The Bible, the book of faith

The Bible holds a unique place in the life of the Christian. It is the foundation of what we believe and it guides our everyday choices. That is why this course begins with it: everything else will rest on it.

A trust that also rests on witnesses

Many Christians defend the authority of the Bible by quoting the Bible itself. For a believer, that is legitimate. But someone who does not believe will find it hard to accept that a book is true because it says so about itself. Nor would a Christian believe another religious book for that reason alone.

We trust an account more easily when several witnesses confirm it. This course therefore relies both on what the Bible says about itself and on external evidence: the history of its formation, its manuscripts, the way the first Churches received it.

A book formed over time

The Bible did not appear overnight. It was not written by a single man. It is the result of a long process: oral tradition, writing down, selection, copying and editing.

The word itself has a history. It comes from the Greek ta biblia, “the books”, a plural. In Latin it became a singular. We moved from a collection of books to a single book.

The canon

The word canon comes from the Greek kanôn, the rod used for measuring. Figuratively, it means a norm. Paul uses it in Galatians 6:16: “And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them”.

The whole canon is Scripture, but not all writings are canon. The canon gathers the writings recognised as trustworthy and authoritative. A canon can be formed in two ways: an authority chooses and imposes, or the usage of a people ends up carrying authority. For the Bible, it is mainly the second way.

This canon still varies between traditions. The Old Testament has 39 books for Protestants and 46 for Catholics, who include books called apocryphal or deuterocanonical. The Orthodox Churches, and in particular the Church of Ethiopia, have an even larger canon. Catholics point out that these books were in the Septuagint, the Greek translation used by many Jews and Christians. Protestants consider that the Hebrew canon was closed before the first century without them. Some Protestants study them, without giving them the same authority.

Why fix a canon

Three reasons explain why these texts were written down and gathered: to communicate at a distance, as Paul did with his letters; to fix the teaching for the long term; to protect against heresies.

In the second century, several movements threatened the Church. The Gnostics claimed to possess a secret knowledge reserved for a few and saw matter as evil; for them, Christ did not really have a body. John 1:14 says the opposite: “the Word became flesh”. Montanus presented himself as the direct spokesman of the Holy Spirit, which made any contradiction impossible. Marcion rejected the Old Testament and kept only part of Paul’s writings, whereas Jesus and the apostles constantly quoted the Scriptures of Israel.

Faced with these dangers, the Church had to state the truth more precisely, determine which writings carried authority and clarify the place of the Old Testament. A canon does not, however, remove the need for interpretation: Romans 13:1-7 has been used to justify submission to a criminal regime.

How the canon was formed

For the Old Testament, the Jews held their writings to be sacred long before Jesus. They classified them in three parts, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, hence the name Tanakh. Jesus often refers to them and Paul quotes them about ninety times.

For the New Testament, by the end of the second century most Churches were already reading a “double testament”. The Muratorian fragment, probably from that period, is the oldest known list. The criteria used were: a writing close to the time of Jesus, written by an apostle or one of his companions, widespread in the Churches and of sound theological value.

In the fourth century, the emperor Constantine asked Eusebius of Caesarea for fifty copies of the Scriptures. In his Ecclesiastical History, written a few years earlier, Eusebius classified the books in three groups: received by all, disputed, and rejected. As Bruce Metzger notes, his very hesitations are a sign of honesty. His work reflects the use of the Churches, not an arbitrary choice.

Why several versions?

We do not have the originals, but copies of copies. The great manuscripts, such as the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, date from the fourth century. By comparing the manuscripts methodically, we can work back to the most probable text. The differences are mostly unintentional copyists’ errors and very rarely change the meaning.

Modern translations also make choices. For close study, a fairly literal version, or the original text, is best. The divisions into chapters, in the thirteenth century with Stephen Langton, then into verses, in the sixteenth century with Robert Estienne for the New Testament, are later practical additions.

What the Bible is and is not

The Bible is first of all a book of theology. It contains historical facts, but it does not claim to tell the whole of human history in a scientific way. The author of this course thinks it difficult to assert that it contains no historical imprecision; other evangelicals, such as René Pache, on the contrary defend its complete inerrancy. All agree on the essential point: it must be read with sound methods. An entirely literal reading is dangerous, and so is an entirely allegorical one.

Its authors were trustworthy witnesses, and there are many of them. The Old and New Testaments form a unity, but our conduct flows first from the teaching of the New.

René Pache defines inspiration as the influence of the Holy Spirit on the biblical authors, so that they would accurately pass on the message received from God. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching” (2 Timothy 3:16).