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Why Did We Get a New Testament?

In my past couple of posts I’ve talked about how the canon of the Hebrew Bible was formed.  That raises the obvious corollary of how the canon of the New Testament was formed.  Who decided we should have the twenty-seven books we do?  Why these books and not others?  Why were any books chosen at all?  When were these decisions made?  And what criteria were used to make the decisions? To my surprise, I haven’t talked much about the process on the blog over the years.  So here I will devote two posts to the issue.   I have written at greater length about the matter in several of my books, especially Lost Christianities.  Here is the most direct and to the point discussion that I provide in my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ********************************************************** THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT We are much better informed about the formation of the canon of the New Testament, in no small part because we have the writings of later church fathers who explicitly discuss the [...]

How We Got the Hebrew Bible

Here at last I can summarize what modern scholars say about the formation of the canon of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament).  It’s a fascinating topic, of relevance, of course, to Jews, Christians, and anyone else who thinks the history of our civilization matters!  This summary is taken from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (If the terms I use here don’t make sense: read the preceding two posts!) ************************************************************* Contemporary Views of the Formation of the Canon Today scholars tend to present a somewhat fuzzier picture of when and why the canon came to be formed, although there do seem to be some fixed points. It is widely held that the five books of the Torah were accepted by nearly all Jews as a set canon by the fifth century b.c.e., in the early postexilic period. One piece of evidence comes from the Bible itself, in a post-exilic book, Ezra. The scribe Ezra himself is described as being “skilled in the Torah of Moses that the LORD the God of [...]

2020-06-03T15:53:31-04:00January 3rd, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

How We Got the Hebrew Bible: The Older View

Now that I’ve given some terms and definitions (in yesterday’s post) I can start talking about how it is we got the books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: who chose the books to include, when they did so, and on the basis of what criteria.  Before laying out what scholars today tend to think, I need to provide some information about what *used* to be the standard view (this older view is still held by some, who are not abreast on changes in scholarship over the past twenty or thirty years.)   That will be today’s post.  Again, this information comes from my textbook on the Bible.   ****************************************************************** The term “canon” comes from the Greek word for “reed” or “rod.” A canon was a straight edge that was used, for example, by a carpenter to make sure that an alignment was correct; but it could also be used as a measuring stick. Eventually the word “canon” came to be applied in other contexts, by analogy, to refer to a rule or standard by which something [...]

2020-04-03T02:42:22-04:00January 2nd, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

What is the Hebrew Bible?

In response to my previous two posts about how the Hebrew Bible came to be copied over the years, several readers have asked me a related (though also very different) question about how the books of the Hebrew Bible were chosen – why do we have these books and not some others?  Who decided what the canon of the Hebrew Bible would be?  When did they decide?  And what were their criteria? These are important questions, and even though not quite as directly related to the thread I’m making my way through, I think they are worth a couple of posts.   Before giving the standard scholarly view of such things, I will need to explain in the simplest terms I can what the layout, structure, and divisions of the Hebrew Bible are, and define and explain a number of terms.  That will occupy us in the present post.   I have once more taken this information from the discussion in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.   ************************************************************** BOX 1.1 THE [...]

2020-04-03T02:42:30-04:00January 1st, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|
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