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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The availability of Old and New Testament Scriptures in the early church
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
See this post in Dead Horses
Kerygmania Hosts will correct me if I am wrong in starting the thread here but it is certainly a topic about bible content and availability prior to the settling of the canon. It's a topic with both historical and theological significance in terms of the importance of the scriptures in the early church.
There seem to be two views. The first was spelled out clearly by F F Bruce in this way.
quote:
The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognising their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa-at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397-but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities.
Here's the link to the online book.
The second is that there was in practice a good deal of variation, both in terms of versions which were available and which books and letters were "in" or "out". This seems to apply particularly to New Testament Books. It does seem very likely that the early church used the Septuagint as its OT source, but there may well have been version variations there as well.
What are your opinions on these views of this aspect of early church history and its significance for our beliefs about scripture?
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
Was Sinaiticus the first complete Bible? Apparently it includes the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shephed of Hermas, but also the whole NT and, originally, the whole LXX OT.
Before then, did churches generally own just portions of ou NT?
And, an allied question, is 2 Peter in my canon? Is Revelation? I hardly ever read them.
I suppose I'm questioning the importance of the concept of canon. The fact some churches include 4 Esdras or whatever doesn't actually seem a big deal.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
Although that final formal settlement of the 'canon' was in the late fourth century, there was also a significant less formal settlement in the mid 2nd century in response to Marcion's Gnostic-ish attempt to 'de-Judaise' the NT and restrict it to AIUI pretty much just Paul's letters and a somewhat edited Luke/Acts. At that point the Church seems to have pretty much agreed on the 'Four Gospels' as authoritative - and ipso facto dismissed other 'gospels' for their lack of what might be called 'apostolic provenance'. (Thinking about it, the Marcionite controversy actually implies a nearly settled 'canon' very similar to the present NT.)
Again AIUI, by the 4th century the main outline of the NT seems to have been pretty clear and there appear to have been less than a dozen 'disputed' books/letters about half of which made it to the 'final cut'.
In relation to the early availability of the NT, a few thoughts.
II Peter's reference to Paul's letters seems to imply a relatively wide distribution, at a very early date if you accept the letter as genuinely Petrine (ie pre 60CE); and still an early date if you regard II Peter as a later writing, say mid 2nd century.
Peter's letters and other 'catholic' epistles seem intended for wide distribution through the church; this would probably be achieved by first more than one copy being sent out, and then of course churches 'passing them on'. It's not unlikely that a local church would make its own copy before that passing-on, and in the post-apostolic era more copies would be made to preserve and spread the teaching. No need for Croesos' "large network of scriptoria" to achieve a considerable number of copies.
Some of that also applies to Paul's letters; they clearly were copied and distributed quite early, and I understand scholarly opinion is that Ephesians was originally a 'round robin' type document sent round several Asia Minor churches, rather than a single letter to one church. It doesn't seem to matter much whether that was done by multiple copies initially or by passing on a single copy which was copied at various places later - again early copying would mean quite wide availability at an early date. (But please don't go exaggerating that into me thinking the early Church was 'awash with NTs'; clearly the numbers were not huge at first. On the other hand, the mathematics of 'doubling' could add up to a considerable number of copies surprisingly quickly just by recipient churches producing copies for themselves and to pass on)
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
One thing to bear in mind is that the great majority of Christians heard the sacred writings read, rather than reading them for themselves.
In many churches an entire gospel was read aloud at one time.
Moo
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Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I wonder if we can get some idea as to possible parallels from churches in what were, until recently, pre-modern societies?
I've heard that Ethiopian priests carry portions of scripture and other liturgical equipment in their turbans, for instance.
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Belle Ringer
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# 13379
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Posted
Somewhere I have a list of the books in the canon - for different wings of the church. Is it the Copts have 4 books the rest of us don't? I've forgotten who. Lots of agreement about the contents of the canon, but a few differences in the lists, not just RC vs P lists.
I do think the concept of "this is a list of books we all respect" is helpful, if understood as not necessarily including all books worthy of respect, but as giving us a common base to build discussions on. It also helps keep down claims that my grandson's essay is so inspired it should be added to the canon. Yes other things are inspired - poems, songs, stories, essays, films, collections of meditations and prayers - no we aren't adding them to the "must read" list.
As to reading a whole letter or gospel out loud, I wonder if out loud brings focus to different things than silent reading? Anyway, whole book can sometimes bring different understanding, different sense of how to all fits together, than just a few paragraphs offer. I totally flipped understanding of what Paul is saying on a dead horse issue when I read the letter in one sitting and saw the whole context of a commonly cited verse.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
One thing to bear in mind is that the great majority of Christians heard the sacred writings read, rather than reading them for themselves.
Yes. Widespread literacy is an artifact of moveable type and cheap, pulp-based paper, both of which post-date the early church by well over a millenium.
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Arethosemyfeet
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# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Although that final formal settlement of the 'canon' was in the late fourth century
Could you clarify what you're referring to here? I can't see how you can endorse the settlement of the canon without giving tacit validity to the councils and synods that approved it.
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Crœsos
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# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Peter's letters and other 'catholic' epistles seem intended for wide distribution through the church; this would probably be achieved by first more than one copy being sent out, and then of course churches 'passing them on'. It's not unlikely that a local church would make its own copy before that passing-on, and in the post-apostolic era more copies would be made to preserve and spread the teaching. No need for Croesos' "large network of scriptoria" to achieve a considerable number of copies.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "wide distribution". Your original claim is that "early Anabaptists [living about a century after movable type printing was available] would probably have access roughly equivalent to, say, mid-2C Christians [copying documents by hand on a medium much more difficult to work with than paper]".
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Some of that also applies to Paul's letters; they clearly were copied and distributed quite early, and I understand scholarly opinion is that Ephesians was originally a 'round robin' type document sent round several Asia Minor churches, rather than a single letter to one church. It doesn't seem to matter much whether that was done by multiple copies initially or by passing on a single copy which was copied at various places later - again early copying would mean quite wide availability at an early date.
That's the standard view, and doubtless there was considerable copying going on, but I think you over-estimate the productive capacity of such techniques. The difficulties involved are several. First there's the question of literacy. Estimates of literacy rates in the Roman Empire vary a lot, but 10% adult literacy seems to be a rough consensus. Literacy was also not a uniformly distributed skill but dependent on class and gender.
Another consideration was leisure. Did the prospective scribe, who most likely would have been an enthusiastic amateur, have several days to devote to copying out a short epistle, or a few weeks for one of the longer ones (like Romans), or months at a time for a Gospel? That's a lot of time to devote to what is an otherwise economically unproductive activity. (Assuming the scribe is an enthusiastic amateur donating his time to the church. If he's doing it for pay then there's an assumption that the church has resources to hire a professional scribe.)
