A fuzzy-edged Bible (1)
One of the assumptions / assertions often made about the Bible is that it is easy simply to point to it. There is no problem identifying what we mean when we say the Bible. The only concession made is that the inspired Bible is the original autographs, and there are a handful of places where our reconstructions do not allow us to say with metaphysical certainty what those autographs were, though we can treat the text pragmatically as certain.
I don’t want to overstate the opposite case, because broadly I think we all do know what we’re talking about when we say “the Bible”. However, there are enough “fuzzy edges” to at least raise questions for both too many doctrinaire assertions about and certain doctrinal conceptions of “the Bible”.
One sort of fuzzy edge comes from mystery citations: quotations of what we might call “missing scriptures”. The most obvious are (all NRSV):
- Matt 2:23 – There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”
- John 7:38 – As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
- James 4:5 – Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?
It is simply not possible to discern what verses of our Bibles these NT writers thought they were quoting. The least likely explanation to my mind is that they were quoting from a book then regarded as scripture, but which came subsequently not to be so regarded. The evidence suggest rather that their canon was smaller than the one that emerged. More likely they are either misquoting from memory, or they are quoting a text tradition / variation that has subsequently disappeared. (The evidence of Qumran and the LXX, might well point us in the direction of a more variable text tradition.)
Whatever the explanation, we have texts quoted as authoritative scripture, by books recognized themselves as authoritative scripture, which exist nowhere within the canon as we receive it today. In that sense scripture itself canonizes a fluidity in the tradition that points away from tying authority and inspiration to a narrowly defined and precisely delineated text, and towards locating it in the transmission of a text tradition within the community, where it exercises its authority as interpreted text. Those who would want to speak of the church receiving a clear canon and a fixed (Massoretic) text from Jesus or Judaism need to come up with an explanation for these texts.
May 13th, 2007 at 4:32 am
Could these quotations come from more mystical interpretation/translations of various passages. Could the author of these NT scriptures be assuming a knowledge of underlying meanings, or bypassing a step(s) of interpretation/manipulation? dt http://www.davetilma.com
May 13th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
What you suggest is not impossible, but I think the simple answer is we don’t know. Either way, it points a more complex text tradition witnessed to as scripture instead of simply assuming there is an original fixed text which alone is inspired
May 13th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Actually, I would argue for a fixed text with different interpretations. If the quotations come from a community of interpretation that we are not familiar, it leaves the text “unfuzzy.” dt http://www.davetilma.com
May 13th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I don’t think so. Even if the quotation comes from a different interpretative community, it is still a text tradition quoted in scripture as scripture, while not itself being in the canon of those (us) who hold a different interpretative tradition to be scripture. That difference (whatever the mechanism behind it - which can only be guesswork) is itself what I mean by a “fuzzy edge”
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:53 pm
[...] turn firmly locates scripture as a tradition, a range of books that I have elsewhere referred to as a fuzzy-edged Bible. (Irrelevant note: typing that phrase into Google returns this blog as the first hit!) Scripture is [...]