Whose Bible Is It?

Whose Bible Is It? A Quiz

Our Sunday School class has begun to study portions from the late Yale church historian Jaroslav Pelikan’s last book, Whose Bible Is It. I will try to summarize some of his arguments soon. Pelikan, who grew up a Lutheran converted during the last years of his life to Eastern Orthodoxy, so not surprisingly he speaks very highly of the oral tradition which makes an interesting counterpoint to the discussion of the Methodist Quadrilateral that is heating up as we get closer to General Conference and whether it is a really square or a three legged stool.

In the introduction to the book, Pelikan spins an alternative to the traditional jokes where a Rabbi, a Priest and a Pastor are out fishing or dringing or whatever. He tells the story of three women – a Rabbi’s wife, a Catholic Woman, and a Preacher’s spouse who all go into a bookstore and each asks for a copy of the Bible. The astute sales associate asks them each the question, “Which Bible do you want?” Focusing on this provocative question, I conducted a short quiz which I have now revised and share. Cheating is okay. I regularly use Lowell K. Handy’s book The Educated Person’s Thumbnail Introduction to the Bible as a crib sheet! In blue, you will find my best generalized answers to these questions. For some, the answer is pretty objective, it just takes counting. Other questions are really discussion starters. Good Luck. Hope you did better than me the first time through!

1) What is the shortest Bible found in use today?

The Samaritan Pentateuch consists of the same first five books of the Bible that both Jews and Christians use. There are a couple of minor distinctions, but they make no enduring difference. Small Samaritan communities of faith are still living and worshiping today in the West Bank of modern Israel, what used to be Samaria.

2) What is the longest (i.e. the Bible with the most books) in use today?

The most common answer to this question was the Orthodox Bible, and that is close, but no cigar! The question becomes which Orthodox Bible? The longest Bible apparently in use today is the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible which in what is called its “wider canon” is the only Bible that includes Jubilees and Enoch.

Going from shortest to longest then (and I am probably leaving something out) – we have the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible), the Protestant Bible, the Roman Catholic Bible, the Greek Orthodox Bible, the Coptic Orthodox Bible (which includes 3 Maccabees in the Old Testament and the book of Clement and the Apostolic Constitution in the New) and then the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. Depending on the tradition, Psalms 151-155 show up on different lists.

3) What Bible is the most widely read by Christians today?

Apparently different people took this question in different ways. Some answered by talking in terms of translations and I don’t know for sure which translation is most popular. What I was asking about had to do with numbers of people and in that context, it is clear that the Roman Catholic Bible is most widely read and an awful lot of people read it in Spanish – so much for the KJV.

4) What is the difference between the Roman Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible?

Most people got this one. Because the early church spoke and read Greek, the canon that was deemed official for Christians at the first North African Council held in Carthage in 395 CE is based on the larger set of writings found in the Alexandrian version of the Jewish Scriptures, the Septuagint. But that larger list is not typically found in the Jewish canon used in Mesopotamia and Palestine. Because the Protestant church used the texts found in modern synagogues that are based on the Hebrew translations, the Protestant list was shorter. The Roman Catholic Bible will contain a longer version of Esther and a lengthy prayer and several other stories that are found in Daniel. These additional Roman books, declared canonical at the Council of Trent, are designated by Catholics as the Deuterocanonical texts. Protestants would call them the Protestant Apocrypha (or the hidden books), but Protestants do not consider these books canonical. Some “extra” Old Testament books which were taken by Catholics from the Jewish Septuagint, but did not make the list are referred to as the Catholic Apocrypha.

5) What is the difference between the traditional Masoretic texts of the Jewish Bible and the Septuagint? How might the Gospel of Matthew be different if he had referenced the precursor to the Masoretic text?

I started answering this question in the response previously given – our existing Masoretic texts date to the 8/9 th centuries CE (common era) and are primarily written in Hebrew with a few references in Aramaic which is a Hebrew dialect. The Septuagint dates to third century BCE (before the common era) and was written in the Greek language in Alexandria. Later this Greek translation became used throughout the Jewish Diaspora. Our earliest existing versions date back to the third century CE.