Then there's the question of the expense of materials, something that's often underestimated by modern people. We live in a time where things are cheap and plentiful. This was not the case in the second or third century at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Papyrus or parchment (the writing media available at the time) were pricey specialty goods. Ink less so, but still not commonplace.
There's also the question of durability. Just because additional copies are made doesn't mean they stick around forever. Writing materials deteriorate, especially if they're recycled. Scraping or bleaching off previous writing to re-use the parchment or papyrus was common in Antiquity, given the price of fresh materials, and palimpsests were more likely to fall apart than manuscripts crafted from fresh materials (and neither papyrus nor parchment were as durable as modern paper). For the same reason, circulating documents between churches would have been risky. It was certainly done, as we know from literary evidence, but it seems likely the willingness to do so would have been inversely proportional to the size and fragility of the document in question.
Finally, there's the question of storage. Papyrus and parchment are both significantly thicker than paper. Books would have been bulkier than modern volumes (or of a similar bulk but with fewer pages), so a collection of scriptures would have required a sizable storage space free of moisture and vermin. This might have been difficult for a cult subject to occasional spasms of state persecution.
It seems most likely that the typical second or third century church would have had one Gospel, a scattering of epistles, and one or two of the more popular volumes of the Old Testament. And that would have been a particularly prosperous and well-supplied church. Interestingly that's more or less what we see from the historical information available. Various Gospels were favored in different regions. This is, needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), a very different situation than someone living in a society where a complete printed version of the Bible was easily (though not necessarily cheaply) available.
For comparison, in the early fourth century the Emperor Constantine (you may have heard of him) commissioned fifty complete volumes of Christian scripture. So fifty is considered a reasonable number of Bibles to produce if you've got the imperial resources of the Roman state at your disposal and want to promote Christianity to every corner of the Empire. For a church with considerably less wherewithal at its disposal, scriptural reproduction was almost certainly much less voluminous and much more scattershot.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
(But please don't go exaggerating that into me thinking the early Church was 'awash with NTs'; clearly the numbers were not huge at first. On the other hand, the mathematics of 'doubling' could add up to a considerable number of copies surprisingly quickly just by recipient churches producing copies for themselves and to pass on)
What do you mean "exaggerating"? You simply asserted that the availability of written scripture was pretty much the same in the second century as it was in the sixteenth. That's a very remarkable claim that practically demands closer examination. Yes, the mathematics of doubling would allow a "considerable number of copies", but that's subject to the numerous constraints listed above that you seem to simply hand-wave away.
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
One thing to bear in mind is that the great majority of Christians heard the sacred writings read, rather than reading them for themselves.
This can be somewhat problematic, since the audience is more or less at the mercy of the reader. If the reader decides that a certain epistle is pointless and never reads it (for example), the audience has no way to know.
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Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
Croesos, my comment was not about general availability of scripture in the 1500s but specifically about the Anabaptists, who were generally not rich, often not literate, and often had to live in RC areas where possessing a vernacular Bible would still be discouraged.
And my original point was that despite limited access to Scripture they carried on something basically similar in intent to modern congregational Bible study, by that combination of those who could read reading for the others, and by memorising Scripture.
Despite printing, the access of poor families to books was quite limited even in the 17th C., let alone the 16th.
Constantine's production of a luxury edition of 'pulpit Bibles' was in a somewhat different league to the less formal copying and passing on that I was considering.
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Crœsos
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# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Despite printing, the access of poor families to books was quite limited even in the 17th C., let alone the 16th.
By our standards, certainly. But by the standards of second century believers (your chosen standard for comparison) they were practically saturated with written works.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
It has just occurred to me that there were probably quite a few Christians who memorized various gospels and epistles.
This kind of memorization is very common in illiterate societies, and I would assume it was also common where books were scarce.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I think people still memorise large chunks of the Qur'an.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I think people still memorise large chunks of the Qur'an.
Yes, in Arabic. I know 10 year olds who can do it all. They don't understand a word.
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
1) Croesos; from figures you quoted in an earlier post I think we're actually not differing so much on the general figures involved, just I'm taking a more positive and less cynical view.
Agreed that the 17th C was 'saturated' in books compared to the 2nd C; fairly wide reading about the 16th C Anabaptists suggests that was not true of them, especially as I said the many living in RC areas where vernacular scriptures were still discouraged.
2) Boogie, LeRoc; 2nd C Christians and the later Anabaptists would be memorising scripture in their own language. 'Koine' Greek was the 'lingua franca' of the Mediterranean world - like English in places such as Kenya and India it was pretty much everybody's second language as well as the first language of the Greeks themselves.
The Muslim situation quoted, of memorising without understanding, is an interesting comment on the different attitudes of Christians and Muslims to their scriptures, Muslims being on the whole more superstitious. The nearest equivalent in Christianity would be I suppose the insistence of the medieval RCC on using only the Latin 'Vulgate' and refusing the vernacular to most laity. Ironic that in that case, unlike Islam, the Latin was not the original language of the scriptures; the restriction appears to have simply been about the self-serving authority of the RCC.
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Arethosemyfeet
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# 17047
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Posted
My recollection is that the use of the Vulgate was out of a, possibly misplaced, sense of confidence in the translation that had been done by Jerome. It's not a totally unreasonable idea that, in a world where Latin had survived in regular if not common use, and Koine Greek had largely died, that the Vulgate might be a better reflection of the original intent of the text than a fresh, vernacular translation of the Greek, and that multiple vernacular translations of the Latin might proliferate different and divergent Bibles. Try not to let your suspicion of the secular power of the church make you assume that it was composed of moustache-twirling villains. Apart from anything else vernacular translations of all or part of the Bible (and it's worth recalling how vast an undertaking even producing a copy, never mind translating, the Bible is) were widely circulated in e.g. Anglo-Saxon England. There is also a reasonable argument to be made that translations were (and indeed are) used to propagate heretical ideas. You only have to look at the work of the Watchtower Society to see how you can twist the translation of the Bible to your own ends.
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Crœsos
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# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
It has just occurred to me that there were probably quite a few Christians who memorized various gospels and epistles.
This kind of memorization is very common in illiterate societies, and I would assume it was also common where books were scarce.
Almost certainly, though this kind of "memorization" often isn't word-for-word.
