In my last post we saw a few things James Kugel had to say about the importance of the Sefarim Chitzonim (The Outside Books) for how later rabbis came to interpret the Bible. I have become more and more interested in the Apocrypha and Pseudopigrapha, and the little I have read has been incredibly helpful. A friend of mine who recently took a course at Gordon-Conwell in early Judaism had to read quite a bit of Second Temple writings, specially the ones from Qumran. He seems to be a bit disappointed because of the lack of coherence that he found in them. One of my projects for this year is to start reading more of these books and draw my own conclusions. I might even blog some thoughts about them.

In the book Exploring the Origins of the Bible (ed. Craig A. Evans and Emanuel Tov), there is a good essay by James H. Charlesworth called “Writings Ostensibly Outside the Canon.” The title was chosen since the word “ostensible” can carry the meaning of “apparent” and “professed,” as Charlesworth explains,

“On the one hand, the Jews who wrote and found God’s word in the allegedly apocryphal compositions did not consider these writings “outside the canon.” On the other hand, since about 200 CE many Jews and Christians have judged the writings in central focus to be on the fringes of canon or ‘outside the canon’” (p. 59-60).

This quote represents the overall opinion in the essays that I have read so far that to talk about a canon (i. e. Hebrew Bible) in Second Temple period is anachronistic (a position I tend to agree with). But what really caught my attention in this essay was something Charlesworth said about the “role” that a canon should play which I had never thought of before, and I wonder how many of you would agree with him. Here is the quote in full for you to ponder:

“The danger of the canon is the tendency to imagine, even think, that God has spoken only in and through a closed book. The beauty of the canon is the guideline, the rule, for how, and in what ways, the One who has spoken in the past may be heard in other writings and persons, whether prophet, priest, or perplexed. The word canon should have been, and hopefully will now be, used as the measuring standard by which to discern God’s word in many other words” (p. 84).

Allert, Craig D. A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academy, 2007.

This book is about the formation of the New Testament canon. The author does a great job describing the Evangelical movement to set the context of the debates about the authority, inspiration, canonicity and inerrancy of the bible. He basically talks about how the bible came to be formed and looks at the merits of three different theories: 1) the NT was a spontaneous occurrence, 2) the NT was formed in the second century and 3) the NT was formed in the fourth century (p. 41). The differences in these theories can be attributed to the way historical evidence is interpreted (p. 87). The rest of the book analyzes these three theories and concludes that, while we can talk about Scriptures being recognized as authoritative in the first and second centuries, it is anachronistic to talk about a canon in this period. Even in the fourth century, despite the list of Athanasius in the West and Carthage in the East, there was still a lot of fluidity. Read more »