The Lindisfarne Gospels, penned around 800 CE, has an illustration of Matthew writing his gospel. God is drawing back the curtains of revelation while an angel double checks Matthew’s text against a divine scroll. Such was the ninth century idea of how the bible came to be. Reality is far less tidy[1].The Hebrew Bible is divided into three sections; the law, the prophets and the writings. The authorship of the first of these, the Pentateuch, is traditionally credited to Moses but this is best thought a theological truth expressed in historical form rather than a historical fact; for historically the best we can say is that Moses led a rabble of slaves out of Egypt to Sinai which then inspired an oral tradition that persisted until it found its written form.
That the Pentateuch originates in oral tradition does not necessarily diminish its historical value or its historical integrity. The song of Miriam at the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15:21), for example, likely go back word for word to the time of Moses[2].
But oral tradition is dynamic. In the Homeric tradition, for example, new episodes appear in some copies that are missing from others. This interplay between authenticity and fluidity allowed each generation to re-frame their treasured stories in a contemporary way without compromising their historical authenticity.
Many scholars now believe this complex interplay explains how the early Mosaic tradition was supplemented by laws and rulings, that in time would lay out how the Israelites should live as the people of YHWH. In this context the story of Moses descending with the Ten Commandments is almost assuredly an oversimplification for the writings of the Mesopotamian legislator Hammurabi show that the Ten Commandments were not unique. Rather, it was the developing case-law that protected the orphan as YHWH had protected the Jews in Egypt that became unique[3].
The stories of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and Babel are believed to be among the latest narratives found in the Pentateuch for they all adopt ‘Babylonian vocabulary’ to defend their all-powerful God over Babylon’s pantheon of quarrelling deities. If this thesis is correct then the Pentateuch could not have found its final written form until after the Babylonian exile; a full half a millennia after Moses crossed the Red Sea.
The prophets were also oral teachers. In the same way their sayings persisted in oral form until being arranged into written form. For example, Jeremiah 22 contains sayings about four successive kings who reigned over a twenty year period; demonstrating how temporally sparse material was often collected and compacted around common themes.
Adaptations and liturgical doxologies then grew around the original prophetic sayings. The sayings of Isaiah, for example, likely spanned two hundred years, with its material arranged so as to unite the many sayings that affirm that God was the Holy One of Israel; while the writings of Jeremiah are so diverse that it is impossible to identify the core sayings with any certainty at all.
The book of Daniel dates to the Babylonian exile. Its style is apocalyptic which Norman Perrin calls - ‘a child of hope and despair; hope in the invisible power of God in the world he created, despair in the present course of human history in that world’[4] .
This sense of history moving according to a divine plan toward a scripted end would come to form the second temple expectation that a warlike figure, like David of old, would conquer the evil empires of the ancient world. Not all forms of apocalyptic literature include this idea but the ones that do often use the title messiah to describe their prophetic hero.
The third category of the Hebrew bible known as the writings includes Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Esther, Ruth and Psalms. It was not until two hundred years after Christ that Judaism finally settled on which of these books ‘soiled the hands[5]’.
But before the Hebrew bible could find a settled form its history bifurcated. A letter to Aristeas has it that in 275 BCE Ptolemy II ordered 72 scholars, each working in isolation, to translate the Hebrew bible into Greek. At the end of 72 days they all presented identical works which became the Septuagint (Latin for seventy). In truth the Septuagint was completed over several centuries only finding a settled form in the century before Christ. The Septuagint is significant because it was the bible of the early church. The Jesus followers, writing in Greek, quoted directly from the Septuagint rather than from the earlier Hebrew texts.
Several theological themes were introduced with the Septuagint. For example the original ‘young woman’ of Isaiah 7:14 was translated into Greek as virgin, a text Matthew (1:23) later confirms was fulfilled by the virgin birth of Christ. Also resurrection is more robustly affirmed in the Greek translation than it was in the Hebrew. For example in Job 14:14 a tentative question in Hebrew ‘can the dead come back to life?’ became an affirmation in Greek - ‘if a man dies, he shall live.’ It is hard to say if the translators were being too positive, or if the Hebrew texts they used to translate the Septuagint were more positive than the Hebrew texts we now possess.