I remember reading about a study done in the 1990s of Macedonian storytellers. They lived in fairly remote areas that until very recently had been behind the Iron Curtain and, most conveniently, the stories they most commonly related had a standardized text. Namely the Iliad and the Odyssey. What was discovered was that they never seemed to tell the story exactly the same way twice, though the general narrative arc was the same. Instead of relying on word-for-word memorization they seemed to use certain repetitive phrases (like "wine dark sea") as narrative signposts to navigate their way through the tale. Of course this is a lot easier with something in poetic format. I'm not sure how well it would work with a prose scripture, which would probably require different techniques.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
1) Croesos; from figures you quoted in an earlier post I think we're actually not differing so much on the general figures involved, just I'm taking a more positive and less cynical view.
Agreed that the 17th C was 'saturated' in books compared to the 2nd C; fairly wide reading about the 16th C Anabaptists suggests that was not true of them, especially as I said the many living in RC areas where vernacular scriptures were still discouraged.
Your contention seems to be that any relative scriptural advantage early Anabaptists might have over second century Christians because of their access to movable type printing was counteracted by the fact that many members of the group were poor and that they were subject to occasional bouts of official suppression. I'm pretty sure that even a cursory examination of second century Christianity would show this to be not so much a "difference" as "the same damn thing".
Interestingly the publication of vernacular Bibles (example) coincides more or less exactly with origins of the Anabaptists. Coupled with the advent of the printing press, the fact that a poor peasant in the sixteenth century, while more likely illiterate than not, was more likely to be literate than a poor peasant in the second century, the advantage of having a settled canon in sixteenth century, and the ability to produce much larger quantities of that canon would seem to put the sixteenth century heretic in a much more advantageous position (as far as scripture access goes) relative to the second century Christian.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I'm not sure how far the comparisons/parallels will take us ...
For a kick-off, as Croesos says, the canon was fairly unsettled in the 2nd century and there would have been copies of non-canonical works (which had yet to be declared as such) alongside copies of what we know as the NT today ... books like The Shepherd of Hermas and the Protoevangelium of James (discussed elsewhere) which some date as early at the 150's.
The Anabaptists were generally poor and yes, there were surrounded by largely Catholic cultures where the Vulgate was the only official version permitted.
However, access - however limited - to printed versions of canonical NT texts doesn't seem to have stopped the Anabaptists from maintaining straight-as-a-die orthodox Christianity.
You read any unmisty-eyed account of Anabaptist history - and non-conformist history in general - and you'll find it riddled with the resurgence of ancient heresies - Arianism, Sabellianism, Socinianism, Apollinarianism - you name it, you can find it.
In fact, the denominational history of all the non-state (and some state-run) Protestant churches is largely one of a constant battle against such heresies. Even such luminaries as Christmas Evans in Wales, the one-eyed Baptist revivalist, succumbed to heresy for a time.
That's not to let any of the state-run churches or the RCC off the hook - they had (and have) their own problems.
Equally, it doesn't deny that at times Anabaptist groups did achieve a reasonably high level of scriptural literacy and scholarship - and even their opponents acknowledged that.
No, what we've got are both things going on at the same time ... and it's all part of the struggle to find and agree shared standards of meaning and interpretation - part of the 'conversation' if you like.
The reason, I'm told, that the RCC clung onto the Vulgate was largely because they had an inordinate sense of its reliability - particularly compared with vernacular translations. They weren't necessarily opposed to vernacular translations in and of themselves - such things existed in Anglo Saxon England for instance - rather they were concerned that vernacular translations might be flawed and lead people astray.
They no longer believe that, of course, so there's no point in beating their 16th century forebears over the head for doing so nor for excoriating 16th and 17th century Anabaptists for the way so many of them quickly abandoned any semblance of received orthodoxy. Vast swathes of Anabaptism had become unitarian by the mid-1600s.
I'd argue that was pretty much inevitable. What is more remarkable is how many of them remained relatively 'on track' in small-o orthodox terms.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
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Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
Gnarr!
What I meant to say, of course, was:
'However, access - however limited - to printed versions of canonical NT texts doesn't seem to have stopped many Anabaptists from failing to maintain straight-as-a-die orthodox Christianity.'
I think I'm right is saying that virtually all the Anabaptists in Bohemia became unitarian and that it was pretty touch-and-go for most of the other groups at one time or other.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
by Croesos;
quote:
Your contention seems to be that any relative scriptural advantage early Anabaptists might have over second century Christians because of their access to movable type printing was counteracted by the fact that many members of the group were poor and that they were subject to occasional bouts of official suppression. I'm pretty sure that even a cursory examination of second century Christianity would show this to be not so much a "difference" as "the same damn thing".
Interestingly the publication of vernacular Bibles (example) coincides more or less exactly with origins of the Anabaptists.
On the first para, I thought I was also saying it was pretty much the same thing.
On the second, yes, printing made a difference - never said it didn't. There were precursors of the Reformation such as the Lollards based on Wycliffe's vernacular but not printed translation.
It took some time for the distinctive Anabaptist ideas to become clear in the general ferment of the Reform. In effect, some saw earlier than others the two facts that the NT teaches believers' rather than infant baptism and that spiritual rebirth at an age when you can do your own believing implies a different approach to the place of the church in the surrounding world.
The Anabaptists then found themselves persecuted by both Catholics and Protestants who had retained the dubious 'state church' model and had an obvious though worldly interest in defending it. That resulted in the kind of situation I outlined in which Anabaptists were doing, on the basis of the principles they derived from the NT,something similar to modern congregational Bible study but with limited access to physical copies of the Bible/NT, partly on economic grounds, partly because in much of Europe, particularly in RC areas, vernacular scripture was still discouraged.
Which was very like the situation of the early church - so I see no point in following this particular bit of nit-picking any further....
Clearly the early church went to some effort to keep itself supplied with scriptures; and that can be done in surprisingly large numbers without needing lots of formal scriptoria. As a thought experiment rather than a statement that 'this is what actually happened', on the simple proposition of one document being copied twice and the copies passed on and then the copies being similarly copied, it takes only ten rounds of copying to produce over 1,000 copies, and the next 'round' will itself be 2,000 more copies. That could easily happen over only a few decades. Obviously it won't have been quite that neat, or quite as many - but it seems likely that more copies of Christian scriptures were produced than copies of most other books of the period. Which is pretty good availability for the period.
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I think we are well aware of what Anabaptists believe, Steve Langton.
But not everyone agrees that what Anabaptists believe is what the NT 'teaches' - it's what Anabaptists believe that the NT teaches.
It's that tricky business of interpretation again.
I'm not saying that Anabaptists are 'unscriptural' or anything of the kind, simply that theirs is an interpretation and a 'take' just as much as anyone else's is.
