request whose appointed hour coincides precisely with that of your own meeting, and thusly regret being unable to attend yours, you wouldn’t expect their next text to read, But yo, gurl, ain’t seen you inna minute, so hit me up on the flip side!  Makes you wonder, no?  Similarly, our Greek-speaking church fathers, reading the vocabulary differences between the dual Peter letters, suspected different people were writing those two texts.

• Much More Stylish.  Beyond just the words, the layout and rhetoric of Second Peter is vastly different from First Peter.  The ancients noted this with concern.  You can probably appreciate their apprehension if you consider different sermon styles by different modern-day preachers you’ve heard.  One preacher might prefer grabbing a topic and bouncing all around the Bible to talk about his chosen theme.  Another may prefer to take a passage and do a deep-dive walkthrough of what the scripture writer is saying.  Yet a third may quote just one verse and spend the full sermon relating that to modern Christian life.  Listen to enough preachers, and you’ll be able to tell when one is reading a sermon written by someone else who doesn’t match their style. 😊

• Are the Apostles Gone?  Second Peter has a few places where it sounds too late in time to be written by a living apostle.  The writer’s discussion in 2 Peter 3:15-16 make Paul’s letters sound like collected works.  The problem is, it seems Paul’s letters weren’t passed around in a collected form until a generation after his death.  That means Peter was gone already, too.  In addition, 2 Peter 3:3-4 mentions those who mock the long delay of the Second Coming of Christ, prompting the writer to explain that to the Lord a day is as a thousand years.  That “long delay” further raised the ancients’ suspicions that it wasn’t Peter doing the writing.

• Plagiarism: Second Peter’s second and third chapters copy nearly the entire epistle of Jude.  For the church fathers weighing the canon of the New Testament, that was a red flag.  Was the author trying to make himself seem apostolic by copying a better-known text?

• Nobody Quotes It: Very few church fathers quoted Second Peter or referred to him as having written a second letter.  One exception, Origen, wrote in the early 3^rd century: “Peter has left one acknowledged epistle; perhaps also a second, for it is disputed.”  Was this the same “second letter” as what we call Second Peter?  It’s impossible to say, since Origen quotes nothing from it.  With no undisputed 2^nd century quotations and very thin 3^rd century attestations, it’s unsurprising that 4^th century church fathers raised an eyebrow at the text.  As my young son might have said: “Bruh, that’s sus.”

 

The Writer of Second Peter

It’s no spoiler when I tell you Peter’s second letter did, in fact, get into the canon.  But how?  What changed?

If you’ve gone to Bible college or browsed entries at online apologetics sites, you’ve likely run into the “Silvanus” explanation of why Second Peter has such stylistic and vocabulary differences from First Peter.  In fact, 1 Peter 5:12 actually mentions the man Silvanus (also called Silas) as the vehicle through which Peter’s letter is presented to the readers and listeners.  That could explain the vocabulary and style differences between the two letters – Silvanus helped Peter write the first one, while the second one (which doesn’t mention Silvanus) was written by Peter alone.

However, did you notice how carefully I worded that?  I said, “The vehicle through which Peter’s letter is presented.”  Some Bible translations will directly say “Silvanus helped me write this letter,” while other translations will say “I had Silvanus deliver you this letter.”  You can see the variations here for yourself.  But the Koine Greek is simply dia Silouanou, “through Silvanus.”  The word-for-word Greek of the verse is actually: “To you through Silvanus, the faithful brother as I regard (him), through few words I have written …” and so on.  It’s not clear at all whether Silvanus helped with the writing or whether it was through him, by his delivering the letter, that the words came to the readers … thus the differences among a number of translations.

Modern interpreters who are keen to maintain Peter’s authorship are likely to insist that it means he dictated it with Silvanus as his secretary.  This helps them preserve the idea that an apostle must be the author of a Bible text – they could use backup writers as designated scribes.  But that simply creates a new problem: if the style and words are Silvanus’s, and that’s what we have today, then the inspiration of the Holy Spirit came to Silvanus, not an apostle, and Peter’s original words of dictation were cancelled out.  Are we ready to make a claim that the Holy Spirit had to cancel an apostle to get the words right through a non-apostle?  And should we ignore all the other issues – timing, literary borrowing, and Paul’s letters appearing as collected works?

It turns out all of this discussion is moot when it comes to the topic of our church fathers refining and finalizing the canon.  The Silvanus explanation is largely a modern apologetic and does not appear to have played a role in the early church’s canonical deliberations.  They actually took a less confounding path.

