The Formation of the Christian Canon
Eventually, some of these Christian books came to be seen not only as worthy of reading but as absolutely authoritative for the beliefs and practices of Christians. They became Scripture.
The Beginnings of a Christian Canon
The formation of the Christian canon of scripture was a long, involved process, and I do not need to go into all the details here.10 As I have already indicated, in some sense Christians started with a canon in that the founder of their religion was himself a Jewish teacher who accepted the Torah as authoritative scripture from God, and who taught his followers his interpretation of it. The earliest Christians were followers of Jesus who accepted the books of the Jewish Bible (which was not yet set as a "canon," once and for all) as their own scripture. For the writers of the New Testament, including our earliest author, Paul, the "scriptures" referred to the Jewish Bible, the collection of books that God had given his people and that predicted the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.
It was not long, however, before Christians began accepting other writings as standing on a par with the Jewish scriptures. This acceptance may have had its roots in the authoritative teaching of Jesus himself, as his followers took his interpretation of scripture to be equal in authority to the words of scripture itself. Jesus may have encouraged this understanding by the way he phrased some of his teachings. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus is recorded as stating laws given by God to Moses, and then giving his own more radical interpretation of them, indicating that his interpretation is authoritative. This is found in the so-called Antitheses recorded in Matthew, chapter 5. Jesus says, "You have heard it said, 'You shall not commit murder' [one of the Ten Commandments], but I say to you, 'whoever is even angry with a brother or sister is liable to judgment.'" What Jesus says, in his interpretation of the Law, appears to be as authoritative as the Law itself. Or Jesus says, "You have heard it said, 'You shall not commit adultery' [another of the Ten Commandments]. But I say to you, 'whoever looks at a woman to lust after her in his heart has already committed adultery with her.'"
On some occasions these authoritative interpretations of scripture appear, in effect, to countermand the laws of scripture themselves. For example, Jesus says, "You have heard it said, 'Whoever divorces his wife should give her a certificate of divorce' [a command found in Deut. 24:1], but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife for reason other than sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." It is hard to see how one can follow Moses' command to give a certificate of divorce, if in fact divorce is not an option.
In any event, Jesus's teachings were soon seen to be as authoritative as the pronouncements of Moses—that is, those of the Torah itself. This becomes even more clear later in the New Testament period, in the book of 1 Timothy, allegedly by Paul but frequently taken by scholars to have been written in his name by a later follower. In 1 Tim. 5:18 the author is urging his readers to pay those who minister among them, and supports his exhortation by quoting "the scripture." What is interesting is that he then quotes two passages, one found in the Torah ("Do not muzzle an ox that is treading," Deut. 25:4) and the other found on the lips of Jesus ("A workman is worthy of his hire"; see Luke 10:7). It appears that for this author, Jesus's words are already on a par with scripture.
Nor was it just Jesus's teachings that were being considered scriptural by these second- or third-generation Christians. So too were the writings of his apostles. Evidence comes in the final book of the New Testament to be written, 2 Peter, a book that most critical scholars believe was not actually written by Peter but by one of his followers, pseudonymously. In 2 Peter 3 the author makes reference to false teachers who twist the meaning of Paul's letters to make them say what they want them to say, "just as they do with the rest of the scriptures" (2 Pet. 3:16). It appears that Paul's letters are here being understood as scripture.
Soon after the New Testament period, certain Christian writings were being quoted as authoritative texts for the life and beliefs of the church. An outstanding example is a letter written by Polycarp, the previously mentioned bishop of Smyrna, in the early second century. Polycarp was asked by the church at Philippi to advise them, particularly with respect to a case involving one of the leaders who had evidently engaged in some form of financial mismanagement within the church (possibly embezzling church funds). Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, which still survives, is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its propensity to quote earlier writings of the Christians. In just fourteen brief chapters, Polycarp quotes more than a hundred passages known from these earlier writings, asserting their authority for the situation the Philippians were facing (in contrast to just a dozen quotations from the Jewish scriptures); in one place he appears to call Paul's letter to the Ephesians scripture. More commonly, he simply quotes or alludes to earlier writings, assuming their authoritative status for the community.11
The Role of Christian Liturgy in the Formation of the Canon
Some time before the letter of Polycarp, we know that Christians were hearing the Jewish scriptures read during their worship services. The author of ix Timothy, for example, urges that the letter's recipient "pay close attention to [public] reading, to exhortation, and to teaching" (4:13). As we saw in the case of the letter to the Colossians, it appears that letters by Christians were being read to the gathered community as well. And we know that by the middle of the second century, a good portion of the Christian worship services involved the public reading of scripture. In a much discussed passage from the writings of the Christian intellectual and apologist Justin Martyr, for example, we get a glimpse of what a church service involved in his home city of Rome:
On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things... (1 Apol. 67 )
It seems likely that the liturgical use of some Christian texts—for example, "the memoirs of the apostles," which are usually understood to be the Gospels—elevated their status for most Christians so that they, as much as the Jewish scriptures ("the writings of the prophets"), were considered to be authoritative.