The New Testament was either written by or critically influenced by the apostle Paul. The two main historical sources for Paul are the book of Acts and his own letters. Acts does not tell us what happened after Paul went to Rome but second century legend has it both Peter and Paul were martyred while imprisoned by Nero (64 CE). Since this legend has little historical basis, in the final analysis we do not know when or how Paul died; other than it occurred sometime after 60-62 CE when Paul left Corinth for Jerusalem and Rome[6].
Paul did not cease being Jewish; but according to his new found exegesis Sinai was no longer crucial – for Sinai simply foreshadowed Christ. Likewise, Abraham was no longer the father of Israel, because through Christ Abraham had become the archetypal father of all believers; whether Jew or gentile. Central to Paul’s exegesis was the belief that Jesus had fulfilled the Old Testament - Isaiah’s suffering servant pointed to Jesus, Adam was the first archetype - Jesus the second, even the Psalms were coded prophesies that on reflection pointed squarely to the promised messiah.
Paul’s undisputed letters were all penned during the Aegean period. They include the first letter to the Thessalonians (50-51 CE), the first letter to the Corinthians (53-54 CE), the prison letters Philippians (55-56 CE) and Philemon (55-56 CE) that were written to the church in Ephesus, Galatians (48, 55, 57 CE), the second letter to the Corinthians (55/56, 57/58 CE) and the letter to the Romans (57-59 CE).
Some scholars have argued that the rest of the New Testament epistles which bear Paul’s name are more likely pseudonymous works. Closest in style to Paul’s undisputed letters are Colossians (c. 60 CE) and the second letter to the Thessalonians (50CE, c. 60CE). Both are either authentic works or ‘Deutero-Pauline’ works; meaning they were written by Paul's inner circle.
The fact forty passages in Ephesians are expansions or variations of passages found in Colossians coupled with an excursion away from the formula Paul used in the genuine letters suggests Ephesians was likely a late pseudonymous work.
The pastoral epistles 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy and Titus are also believed to be late works but the anomalies used to derive this conclusion could be explained if Paul was imprisoned twice; the second ending in his execution around 65 CE.
Thus either these epistles were late authentic works c. 60 CE or ‘Trito-Pauline’; meaning they were written by members of the Pauline school possibly as late as a generation after Paul’s death.
The book of Hebrews has also been associated with Pauline authorship; but unlike the other epistles Hebrews does not bear Paul’s name and the only place it comes close to following the Pauline formula is in the final salutation (13: 22-25). Instead it seems to be a homily, a word of exhortation designed to bolster the faith by giving a detailed Christological exposition. Paul’s authorship of Hebrews was doubted as early as Origen - ‘As to who wrote it; God alone knows’[7].
Regardless of authorship, the author of Hebrews forcefully argues that Christ had superseded the Torah. This exegetical tour de force redefines the whole of Israelite history; Torah, temple and cult all foreshadow the coming of the promised Messiah. Thus the influence of these early authors, particularly Paul and the unknown author of Hebrews, sets the scene for how the gospel writers would later integrate the Septuagint into their own writings.
The principle components of Mark; namely the stories, sayings, and parables of Jesus were likely handed down by oral tradition. Mark uses repetition, an important oral technique to ensure important points were preserved; ‘at evening, when the sun had set (Mark 1:32)’, ‘when he was in need and was hungry (Mark 2:25)’.
Paul hardly mentions the temple but for Mark the destruction of the temple was pivotal, marking the start of the apocalypse that was to happen in that generation. For most scholars then, Mark’s preoccupation with the destruction of the temple dates his gospel to around the time of its destruction (70 CE).
It is often argued that Mark holds to an imminent eschatology (Mark 9:1) but as that ‘first generation’ passed away the later Matthew and Luke had to explain the delay of the paraousia and so shifted to a realised eschatology. For Matthew Jesus’ life was fulfilled in scripture; the forty days in the desert hark back to the forty years in the wilderness, Isaiah had foretold the miracles Jesus did, and most importantly Jesus was a great teacher of the Torah. The Jews had found solace in their temple and the Torah, but in this post temple world in which Christ had not returned, Matthew’s gospel encouraged Christians to find solace in the person of Jesus who had already fulfilled temple and Torah - and it was in this way that Christ’s kingdom had already come.