If it was as simple as saying, 'the NT teaches believer's baptism' or 'the NT teaches that people have to be of an age whereby they can consciously decide to be considered Christians before baptism can be administered', then we'd have all been Anabaptists long ago.
I'm not taking sides ... I'm simply saying that not everyone believes in 'sola scriptura' in the way you do and not all 'sola scriptura' types agree with you any way.
The point here isn't whether the Anabaptists are right, wrong, good, bad or indifferent - but whether their position in the 16th and 17th centuries was analogous to that which pertained in the first few centuries of Christianity.
For various reasons, it's been suggested that in some ways it was, in other ways it wasn't.
There's also the aspect of collegiality and the interpretation of texts within community -- which, arguably, is how the RCC and the Orthodox and other historic Churches have maintained a belief in the classic Nicene-Chalcedonian creedal formularies (the non-Chalcedonian historic Churches excepted of course).
Lacking that kind of collegial aspect found within the episcopal churches - or a Rome-style Magisterium - it was harder for them to maintain a corporate sense of what was and wasn't 'orthodox' - hence the drift of so many early Anabaptist groups off into ancient heresies such as Arianism and Socinianism.
The Anabaptists were - and are - undoubtedly admirable in many ways but they were far from squeaky clean ... sure, they didn't have the kind of state-church connections that proved (and still prove) problematic for many of the historic Churches - but they had problems of their own.
I'm not making a value judgement there, simply stating an historical fact.
In the ferment of the Reformation and radical reformation, the Anabaptists were particularly prone to all manner of wierd and wonderful beliefs - and what is remarkable, as I've said, is that so many were able to maintain a semblance of received orthodoxy. That's all credit to them - if one values received orthodoxy of course - but it's also down to wider factors, I suggest - such as the continuing existence of older and more historic Churches - to which they could act as foils - and from where they could receive influences and engage in debate.
The Anabaptists didn't remain hermetically sealed from the wider society for very long - and those that attempted to do so - such as the Amish and so on - ended up with rather odd and arguably dysfunctional communities.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
Tangent alert -- and no, I'm not going to get into the state-church vs non-state church thing which isn't directly relevant to this thread ...
Rather, here's an issue of interpretation ...
Can anyone tell me how - in the 'solo scriptura' sense of 'sola scriptura' as it is often popularly understood (and I'm aware that 'sola scriptura' itself in Big R Reformed terms is different to that) - we can possibly make sense of an obscure verse - such as the reference to proxy baptism for the dead in I Corinthians 15:29 without reference to 'tradition' or the interpretative structures of the wider Christian community?
See: http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/15-29.htm
I say this not to start a debate about baptism - paedo or credo - but to illustrate my point.
Which is that it's not clear what the Apostle Paul is referring to nor whether he approves or disapproves of the practice. The scriptures in and of themselves don't address or answer that - although the balance of probability - given the consensus across all mainstream churches - is that the reference is certainly not there to encourage or promote the practice.
Here - as in much else - we go with the flow of received traditional understandings ... unless we happen to be Mormons, of course.
Tangent over.
It strikes me as axiomatic that the Anabaptists, for good and understandable reasons, were inevitably going to drift from what we might regard as received tradition ... towards Arianism, towards Socinianism, Appollinarianism ... towards all sorts of -isms that, truth be told, do emerge from time to time among various Baptist groups today ...
Not that they are absent from the historic Churches either - certainly within liberal Anglicanism and among mainstream Presbyterians we can find such tendencies. I don't know about the Lutherans.
It also seems axiomatic to me that biblical interpretation is a corporate activity and not one to be carried on in splendid isolation - or even simply among the members of one's own particular group.
So, early Anabaptist Bible study and so on is thoroughly commendable - insofar as it happened or continues to happen - within a framework of interpretation that stays within the bounds and limits of accepted orthodoxy.
Those bounds and limits weren't devised by the Anabaptists themselves, but received from the wider Christian tradition.
Lovely as Anabaptists might be, they can't have their cake and eat it.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Clearly the early church went to some effort to keep itself supplied with scriptures; and that can be done in surprisingly large numbers without needing lots of formal scriptoria. As a thought experiment rather than a statement that 'this is what actually happened', on the simple proposition of one document being copied twice and the copies passed on and then the copies being similarly copied, it takes only ten rounds of copying to produce over 1,000 copies, and the next 'round' will itself be 2,000 more copies. That could easily happen over only a few decades. Obviously it won't have been quite that neat, or quite as many - but it seems likely that more copies of Christian scriptures were produced than copies of most other books of the period. Which is pretty good availability for the period.
I still think you're not taking in to account several difficulties. Yes, you can get pretty big numbers if you're willing to stipulate geometric growth, as we've all learned from zombie apocalypse movies. On the other hand, very few things grow geometrically without hitting a barrier or two. For example, the assumption that every copy made is essentially "immortal" doesn't seem reasonable.
Another difficulty is that, as best we can tell, these scriptures were not uniformly distributed but had a regionally heterogenous distribution. It doesn't matter how often you copy and swap texts if certain texts simply don't exist in your region. For obvious reasons this was more problematic with longer works (the gospels, Acts, Revelation) than with shorter ones (various epistles) which are easier to both copy and transport.
All this goes back to my earlier point that without widespread literacy and movable type printing (or other mass-production technique) the kind of "all believers reading and interpreting the Bible" method of Biblical interpretation is not possible. It's even more complicated in situations where most believers don't have access to most of scripture and even the idea of what is and isn't "scripture" is up for grabs.
For example, assume you're a second century Christian. Your local church has a copy of the Gospel of Mark, Paul's epistles to the Philippians, the Galatians, and his Third Epistle to the Corinthians, as well as a Septuagint copy of the Book of Esther. Not a bad library for an out-of-the way church in the second century. You can't read these documents yourself, but there are two or three of your co-religionists who can. Given these resources (one Gospel, three epistles, one Old Testament history, and a couple literate neighbors whose time you can beg) you claim it's perfectly reasonable to be able to correctly extrapolate all of Christian theology. That seems remarkably optimistic.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
Yep. It also assumes that 2nd century Christians approached the scriptures in the same way as 16th century Anabaptists or 21st century non-conformists.
I see no reason to believe that to have been the case.
I suspect that whatever theology 2nd century Christians picked up, it was more through liturgy - or dramaturgy - than by close study of canonical and non-canonical texts.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
by Croesos;
quote:
I still think you're not taking in to account several difficulties. Yes, you can get pretty big numbers if you're willing to stipulate geometric growth, as we've all learned from zombie apocalypse movies. On the other hand, very few things grow geometrically without hitting a barrier or two. For example, the assumption that every copy made is essentially "immortal" doesn't seem reasonable.
