Today I’m beginning a ten to twelve part series on Interpreting the Bible. This series is drawn from Kenneth Bailey’s two lecture DVD Interpreting the Bible. We will spend three or four posts examining how the Bible came to be and then look at Bailey’s seven sins of biblical interpretation.
How the Bible was Inspired
Bailey starts by reminding us that we each have our assumptions, examined or not, about what the Bible is and where it came from. We need to examine our assumptions and make some assessments but Bailey is not interested in doing our work for us. Instead, he offers some “raw materials” for us to consider as we form our view of how the Bible came to be.
Bailey has done considerable work with ancient manuscripts. At the front of these manuscripts is usually a depiction of the author faithfully writing down the words an angel is dictating to him. I’ve included a ninth century example from the Riems School that portrays Matthew at work (Source).
This idea of the dictated word is familiar one from the past but Bailey suggests that our understanding of biblical inspiration can be loosely grouped in five categories:
- Mechanical inspiration views the author as a “human tape recorder.”
- Verbal inspiration allows that the human personality of the author is involved but God inspired the precise words.
- Another view is that the ideas were inspired but not necessarily the precise words.
- Some would argue for an inspiration in much the same sense a poet is inspired but at a higher level.
- Others would so they Bible is inspired but no more so then Shakespeare or other great writers.
Others have sought to find a basis within the Bible itself for what is inspired. Bailey points out the frequent reference to 2 Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is inspired by God [theopneustos]…” The idea here is that scripture is “God breathed.” But “the scripture,” for the author of 2 Timothy, whether Paul or one of his students, could only be referring to two thirds of the Old Testament. The Jewish community had not fully selected all the texts that would come to be known as “scripture” and none of the New Testament books would be included. This passage can only refer to books known at that time 2 Timothy was written and this doesn’t ultimately help us resolve our question.
How the Old Testament was Formed
Either during exile or in the fifth century after the exile, the Old Testament community concluded that the first five books, the Torah, should be given unique authority. Samaritans have held that only the Torah is authoritative. Some time after this a second body of texts came have authority called the Nevi’im or “the prophets.” These included most Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and the prophets. Chronicles was not yet included.
By Jesus' day Psalms had achieved an authority near that of these other books. But the remaining books called the Ketuvim, or “the Writings,” had not yet been given the same status. Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles were eventually included in the Writings along with Psalms.
Bailey points to this passage about Jesus in Luke 24:44:
Then he [Jesus] said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you -- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled."
This illustrates what was authoritative for Jesus.
Not long before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., rabbi Yochanan ben Zachi escaped the destruction of Jerusalem and set up a school in the costal town of Jamnia. In the years following his death, in a manner not precisely known, his followers felt it necessary to make a determination about which books would be considered authoritative and “the Writings” were added to the scripture. The Church went along with this decision but later added some apocryphal books written in Greek. At the time of the Reformation, the Reformers excluded these apocryphal books.
That is the whirlwind tour of Old Testament origins. Where did the New Testament come from?