The Role of Marcion in the Formation of the Canon
We can trace the formation of the Christian canon of scripture a bit more closely still, from the surviving evidence. At the same time that Justin was writing in the mid second century, another prominent Christian was also active in Rome, the philosopher-teacher Marcion, later declared a heretic.12 Marcion is an intriguing figure in many ways. He had come to Rome from Asia Minor, having already made a fortune in what was evidently a shipbuilding business. Upon arriving in the Rome, he made an enormous donation to the Roman church, probably, in part, to get in its good favor. For five years he stayed in Rome, spending much of his time teaching his understanding of the Christian faith and working out its details in several writings. Arguably his most influential literary production was not something he wrote but something he edited. Marcion was the first Christian that we know of who produced an actual "canon" of scripture—that is, a collection of books that, he argued, constituted the sacred texts of the faith.
To make sense of this initial attempt to establish the canon, we need to know a bit about Marcion's distinctive teaching. Marcion was completely absorbed by the life and teachings of the apostle Paul, whom he considered to be the one "true" apostle from the early days of the church. In some of his letters, such as Romans and Galatians, Paul had taught that a right standing before God came only by faith in Christ, not by doing any of the works prescribed by the Jewish law. Marcion took this differentiation between the law of the Jews and faith in Christ to what he saw as its logical conclusion, that there was an absolute distinction between
the law on the one hand and the gospel on the other. So distinct were the law and the gospel, in fact, that both could not possibly have come from the same God. Marcion concluded that the God of Jesus (and Paul) was not, therefore, the God of the Old Testament. There were, in fact, two different Gods: the God of the Jews, who created the world, called Israel to be his people, and gave them his harsh law; and the God of Jesus, who sent Christ into the world to save people from the wrathful vengeance of the Jewish creator God.
Marcion believed this understanding of Jesus was taught by Paul himself, and so, naturally, his canon included the ten letters of Paul available to him (all those in the New Testament apart from the pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus); and since Paul sometimes referred to his "Gospel," Marcion included a Gospel in his canon, a form of what is now the Gospel of Luke. And that was all. Marcion's canon consisted of eleven books: there was no Old Testament, only one Gospel, and ten Epistles. But not only that: Marcion had come to believe that false believers, who did not have his understanding of the faith, had transmitted these eleven books by copying them, and by adding bits and pieces here and there in order to accommodate their own beliefs, including the "false" notion that the God of the Old Testament was also the God of Jesus. And so Marcion "corrected" the eleven books of his canon by editing out references to the Old Testament God, or to the creation as the work of the true God, or to the Law as something that should be followed.
As we will see, Marcion's attempt to make his sacred texts conform more closely to his teaching by actually changing them was not unprecedented. Both before and after him, copyists of the early Christian literature occasionally changed their texts to make them say what they were already thought to mean.
The "Orthodox" Canon after Marcion
Many scholars are convinced that it was precisely in opposition to Marcion that other Christians became more concerned to establish the contours of what was to become the New Testament canon. It is interesting that in Marcion's own day, Justin could speak rather vaguely about the "memoirs of the apostles" without indicating which of these books (presumably Gospels) were accepted in the churches or why, whereas some thirty years later another Christian writer, who equally opposed Marcion, took a far more authoritative stand. This was the bishop of Lyons in Gaul (modern France), Irenaeus, who wrote a five-volume work against heretics such as Marcion and the Gnostics, and who had very clear ideas about which books should be considered among the canonical Gospels.
In a frequently cited passage from his work Against Heresies, Irenaeus says that not just Marcion, but also other "heretics," had mistakenly assumed that only one or another of the Gospels was to be accepted as scripture: Jewish Christians who held to the ongoing validity of the Law used only Matthew; certain groups who argued that Jesus was not really the Christ accepted only the Gospel of Mark; Marcion and his followers accepted only (a form of) Luke; and a group of Gnostics called the Valentinians accepted only John. All these groups were in error, however, because it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel... it is fitting that she should have four pillars... (Against Heresies 3-11-7 )
In other words, four corners of the earth, four winds, four pillars— and necessarily, then, four Gospels.
And so, near the end of the second century there were Christians who were insisting that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the Gospels; there were neither more nor fewer.