Did you miss the bit where I emphatically said this was just a 'thought experiment', that it was NOT what I thought had actually happened, and that I didn't think the reality would be that neat or numerous? And if you're thinking I'm so stupid as to think all the copies are immortal I'm thinking I ought to feel insulted!!
Croesos again;
quote:
Given these resources (one Gospel, three epistles, one Old Testament history, and a couple literate neighbors whose time you can beg) you claim it's perfectly reasonable to be able to correctly extrapolate all of Christian theology. That seems remarkably optimistic.
And again you're (in this case massively) exaggerating what I actually said.... Also in addition to those resources locally available there would likely be some contact with other churches, even if not frequent, both by people from my group travelling out and others coming in, and Paul wasn't the only travelling missionary....
Gamaliel - briefly given the time of night -
1) Obviously the issues might be different between the time periods compared here; but basic human thinking doesn't change all that much, just read the NT itself.
2) Berea??
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Arethosemyfeet
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# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And again you're (in this case massively) exaggerating what I actually said.... Also in addition to those resources locally available there would likely be some contact with other churches, even if not frequent, both by people from my group travelling out and others coming in, and Paul wasn't the only travelling missionary....
So, in fact, the various churches would have been held together and their faith corrected and developed not primarily by the study of scripture but by the shared teaching of the Apostles? Now where have I heard that before...
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yep. It also assumes that 2nd century Christians approached the scriptures in the same way as 16th century Anabaptists or 21st century non-conformists.
I see no reason to believe that to have been the case.
I suspect that whatever theology 2nd century Christians picked up, it was more through liturgy - or dramaturgy - than by close study of canonical and non-canonical texts.
Yet they would have come out of the Jewish synagogue tradition -- in that all the early leaders were Jews, and many of the first non-Jewish converts appear to have been God-fearers, who attended synagogues even though not fully converted to Judaism -- and as I understand it, there was in Judaism a very strong tradition of close study of canonical and non-canonical texts, so wouldn't some of that have transferred to the early Christian churches?
I was also thinking of Berea.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Gamaliel - briefly given the time of night -
1) Obviously the issues might be different between the time periods compared here; but basic human thinking doesn't change all that much, just read the NT itself.
2) Berea??
Briefly, because I've got things to do ...
1) In essence our thought patterns are the same as those of people in the 1st century as we have a shared humanity ... but in terms of the way we think, that's changed dramatically over the years and is continuing to change.
That doesn't mean that we can't 'relate' to scriptures and texts written hundreds or thousands of years ago, but it is to acknowledge that our assumptions and interpretations aren't necessarily going to be the same as theirs. That's axiomatic and I don't see how it's incompatible with a 'high' view of scripture either ...
2) Yes, the Bereans. They were 'more noble' and did search the scriptures - what we would call the Old Testament - to check out the claims of this new Messianic sect that became known as Christians ...
http://biblehub.com/acts/17-11.htm
Look at the context. They were 1st century Jews not 16th century Anabaptists.
Now, of course I believe it apt and 'noble' to search the scriptures and check things out there - but the scriptures don't exist in a vacuum.
The Bereans were checking out whether the new teaching of the Apostles about the arrival of a Messiah and his life, death and resurrection was commensurate with anything found in the Hebrew scriptures ... which effectively represented received tradition.
To an extent the Anabaptists were doing the same kind of thing - checking out what they believed that Christians should believe against the scriptures rather than the received traditions of the surrounding Christendom culture, Rome and the national churches of the Magisterial Reformers.
But look what happened - to a large extent - and this is the issue you seem to elide:
- Many of them became unitarian.
- Many of them adopted long-dead ancient heresies.
- Others retained orthodox teaching on the Trinity and Deity of Christ - but it was often a close run thing.
Yes, scripture is primary but we cannot isolate it and separate it from the body of small t and Big T Tradition that surrounds and transfers/transmits it.
Whatever our churchmanship, high, low, middle, whatever else, we cannot get around the fact that the Churches acted as a conduit for the conveyance of the scriptures down the centuries. No Church, no scriptures.
It's a both/and thing -- again.
So, yes, the Bereans were checking out the OT scriptures - and they were commended for that by Luke/the author of Acts - presumably because he believed that in so doing they'd arrive at the same conclusions that the Christians had.
However 'noble' or ignoble the Anabaptists were, not all of them came to the same conclusions as the mainstream Trinitarian tradition within Christianity.
You wonder why late medieval/Renaissance Catholicism kept a tight rein on scriptural interpretation ... there's your answer.
They knew that people could (and did) go off the rails from standard, received orthodoxy if they started reading and interpreting the scriptures in isolation and outside the broad thrust of received tradition.
Yes, we may rightly repudiate some of their methods and their assumptions - but the fact remains, they did have grounds for concern - whether we agree with them or not.
I'm sorry, but you write as if the Anabaptists and the Anabaptists alone were somehow able to preserve and recover lost NT truth.
This is patently not the case given that so many of them veered off into what would be considered heresy by any standards - including those of contemporary Anabaptism.
Yes, all Christian bodies have regulated and contended with what they'd consider heterodox or heretical views - some more violently than others, unfortunately ...
But if the historic Churches are not to be trusted in their collective interpretative consensus because of their past or present connections with the status quo - how are groups like the Anabaptists any more to be trusted given that so many of them hived off into heresy in the first centuries of their existence?
That's not to dismiss or criticise contemporary Anabaptism, simply to acknowledge that it has no more special privileges than any other group when it comes to 'rightly dividing the word of truth'.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Cross-posted with Trudy Scrumptious:
Sure, I don't doubt that there was a continuing tradition of close study and attention to Biblical texts - a tradition the early Christians inherited from Judaism.
I don't see anyone here denying that.
I'm not expert on Patristics but I've read sufficient sub-apostolic and Patristic writings to know that these people were steeped in the scriptures - even if their exegesis is mind-boggling at times ...
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
No, what I'm saying is that it's a both/and thing. The Bereans, the Anabaptists, the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals and Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and All - none of them approach scripture in glorious isolation.
We all approach it in the context of a received tradition of one form or other.
Our only real choice, then, is either to accept and run with that tradition (or Tradition) - perhaps electically picking and choosing elements within it -
Or, to reject the received tradition/Tradition and develop our own.
There are gradations of the extent that people have done that.
Clearly, a group like the Mormons will have done it to a greater and more drastic extent than, say, the Anabaptists have done or the Anglicans have done or the Methodists or, as in your case, the Adventists ...