I discovered that the second part of the question is poorly worded. But here is the point I was trying to make. In the Gospel of Matthew (as a good Jewish scribe) our evangelist regularly references what were referred to as the “Law and the Prophets.” In particular, in his nativity story, our writer (redactor) of this text harks back to Isaiah 7:14. In Hebrew the text reads, “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” The Hebrew word for young woman is ‘aalmah. This writer, later called Matthew, however, regularly drew from the Greek translation. The equivalent Greek term reads parthenos and while it is rightly translated as young woman, the word also has a secondary meaning not found in Hebrew which can be translated as a virgin. So, the simple answer to our quiz question is that if Matthew only had an Isaiah scroll in Hebrew, he could not have spoken of a virgin birth, or at least he would not have been able to quote his scripture to justify that contention. Clearly, the circumstances of the birth of Jesus were controversial. As the image of an immaculately conceived child emerged, these subtleties in translation became very significant.

6) How is the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh) different than the Protestant Old Testament? Are they the same book? Why or why not?

At Chicago, I had the opportunity to study with Jon Levenson who now teaches at Harvard (that is the school called the “University of Chicago out East!”) I remember one statement that he made that stayed with me. He said something like this, “Even if we had two identical books, word for word the same (and they are not the same), but if they were, they would still be different books.” In the first place, the overall list includes the same texts. However, their texts are arranged in different order with the Jewish Tanahk beginning with Torah (Instruction), followed by the Nebi’im (prophets) and then Ketubim (the writings). The Christian Old Testament places the prophets in third place, if you will, finishing the collection with Malachi. In the scroll of the 12 prophets found in the Tanakh, while there can be several different arrangements within the 12, Malachi must be last for in the Jewish tradition, he is understood as the final authentic prophet to speak. In the Christian Old Testament, Malachi is the last book in the complete collection, and as it is placed just prior to the Christian New Testament, it has been perceived to serve as a transition between the two, “predicting” the coming of the messiah in terms of the life and teachings of Jesus. What we are talking about here has to do with authority. In the Tanakh, the Torah texts are privileged. The other texts do not carry the same weight and are understood as further commentary or explication on the first five. The prophets and writings speak to the past, the foundation of the irrevocable covenant between God and the Jewish people, if you will. In the Christian tradition, the Old Testament is seen as speaking to the future. In the Jewish understanding of these texts, the latter events described are filled-full (to coin a word) with meaning by the Torah. In the Christian tradition, the Christian Old Testament is fulfilled in the New which, if you will functions as a sort of second chapter, although even it anticipates additional activity of God which if recorded would I suppose make up a third chapter. In crude terms, the Old Testament is about Jesus. However, in light of the tragedy of the Shoah, Christians are re-thinking this notion and acknowledging that these earlier texts can and must stand on their own in a Jewish context as well.

7) Why do some think it is not appropriate to call the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible as in the sentence, “Our first Scripture reading is taken this morning from the Hebrew Bible?”

This is my “pet peeve” question – the simple answer has to do with the meaning of the word Hebrew as a language. Calling what is really the Christian Old Testament the Hebrew Scriptures may be a well-meaning gesture in light of centuries of Christian anti-Judaism, but it is generally not accurate. If we did talk about the Christian Old Testament as the Hebrew Scriptures, then we should follow by speaking of the Christian New Testament as the Greek Scriptures. Some have talked about reading from the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible) but then we need to make sure that what we are holding in our hands for reading is a copy of the actual Jewish Bible.

8) Why do we find a I and II Kings, a I and II Samuel, and a I and II Chronicles in our Bible?

This one is simple, but fascinating. The ancient Hebrew texts were written on scrolls. In synagogues today, scrolls still function as the center of Jewish worship. When ancient publishing technology shifted in the early first century CE from scrolls to codices, the forerunners of our modern books, the above referenced scrolls were so lengthy that the codex binding would regularly break into two parts. Thus Kings became I and II Kings and so forth.

9) If Martin Luther came back today and went to a Protestant church, what would he be surprised (perhaps angry) to find in the pew Bible?

Martin Luther especially did not like James, Jude, Hebrews and Revelation. He did not feel that he had authority to remove them from the canon and place them in his apocrypha, but he did move them to the end of his version of the New Testament texts. Luther despised these texts partly because he thought they spoke of works righteousness (his interpretation of Paul) and also because particularly the images in Revelation were so bizarre.

