Biblical Particularity, Transcendence, and Diversity

The Bible is a particular book for a particular people at a particular time in a particular place. The timeless wisdom latent within its pages, however, also transcends its particularity so that it can stand the test of time, bearing upon various diverse sociocultural contexts wherein it might breathe afresh new life and meaning into its readers, the recipients of its word.

Again, although its particularity is essential to the nature of its being as such, there have been many hands at work authoring, compiling, and editing its pages across many different landscapes—even across divergent ideological landscapes.

Thus, it is somewhat of a misnomer to indicate that the Bible is but the Bible, for it is a compilation of various, even divergent socio-historical texts and contexts. Indeed, it may be far more accurate to name the Bible as the Bibles.

Contested and Diverse Authorship

Accordingly, the books of the Bible and the number thereof has been contested throughout the history of the Bible, as has the authorship of each/many of its books.

As regards the Hebrew Bible (HB), also known as the Christian Old Testament (OT), scholarship has come to the consensus that there are at least four or five different schools of writers/editors, namely, those of J, D, E, and P,  with Ezra the priest in exile after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BCE compiling all such sources into one complete text, which is largely what makes up the HB/OT as we have it today—in some form or other.

As regards the Christian New Testament (NT), there are a number of books, many of which have been excluded from the official church canon, which made up the NT in the first, second, and third centuries CE: there were many gospel accounts (more than the canonical four), many letters and epistles, many histories of acts, many apocalypses, as well as texts of the sayings of Jesus.

Determining the True Word

In order to adjudicate between what was legitimate scripture and what was not, early church fathers fought out the matter with voice, pen, and even, at times, hands—though not in the manner in which Paul prescribes in 1 Timothy 5:22! Discerning the true and pure word of God in the Bible has been an aspiration of many a Bible reader throughout the generations of its history, particularly those of the Christian faith tradition. It seems, however, that whatsoever is true or pure of the Bible is not to be found in one particular instance or context or interpretation, since the Bible has had many iterations and traditions thereof throughout its history. 

Indeed, the idea that there is one true and pure Bible seems to be but a fabrication of the imagination: we may accept all scripture as inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16), without necessarily thereby/therewith determining that which is or is not scripture; accordingly, since the Bible states that God is true (Romans 3:4) and cannot lie (Numbers 23:19), one may argue that as all truth is truth and truth is of God, then all truth is of God, wheresoever it may be found; then, too, all truth within the scriptures is inspired by God, wheresoever the scriptures may be found.

In the first century CE, as John writes in 1 John 1:1-3, the authors of the texts of the NT were presumably writing in order to proclaim and declare that which they had seen, heard, and touched—as well as that which had touched and moved them. Thus, when reading with a critical eye, the church fathers of the first through fourth centuries, sought to establish that which was legitimate scripture.

To determine such, however, is a rather momentous task that would seem to take a rather long time, decades, centuries, even millennia. The fact that the canon of the NT was settled in such a relatively short period of time, seems to indicate not only that it was established in veracity by the testimony of the apostles and their disciples, but also that it may have been too hastily established in declining to include, that is, in excluding, other valuable and viable texts—as attested by the variations and discrepancies in the received history of the Bible’s tradition(s).

Establishing the Canon

By the end of the fourth century CE, the biblical canon of the Catholic Church had been “established” and was translated into the Latin Vulgate by Jerome into one single bound volume, a codex (rather than a collection of many scrolls). Such was contested, however, some eleven hundred years later by the former Catholic monk and priest, Martin Luther, who was excommunicated from the church—though his break from the church was rather seemingly mutual, even as he established the Protestant reformation and church therewith.

It was in the reformation that Luther reevaluated the Catholic biblical canon, dispensing with books that he and other reformers saw as unbiblical or apocryphal, pseudepigraphal, or extra-canonical.

To be sure, the Bible has been read in various and variegated ways throughout its history of transmission and reception therewith.

Various Canons Then

Various canons of the Bible have been put forth and established throughout the generations of the history of the Bible. In the first century CE, there was no canon of scripture, per se, even as the term “canon” was not applied to the Bible until the fourth century CE; before and at the time of the first century CE, the books of the Bible were but collections of texts recognized as scripture, though not with the apparent “rigor” or “exactitude” that was applied in the fourth century CE. 

To be sure, in the first century CE, there were at least three versions of the Bible, that is, the Hebrew Scriptures, also known as the Christian OT: the Hebrew translation, known as the Hebrew Bible (HB); the Greek translation, known as the Septuagint (LXX); and the Aramaic translations, known as the Targumim (Tg). The “canons” of the Bible in the first century CE, then, were manifold, the HB comprised of the law, the prophets, and the writings; the LXX comprised of law, history, poetry/wisdom, and prophets; and the Tg followed a composition somewhat like that of the HB. Moreover, the HB, LXX, and Tg each had different sets of books within their “canons.”