All I'm saying is that diligently searching the scriptures does not, in and of itself, guarantee continuing orthodoxy.
There are many, many examples of people who believe that they've stuck simply to the scriptures and who have developed idiosyncratic or even heretical views.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
There is a school of thought which sees Philo's approach as having significant influence on early Christian interpretative practice. He certainly seems to have treated the OT (he used the Septuagint) as authoritative and inspired, but he made free use of allegorical approaches.
I think the other profound Jewish influence was the prophecies from the OT associated with Messianic expectation. But it does seem very clear that authority and credibility were invested more in the apostolic witness and those thought trustworthy to declare it.
Also, I'm pretty sure that 1st Century exegetical methods within Judaism were different to the "sola scriptura" approach, which has to be seen as a later development. Though no doubt drawing to some extent on earlier practice, and no doubt seen as a kind of antidote to aspects of Catholicism which were disapproved, the methods and beliefs of sola scriptura were children of the Reformation.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by arethosemyfeet;
quote:
So, in fact, the various churches would have been held together and their faith corrected and developed not primarily by the study of scripture but by the shared teaching of the Apostles? Now where have I heard that before...
1) Obviously so in the very early stages before the NT even existed - but note that in addition to the said apostolic teaching they would have the OT to study and many of them were ethnically Jewish with significant knowledge thereof.
2) And by the mid-2nd Century, the teaching of the Apostles was embodied in ... er ... the New Testament, i.e. the Scriptures. Which is not to deny that there were other ideas around, many good and useful; but the NT would act - or should have acted - as a useful guard against people using claims of 'Tradition' which conflicted with the NT teaching.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Who guarded the "graphe", Steve?
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Well obviously the rabbinic Jewish tradition of close synagogue study of the Scriptures didn't treat the Scriptures as distinct from tradition -- look at the Talmud, the whole tradition of "Rabbi X says this, but Rabbi Y says that" commentary on the text. It's very much study and discussion of Scripture WITHIN the tradition of the community, which is what I would assume the early Christians inherited.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
It's very much study and discussion of Scripture WITHIN the tradition of the community, which is what I would assume the early Christians inherited.
A good phrase that. "Within the tradition of the community" says a lot.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Yes, absolutely, and which is, I think, the main thrust of the arguments against 'heresies' in the early centuries of Christianity.
In fact, didn't some of the Fathers complain that it was the heretics - the Gnostics and Arians and so on - who were quoting scripture in isolation and not in the context of the received, communal, apostolic tradition?
If I may be so bold, Steve Langton appears to assume that the first Christians handled the NT in the same way that post-Reformation Protestant Christians did ...
That's a rather anachronistic claim.
Who says that the Church 'should' have taken a post-Reformation approach to the NT?
The claim that 'the NT would act - or should have acted - as a useful guard against people using claims of 'Tradition' which conflicted with the NT teaching' might be taking to assume:
- That one's own interpretation is completely congruent with NT teaching.
- That one knows better than the early Christians what does and doesn't contradict the 'NT teaching'
- That the message is self-evident and needs no interpretation.
- That it would have occurred to 2nd century Christians to have approached the scriptures in a post-16th century way even though the Jews of the time didn't have a 'sola scriptura' approach either - hence the Talmud as Trudy has reminded us.
Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that anyone here is elevating their own, personal interpretation above that of any Christian community - but what I am saying is that we ALL OF US interpret the scriptures according to what particular set of lenses we happen to have adopted - be it the lens of Big T Tradition or one or other of the small t traditions ... which includes the Reformation and radical Reformation approaches too, of course.
They don't somehow magically transcend small t tradition - they are themselves a tradition or set of small t traditions that determine how we approach and interpret the scriptures.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
2) And by the mid-2nd Century, the teaching of the Apostles was embodied in ... er ... the New Testament, i.e. the Scriptures. Which is not to deny that there were other ideas around, many good and useful; but the NT would act - or should have acted - as a useful guard against people using claims of 'Tradition' which conflicted with the NT teaching.
But equally, Tradition (and reason) guard against the twisting of scripture to promote novel and/or heretical doctrines. If you're interpretation of scripture conflicts with the teaching passed down by the Apostles then you need to be very certain of that interpretation before you override that teaching.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Yes. The problem, though, as 'sola scriptura' types remind us, is that the Big T Traditions can't agree among themselves as to what constitutes a reasonable extrapolation of apostolic tradition/practice ...
However, there are pitfalls on all sides.
In this case, though, when considering the 2nd century, whilst it is certainly the case that copies of the books that constituted what became known or recognised as the New Testament were in circulation - it's also the case that many books that were subsequently deemed non-canonical were also accepted alongside them ... such as the Shepherd of Hermas for instance.
How would 2nd century Christians 'know' to drop that one from their reading lists, as it were, rather than to read it alongside the Gospels and NT epistles?
Who decided?
Equally, there were plenty of Christians around in the 2nd century - and on up into the 4th and 5th centuries - who would have been squeamish about incorporating the Book of Revelation into the canon - even if they had a sense of the canon in the sense that we understand it today.
This idea that somehow once the scriptures were 'out there' and generally accepted everyone should automatically agree on what they taught because it was so blatantly obvious is historically untenable.
That's not how it happened and neither is it how these things work.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
Plus some of the reformers, even the original proponent of Sola Scriptura, wanted to excise a number of books from the New Testament canon.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Well, yes ...
If one were to be cynical, then Sola Scriptura has always meant, 'Sola MY interpretation of Scripture' or 'Sola What I Think Scripture Should Say and Should Include' ...
Whatever the ins and outs and rights and wrongs, though, Sola Scriptura is just as much a tradition (small t) as any other ...
Cut it how we may, we cannot get away from the community aspect.
What we get in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries is the gradual agreement on a set of texts universally (or almost universally) considered to be authoritative and to form the NT canon.
That doesn't mean that the people involved in that process understood what they were doing in Sola Scriptura terms. How could they? That concept didn't arise until the 16th century - and only then in reaction/opposition to what had come to be seen as flagrant abuses - and heck, even the RCC acknowledges that in respect to some of the racketeering that went on in those days ...
I don't dispute that there was considerable engagement with the scriptures in the early centuries. Nor do I think that ordinary 'lay' people were necessarily excluded from theological discourse. I've mentioned the jokey Byzantine stories about not being able to get your hair-cut, your horse shod or your bath prepared without the chappie doing so engaging you in debate about the Hypostatic union ...
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
The Reformers and their descendents are right to point out the parlous state of biblical knowledge across the RC clergy of the time - and I'm not knocking the early Anabaptists for gathering to consider and discuss the scriptures. Good for them.
