It is evident that Jews in Greco-Roman antiquity were not in complete agreement about which books were suitable to cite and teach from, in worship and in polemics. Even when they read from the same books, they often read them in variant textual forms. A Hebrew text very close to the MT or received text of later Judaism in the case of certain books was read by some; a less or more developed Hebrew text of certain books was read by others. The Septuagint or received Greek translation of the same writings, however different in detail from proto-MT, was read by Greek-speaking Jews for centuries; others read the Bible in a revised version of the original Greek translation.
In the same way, a variety of “OT” text forms circulated among early Christians, as quotations in the New Testament prove. Variation in terms of content and arrangement of individual books and in terms of which books formed a part of the Old Testament is evident throughout antiquity among the Christian churches. The manuscript tradition of the Septuagint and its daughter translations confirms this. Beyond scripture inherited from precedent Jewish tradition, evidence for variant sets of "post-scriptural" authoritative Christian texts among various churches and Christian authors is extensive (detail here). As Craig Allert has argued, church fathers of the second and third centuries betray “neither a concept of nor a desire to form a NT canon”; the formation of New Testament canons is best dated to the fourth century. Some of the debate that ensued in the attempt to achieve uniformity is reflected in the writings of Eusebius.
In reality, uniformity across the spectrum of the historic Christian churches was never achieved vis-à-vis the contents of either the Old or New Testaments. Uniformity is not a feature of the Christian tradition today; the effective edges of the OT and NT remain in dispute (overview by Vincent Setterholm here).
For example, the 5th cent. CE Syriac Peshitta, the authorized translation of the Bible in Syriac-speaking Christianity and offshoots, did not include 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and the Apocalypse of John. The shorter canon of 22 NT books was once current in Greek-speaking Christianity; John Chrysostom (~347–407) cites from the 22, not the 27, in the mass of his extant writings. As Glenn Davis notes, western Syrians did not add the 5 previously non-canonical books to their NT until the 18th century. They have been slow to make use of them since. Farther east, “Still today, the official lectionaries followed by the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, with headquarters at Kottayam (India), and the Chaldean Syrian Church, also known as the Church of the East (Nestorian), with headquarters at Trichur (India), present lessons from only the 22 books of the original Peshitta.”
The attested variety is not surprising given that the God whom Jews and Christians invoke in worship was understood to have spoken “at various times and in various ways … in times past to the fathers” (Heb 1:1). From a purely phenomenological perspective, a voice identified as that of God speaks to the Jewish people through the scriptures vouchsafed to them; to the Malankara Syrian Orthodox through those inherited by them; to Roman Catholics through those held in honor by them, and so on.
The felt reality is that of the persistence of God’s beneficence “to the thousandth generation of those of who love him and keep his commandments” (Deut 7:9) through the gift of scripture in which the divine commandments and promises are recorded. Scripture is understood as one gift among many. According to a Christian missionary named Paul, furthermore, “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). Paul affirmed this about Jews whether or not they believed on the name of Jesus, the one he took to be the Messiah. By extension, the same might be taken to apply to Christians of all persuasions. Regardless, it is a sociological truth in context that a deity of reference speaks to Jews and Christians through scripture read in public worship and other loci of devotion. According to Jews and Christians, God has left himself a reliable witness among the people he has called and gifted at various times and in various ways.
Paul’s conviction that God will not renounce his elect leads him to an open-ended view of God’s work among his fellow Jews. The tensions within his discussion (Rom 9-11) are not of his own making. The one who wanted to be “all things to all people” embraced a set of crisscrossing particularisms and universalisms all of which have roots in the Hebrew Bible. Jewish thinkers who like Paul and even more than Paul have simultaneously embraced particularisms and universalisms include Franz Rosenzweig and Yehezkel Kaufmann.
Many Jews and Christians are nonetheless at a loss when it comes to articulating a sense of God’s involvement in the life and worship of those who read many of the same texts they do, but within the framework of a religious metanarrative incompatible with their own. It might be admitted by all that the God who speaks in scripture speaks to Jews and Christians of whatever persuasion when Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms are read in worship. Whether the scriptures are heard rightly, of course, is a separate question.
To be continued.
[This post is part of a series and revises and expands on 2007 posts that appeared on this blog]
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