Loading...How did we get the Bible, these 66 books in particular?
Over the next couple of years I’m planning on reading massively on the Canon Part 2 (the New Testament), in particular on what we know about why certain books came to be included and yet others were left out, as the topic of my next book. And I’ll be talking a good bit about what I’m thinking about that here on the blog.
The topics that I’ll need to be covering are so wildly varied that I’m guessing that about two-thirds of time it won’t even be obvious to blog readers that a post is even related to questions of canon. We’ll almost certainly have to be dealing with such widespread issues as Roman imperial efforts to obliterate Christianity; teachings of universalist salvation in the early church; The Arian Controversy (think: the Council of Nicea); Paul’s confrontation with a talking lion he had earlier baptized; letters allegedly written by Jesus himself and…. and oh, there is so much to cover!
I’ve decided that here at the beginning I should give a basic overview of how we got the New Testament canon, and then it occurred to me that if I start that way I’ll inevitably be getting queries about the other elephant in the room, how we got the first part of the Christian Bible, the “Old Testament” (i.e., the “Jewish Bible” or “Hebrew Bible” or “Tanakh”).
Even though I probably won’t be dealing with that issue directly in my book (but who knows?!), here is some of the background information for curious minds, a kind of primer on the formation of the Jewish Scriptures. This will take four posts, and I’ll begin with the very basics about what the the Hebrew Bible actually is as a refresher course or, well, new information, depending on where you happen to be sitting in the world of biblical data.
All the material in these next posts will be excerpted from my undergraduate textbook (which is a resource you may want to start with if you’re interested in the basics of the Bible, including bibliographies for further reading at the end of each chapter): The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction 2nd edition (Oxford University Press).
In this post I explain the content, structure, and organization of the Old Testament.
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
I am excited about your insights on the TaNaK…I have been curious about how much was copied from Babylon? I have so many questions on that and the NT writings. Honestly, I have been reading so many books and listening to many podcasts that I would really like to get it all sorted out about what is true and needs to be followed and what doesn’t need to be followed.
Presumably Jews in Babylon would have needed copies for worship, so I’d say certainly there were copies made there at different times. But, of course, none of them survives.
Dear Bart,
I was listening to the Q&A on your lectures on the virgin birth stories in the NT. At the 2h48m mark you’re asked if there are any non-canonical sources that discuss the virgin birth, and you say there aren’t and “the first references we have to it in non-cononical [sources] are [from] people who are relying on the New Testament gospels.”
I’d like to ask if you would consider Odes of Solomon 19, and Ascension of Isaiah, ch. 11, as potential independent sources? Neither seems to rely on Matthew and Luke, and they have some truly original (and frankly bizarre) claims.
Odes claims that God the Father lactated milk from his breasts, and that milk was used by the Holy Spirit to inseminate Mary. AoI claims Jesus teleported out of Mary! As neither of these claims are found in Matthew or Luke, and as both accounts share so few literary features with the gospels, it seems to me that they are independent.
Good point. I was thinking of narratives (full stories) rather than comments on incidents. There are certainly other bizarre things out there. My view is that Ascension of Isaiah has to be mid second century; I don’t have a strong view about Odes of Solomon. Where they came up with these ideas … who knows?! They clearly didn’t get them from the NT Gospels. I don’t think that means they weren’t familiar with them, though; that would be hard to show….
As you point out, Marcion didn’t appear to know Luke’s infancy narrative, so it may not have been added until the mid-2nd C. There’s good reasons for doubting Matthew’s infancy narrative was original (ala R. Brown), so it’s possible that it wasn’t added until the 2nd C either.
R. M Grant dates Odes prior to Ignatius c. 108 (Grant 1944:370), and Charlesworth notes that “after a decade of study and debate, Harris and Mingana assigned the Odes to the first century AD” (Charlesworth 1985:726). He also argues that Odes possesses a close affinity with 1st C texts such as GJn and the DSS (Charlesworth 1998:14-20), and was composed in Syriac or Aramaic (Charlesworth 1985:726) by an Essene who had converted to Christianity and joined the Johannine community (Charlesworth 1998:14-20).
