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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge History of the Bible
  • Cited by 22
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
1970
Online ISBN:
9781139055901
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521074186
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Religion
Subjects:
History, Regional History Before 1500, Religion, Church History, Religion: General Interest
Series:
The Cambridge History of the Bible
Information

Book description

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of the Bible concerns the earliest period down to Jerome and takes as its central theme the process by which the books of both Testaments came into being and emerged as a canon of scripture, and the use of canonical writings in the early church.

Reviews

'This volume is a distinguished achievement. Its scholarship is sound and up to date. Nowhere else, it is safe to say, will a reader find so comprehensive and informed an account of the wide field it covers.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'Once again the editors, publishers and contributors have produced a magnificent volume well worthy to stand alongside its two predecessors … Judged by any standaed, the History is a landmark in Bible scholarship.'

Source: The Evangelical Quarterly

'Professors Ackroyd and Evans have assembled an exceptionally distinguished team for this volume, and the resultant composition is as instructive as it is readable … Altogether this is an excellent work.'

Source: Bulletin of the SOAS

'An indispensable work of reference both for historical theology and for the history of biblical scholarship.'

Source: Expository Times

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Contents

Page 1 of 2

Contents
  • 1 - THE BIBLICAL LANGUAGES
    pp 1-11
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Hebrew and Aramaic are two of the main representatives of the Semitic family of languages, named after Shem, the reputed ancestor of the Semitic peoples. Ancient Ethiopic first appears in epigraphic materials of the first Christian centuries and in the Aksum inscriptions of the fourth century AD. It is the language of an extensive Ethiopian Christian literature. The modern Semitic languages of Ethiopia are represented by Tigrina, Tigre, Amharic, Harari and Gurage. Classical Hebrew is the language of the Old Testament scriptures. The Lachish letters of the sixth century BC inscriptions, like the Gezer Calendar, the Siloam inscriptions have all added substantially to the knowledge of the ancient Hebrew language. The New Testament is written in a form of biblical Greek, the language of the Greek Old Testament and related writings, which are itself a deposit of the widely diffused Hellenistic language, usually designated the Koine form of the Greek language in the post-classical or Hellenistic era.
  • 2 - THE BIBLICAL SCRIPTS
    pp 11-29
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter explores the Biblical Scripts: Early Hebrew, Square Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic. The Early Hebrew and the Phoenician alphabets were two branches from the Canaanite stem, which was a continuation of the North- Semitic. The Samaria ostraca, of the ninth or eighth century BC are the earliest documents written in Early Hebrew current or running hand. The Greek alphabet occupies in many ways a unique place in the history of writing. The numerous Greek inscriptions are of paramount importance for history; they form the subject of Greek epigraphy. The city of Antioch of Syria was one of the most important centres of early Christianity and it was there that 'the disciples were for the first time called Christians'. Coptic literature consists for the most part of translations from Greek, and includes versions of the Bible, apocrypha of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, the Martyrdoms and the Lives of the Saints, and so on.
  • 3 - BOOKS IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
    pp 30-48
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The discovery of more than half a million documents spanning the period of the Old Testament enables a comparison to be made between the various contemporary literary forms in use within the ancient Near East. The Assyrian and Babylonian scribes of the first millennium employed scrolls of papyrus or leather for Aramaic inscriptions. The varied and numerous documents and writing materials presuppose persons skilled in writing. From 3100 BC in Mesopotamia, and thereafter in Egypt, Anatolia and Elam, scribes were at work in the principal cities and centres of government. In Mesopotamia and Israel the overriding cultural factor was the concept of law and authority which ensured the vitality, stability and continuity of a highly developed civilisation. The Hebrew Proverbs are closest to the precepts or instructions which range from the Old Kingdom writings of the Egyptian sages to the New Kingdom collections and are scattered throughout the literature.
  • 4 - BOOKS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD AND IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
    pp 48-66
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The discoveries at Qumran show that in the first century BC the text of Isaiah, for example, was faithfully transmitted; the widely varying interpretations that might be placed on the text by Jews as well as later by Christians. Christian literature began with the interpretation of the Old Testament in the light of Christian experience. The literature of the earliest Church, from the New Testament, is with two exceptions what might have been predicted from its Jewish origins: the sacred books of Judaism and some interpretations of those books in the light of Christian experience. In Jewish copies of the Greek versions of the scriptures it was usual for the name of God, Yahweh, to be written in Hebrew letters. Christian culture and education were bookish through and through; reliance on the book, initially a legacy from Judaism, was soon a weapon of the Church in its fight against paganism.
  • 5 - THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING
    pp 67-113
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Old Testament is a collection of religious writings which, whatever their individual origins, are in their final form directed to the maintenance of the life of a community which thought of itself as being in a special sense the people of God. A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to form critical analysis of Old Testament material. This was applied especially to the psalms, the types of which were traced by Hermann Gunkel and further developed; analysis of psalms outside Israel revealed the same patterns of construction. This chapter considers a narrative which appears twice in the Old Testament, in 2 Sam. 24 and 1 Chron. 21. One variety of Old Testament literature is provided by the prophetic books, containing an immense wealth of material of many different kinds. From the point of view of content, no completely sharp division can be made between the prophetic literature and other parts of the Old Testament.