However, it is incontrovertible that they didn't all reach what would now be considered 'sound' conclusions from an evangelical point-of-view, quite apart from anything else.
As for the 2nd century, however few or many portions of scripture were actually available in the average Christian congregation - if there was such a thing as an 'average' - the fact remains that, like the Jews before them, the early Christians thrashed matters out in debate and discussion ... eventually, and like it or not, by imperial intervention - in the great Councils.
A consensus gradually emerged. I've observed here before that scholars have identified around 30 or so distinct Christian groups or forms of Christianity in the first few centuries - many of them Gnostic. All, presumably, would have been referring to a smorgasbord of texts - some later determined to be canonical, others not.
So it's hardly surprising that there was a range of views - hence the need to thrash out what was orthodox and in keeping with the apostolic deposit and teaching. Sure, what became the NT scriptures were the primary embodiment of that - but never in isolation but always in community ... hence the big deal the early Christians seemed to make after a generation or so as to who your bishop was and what their provenance and credentials were.
Ultimately, of course, that led to the development of notions of 'apostolic succession' - and whilst we might mock or chortle at some of the labyrinthine post-hoc attempts to provide evidence for some of these lines of succession, it's pretty clear how and why these things developed in the first place ... because it was the community and the scriptures - the scriptures and the community - the scriptures IN community that was seen to be the focus and forum for authoritative interpretation.
Of course, eventually you get what we might consider reprehensible developments - forgeries and so on like the 'Donation of Constantine' - and I'm not out to justify those ... but I can see why they felt the need to appeal to such things.
How did things function in the shady mists of the largely undocumented 2nd century?
Well, pretty much as they were later to develop, I'd have thought, only in embryonic form and obviously without the wealth, power and bling that the Church later acquired.
Who knows at what point itinerant 'apostles and prophets' settled down to become the precursors of metropolitan bishops ... the pattern varied from place to place, I suspect.
But what I can imagine happening is these guys (and gals?) going around and conferring, consulting and discussing which texts they found most helpful.
'Oh, so you use the Shepherd of Hermas in your church? It's great to read, but we don't tend to use it in our services. We prefer to use those texts with a definite apostolic provenance - the Gospels, the epistles. Sure, we still have our copy of the Shepherd and those who are literate can read it - but as far as public worship goes ...'
And so on.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Arethosemyfeet;
quote:
If you're interpretation of scripture conflicts with the teaching passed down by the Apostles then you need to be very certain of that interpretation before you override that teaching.
I've a more extended comment I'm working on, but consider this slight rewrite of the above....
"If your interpretation of scripture conflicts with the teaching claimed by sources external to the scripture to be teaching passed down by the Apostles"
I can be fairly certain of the teaching in the scripture; can I be as certain of such an extra-scriptural claim??
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Steve Langton
I think you must believe that scripture is perspicuous and therefore the meanings you see there are clear and plain. Well, lots of people have believed that and lots haven't. But why do you believe it?
For example, if we take together the twin scriptures that God's thoughts are not our thoughts and that all scripture is God-breathed, do they not point to God as Mystery, revealed in part because of our limitations. And therefore that scripture is to be wrestled with to get at meaning?
That's where community comes in. We share the insights of our wrestling. We don't say we don't have to wrestle. We do recognise our limitations and fallibility.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I can be fairly certain of the teaching in the scripture;
I would dispute this. And there are plenty of things (such as infant baptism) that have been the practice of the church since before we have extant copies of most of the New Testament. To overthrow them you need more than oblique references and arguments from silence.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
After long, hard wrestling over many years, I've come to similar conclusions to Barnabas62 and I'm still working on them ... it's work in progress.
The scriptures aren't a manual or text-book - although I do believe they contain 'all things necessary for salvation' as the old Protestant divines put it.
The scriptures emerged in community, they were written in community, received in community, disseminated, transmitted and propagated in community - the components of their constituent parts were agreed in community. We understand them - insofar as we ever can - in community.
We are not illuminists. Neither are we isolated from one another but we all draw to a greater or lesser extent on received tradition.
The very frameworks we all use to interpret the scriptures in the first place are part and parcel of one or other tradition.
We can't put a Bible in a corner and expect it to emit 'truth-rays' -- zzzzttt -- to keep us all on track.
We have to wrestle and engage with it and that happens in community. To an extent, that's how things work here too.
Whether we like/despise, agree or disagree with the various Christian communities, we cannot ignore their contributions and insights.
'The grape gains its purple tinge by looking at another grape,' as Juvenal put it.
'I need you in order to be me,' as another saying goes.
Sure, there's a place for congregational level Bible study - but it's broader and wider than that.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Baptist Trainfan
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# 15128
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Posted
I can't disagree with that. (Not that I want to!)
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I remember reading about a study done in the 1990s of Macedonian storytellers. They lived in fairly remote areas that until very recently had been behind the Iron Curtain and, most conveniently, the stories they most commonly related had a standardized text. Namely the Iliad and the Odyssey. What was discovered was that they never seemed to tell the story exactly the same way twice, though the general narrative arc was the same. Instead of relying on word-for-word memorization they seemed to use certain repetitive phrases (like "wine dark sea") as narrative signposts to navigate their way through the tale.
Can you remember the name of this study? It looks like a garbled account of Parry and Lord's research.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
by
quote:
I would dispute this. And there are plenty of things (such as infant baptism) that have been the practice of the church since before we have extant copies of most of the New Testament. To overthrow them you need more than oblique references and arguments from silence.
"Extant copies of most of the New Testament", if I remember rightly, would be the Chester-Beatty papyrus collection dated to the mid-200s. I'm not sure, mind, how relevant 'extant copies' are to the argument. I believe until the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery there were no known 'extant copies' of the Hebrew OT prior to 1000CE; and the same also applied to most Western literature such as Caesar's writings. Clearly the NT documents existed by mid-2C (mid-100s) at latest even on a cynical view of their origin.
On infant baptism I had a book (which I now can't access easily because I donated it to our church library) which examined the pre-300 texts about baptism and reasonably concluded that it rarely happened before the imperial nationalisation of the Church.
Kurt Aland's "Did the Early Church Baptize Infants?" (SCM 1963 - though first published in German in 1961) came to an essentially similar conclusion. He saw a growing practice of baptising infants not expected to survive infancy, related to a growing quasi-magical view of baptism as automatically washing away sins. This view, he thought (and produced evidence) also paradoxically led to a practice of deferred or effectively deathbed baptism, on the idea of washing away sin at a point where you'd have little chance of committing more! Constantine appears to have been an example.