Debates about the contours of the canon continued for several centuries. It appears that Christians by and large were concerned to know which books to accept as authoritative so that they would (1) know which books should be read in their services of worship and, relatedly, (2) know which books could be trusted as reliable guides for what to believe and how to behave. The decisions about which books should finally be considered canonical were not automatic or problem-free; the debates were long and drawn out, and sometimes harsh. Many Christians today may think that the canon of the New Testament simply appeared on the scene one day, soon after the death of Jesus, but nothing could be farther from the truth. As it turns out, we are able to pinpoint the first time that any Christian of record listed the twenty-seven books of our New Testament as the books of the New Testament— neither more nor fewer. Surprising as it may seem, this Christian was writing in the second half of the fourth century, nearly three hundred years after the books of the New Testament had themselves been written. The author was the powerful bishop of Alexandria named Athanasius. In the year 367 C.E., Athanasius wrote his annual pastoral letter to the Egyptian churches under his jurisdiction, and in it he included advice concerning which books should be read as scripture in the churches. He lists our twenty-seven books, excluding all others. This is the first surviving instance of anyone affirming our set of books as the New Testament. And even Athanasius did not settle the matter. Debates continued for decades, even centuries. The books we call the New Testament were not gathered together into one canon and considered scripture, finally and ultimately, until hundreds of years after the books themselves had first been produced.
The Readers of Christian Writings
In the preceding section our discussion focused on the canonization of scripture. As we saw earlier, however, many kinds of books were being written and read by Christians in the early centuries, not just the books that made it into the New Testament. There were other gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses; there were records of persecution, accounts of martyrdom, apologies for the faith, church orders, attacks on heretics, letters of exhortation and instruction, expositions of scripture—an entire range of literature that helped define Christianity and make it the religion it came to be. It would be helpful at this stage of our discussion to ask a basic question about all this literature. Who, actually, was reading it?
In the modern world, this would seem to be a rather bizarre question. If authors are writing books for Christians, then the people reading the books would presumably be Christians. When asked about the ancient world, however, the question has special poignancy because, in the ancient world, most people could not read.
Literacy is a way of life for those of us in the modern West. We read all the time, every day. We read newspapers and magazines and books of all kinds—biographies, novels, how-to books, self-help books, diet books, religious books, philosophical books, histories, memoirs, and on and on. But our facility with written language today has little to do with reading practices and realities in antiquity.
Studies of literacy have shown that what we might think of as mass literacy is a modern phenomenon, one that appeared only with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.13 It was only when nations could see an economic benefit in having virtually everyone able to read that they were willing to devote the massive resources—especially time, money, and human resources—needed to ensure that everyone had a basic education in literacy. In non-industrial societies, the resources were desperately needed for other things, and literacy would not have helped either the economy or the well-being of society as a whole. As a result, until the modern period, almost all societies contained only a small minority of people who could read and write.
This applies even to ancient societies that we might associate with reading and writing—for example, Rome during the early Christian centuries, or even Greece during the classical period. The best and most influential study of literacy in ancient times, by Columbia University professor William Harris, indicates that at the very best of times and places—for example, Athens at the height of the classical period in the fifth century B.C.R.—literacy rates were rarely higher than 10-15 percent of the population. To reverse the numbers, this means that under the best of conditions, 85-90 percent of the population could not read or write. In the first Christian century, throughout the Roman Empire, th
e literacy rates may well have been lower.14
As it turns out, even defining what it means to read and write is a very complicated business. Many people can read but are unable to compose a sentence, for example. And what does it mean to read? Are people literate if they can manage to make sense of the comic strips but not the editorial page? Can people be said to be able to write if they can sign their name but cannot copy a page of text?
The problem of definition is even more pronounced when we turn to the ancient world, where the ancients themselves had difficulty defining what it meant to be literate. One of the most famous illustrative examples comes from Egypt in the second Christian century. Throughout most of antiquity, since most people could not write, there were local "readers" and "writers" who hired out their services to people who needed to conduct business that required written texts: tax receipts, legal contracts, licenses, personal letters, and the like. In Egypt, there were local officials who were assigned the task of overseeing certain governmental tasks that required writing. These assignments as local (or village) scribes were not usually sought after: as with many "official" administrative posts, the people who were required to take them were responsible for paying for the job out-of-pocket. These jobs, in other words, went to the wealthier members of the society and carried a kind of status with them, but they required the expenditure of personal funds.
The example that illustrates the problem of defining literacy involves an Egyptian scribe called Petaus, from the village of Karanis in upper Egypt. As often happened, Petaus was assigned to duties in a different village, Ptolemais Hormou, where he was given oversight of financial and agricultural affairs. In the year 184 C.E., Petaus had to respond to some complaints about another village scribe from Ptolemais Hormou, a man named Ischyrion, who had been assigned somewhere else to undertake responsibilities as a scribe. The villagers under Ischyrion's jurisdiction were upset that Ischyrion could not fulfill his obligations, because, they charged, he was "illiterate." In dealing with the dispute Petaus argued that Ischyrion wasn't illiterate at all, because he had actually signed his name to a range of official documents. In other words, for Petaus "literacy" meant simply the ability to sign one's name.
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Page 4