 

“Written by an Apostle” vs. “Apostolic”

As the time of Athanasius’s fourth-century canon list and the Council of Rome’s imprimatur drew nearer, Second Peter’s use in churches spread widely.  Its acceptance seems to have created a more flexible mindset among the church fathers of that age, almost as if they had started asking themselves whether there was any reason not to have Second Peter in the canon.  Being allowed in became less a matter of a resounding “Yes!” and more a recognition that there was no compelling reason to exclude it.

After all, nothing in Second Peter contradicted established doctrines received from the apostles.  It didn’t have any false teachings, and it did a solid job supporting existing beliefs, particularly in its insistence on combating false teachers and embracing the hope of a true Second Coming.  Even if it weren’t the apostle’s direct creation, it was very much in the tradition of the apostles.  It was apostolic in nature.

So, the test question changed.  No longer were the church fathers asking, “Did Peter write this?”  Instead, they asked, “Is this orthodox?  Would Peter have written it?  Is it respectfully within a Petrine tradition?”

No, I’m sure they didn’t use that language specifically.  As I said in last month’s post, they had no checklists.  But those kinds of ideas were behind the adoption of the text of Second Peter and the acceptance of other books of the New Testament, such as:

• Mark’s gospel compilation, reasoned to be a record of the preachings of the apostle Peter
• Texts by Luke (who wrote more words than any single author in the New Testament), thought to reflect the teachings of the apostle Paul and interviews with other apostles
• John’s second and third letters, finally adopted as being within the community and spirit of the apostle John, even if not claimed as his work directly in the text
• Jude’s epistle, judged orthodox and beneficial despite the actual identity of “Jude” being a bit nebulous and not universally accepted as the apostle Jude

 

Even the widely doubted book of Revelation overcame the requirement of proof it was penned by an apostle.  The church fathers were split on its authorship.  Dionysius of Alexandria and Gaius of Rome rejected outright that John the apostle had a role in the writing.  Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian embraced John’s authorship wholeheartedly.  Origen and Eusebius straddled the middle, simply noting that there was a lot of disagreement about whether this John of Patmos was the same John as the Gospel writer.  Its connection to apostolic tradition won the day, however (a recognition lasting until Martin Luther’s doubts about the book emerged a millennium later).

 

So, What Do We Do with All This?

Let’s wrap up with some questions that this kind of in-depth investigation might call to mind.

The Bible speaks in many voices — soaring, practical, poetic, urgent. When other believers worship or serve differently than I do, do I assume something is wrong? Or do I remember that unity does not require uniformity?

Some New Testament books were questioned before they were embraced. When I look at other Christians – or myself – and wonder whether we measure up, do I remember Who it is that makes any of us worthy?

Not every book was written by one of the inner circle.  When I feel outside the spotlight, outside the in-crowd, do I remember that the widow’s penny, the smallest seed, the quietest faithfulness still matter deeply in God’s kingdom?

And not every question about the Bible was neatly resolved.  Do I allow that same grace in my own faith? Can doubt coexist with devotion? When uncertainty creeps in, do I still pray, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief”?

The canon took time.  So do we.

 

Until next time, next topic,

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx

 

 

 

How Your Bible Got Its Books

This month, I’ve been thinking about how God used real communities, over real time, to recognize the sacredness of early writings that would one day be canonized as our Bible.  The process took more time than you might guess.  Some books were disputed longer than others … and that story might surprise you.

But let’s start with a parable:

There once was a woman who walked into her dining room and unexpectedly beheld a beautiful German Chocolate Cake on her table.  Thrilled, she immediately sat and helped herself to a delicious piece of that scrumptious dessert.

In time, her husband entered the room and asked with surprise, “Where did that come from?”

“It’s a German Chocolate Cake,” said his wife between mouthfuls, “so, obviously, Germany.”

“No, no,” said her husband, “I mean, where did that particular cake come from?  And if you don’t know, why are you eating it?  How do you know what’s in it?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said his wife, “’cuz it’s so yummy!”

 

THE OLD TESTAMENT: A CONUNDRUM

When we were born, the Bible already existed.  Or, in the terms of our story above: It was there on the table when we walked in the room, and it looked beautiful, delicious, downright scrumptious to those of us who have become believers.  But if one of our fellow humans walked into the room and posed the question “Where did it come from?” are we prepared to give a reason for our hope and faith in it (see 1 Peter 3:15)?