10) Are Christians rightly called People of the Book – why or why not?

This is clearly a popular way to talk about the common roots of the three great Western monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Deb Spaulding rightly spoke of how Wesley talked about himself as a “man of one book.” Of course, he also published condensations of many of the great traditional texts for his movement in what was called the Christian library as well. He was a voracious reader. So maybe, and perhaps maybe not!

The word “biblia” is more properly translated as library than one book. In that sense, we Christians should be called the “people of the books,” This is radically different from the Islamic understanding of one final revelation recited by Mohammed. Tradition has that this recitation (done over several years) is error free, because God had Gabriel directly “dictate” from this single book kept in heaven. In that sense, Muslims are clearly People of the Book. For them, if we quoted the opening text from the Gospel of John, it would read, in the beginning was the Word and the word would be understood as the Qur’an.

As an aside, in this context it can be seen why the fundamentalist notion of a dictated Christian Bible might be considered in error (perhaps a heresy). That would be closer to a Muslim idea, and not a Christian notion.

For Jews, the Johanan text would read “in the beginning was the Word,” but the word would refer to Torah as both the tradition of instruction and the Law (in Rabbinic terms, all 613 mitzvot, not just ten!)

For Christians, especially as the original Jewish sect morphed into the broader Hellenistic cult from whose thinking today we most directly ground our doctrines, creeds and self identity, the text would read, “in the beginning was the Word,” and that Word was made incarnate in the life and teaching of Jesus.

In summary, we are beginning to talk about canon. In Greek, canon means “reed” pointing to an ancient technique for measuring. In the first place, canon means the authorized list and we obviously understand that different traditions have different lists. Secondly, canon refers to arrangement, and we know that the different arrangements of the texts in the Tanakh vs. the Christian Old Testament has significant impact on how they are interpreted and understood.

Another example helps clarify the question of arrangements. Clairemont professor James Sanders points out how the Pentateuch itself represents a canonical decision because a close reading of what scholars call the Deuteronomic History reveals that originally there was a single narrative extending on into Kings and Samuel. However, when the redactor scribes returned from Babylonian exile, that narrative was split in half and the Pentateuch became the Torah. Why? Perhaps because the redactor was deeply suspicious of kingship and in light of the changed circumstances in Palestine and the power of the larger empires of the day, the essential identity of Israel was not to be found in the monarchy, but in the Law and the Temple. Thus, the Torah ends not with David but with Moses.

Or again, many scholars who carefully examine Paul’s two letters to the Corinthians point out that these two texts may in fact be pieces of four different letters. And we also get strong hints that there was another piece of correspondence that was lost.

Thirdly, canon has to do with authority. The authority of the Tanakh can be diagramed as a set of concentric circles with the Torah at the center and therefore most important. The Christian tradition has long understood that both Old and New Testaments carried the same authority. At the same time, some saw the Old Testament as incomplete without the New. Most of my Jewish friends wince at such a notion.

Finally, any discussion of canon today needs to speak of its function. In the first instance, the Christian canonical decision had to do with worship, discerning the most common resources for congregational study and reflection. The New Testament, of course, didn’t drop out of the sky as one piece, its shape evolved over the years until finally our forebears took a vote. They did not vote for the only 27 books. We are beginning to appreciate how diverse our early roots were. The vote did not have to do with the earliest books, some made the cut that came on the scene much later. The vote certainly did not represent the best 27, or the most holy 27, or even the most inspired 27 books. Some of the decisions represented random rationales. Irenaeus argued for four gospel accounts because there were four winds and four corners of the world. I suppose that if we lived on a pentagon, there might have been five!

Again if you find the time, I highly recommend Jaroslav Pelikan’s last book, Whose Bible Is It? Some of the most recent work by Bert Erhman, especially his Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities help fill in our overall knowledge about the Bible. I haven’t read, Elaine Pagel’s recent work with the newly found Gospel of Judas, but I did get to hear her speak last week and it seems to me that reflection on this ancient text’s caution against unchecked Christian martyrdom might just speak loudly in our current world scene.