Despite demonstrating that the early church did NOT baptise infants, Aland still preferred infant baptism on different grounds but seemed unable to provide scripture for the practice.
Scripture appears to give a different and far less superstitious view of baptism. Should I really give preference to a late folk superstition view over the direct apostolic teaching in the NT??
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I don't think anyone here is claiming that the NT documents - or a concept of the NT - didn't 'exist' until the process of canonisation was completed/ratified.
What is and has been said is that the NT documents weren't the only ones in circulation in the 2nd century and that quite orthodox (as opposed to marginal or Gnostic) Christian communities did regard some of these other documents as authoritative in some way.
The process of honing things down until what is now the NT was universally recognised as scripture took rather a long time.
So, in the absence of a complete NT sitting neatly in stacks behind 2nd century pews ( ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ) there was a generally recognised source of authority ie. the apostolic tradition.
Whether subsequent developments were in line with the apostolic tradition or departed from it is the issue at stake ...
On the paedo/credo baptism thing - yes, there are people who'd argue that infant baptism was a comparatively late development - and it's certainly true that baptism was often deferred until close to death - and yes, Constantine was an example of someone who did defer baptism until very late on in life.
The practice certainly wasn't unknown before the time of Constantine but how widespread or otherwise it was is difficult to determine ... as is almost anything from the mid-1st to the mid-2nd centuries.
Superstitions? Well, yes, those were around too. I remember reading an article recently about amulets found in Egypt from around 250AD which appeared to have scripture verses on as though they were some kind of talisman or magic charm ... although it's impossible to say for definite how these were used - perhaps some kind of early WWJD? bracelet ... ?
It's quite clear though, that baptism (however administered) was accorded a pretty 'high' status in the early centuries - the Patristic writings I've read certainly seem to imply some kind of baptismal regeneration understanding of the practice, rather than a Zwinglian style memorialist approach.
The whole 'born-again' thing in the evangelical understanding of the term is another later development - which isn't to say that people in earlier generations didn't have that kind of experience but without the accompanying theology that we are so accustomed to today.
Ignatius of Antioch famously wrote that he'd served the Lord for 80-odd years - effectively his entire life from his birth - so are we saying he wasn't 'saved' or lacked a Billy Graham style 'Get out of your seat ...' conversion experience?
One imagines that Ignatius of Antioch (born c.35 AD, martyred 98 AD - or born c.50 AD, martyred 117 AD depending on how you date him) - reputedly a disciple of the Apostle John was baptised soon after his exposure to the Christian Gospel - which would have been at a very young age it would seem.
I think all we can reasonably and safely conclude is that both paedo and credo baptism existed side by side to some extent in the early centuries and later paedobaptism became the dominant form - other in places where the Church was breaking new ground. Most, if not all, paedobaptist churches will practice credobaptism when people who have not previously been baptised embrace the Christian faith.
Sure, widespread and indiscriminate paedobaptism can and does fuel nominalism - and I've heard highly sacramentally inclined clergy of various stripes bemoan that state of affairs.
However it's done, baptism in and of itself doesn't ensure that anyone stays the course or maintains the straight and narrow path. There are plenty of 'back-slidden' people around who have been baptised as believers just as there are plenty of people baptised as infants who show no interest whatsoever in pursuing or practising the Christian faith.
What is interesting, in connection with this discussion, though, is that churches that developed outside the Imperial ambit of Rome/Byzantium also maintained or developed a high view of the sacraments and the practice of infant as well as believers' baptism.
We can't 'blame' Constantine and the development of close church/state relations for sacramentalism, paedobaptism and other practices repudiated by Anabaptists when these occured outside of the limits of the Roman Empire. The churches which spread across Persia and further east - India and China etc - all seem to have a pretty high view of the sacraments - even if they didn't develop the same level of bling and iconography that developed within the Empire itself.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
The thing is, we are all of us rather selective about which NT injunctions we choose to observe or ignore ...
'Sell your possessions and give to the poor ...'
How many of us do that regularly? Or who have done it at all? Ever?
I don't know about you, but I can't say I've ever picked up a venomous snake and come away without suffering the consequences (nor indeed picked one up ...) nor drunk deadly poison and carried on as if nothing had happened, nor yet spoken in languages I hadn't learned (and I'm thinking about real spoken, human languages here, not what so often passes off as 'glossolalia') ...
Nor can I say that I've ever cast out demons or laid hands on the sick and they've recovered ...
http://biblehub.com/mark/16-17.htm
Now, I'm being cheeky, of course, we know that these are disputed verses not present in all early copies of Mark's Gospel ... but how do we deal with them in a straight-forward 'this is the plain meaning of scripture' kind of way?
The thing is, we can't. We have to rely or fall back on the 'tradition' - the collective, received interpretation.
Otherwise we're going to look right charlies if we go down to the zoo this afternoon and ask for admittance to the reptile house or get some bleach out from under the sink.
What a certain kind of credobaptist tends to do, of course, is to fillet these verses up and select those bits they want ... 'He has believed and been baptised shall be saved ... Aha! believing precedes baptism. There we have it black-and-white ...'
Of course, there are other and perhaps more suitable NT references that could be used to commend the practice of believers' baptism - and I'm not knocking that. I was baptised as a believer at the age of 19 - I'd also been christened as an infant. I don't lose sleep these days as to which was or wasn't valid ... I'm just glad that I was baptised at some point - however it was done.
But that's by the by ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
First, Arethosemyfeet;
Sorry I absent-mindedly forgot to credit you for the quote I used in my last post. I have kicked myself hard; wish I could guarantee I won't have the same problem in future with someone else....
Gamaliel;
One thought on the way the canon developed is that it wasn't just a cosy academic discussion. The Roman equivalent of the Gestapo did occasionally come calling and confiscated 'scriptures'; the early church appears to have developed a distinction between those documents they considered really really important and would try very hard not to surrender, and those less important which could (still reluctantly) be surrendered in hope of satisfying the authorities.
You may recall that one of the causes of the 'Donatist' dispute was the unwillingness of the Donatists to forgive, and accept as bishops, the 'traditors' who had too readily surrendered scriptures. This argues again that at least the main outline of what was 'scripture' was known at the time of the persecutions shortly before Constantine's time.
I am, BTW, trying in this not to make too much of Constantine - just there are times he seems to be so inherent to the history it would be silly not to mention him!
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
by Gamaliel;
quote:
Whether subsequent developments were in line with the apostolic tradition or departed from it is the issue at stake ...
While I'm over-simplifying for brevity, I think the basic point is that once you have the NT available, you have an embodiment of 'the apostolic tradition' against which you can check other ideas which are claimed to be that tradition.
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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