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Book Review, April 17, 2010
This review is from: The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, And Authority (Paperback)
Lee M. McDonald's The Biblical Canon is the cumulative result of 25 years of research since writing a term paper and a thesis on the subject while at Harvard University in the early 1980s and then the Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon in 1995. In the preface he notes that his research has caused him to challenge his own unsubstantiated claims about the origins of the Bible (xv); early Christians had no notion of a closed biblical canon (xvi); the lxx was indeed the first Christian Bible (xvii); the expanded lxx of Alexandria was actually no different than the lxx elsewhere (xviii); the nt canon was not well formed by the end of the second century (xix), etc. McDonald predicts that our new knowledge of the canon will drive attempts to downplay the significance of or even change the current biblical canon (xxxi). Consistent with this sentiment, he boldly questions the inclusion of certain works like Ecclesiastes, Esther, Job, Song of Songs, 2 Peter, and others in the biblical canon (xxxi). Although from a conservative evangelical background, McDonald claims to have carried out his research without foregone conclusions (xxxii).
Chapter 1 (3-19) introduces difficult questions on canon studies. McDonald agrees that the present canon may be changed in principle but not practically (10), and notes that the earliest collections grew or shrank depending on the relevance of the writings (12). Even Paul "'decanonized' much of the OT's emphasis on the law" that was "deemed no longer relevant to Christian faith" (13). While the terms Old Testament and New Testament emerged in the second century, they were not commonly used until the fourth century (15). McDonald in chapter 2, "The Notion and Use of Scripture" (20-37), discusses the meaning of the term 'scripture' in secular and religious literature. Recognition of nt writings as Scripture was a "growing process" neither unanimous nor simultaneous among ancient churches (31). McDonald assumes 2 Peter was written around 120-150 or as late as 180, and argues that both Matthew's and Luke's redaction of Mark and Tatian's Diatessaron show that the Gospels were not initially received as unalterable Scripture (31-2). Hardly a trace of normative Scriptures in Israel is present until Josiah's reforms in 621 b.c.e., and when collections do appear, changes and deletions were common (33-5). Only the Law collection was fixed by the third century b.c.e., a loose collection of the Prophets by 150-130 b.c.e., and a fluid Writings collection some time later than that (35-6). Luke 24:44 implies the Writings category was not a well-known category in the first century c.e. (36).
In chapter 3, "The Notion and Use of Canon" (38-69), McDonald presents a historical sketch of biblical and non-biblical canons, continually noting lack of consensus among Jews regarding the ot canon and therefore concluding that the church "inherited from Judaism the notion of sacred Scripture, but not a closed canon of Scriptures" (55). Furthermore, only that literature that was perceived to have continuing adaptability and life was allowed to survive in the canon (63-8).
Part 2 (71-240) covers issues of the ot canon in chapters 4-8. Chapter 4, "Origins of the Hebrew Bible" (73-113), argues for the gradual acceptance of the three sections as Scripture: the Law by 400 b.c.e.; the Prophets by 200 b.c.e.; and the Writings by the second century c.e. McDonald dismisses the idea that Judas Maccabeus was responsible for canonizing the ot and also the argument that 'psalms' in Luke 24:44 refers to the Writings. Continuing his argument against a complete Hebrew biblical canon by the time of Jesus, he also dismisses the idea that 'Abel to Zechariah' (Luke 11:51; Matt 23:35) was an illusion to the first and last persons killed according to a canonical order of the Hebrew canon. He dismisses the idea that an Alexandrian canon accounts for the Christian acceptance of the deuterocanonical literature, and refutes the notion that Jude was not appealing to 1 Enoch as Scripture. In the end, it was Hillel who was responsible for the present scope of the Hebrew canon both by rejecting some works that the Essenes had accepted and accepting some that the Pharisees had rejected (113).
Chapter 5, "Early Jewish Scriptures" (114-49), contains information on the origin and use of the Greek ot, the Essenes and their scriptures, the Samaritan Bible, the Sadducees and their scriptures, and Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings. McDonald suggests the 25 works cited in the ot were "decanonized" due to the changing of script, inhospitable climate, and repeated ravages of the land (147-8), and that the eleven duplications in the ot indicate "textual fluidity prior to its stabilization" (149).