Let’s spend this month doing a little history.  I’ll try not to make it boring (that’s a chore for me, since I’ve never found history boring).  I’ll adopt a light, chatty tone to take you on a journey through the evolution of the New Testament.

A couple points up front, though: First of all, I’m only going to deal with the New Testament.  The canon (a fancy word for “official list”) of the New Testament is universally accepted by all Christian groups.  However, inter-tradition agreement on the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, remains fuzzy at the edges.  You might think I’m talking about the differences between the Protestant Old Testament and the Roman Catholic inclusion of deuterocanonical works like Tobit (a very cool book, by the way) and additions to Daniel (some awesome detective stories, not kidding).  But I also mean:

• The Eastern Orthodox canon (featuring 2 Esdras, Psalm 151, 3 Maccabees, and others)
• The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon (starring 1 Enoch and Jubilees)
• The Armenian Apostolic Church canon (including Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs)
• The Samaritan Pentateuch canon (containing only Torah, the first five Hebrew books)

 

Those groups account for a quarter to a third of Christians worldwide (I’m not counting the Samaritan community since they don’t identify as Christians).  When you add in Roman Catholics with their deuterocanonical texts, it means well over half, and perhaps as high as two-thirds, of all people worldwide who call themselves Christian use an Old Testament canon that is not identical to that of Western Protestantism.

Yeah, two-thirds.  When I ran those numbers, I was surprised, too.  So, I’ll leave aside discussion of the Hebrew Scriptures (in all honesty, I can only juggle so many flaming chainsaws at once) and focus on the more universally accepted canon of the New Testament.

Oh, and I said I had a couple points to make up front.  Here’s the second one: German Chocolate Cake is not from Germany.  It’s a 1957 recipe crafted by Mrs. George Clay of Texas, USA , using a sweet, dark chocolate developed by American chocolatier Samuel German.  We should be thankful Mrs. Clay named it after Mr. German and not after herself.  No one would eat Clay Cake.

And that last paragraph is a parable, too.  It's about expectations.

 

THE NEW TESTAMENT: HOW IT WASN’T MADE

I’ve run into more than one scoffer who’s said some version of this, either in part or in full: “Why do you follow an ancient book that was written in the Iron Age?  Talk about outdated ideas!  It’s a bunch of rules whipped up for a slaveholding, autocratic society.  And the parts that aren’t rules are bizarre hallucinations by writers who were probably under the influence of mind-altering drugs.”

I suppose I could argue each of those points.  In my opinion, they’re founded on ignorance (after all, Aristotle and Plato were products of that same Iron Age, and their ideas still inform modern-day philosophers.)  But I'm only restating cynical arguments here to demonstrate how extreme some views can get -- definitely the far end of a “view-of-the-Bible” spectrum.

That spectrum has another extreme, though.  I’ve also met Christians who believe some version of the following, either in whole or in part: “The Bible was spoken by God directly into the ears or minds of human beings, word by word with no human participation in the text.  There were no other influences, only the dictation of God.  Upon completion of each part, the pieces were added to the Scripture until it was all closed up by the words of Revelation 22:18-19, then translated into King James English, then printed by the Gideons, and then distributed into hotel-room drawers everywhere.”

I have examined a number of these claims in other blogs, so I won’t rehash them too much here:

• The Lord is clearly working with humans through their individual minds and voices.  That point’s obvious even in translation to anyone who’s read and compared the styles of John’s Gospel, Luke’s Gospel, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.  I explore the unique and all-too-human style of Ecclesiastes here.
• Human writers freely borrow (guided, I believe, by the Spirit) from existing human, nonbiblical sources regularly in both the Old and New Testaments, as I will discuss in detail in a future blog post (although I mention it in passing in this essay).
• And, while the King James Version is rendered in beautiful, poetic English, I discuss fully here how King James Onlyism is a stance even the translators of the King James Version would reject.

That leaves me one extremist stance to address from the collection above (since I was only kidding about the Gideons and the hotel drawers): that the New Testament didn’t begin its existence as a book-by-book, set-in-stone creation compiled without doubt, debate, or revision to its canon.