Similarly, Luke-Acts[8] (originally one work[9]) opts for a realised eschatology that is set up in Acts 1:6 ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ Jesus answers ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witness in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth (1:7-8)’. Thus like Matthew, Luke-Acts also settles for a realised eschatology by equating Pentecost with both the arrival of His kingdom and the arrival of the last days (Acts 2:17)’.
Matthew and Luke-Acts share 250 versus quoted nearly verbatim (the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, parable of the lost sheep) that are absent from Mark. Most scholars believe that Matthew and Luke used both Mark and a now missing writing that contained these saying of Jesus (known as Q) as their primary sources.
In sum Mark appears to be the earliest gospel written around 70 CE, with Matthew and Luke written soon after. For F.F Bruce[10] the ‘one criteria which has special weight for me is the relation which these writings appear to bear to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. My view of the matter is that Mark and Luke were written before this event, and Matthew not long afterward’.
Around the same time as Matthew and Luke-Acts were penned the churches in Asia Minor developed their own understanding of Jesus and His coming kingdom. This understanding is captured in the Joanine gospel, at least the first of the Joanine epistles and the apocalypse. These works all describe Jesus as the incarnate Logos who descended to Earth as God’s ultimate revelation.
Irenaeus confirms the apostle John wrote the Joanine gospel but some doubt lingers to the extent of originality. For example, according to John 21:20-24 - ‘the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’ This passage does not quite fit; which might point to its latter insertion by a redactor who wanted to justify why John had died before Christ returned. Nevertheless, even if this particular ‘amendment’ is inauthentic, it hardly denies that the core of the gospel is authentic; and so it is widely accepted that the core of the Joanine gospel did predate John’s death in 95 CE.
With the passing of the first generation Christ followers could no longer depend upon the apostle’s eye-witness accounts and so began to shift toward an exegetical tradition. This shift proved popular with the wider gentile population. So much so that by 111 CE Pliny the Younger, concerned with the number of Christians he was executing, wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan to check if his basic methodology still represented the Empire’s policy;
‘I ask them if they were Christians. If they confess to it, then I ask them a second and third time, while threatening punishment. If they persist, I order them to be led away [to execution]. (Epistles 10.96.2-4)’
Trajan wrote back confirming Pliny’s approach but instructed him not to go out and hunt down Christians. This principle governed the Roman’s treatment of Christians for the next fourteen decades. Apart from these imperial rescripts, we have few Roman sources that describe the persecution of Christians during this period. The majority of detail is instead found in the Jewish martyr literature.
Persecution of Christians continued from time to time; even reaching empire wide proportions during the reigns of Decius (249-51 CE) and Diocletian (303-13 CE). But despite three centuries of persecution Christianity did prosper; so much so that by 380 CE Constantine was able to instate Christianity as the reunited Roman Empire’s official religion.
With state legitimacy came the need to settle the canon. Paul had not written scripture but letters to the early churches. When Paul’s letters (corpus Paulinum) became scripture is unclear but it must have pre-dated 2 Peter (3:16) which explicitly claims that Paul’s letters were scripture.
The epistle of 2 Peter was itself likely a pseudonymous work dated to after Peter’s death (64-67 CE). The reason for this late date is varied but includes allusions to second century Gnosticism, an encouragement to believers to persevere even though the parousia had been delayed, and a direct mention of the Pauline epistles that are themselves dated only several years before Peter’s death. In sum scholars date 2 Peter anywhere from an authentic 60 CE text to a pseudonymous 150 CE text. So in light of the evidence concerning 2 Peter, we can only conclude by the mid second century Paul’s letters were being read as scripture.
But quite apart from 2 Peter, we also know that Ignatius quoted (110 CE) Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians as if scripture while the first heretic Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament) formed a list of divine scriptures, using Paul’s ten letters (excluding the Pastoral Epistles) and a self-edited version of Luke (144 CE) all supporting the mid second century thesis.
Similarly the four-fold gospel must have predated Polycarp who died in 155 CE for he also quoted from 1&2 Thessalonians, Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, 1&2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1&2 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter and 1&3 John as if scripture while Origen (185-254 CE) wrote that all four gospels, acts, all thirteen Pauline letters, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation were acknowledged by all as scripture while Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, epistle of Barnabas, the shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the gospel according to the Hebrews were disputed by some. Finally Eusebius (265 – 340 CE) wrote that by his time all the books except James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John had been accepted.