The variations within and between texts of the Bible seem to indicate that fixing a canon of scripture was an arbitrary exercise in the futile effort to control that which is determined or discerned as valid scripture.

In the Catholic tradition, the very fact that there were many councils to determine the canon is undermined not so much by the number of councils seeking to hammer out the details of the canon, but that certain books that were accepted in the second and third centuries as scripture (such as the  Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Clemente) were excluded on the grounds of which books that were included (as the Epistle to the Hebrews, Acts, or the Gospels) did not meet, such as verified (apostolic) authorship.

In the Protestant tradition, the five Solas of Luther would seem to imply a greater canon, encouraging increased accessibility to a wider swath of books to be included, rather than the delimiting canon put forth—since the Solas indicate that a Christian ought to live by the faith alone in Christ alone by the Spirit alone to God’s glory alone with the Bible alone. 

As this paper contests, however, the Bible is a rather difficult text to nail down.

NT Use of the Old

When looking at the NT and its use of the OT, we might even see that there is rather a great deal of freedom therewith to utilize, interpret, and apply the OT in ways unforeseen prior to the first century CE. For instance, when Jesus cites the OT, he makes use of all the versions/translations at his disposal, not differentiating between them. This seems to indicate that Jesus—or, at least, the author who put the words in his mouth—was not concerned so much with the translation or version of the text, but only with that which suited his purposes in making a point.

For example, it is written in Luke 4:14-21 that Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah, from 61:1-2, inserting the end of 58:6 into the Isaianic passage, declaring that he fulfills the passage, to which the members of the synagogue respond with amazement and then with fury, as Jesus declares that the fulfillment is not for them but for outsiders, the Gentiles. The passages of Isaiah 58-61, however, are about Israel, particularly, Judah and the city of Jerusalem, being reestablished in redemption by God, who will have the nations—that is, the Gentiles—come rebuild Jerusalem and serve the people of Israel.

Again, as Paul writes in Romans 10:5-10, citing Deuteronomy 30:12-13, one is saved by confessing and professing Jesus as Christ the Lord and Savior. The rub is that Deuteronomy 30:12-13 is not about the Christ or Jesus, but is about the accessibility of righteousness in the Mosaic Law, that one can live out the righteous requirements of the law by living with personal responsibility to it, that righteousness is not something external to a person but is internal to every person.

Another NT verse which has been hotly contested is that of Matthew 1:23, which is a citation of Isaiah 7:14; the OT verse of Isaiah, though, does not necessarily bear the meaning that the author of Matthew 1:23 ascribes to it. However, if we view the verse in Isaiah metaphorically or allegorically in relation to the point that the author of Matthew 1:23 is making, then we may make some sense of what is being said by the author of Matthew as well as what is being done with the text of the Isaianic scripture.

From these NT passages, it seems that the authors of the NT were not so much playing fast and loose with the OT, but that they utilized it to suit their purposes to make their points, not so much to make literal commentary of the OT text, but to act as if the OT were a metaphor or allegory for their first century CE and NT context. Indeed, this manner of interpreting the Bible was not lost on the early church fathers, who likewise interpreted the Bible for many centuries to come.

As the text of the Bible had been received, so it was transmitted. As it has been transmitted throughout the generations of the centuries unto us, so we have received it as such. Indeed, our reception of the Bible today is as much a conglomeration of the historical reception of the Bible as well as its transmission to us, forming and shaping the conventions of interpretation, as reception impacts reading.

Ways to Reception via Transmission

Each generation that receives and reads the Bible does so in two ways: via the  historical transmission of such and via the historical reception of such. Inasmuch as communication is the means by which information, data, or feeling is conveyed or transmitted and is received by that relay, so also is the Bible relayed through the lines of generations: we are as much today what was yesterday with the present, which once was the future, in us as we are what we are now and now becoming. That is to say that we bear in ourselves—whether ignorant or aware—those influences of the past and the influence of the very present moment in which we live, forging forward into the future with these markings as we shape reality. 

The Bible, too, is coming of age, whether it be hindered by a delimiting canon or wide open as the sky above; it is coming into its own, howsoever it is shaped by the hands which transmit and receive it: indeed, we cannot transmit nor receive an untouched, unmarked Bible; likewise, we cannot interpret without having the breath of the whisper of past interpretations transmitted unto and through us, as we receive the text given unto us.

The manner in which Jesus, Paul, and the various NT authors received the Hebrew Scriptures was likely thus: largely, allegorically—not necessarily or so much literally; rather, literarily, they received the word of the HB, in whatever form or translation it came unto them. Even as ancient historians were not so much like modern historians, seeking to be as precise and exact as possible, so the first century Jewish teachers of the CE, as Jesus and Paul, would have taught according to the manner in which or pattern after which they had been taught or trained. As received tradition is lived tradition, so they lived out that which they received, namely, an allegorical tradition.