  • 6 - CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL
    pp 113-159
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter considers the terms that are used to describe the canonical writings and the definition of canonisation and canonicity within the relevant period. It discusses the evidence for acts of canonisation by which the several sections, and the collection as a whole, came to be recognised as canonical. The chapter describes the relation between canonical and non-canonical literature. A famous passage in Josephus provides both a descriptive terminology and a definition of the nature of the Canon as it was understood in his time. The discovery of the book of the Law in the Temple at Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah led to a decisive development in the emergence of the Canon. The Greek-speaking Christian Church took over the Septuagint, which contained other works and in which, moreover, some of the canonical books included additional sections.
  • 7 - THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT
    pp 159-199
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter examines the first stages in the history of the transmission of the Old Testament text over a period of approximately 500 years, starting with 300 BC. The Old Testament books were translated into other Semitic languages, Aramaic and Syriac and also into non-Semitic languages, Greek, and subsequently Latin. The demand for a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Aramaic probably arose during the Babylonian Exile or immediately after the return of the exiles to Palestine in the Persian period. Aramaic being the lingua franca of the time, it was adopted by many Jews in their intercourse with the non-Jewish world. The biblical manuscripts from Qumran have added a new dimension to the criticism of the biblical text and to the study of its history, both in the original Hebrew and in the earliest ancient versions, especially in Greek.
  • 8 - BIBLE AND MIDRASH: EARLY OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS
    pp 199-231
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses the nature and purpose of midrash and focuses on some biblical passages which foreshadow and prompt the discipline of exegesis. The most famous of the scribes was Ezra, and it is in connection with him that scripture interpretation as such is first mentioned in the Bible. The public recitation of scripture which was part of Temple worship became the essential feature of synagogal liturgy already in pre-Christian times and appears in the New Testament as a well-established custom. Palestinian Jewry was divided, from the second century BC to the end of the Second Temple, into separate and rival groups each of which slanted its interpretative system to justify the biblical authenticity of its beliefs and way of life. Beyond any immediate exegetical assistance, midrash is by nature provides the closest historical link with Old Testament tradition itself.
  • 9 - THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING
    pp 232-284
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Christianity is unique among the world religions in being born with a Bible in its cradle. The use of the Old Testament continued to play a great part in Christian writing as it had done previously in Christian speech. The existence of an authoritative Bible would have had the negative effect of inhibiting any thought of producing fresh books, and there is more than a suggestion in the early Church of a reluctance to write. With the exception of the Pauline letters the New Testament writings were relatively slow in appearing, and a high proportion of them are anonymous. The Old Testament supplied the basis of early Christian thought, it did not supply the models for its writing, and in the matter of literary forms the New Testament is remarkably independent of the Old. The New Testament was not, like the Old Testament, revealed the limited amount of material available for canonisation.
  • 10 - THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON
    pp 284-308
    • By R. M. Grant, Carl Darling Buck Professor of Humanities, Divinity School, Chicago, Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Canon of the New Testament was the result of a long and gradual process in the course of which the books regarded as authoritative, inspired, and apostolic were selected out of a much larger body of literature. During the apostolic age the Christian Bible consisted of the Old Testament alone, not that the Old Testament was precisely defined, but the main outlines were quite clear. The Church was experiencing severe exegetical difficulties toward the middle of the second century. Many Gnostics were able to provide esoteric interpretations of Pauline epistles and of the gospels as well. Among the most important documents in the history of the New Testament Canon is the 'Muratorian' fragment, so called because it was published by L. A. Muratori in 1740. Origen provides one of the best examples of the way in which literary criticism was being brought to bear on questions of authorship in relation to canonicity.
  • 11 - THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT
    pp 308-377
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the field of New Testament textual criticism, a great change of approach and method has taken place in the course of the present century. The method owed much to the work of the great nineteenth century philologist Karl Lachmann, who worked in the fields of the manuscript tradition of Latin classical texts, the New Testament and medieval German poetry. One of the greatest exponents of the study of documents a generation after Westcott and Hort was Kirsopp Lake. He wrote some words which express the ideal for the textual critic working on this aspect of the field. The majority of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament are of Byzantine production, and most of these post-date the Iconoclastic controversy and the invention of minuscule. The Byzantine text has many readings which appear conflate, and many evident rationalisations of cruces.
  • 12 - THE INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE NEW
    pp 377-411
  • View abstract