In chapter 6, "Stabilization of the Hebrew Bible" (150-69), McDonald discusses the earliest citations of a 22- and 24-book ot canon, boldly noting that "none of the lists that contain twenty-two books are the same in either Jewish or Christian sources" (169). Chapter 7, "Rabbinic Tradition (90-550 c.e.)" (170-89), argues that the ot canon "was not fixed because of a view that prophecy had ceased in Israel" (172), that "the so-called Council of Jamnia did not stabilize the canon of the hb/ot" (175), that the Rabbinic restriction of certain books (Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs) and acceptance of others (e.g. Sirach) show that even the Jews did not agree universally until later, and that the Aramaic Targums are too late to be of value in canonical determination. In short, "evidence in support of a clearly defined biblical canon in the first two centuries c.e. is not substantial" (189).
Chapter 8, "The Scriptures of Jesus and Early Christianity" (190-223), argues that the evidence cannot confirm that the only Scriptures acknowledged by Jesus were all the books of the hb/Protestant ot. According to McDonald, apparent biblical citations of nonbiblical literature show "the tenuous boundaries of sacred collections of Scriptures in the first century" (196). He offers the following in support: Mark 10:19 (of Sir 4:1), 2 Tim 2:19-20 (of Sir 17:26), Rom 1:24-23 (of Wis 14:22-31) and 5:12-21 (of Wis 2:23-24), 1 Cor 2:9 (of Ascension of Isaiah 11:34 or a lost Elijah Apocalypse derived from Isa 64:3), Jude 14 (of 1 En. 1:9), 2 Pet 2:4 and 3:6 (of 1 Enoch), Heb 1:3 (of Wis 7:25-26), James 4:5 (of an unknown "Scripture"), several parallels in the nt from Life of Adam and Eve and Apocalypse of Moses (195), and similar citations of such literature in the Apostolic Fathers. McDonald also argues that the early church (with the major exception of Rev 22:18-19) did not share the ot notion that the Scriptures were inviolable, and the early church fathers, church council decisions, and biblical codices all point to a late development of a fixed biblical canon. "The earliest Christian church was not canon conscious" (214), and ironically the current Protestant and Hebrew ot canon likely emerged from Babylon but was not widely circulated and known among Jews of the Diaspora until much later (223).
An excursus, "The Use of the Septuagint in the New Testament" (224-40) by R. Timothy McLay (St. Stephen's University) concludes McDonald's section on the ot canon. McLay argues that a bias in favor of the Hebrew text is wrongheaded and based on three (false) suppositions: (1) a Hebrew biblical canon in the first century c.e.; (2) the priority of the Hebrew text; and (3) the meaning of the Hebrew behind the Greek. McLay's intention is to show that the Hebrew Scriptures was not the sole matrix from which the nt writers developed their theological thinking and drew their citations. Rather, "a multiplicity of texts witnessed to the Scriptures in the first century" and authors "may have drawn upon any of them without distinction" (240). While most would agree with McLay's assessment, how can one tell if nt writers were separated from their Hebrew milieu as much as is claimed? It is certainly possible that the mt tradition pushed aside and even eliminated other Hebrew textual traditions, the echoes of which are now found only in the lxx. One example that begins McLay's excursus is Matthew's citation of Jonah 2:1 in Matt 12:40, which he says "demonstrates Matthew's dependence upon the Old Greek of Jonah" (225), yet I fail to see how this citation could not be from the Hebrew.
Chapter 9, "From Story to Scripture: Emergence of the New Testament Writings as Scripture" (243-84), begins McDonald's treatment of the nt canon. McDonald weaves the historical data to present a gradual process of canonization, first from oral tradition to written documents with regard to the Gospels, then the emergence of Paul's letters as authoritative, and finally the transformation from authoritative documents to Scripture. From many citations of the nt as Scripture in second-century church father, McDonald attempts to show "the tendency on the part of the second-century church to transfer the recognized authority of the teaching of Jesus found in the Gospels to the documents themselves, including the letters of Paul" (280). It is worth noting the logical leaps that McDonald is willing to take in his attempt to show that the four canonical Gospels were not the only ones accepted: "Even in the fourth century, when the four canonical Gospels were widely acknowledged in the majority of churches, we cannot say that only the four canonical Gospels and no others received recognition and acceptance in the churches, for some noncanonical gospels, acts, and letters continued to be read in several churches" (282-3). Such a statement is all too indicative of what one finds throughout the book, an apparent casting of doubt on what came to be the biblical canon based on the practices, in many instances, of a minority or of the scant resources that have survived. If the early...
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