This convergence of accepting particular writings as scripture culminated in Athanasius’ (367 CE) twenty-seven book canon which was quickly endorsed in the west by both Jerome and Augustine (Council of Carthage 394 CE) but was not initially accepted in the east; for 2 Peter, 2&3 John and Revelation were not accepted into the eastern canon (until 508 CE).
In sum Mark appears to be the earliest gospel written around 70 CE, with Matthew and Luke written soon after. For F.F Bruce[10] the ‘one criteria which has special weight for me is the relation which these writings appear to bear to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. My view of the matter is that Mark and Luke were written before this event, and Matthew not long afterward’.
Around the same time as Matthew and Luke-Acts were penned the churches in Asia Minor developed their own understanding of Jesus and His coming kingdom. This understanding is captured in the Joanine gospel, at least the first of the Joanine epistles and the apocalypse. These works all describe Jesus as the incarnate Logos who descended to Earth as God’s ultimate revelation.
Irenaeus confirms the apostle John wrote the Joanine gospel but some doubt lingers to the extent of originality. For example, according to John 21:20-24 - ‘the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’ This passage does not quite fit; which might point to its latter insertion by a redactor who wanted to justify why John had died before Christ returned. Nevertheless, even if this particular ‘amendment’ is inauthentic, it hardly denies that the core of the gospel is authentic; and so it is widely accepted that the core of the Joanine gospel did predate John’s death in 95 CE.
With the passing of the first generation Christ followers could no longer depend upon the apostle’s eye-witness accounts and so began to shift toward an exegetical tradition. This shift proved popular with the wider gentile population. So much so that by 111 CE Pliny the Younger, concerned with the number of Christians he was executing, wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan to check if his basic methodology still represented the Empire’s policy;
‘I ask them if they were Christians. If they confess to it, then I ask them a second and third time, while threatening punishment. If they persist, I order them to be led away [to execution]. (Epistles 10.96.2-4)’
Trajan wrote back confirming Pliny’s approach but instructed him not to go out and hunt down Christians. This principle governed the Roman’s treatment of Christians for the next fourteen decades. Apart from these imperial rescripts, we have few Roman sources that describe the persecution of Christians during this period. The majority of detail is instead found in the Jewish martyr literature.
Persecution of Christians continued from time to time; even reaching empire wide proportions during the reigns of Decius (249-51 CE) and Diocletian (303-13 CE). But despite three centuries of persecution Christianity did prosper; so much so that by 380 CE Constantine was able to instate Christianity as the reunited Roman Empire’s official religion.
With state legitimacy came the need to settle the canon. Paul had not written scripture but letters to the early churches. When Paul’s letters (corpus Paulinum) became scripture is unclear but it must have pre-dated 2 Peter (3:16) which explicitly claims that Paul’s letters were scripture.
The epistle of 2 Peter was itself likely a pseudonymous work dated to after Peter’s death (64-67 CE). The reason for this late date is varied but includes allusions to second century Gnosticism, an encouragement to believers to persevere even though the parousia had been delayed, and a direct mention of the Pauline epistles that are themselves dated only several years before Peter’s death. In sum scholars date 2 Peter anywhere from an authentic 60 CE text to a pseudonymous 150 CE text. So in light of the evidence concerning 2 Peter, we can only conclude by the mid second century Paul’s letters were being read as scripture.
But quite apart from 2 Peter, we also know that Ignatius quoted (110 CE) Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians as if scripture while the first heretic Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament) formed a list of divine scriptures, using Paul’s ten letters (excluding the Pastoral Epistles) and a self-edited version of Luke (144 CE) all supporting the mid second century thesis.
Similarly the four-fold gospel must have predated Polycarp who died in 155 CE for he also quoted from 1&2 Thessalonians, Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, 1&2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1&2 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter and 1&3 John as if scripture while Origen (185-254 CE) wrote that all four gospels, acts, all thirteen Pauline letters, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation were acknowledged by all as scripture while Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, epistle of Barnabas, the shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the gospel according to the Hebrews were disputed by some. Finally Eusebius (265 – 340 CE) wrote that by his time all the books except James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John had been accepted.
This convergence of accepting particular writings as scripture culminated in Athanasius’ (367 CE) twenty-seven book canon which was quickly endorsed in the west by both Jerome and Augustine (Council of Carthage 394 CE) but was not initially accepted in the east; for 2 Peter, 2&3 John and Revelation were not accepted into the eastern canon (until 508 CE).