    Summary

    A very large majority of New Testament books quote the Old Testament explicitly, and often make it clear that the authors regarded the Old Testament as an authoritative body of literature which claimed the attention and obedience of Christians. The interpretation by Greek thinkers of poetry and ancient myth forms a useful but distant background to the use of the Old Testament by New Testament writers. To the Greek philosopher, the existence of earlier literature was no more than incidental; at most it provided a useful confirmation of truths of which he was already persuaded on other grounds. Judaism understood itself as a current practical exegesis of its Bible. Most of the writers of the New Testament were Jews, and all were children of their own age. The wording of the Old Testament is taken over and woven into narrative or argument.
  • 13 - BIBLICAL EXEGESIS IN THE EARLY CHURCH
    pp 412-453
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The exegesis of the primitive Christian Church was a direct and unselfconscious continuation of the type of exegesis practised by ancient Judaism in its later period. The discovery of the Qumran literature has opened to another type of Jewish exegesis, the list of proof-texts. The greater part of Christian exegesis for a hundred and fifty years after the resurrection is of course exegesis of the Old Testament. One of the most important new features in all Christian exegesis from the end of the second century onwards is the acceptance by the Church of the Fourth Gospel as fully authoritative. The Western tradition of exegesis showed its conservatism and caution, however, in another direction, and that is in its treatment of eschatology. The Christian gospel was being transposed from a basically Jewish frame of reference and form to a basically Greek frame of reference.
  • 14 - ORIGEN AS BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
    pp 454-489
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Origen was the kind of person, regrettably rare in Christian history, who appears to have been capable of entering into genuine dialogue with Jews. The obvious common ground for such debate was the Old Testament. He did not undertake any major study of the New Testament text of the kind which he carried out in the case of the Old Testament. The ancient Latin version of the passage quoted from the Commentary on Matthew makes him say that he would not dare to do such a thing; but the remark does not occur in the Greek text and cannot therefore be accepted with any confidence as genuine. The Holy Spirit was the real author of scripture. This fact guaranteed neither the stylistic quality nor the absolute historicity of the scriptural record. Modern scholarship has tended to draw a firm line of distinction between typological and allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament.
  • 15 - THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ANTIOCHENE SCHOOL
    pp 489-510
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Fourth-century Antioch was an outstanding centre of biblical scholarship and of ecclesiastical confusion. The leading figures of the Antiochene school of biblical scholarship in the fourth century were staunch upholders of the faith of Nicaea. Diodore was the leading figure of the school in the middle of the century and bishop of Tarsus from 378. Theodore of Mopsuestia draws a distinction between the office of the exegete and that of the preacher in the introduction to his Commentary on John. For Theodore, the primary author of all scripture was the Holy Spirit. His work of commentary on the Psalms and on the minor prophets led him to pay more attention than the majority of early writers to the precise nature of inspiration. His judgement on New Testament commentaries is based wholly on the suitability of the sense of the disputed reading. Theodore's commentaries on the Old Testament show him as a scholar capable of acute historical observation.
  • 16 - JEROME AS BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
    pp 510-541
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Jerome was the greatest biblical scholar of the early Church. Jerome's own first 'little work' was a commentary on Obadiah. From Constantinople Paulinus and Jerome went on to Rome, together with Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, to take part in the council held by Damasus in 382. Jerome lectured on scripture daily and wrote continuously. Didymus' treatise On the Holy Spirit was translated, as were also more of Origen's biblical homilies. Jerome started on a revision of the Old Latin Old Testament and became increasingly concerned to secure the best Septuagint texts obtainable on which to base it. The Hebraica veritas influenced Jerome in one direction namely, in his view of the extent of the Old Testament Canon. Jerome's major contribution as a biblical commentator was the series of commentaries on the Old Testament prophets who provided him with a practically unworked field.
  • 17 - AUGUSTINE AS BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
    pp 541-563
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Augustine's achievements as a biblical scholar and exegete can be appreciated only in relation to his childhood and general education. The African Council of Carthage of 397, at which Augustine was present, recognised an Old Testament Canon which included the books of the Apocrypha and a New Testament Canon which included Hebrews and Peter. The actual text of scripture upon which Augustine exercised his exegetical talent varied during the course of his life. Augustine's own views on scriptural exegesis are set out in the treatise De Doctrina Christiana which appeared in its final form only in 427, and which may therefore be regarded as representing his mature opinion. Augustine's approach to scriptural exegesis is first and foremost that of a pastor, designed to instruct his congregation in the doctrine of the Church and to stir their minds to greater warmth of devotion.
  • 18 - THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN THE LITURGY
    pp 563-586
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The study of liturgical origins enables to understand better the significance of festivals and the meaning of liturgical formulas and ceremonies. The earliest Christians were of Jewish origin, and were accustomed to the services held both in the Temple and in the synagogue. The main purpose of the synagogue was the reading and interpretation of the scriptures of the Old Testament, the Bible of the Jews, as well as prayer. The evidence of the New Testament indicates that the Old Testament scriptures were regularly read in the synagogue. In the sub-apostolic period, three useful texts are the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, Pliny's Letter to Trajan and the Didacke. The Old Testament lesson was sometimes called 'the prophet' or 'the prophecy', as in Apostolic Constitution. There are clear indications in the New Testament that the Christians recognised the value and importance of definite hours of prayer.

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