As both Jesus and Paul were likely of the mindset, if not also, of the school of Hillel in their day, they would have been seen as rather “liberal” or liberal-minded for their day, seeking to expand the bounds and boundaries of the limits and scope of the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, they allegorize the HB when they communicate it to their audiences. Likewise, the church fathers were much about allegorization—even perhaps too much so! They spoke of the various analogies and allegories that pertained between scripture and reality, making much of numbers and signs and symbols, as such.

Additionally, the manner in which the Bible is received generation after generation is threefold: verbally, literarily, and artistically. We speak. We write. We create. Though the second commandment of the Ten Commandments prohibits the making of idols, which has led some to iconoclasm as well as refraining from making any graven image or the likeness of anything at all (Exodus 20:4), there have still been made many images of the Bible and the characters and contents therein: we have pictures today of Jesus holding a lamb, of Noah in a huge boat full of wild animals, of God creating the world, of Moses with the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, of Jesus on the cross, and so on.

The drive to create seems inherent in humans, such that the creation of biblical content is not stopped by an OT prohibition against image-making: if there is to be no image-making, then artists will create designs and abstract images, which are, of course, nonetheless, images. Not only that, we write what we have heard and know—or think we know—our drive to communicate is so fierce: if we cannot craft or create an image in our efforts to self-express, then we write. If we cannot write or create, then we speak.

How the Bible has been received and thereby read throughout generations is contingent upon the manner in which the Bible has been transmitted. Thus, when an interpretation of the Bible arises in any given generation, it does so upon “the shoulders of giants”—to paraphrase Isaac Newton—that is to say that the historical seeds and roots of the tree of the knowledge of the Bible bears forth the fruit of interpretation that there is in any generation: we know today because others have known before. To be sure, prior and previous generations were ignorant of that of which we now know, and we, however ignorant we are of the past, are still infused with  latent knowledge of the history of the past in our present situation—for no one can know the future.

Thus, the received Bible that Jesus read was in many ways very different from the received Bible that a Christian today might read—not merely because of context and language but also because of ideological interpretative principles, based upon the manner in which the text of the Bible is and has been transmitted and received.

Historically, the Christian imagination has been delimited by a christological-colored glass lens, which has colored all else in a particular way, both in the world in general and in the OT in particular: hence, Christians tend to try and find the answer, that is, the christological answer. Rather, it might be more accurate or advantageous to look through a diamond-cut christological lens, through which the whole gamut of the diverse colors of the rainbow of visible light shines—because that is how the Bible actually reads, even as it is received. Indeed, it has been received in a multifaceted way.

Paul vs. Paul

In Romans 16:1, Paul commends a female by the name of Phoebe as a deacon of the church in Cenchreae, a port city of ancient Corinth. In 16:3, Paul names Priscilla and Aquila as his coworkers in Christ Jesus, listing the female before her counterpart. In 16:6, he lists Mary, a female and a hard worker for the church of Rome in the proclamation of the gospel for a very long time. In 16:7, he lists Andronicus and Junia as outstanding among the apostles, indicating that Junia, a female, is not only an apostle but also an outstanding apostle. Paul goes on to list other women as well, who are in one way or another hard workers for the gospel.

In 1 Timothy, Paul seems to paint quite another picture of women, particularly in 2:11-15, wherein he states that women should learn in quietness and full submission, not teaching or exercising authority over a man, but rather being quiet, since Eve was formed after Adam and she—not Adam—was deceived and become a sinner. “Thank God, though!” Paul seemingly proclaims, “Women will be saved through having babies—if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety!”

The book of Romans was purportedly written before the letter of 1 Timothy, which Paul presumably wrote toward the end of his life. While he may have had a change of heart toward women, going from being a keen coworker with women to becoming a misogynistic, patriarchal commander, the fact remains that both texts are in the NT, which is “inspired” by God (2 Timothy 3:16). Thus, do the two parties—the complementarians and the egalitarians—both have a stake in the NT for the arguments they make, and both are presumably valid NT/biblical arguments, since both coexist in the same Bible.

A Final Word

What this may mean is that we ought not be so dogmatic about being dogmatic about what is or is not scripture or the Bible, which books should be included and which excluded. Historically, this has never been satisfactorily ironed out; and, if the annuals of history, replete with great intelligences, have not ironed out the differences contending between canons or even within canons, who are we to presume that we might figure out with precision the exact nature of the text of the Bible? Neither, however, should we discard the baby with the bathwater: we should preserve the Bible as such—whatsoever that may be—but we should also hold it lightly with an open hand, an open heart, and an open mind, remembering that nailing down the text of scripture is a difficult endeavor.