It’s therefore possible that this may be the first text to claim Mary conceived as a virgin, and where the whole idea originally kicked off – in a Christian hymn! If true, then it appears to have been subsequently taken seriously and developed into a narrative.
I don’t remember Brown doubting Matthew’s birth narrative. For my part, I don’t think there’s good reason to doubt it (unlike LUke’s). I’ve never trusted CHarlesworth’s dating of teh Odes; it has always seemed to participate in that tendency to date things early for other reasons. THe idea that they were made by an Essene who joined the Johannine community is pretty-far-out speculative, IMO. I wonder if anyone has bought that? (THese days the move is to deny there even WAS a Johannine community, let alone Essenic converts to it…(
When and why was the Hebrew Bible reorganized to look like what we have in the Christian Old Testament?
That’s a good question! I don’t know off hand (it’s amazing what I don’t know)! Maybe someone else has it on the tip of their tongue or top of their head!
How confident are scholars concerning the historicity of the historical books? Are they able to corroborate any of them with non-biblical sources?
Not confident at all!
Hello
Does the Bible say it is inspired by god? i know there is a verse in 2 Peter but is there more?
1 Timothy 3:16 is the verse most commonly cited by believers in biblical inerrancy. None of the biblical authors themselves talks about their books as being products of divine inspiratoin though.
great for that fact.
So when Folks say the Bible [anthology] was inspired by the Spirit of God [editor].
I reply Old Testament- which can be verified by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Christianity is from Europe.
Koine Greek, NT selected from educated Roman bishops. & at least my lineage goes to Germany, France,England, UK & USA- global at the time superpowers.
other point: Lost or Removed from translation Aramaic-Koine-> & then you informed many scribes were ?able.
recently read that early Christians appreciated Menander….just a thought as you’re out there looking….
I assume that’s because of the possible allusion in 1 Cor. 15:33? Other than that I’m not aware of anything — but if there’s more, I’d love to know! (Fill me in if what you read gave some evidence!)
I picked up some new information on the arrangement of the Hebrew Bible, including designations like the Former and Latter Prophets. I did not know those designations, or exactly how the books were grouped together, so thanks for the count!
Question: I may be missing something, but what do you mean when you say Canon part 2 and then put New Testament in parentheses at the outset of this post? Happy New Year
I was being cute. The Christian canon comes in two parts, the Old Testament and New Testament, so I was calling the NT Canon part 2.
Dr. Ehrman,
What version/translation of the Hebrew scriptures do you recommend for a lay person to get the best gist of how ancient Jews would read/hear their scriptures?
Thanks in advance.
I’d suggest the Jewish Study Bible, which uses the second edition of the translation published by the Jewish Publication Society with fantastic commentary by leading biblical scholars.
What are your thoughts about Robert Alter’s translation? As someone with no knowledge of Hebrew I’ve appreciated his footnotes explaining the translation choices he made.
He’s a brilliant writer — most translators are not! (i.e.,they don’t necessarily have high level literary skills). I”m afraid I”ve not studied his translation for accuracy though.
In an earlier post, you wrote, “But unlike most other authors on the topic, I’m far more interested in the questions/issues/discussions/arguments/and debates in the early church about whether/why one book or another should be considered Scripture.”
Is there enough information about questions/issues/discussions/arguments and debates regarding the formation of the Hebrew Bible to consider including some discussion about them in your planned book? Some of this information, and in particular a discussion comparing and contrasting the questions etc in the formation of the Hebrew Bible vs those in the formation of the New Testament, sounds potentially very interesting. I think it might be interesting even if such discussion would have to be partial and somewhat speculative.
THere may be enough information, but it would take me years to dig it out! I’ll be sticking to the NT. There are a number of books out there that do deal with both OT and NT, but almost always again they focus on which books were accepted when and by whom, rather than the actual arguments (largelyt because the arguments are widely lost and very hard to reconstruct at times)