Around this time Jerome began to translate what he called the Hebraica Veritas and Athanasius’ New Testament canon into the Latin Vulgate. Jerome’s choice to return to the earlier Hebrew text was in part made to refute the Jews in Bethlehem who had used the differences between the Septuagint and their own Hebrew texts to claim that the Christians had an inferior text[11]. The first books Jerome translated, Samuel and Kings, were literal translations while his later works, including Judges, were almost para-phrases. Jerome’s New Testament did not include a completed version of the Acts, the Pauline letters, or Revelation. When these were translated is unknown but it must have happened before the first mention of a ‘pandect’ dated to the sixth century. The first complete latin text we possess, known as the Codex Amiatinus, is dated to the early eight century.
By 430CE the canon was well established in the west. But this Christian period was cut short by marauding barbarians who overpowered Rome’s armies. A deep sadness is evident in Augustine’s writings from this period – especially seen in his interpretation of Adam’s fall. His argument de force was that because any change must result in imperfection - the Garden of Eden had to be timeless; it could not have been a changeable story; the good Jewish Garden of Eden must have been a perfect Platonic Greco-Roman garden.
In this framework Adam’s fall into sin could not simply have been a fall from innocence to experience but it represented an utter transformation from Plato’s perfect and timeless state into Aristotle’s imperfect and changeable story (the decline into Plato's cave). This was the state of the unredeemed world; the world of the barbarians.
But Augustine also argued that redemption meant our souls could be rescued from this imperfect and decaying world through Jesus; for atonement represented the hope that our immortal souls, upon death, could return to their natural timeless and perfect state (heaven).
Augustine’s Greco-Roman framework, which McLaren succinctly calls the six-line plot then starts (from the left) with a high horizontal line which represents Plato’s original timeless state of perfection; second comes a downward vertical line that represents the fall, third a low horizontal line that represents our current Aristotelian state of temporal condemnation; fourth an upward vertical line which represents redemption; and fifth another high horizontal line which represents our soul’s return to time-less heavenly perfection[12].
But since we are also free not all humanity will choose redemption and so when this world does come to an end (which it must for it is imperfect, changing, decaying and therefore temporary) all the unbelieving souls must still persist (since all souls are immortal). This state of existence constitutes hell and is represented by the sixth horizontal line connected to our current unredeemed and therefore changeable Aristotelian world. The six-line plot coupled with Plato’s dualism soon became the normative way to read scripture in the west.
After the fall of Rome, Europe became a pagan wilderness and Christianity retreated to the safety of its monasteries; and there it stayed, largely out of reach of commoners, until the fifteenth century when William Tyndale translated the Christian bible into English. This 'commoner' translation later formed the basis for Luther’s German translation and the seventeenth century King James Bible; which in-turn formed the basis for modern English translations. The rest, as they say, is history.
[1] The story of the bible. How it came to be Wansbrough H Darton, 2006 Longman and Todd
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] Perrin N The New Testament An Introduction 1974 Harcourt Brace
[5] This expression was used because washing the hands before contact with sacred texts symbolised the transition from profane to sacred.
[6] The possibility that Paul wrote several epistles during his second imprisonment in Rome is critical to the case that they are authentic and therefore early works.
[7] Eusebius Church History 6.25.14
[8] Proponents of an earlier date point out that Acts does not mention events beyond 62 CE and since Luke was written before or at the same time as Acts then Luke must have been written while Paul was still alive for otherwise it would surely mention his death; and since Mark predates Luke then Mark must also have been earlier still.
[9] When Luke and Acts were separated a couple of amendments were introduced to the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts. Originally Luke seems to have left all mention of the ascension to his second treatise; now the words ‘and was taken up into heaven’ were added in Luke 24:51 to round off the narrative, and in consequence ‘was taken up’ was added in Acts 1:2. Thus the inconcinnities between the accounts are likely due to adjustments made when the books were separated from each other
[10] The New Testament Documents. Are they Reliable? FF Bruce Sixth edition 1981 Intervarsity Press
[11] He mentioned the mockery in his preface to his translation of Joshua
[12] A New Kind of Christianity McLaren B 2010 Hodder &Stoughton
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