 

THOSE GUYS WHO “BUILT” THE NT

There’s an “easy” version of how the New Testament was assembled.  It’s usually shared with freshman-year Bible students.  In this version, students are told that the books of the Bible were assembled centuries after they were written and subjected to a checklist-like test by 3^rd and 4^th century church councils to see if they should be allowed into the church’s canon.  That “checklist,” reimagined today, usually includes items like

• Book/letter was written by or for one of the original 12 apostles
• Text contained no unacceptable, non-Christian ideas
• Most local churches already accepted it and used it
• It was inspired by the Holy Spirit
• It was really old (from a 3^rd and 4^th century perspective)

That list is an adequate summary as summaries go, but it leaves the impression that the early church fathers had a systematic approach to declaring, “This one’s in, this one’s out!”  It also leads to a number of questions … for example:

• How did they know it was really written by or for an apostle?  Was it signed and notarized?  Three hundred-plus years had passed, which made the texts older than the constitutions of any modern nation on Earth except the Republic of San Marino (I thought I’d give you something to look up).
  
  
• How did they evaluate whether the texts had “non-Christian ideas”?  Today, we judge an idea as Christian or non-Christian based on the New Testament which, no surprise, they didn’t have.  Were Christians using oral tradition and ecclesiastical authority to make their judgment calls about doctrines (something Protestants tsk-tsk Catholics for today)?
  
  
• How did they judge that local churches were already using most of these letters and books, since, by the 4^th century after Christ, Christianity had spread as far west as current-day Spain and Ireland, as far east as Turkmenistan, north beyond the Black Sea, and south into Algeria and Libya?  Communications were limited in ancient times.
  
  
• What tests did they apply beyond “gut feelings” to determine a work was Holy Spirit-inspired?  That feels as if it needs a checklist of its own.
  
  
• How did they decide a work was “really old"?  They likely had very few “autographs,” original first-draft manuscripts, in the 4^th century.  Parchment, handled for regular liturgical use, has a 150-year lifespan in a first-  and second-century Judean environment, if we’re being generous.  Papyrus for scrolls was more fragile still.  Thus, the church fathers would have had much newer copies (of copies, of copies) as their references.

 

All of those questions have (tentative and debated) answers, of course.  Unfortunately, those answers fill up multiple bookshelves in texts written by scholars who are way more qualified than I’ll ever be.  My point in showing you the questions is to encourage you to ask them yourself, and to understand that, no, the ancient councils did not have a formulaic checklist.  In fact, those checklist categories weren’t even defined until after the Reformation in the 1600s CE, when it became more important to ask, “Does this book really belong in our Bible?”

 

HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED.  MAYBE.

In his book The Question of Canon, American Reformed New Testament scholar Michael J. Kruger argues convincingly that much of the New Testament was accepted by believers as authoritative and God-breathed from the very start.  Rather than being crafted by councils, he sees the canon as arising organically, affirmed by the new and growing Christian community over decades.  Council declarations simply rubber-stamped, centuries later, what believers had already widely agreed upon.

Kruger’s argument is compelling.  As an amateur, I can’t do it justice here.  If you’re not going to read his book, you can get a much less time-consuming summary of his ideas by watching him on video here while enjoying what has to be the best hair and beard amid the ranks of modern biblical scholars – modest coiffing complementing his softly tailored, textured sports coat over a palette-restrained button down, projecting an air of … um.  My bad.  I think my mind wandered there.

Ah, yes, how it really happened!  Here we go, moving beyond Kruger to some scholarly consensus about when and why various Christian writings started being accepted as authoritative and on their way into a later-declared canon.  Keep in mind, these are scholars' findings we’re talking about, so there will be outlier opinions in the world and new discoveries that shift things around in the future.  But this, as best as I can tell, seems to be the consensus so far for the historical order in which parts of the New Testament were accepted by believers as authoritative, even Scriptural:

 

Paul’s epistles to churches  – shared & revered, 60 – 100 CE

Probably the first scrolls being copied and passed around congregation-to-congregation were the church letters written by Paul, former enemy of the believers.  The honor of being accepted as authoritative earliest is an ironic one for Paul.  He started his apostolic career later than the other apostles as “an untimely birth,” (1 Corinthians 15:8), referring to his arrival with the Greek word ektromati, meaning a miscarriage or even an abortion.  He positions himself as the least of the apostles, but his letters to churches were the first to rise to the canonical top.

One interesting note: also accepted at this time was Paul’s personal letter to Philemon.  It is, in fact, one of the least controversial entrants into the canon, accepted early on and lumped in with Paul’s letters to full church congregations as early acceptable Pauline writing.  Stay tuned, because that won’t be the case for Paul’s pastoral epistles below.

 

The Gospels & Acts – spotlighted as central, 90 – 150 CE

The Gospels grew out of oral tradition, collections of the sayings of Jesus, and interviews with first-century followers of the Lord.  Two of them, Matthew and John, claim direct authorship by original apostles, while the other two, Mark and Luke, are once-removed from direct apostolic penning.  Luke’s material in his gospel came from multiple interviews and eyewitness sources, as he says in the gospel’s opening (Luke 1:2-4).  Mark's gospel is claimed to be based on the preaching of the apostle Peter, whom Mark followed.  Our only evidence of that, however, is a claim and citation made by the church father Eusebius of Caesarea, two and a half centuries after Christ’s death.  Regardless of the status of Mark’s connections to Peter, the early church accepted the writings as solid apostolic tradition, and it became one of the four most revered attempts at capturing the life of Christ.  There were many other attempts, as Luke records (Luke 1:1).  But only four rose to the top.

 

Paul’s Pastoral Epistles – gradual acceptance, 100 CE – 180 CE

Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus were slower to be acknowledged by the Christian community.  This could have been for one basic, understandable reason: they were written to private individuals, not churches, and so weren’t being read liturgically or copied for distribution to others early on.  Unlike Philemon, which seems to have been distributed by its recipient, these epistles remained in the hands of those who received them.  Their spiritual value was not missed later on, though, and by the writings of church fathers Irenaeus (around 180 CE) and Tertullian (around 200 CE), they were clearly considered part of NT Scripture.

Fun history fact: Tertullian is the dude who formalized the concept of “New Testament” and “Old Testament” in his 207 CE work Adversus Marcionem.  The canon wasn’t yet, um, canonized, but the playing field boundaries had at last been defined.

 

The “Hmm, Maybe” Books – struggled for acceptance, 120 to 200 CE

Four epistles – Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, and 1 John – had a tougher time being embraced by the church at large. 

Hebrews was accepted widely in the eastern churches of Central Asia but doubted in the western communities aligned with the church of Rome.  The issue: It wasn’t tied, directly or indirectly, to any specific apostle.  Claims that it was written by Paul fell flat because of different Greek style, vocabulary, and its way of approaching theology.  In the end, though, its sustained use and theological consonance prevailed.  Some attempted to associate it with Paul … although it’s placed after Paul’s contributions as a “probably-not-Paul entry” to the NT.

James, on the other hand, suffered from a distribution issue.  It was trusted less because fewer churches had access to it.  In addition, the book itself makes no claim to having apostolic authority, simply listing its author by the then-common name Iakobus, which could be rendered either as James or Jacob in English script.  There were early content fears as well, with James’s emphasis on works.  As acceptance grew that the teachings were clearly apostolic, the book gained acceptance.

1 Peter circulated pretty well in early churches, but, suspiciously, not in geographical areas where Peter was known to have travelled.  That was the first strike against the church fathers believing it was actually authored by Peter.  The second strike was the Greek itself – polished, elegant, highly educated in style, and not likely the work of a Galilean fisherman.  But then there's Silvanus, whom Peter mentions is doing the actual writing of the letter (1 Peter 5:12).  Clearly, the reasoning went, the high quality of the Greek was Silvanus's contribution.  As later church leaders came to appreciate the apostles’ use of amanuenses (Latin for “secretaries”), the compelling Christology of 1 Peter won the day.

1 John suffered the same affliction as Hebrews – no named author.  We may think it has an author’s name, since it’s right there in the table of contents, but we need to remember that the titles of books in Scripture are later additions.  Nowhere does the writer of John call himself John or identify himself as an apostle.  Oddly, though, 1 John never suffered the same level of doubt Hebrews had to overcome.  Church fathers noticed the anonymity and considered it little more than an oddity.  The letter's close ties to the theology and style found in the Gospel of John earned it recognition as being, at the very least, in the apostolic tradition, probably preserved by John’s community.  It was in.

 

We’re left with a group of books called the Antilegomena … a term used by the ancients for 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.  “Antilegomena” means “disputed” or “spoken against” … and these books certainly were spoken against by some of the ancients.  They had to fight to earn their spots.  For the record, there were other disputed books, too.  Those didn't earn a spot at all, and we need to explore why.

However, I am over my monthly word count, and the Antilegomena story takes a bit more nuance.  How did these final, much-doubted books finally win their spots in canon?

I guess I know what next month’s topic will be!  Until then --

 

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez