I confess that don’t understand this post at all, although I assume it’s a discussion about the wording of his church brochure. But in particular I don’t understand the point about the translation of “community of peoples”. As far as I can see, in the context in which this phrase is used at Genesis 48:4 (also Gen 28:3 and Gen 35:11) it is particularly related to Jacob’s calling, and has to mean something more like “an assembly of tribes” and is about the unity of Israel. I fail to see why “community” is a better translation of qahal than most of the other alternatives. The only translation that seems to me to be completely wrong is HCSB “I will make many nations come from you”. I have no idea whether the Hebrew can be made to mean that, but it seems highly inappropriate in the context.
John Hobbins has encouraged me to comment on his responses to a Bible meme he really doesn’t like. His three responses are here, here and here, getting progressively more focussed onto the relationship between the covenants and their respective scriptural testimonies. He blames Peter Kirk for what he calls an “appallingly superficial” meme. If he read here more assiduously, he would have seen that I’d tagged him more than a week earlier with the same meme, and the prophetic comment “I tag John Hobbins (who will probably dislike some of these questions even more than I do)” Anyway, enough with the introductory waffle and down to the meat.
John’s starting place is not, I think, quite the same as mine. His favoured Bible translation (at least for the purposes of this meme) is, he claims (with reading age qualifications), the NJPSV. But this – quite reasonable and unexceptionally for a Jewish translation – is not a Bible in Christian terms, rather it is a part Bible. This is related to why questions two and eight are so annoying:
2. [Do you prefer the] Old or New Testament?
8. [Do you prefer] Moses or Paul?
John rephrases the questions as follows:
2. In what sense is the Old Testament abrogated by the New, and in what sense is it not? (The main subject of his second post)
8. In what sense does Paul set the law of Moses aside, and in what sense does he retain it? (The subject of his third post)
This is in line, I think, with the way John selects his favoured translation as one which contains the Hebrew Scriptures only, but it is also in line with the phrasing of the question. The discussion continues from the starting point of two separate things, Old and New, Moses and Paul — the latter contrast surely driven by a Lutheran (and somewhat mistaken in its reading of Paul) contrast between Law and Gospel. This is, I think, misleading. The Old and New Testaments are not opposed in this way; neither are Moses and Paul. In a sense (although this is not exact) the New Testament is opposed to Mishnah and Talmud as a commentary on the Scriptures and a guide to reading them rightly. It is in a unity with the Old Testament, not a disjunction. Paul is, even when he disputed the role and place of Torah, an interpreter of Moses, not an opponent. I start my thinking from the base in this historical perspective, that the New Testament begins life as the interpretation of the Scriptures. Formally and liturgically there are significant differences in the status of New Testament and Talmud. Practically the differences are far fewer.
In this context it is not only that word “or” that points to a false antithesis, but also words from the Christian tradition like “abrogate” and “set aside”. A promise that has been kept is not set aside, but after it has been kept it functions differently. A signpost that leads you to a destination is not abrogated when you get there, but you no longer look for it in the same way.
In some ways I can find myself agreeing with both Michael Bird’s as well as John’s rewritten summary of Paul. It is a question of perspective. When Paul is faced with those who oppose Torah to Messiah, he is derogatory indeed, because Torah taken like this is dragged away from the service of God and ultimately an idol — one that carries its own curse against the idolaters and those who disobey God. When, however, he is talking to his converts, or thinking out loud to himself, or praising God, Torah is refracted through Christ in whose shape it is formed and truly represents the wisdom of God.
(Oh yes, and I’ve oversimplified as well.)
Jim West’s latest report from SOTS in cold, damp Chester, seems a bit strange to me. Let me quote the main part of his favourable comment on the paper he heard.
The paper delivered last night by Susan Ackerman was really fascinating- but, resting as it did on the unquestioned assumption that Josiah’s reform actually happened, it’s major underpinning was shaky. She presented essentially the fact that Josaiah’s reform saw women pushed to the margins of Israelite cultic practice and so they turned, perhaps, to worship of Asherah where they were allowed their lost cultic presence. But if there was no Josianic reform, then there has to be another explanation as to why women participated in the Israelite cult before Josiah but not much afterwards.
Now if I’ve got this right:
- Jim agrees that there is major watershed in the time of Josiah. Before that period, women participated in the Israelite cultus. After that period they didn’t. Something happened therefore which needs explaining.
- The First Testament itself, and many commentators on it, point to a religious reform movement under Josiah, probably (possibly?) to be associated with a Deuteronomic theology.
- Jim’s theory doesn’t allow him to believe in pre-exilic historicity, so he can’t accept an explanation rooted in taking the text as a historical witness.
Something happened which needs an explanation. There is a ready made explanation lying to hand, which is expounded effectively. A wide range of data supports the explanation, but the theory doesn’t allow it to be considered. Isn’t this a case where a simple application of Occam’s razor might just suggest that the data should be allowed to question the theory? In other words, to turn Jim’s closing sentence on its head: “If there is no other explanation of why women ceased participating in the Israelite cult, then surely a Josianic reform happened.”
I’m sure I’d be grateful for some comments from the Hebrew Bible specialists here, so please chip in.
I am often surprised by the way in which moral positions are asserted on the basis of either individual verses of scripture, or indeed individual passages. I am also surprised by the ways in which people present biblical morality as a straightforward matter. Any detailed acquaintance with the complexity of the canonical collection of diverse texts shows how much interpretation plays a role. The mix of largely mono-cultural living, sufficiently comprehensive communal scripts for behaviour, and a plausible and persuasive tradition of interpretation once appeared to present a reasonable clarity. In the past the way of knowing and the way of living were largely unified.
One feature of the Reformation was its beginning to unpick the tradition by which Scripture had ben read. At the same time the path of knowledge and the path of behaviour were beginning to divide. The world was expanding its experience of other cultures. The foundations of individual choices over communal scripts were beginning to be laid down.
One feature of the nascent Protestant ethical tradition was a new focus on the Decalogue. That is not to deny the Ten Commandments played a role in Catholic or Jewish tradition, but to note that they now assumed a priority over all other biblical sources for ethics. They also typify the sense that morality is taught by proof-texting, and a direct voice of God in “God’s Word written”. In a wide variety of churches over several centuries, tables of the commandments took pride of place on the east wall, a new iconography of word and commandment to replace the art and symbols of sacraments and saints. The tables themselves represented those tablets brought down from Sinai by Moses with the laws divinely inscribed.
But, like many other texts the Decalogue does not speak for itself. It sits within an edited book among other edited books in a collection. This canonical inter-texuality puts subversive questions, not least by providing two versions of the same “ten” words – Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5: 5-22 . In what follows I want to note some of the main subversions of the text.
First, within the Exodus narrative on its own, the first reference to the ten commandments comes sometime later (Ex 34: 28-9), well after the first two stone tablets have been broken as a sign of Moses anger (Ex 32:19). Of these tablets the text says:
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back.The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. (Exodus 32:15-16).
But there is little to hint at exactly what the writing is. Between the giving of what we identify as the ten commandments, and this moment, there are many chapters of laws, of which the most recent have been concerned primarily with worship and ritual. There is no mention of the tablets in direct proximity to the Decalogue. That identification is made in Deuteronomy 5:22 but without a specified number – and that number is not entirely obvious. The texts are needed together to identify these commandments as those inscribed on the stone tablets, and to count them as being ten.
Yet if the texts need to be read together to get a list of ten commandments spoken by God and written by God’s own finger, this act of yoking them together highlights differences. The most obvious is a completely different rationale for the sabbath commandment: Exodus roots it in the priestly creation narrative, Deuteronomy in the liberation from Egypt. The ordering of the various provisions against coveting are slightly different, with Deuteronomy adding fields to the list as well. The tradents and scribes of this text seem able to differently retell words written by God himself.
In both cases, even a superficial reading of the text makes clear that it is addressed internally to married male property owners, the leaders and people of substance within the community, and, within the external narrative, to those on a journey towards freedom, where ownership of anything is some way off. The text demands interpretation, even as it stands: it is not “straightforward”.
But it stands also within a larger collection. And even within the collection of the Hebrew Bible it is subverted. The commandment against idolatry in both versions reminds us that:
I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:5-6 cf Deut 5: 9-10)
This is not strict enough for another part of the Deuteronomistic editing team, who wants to be clear that the sinner is punished - God is not going to wait for the next generation
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him. (Deuteronomy 7:9-10)
Equally it is not fair or just enough for Ezekiel:
The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own. (Ezekiel 18:20)
The earlier divine declaration associated with the revelation of God’s presence to Moses, is particularly criticised by the prophet most focussed on the presence of God with his people. Even within the First Testament, the words portrayed as belonging to God both in speech and writing seem to be up for conversation, criticism and dialogue. God in Ezekiel disagrees with God in Exodus, and even though the final redaction of Exodus most likely post-dates these prophecies the tensions and discordances are preserved in the text on its long journey towards canonicity.
When we move on to the New Testament, the subversion becomes even more noticeable. First, there is the implication of their inadequacy: more needs saying than they say: “You have heard that it was said” says Matthew’s Jesus (5: 21, 27, (31), 33, 38, 43) followed by “But I say to you …”. Included in this intensified recasting of the Law are two of the commandments, against murder and adultery. Despite various attempts to wriggle out of this implication, the most logical explanation of “You have heard” is that this was the way the crowds, the masses, received scripture: by hearing it read. And the most logical interpretation of “it was said” is as a periphrasis for “God said.” Just as in the First Testament subversions, a direct attribution of the commandment to God no more prevents Jesus from adapting it (and raising questions about his authority) than it did the earlier editors of Torah.
Then there are those subversions that either vacate or come close to vacating the law. The stories of Jesus prioritising the eschatological family over his natural family, or the demand to leave mother and father (illustrated most poignantly in the story of Zebedee being left alone in the boat with the day labourers), or the shocking demand to abandon even one’s father’s corpse and let the dead bury their dead: all these, at the very least, put a substantial question mark over a straightforward obedience of the commandment to honour father and mother.
Jesus’ own disputes about sabbath may legitimately be seen as about interpretation, but Paul goes further: “do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.” (Colossians 2:16). The observance of sabbath was to become a thorny issue in the relationship between Jews and Christians over the next few centuries. But it is a good illustration of how the divide made in later Christian interpretation between moral and ceremonial law fails to be worked out when it comes to the Decalogue, and neither does justice to the nature of Torah’s holistic combining of them, nor to Paul’s dismissal of sabbath law as part of these “ceremonial” laws.
None of this is intended to dismiss the Decalogue. I only seek to illustrate that the intertextual relationships of the canon drive the need for interpretation as a necessary work. Even this basic text of biblical morality is not a simple text, but needs a theological framework in which to read it. Unusually, even within Scripture it is a text described not only as the spoken word of God, but as the written word of God. Yet that does not prevent other scriptures interacting with it in development and criticism, intensification and abolition. Assuming any text can be absolutised by describing it as “God’s Word”, and freed from the demands of theological interpretative work, actually denies what the scriptures themselves do with this particular and cherished text.
(Part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England, which so far includes an Introduction, Article I, update, Article II, Article III, Article IV, Article V, Article VI)
The seventh article stands within the tradition when it stakes a claim to the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament, and introduces some basic interpretative principles, which are, nonetheless, not without their problems.
VII. Of the Old Testament
The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.
First, the article affirms the unity of the two Testaments, and identifies the unifying factor as Christ’s offer of eternal life to humanity. I am not sufficiently aware of some of the more obscure Reformation debates to know whether some of the more radical groups denied the validity of the Old Testament. Certainly, from early times, with Marcion, some Christian groups have sought to do so, and opposed the God of the OT to the God revealed by Jesus. The idea of a vengeful OT God and a loving NT one is still, unfortunately encountered in popular misconceptions today, by people who have no idea how anti-Semitic, how strange to the mainstream Christian tradition, and how alien to the writers of the New Testament such an idea actually is. The article is quite clear in ruling this out of court.
In making Christ’s offer of eternal life the unitary subject matter of the whole Bible, the article does something interestingly different to two of the more common ways of developing its unity. One is prophetic (and typological), namely that the OT points its promises and hopes towards the NT where they are fulfilled by Christ. This is fundamental to how, for example, Luke saw the scriptures:
Then [Jesus] said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. (Luke 24:25-27 NRSV)
If that is perhaps the main ancient way in which Christians read the OT, then the more modern way is in terms of an overarching narrative, in which Jesus is the pivotal plot element, to which the OT story was leading, and whose words and actions give the definitive shape to the final denouement. This is a view particularly articulated by Tom Wright (e.g. New Testament and the People of God chapter 5).
Neither view would be entirely strange to the framers of the articles, but by speaking about the same offer of everlasting life in both Testaments, they effectively place more emphasis on the OT in its own right as well. The words of Genesis, Leviticus, Job and Lamentations, to take some random examples, are themselves life-giving words. One of the problems of both the prophetic and narrative approaches taken in isolation is that they can iron out the specifics of the texts as texts for their own time, and with their own value. Yet these texts stand in their own right as historical, literary and spiritual products of their speakers, authors, editors and collators.
In one sense, what the article gives with one hand, it appears to take away with the other. By affirming the life-giving nature of the texts as they are, they affirm the real faith of “the old [Israelite / Jewish] Fathers” and open up some possibilities engaging positively with Jewish readings of the texts. By affirming that the offer of life is made by Christ (ironically used apparently as a proper name rather than Jewish acclamation), they seem to take such opportunities for dialogical reading away. Yet there may be another way of reading this. They locate their affirmation in a restatement of the doctrine of the incarnation as the essence of what makes Christ the one who stands between God and humanity.
In other words, the essential Christian affirmation is that God is able to speak words of life into the lives of human beings at any time and in any place, because God enters human existence in the one time and place of this one man. But that affirmation made, the full scope of human existence into which God speaks, and the wide experiences of the human authors by whom he speaks, become themselves of immense value to understanding more fully the mystery of God. There is every reason here for a careful valuing of the texts as they are, for what they are, and for how they have been read. The breadth of the OT is not simply to be funnelled into the narrower but vital concerns of the NT, but to be heard in its own right, as part of the God-man’s offer of life. Conversation about scripture with Jewish brothers and sisters cannot ignore that affirmation about Christ, but it can enter into a much fuller conversation around texts when those texts are acknowledged as life-giving in their own “person.”
That then, of course, makes the final part of the article even more of a problem, with its division of Torah into laws touching ceremonies and rites, civil precepts, and “commandments called moral.” This imposes late and alien categories on Torah, and rends the seamless robe of its vision of obedient life. We may be better paying attention to the idea of a whole community bounded in obedience, and working out, as Christians, how after Christ the end (τέλος, purpose, goal, termination – Rom 10:4) of the Law, we shape the Church so that the obedience of faith is appropriately and equally as holistically patterned as Torah is for Judaism.
There’s been an interesting set of reactions to the story about the deciphering of a cuneiform script naming an Babylonian character who may also be named in the book of Jeremiah. Claude Mariottini first explains why this character Nebo-Sarsekim may not be in your translation, but should be. There is, however, something a little circular in his argument.
- The cuneiform inscription showing Nebo-Sarsekim to be the name of a Babylonian court official confirms the theory of those who think that is how Jeremiah should be translated.
- The fact that the same name is found in the inscription and Jeremiah confirms “that the events and people in the Bible have a true historical background.”
For Peter Kirk “Details like this are a strong indication that the book of Jeremiah is a genuine eye witness account of events.” (!) But there are others who think differently. Jim West is, it seems both sceptical himself, and has been talking to “a leading Old Testament scholar” (why the anonymity?) who says:
1- It [the cylinder seal] is important, of course, and says, probably, that the biblical authors had access to Babylonian archives.
2- It also explains why we have excellent external evidence from some periods and none from other periods. That is, external evidence depends on those times when there were contacts between Assyria/Babylonia and Palestine.
3- The Biblical writers could read cuneiform.
4- Those archives were preserved, or at least excerpts from them.
Somehow I fail to be entirely convinced by theories that suggest the OT (and above all the passionate book of Jeremiah) was written by a bunch of scholarly archivists going on sabbatical trips to Babylon for a spot of intensive library research. At the same time, it does illustrate that “facts” like the similarity of a name (and a difference of title) only emerge as data is gathered into some kind of information-bearing narrative of how the Bible came to be.
The most balanced account is given by Chris Heard (whose post is worth reading in full) who advises caution in assessing the evidence, and notes that conclusions can only be tentative
What baffles me in all of this is the concern about archaeology proving the Bible. This is a significant part of the way the press reported the story, and the way many bloggers have commented on it. It suggests to me both a lack of confidence in Scripture as the valuable book by which the Church reads God’s story and her own, and a mistaken view of history as a collection of discrete and independent facts which somehow have their own meaning apart from the interpretative narrative in which we order them.
On Better Bibles Blog Peter Kirk draws attention to changes in the ESV, currently being listed carefully by Rick Mansfield. On his own blog Peter has a bit of fun with the replacement of wizards by necromancers. He is right, generally to describe most of the changes Rick has so far listed as trivial. They are often simply grammatical corrections.
There is, however, one change that I regard as no-trivial. The revision changes the text of Genesis 2:19.
(First edition) So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
(Revision) Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
With this change the ESV aligns itself with the existing NIV translation by making a significant tense change. All other translations I am aware of agree with the earlier version, and against NIV and ESV(2007). This includes LXX (which uses an aorist). I’d be glad to hear from strong Hebraists about this, but as far as I can see, this is a rather unusual way to translate the verb.
I may be unduly cynical, but have to ask: is this an attempt to unify Genesis 1 & 2 as a single narrative? Is that “had formed” meant to imply that this refers back to the sixth day order? God creates animals then humans. This single “had formed” presents chapter 2 as a detailed exploration of the events of the sixth day.
Taken together the divine fiat of Genesis 1 stresses the transcendence of the Creator. The anthropomorphic pottery of Genesis 2 brings God’s immanent involvement to the foreground. Eliding these stories together seems to do violence to both of them.
Have we got here in this “had formed” a theology of what sort of book the Bible ought to be, or Mosaic authorship, determining what the text is meant to say, instead of a straightforward translation of what it does say? I only ask, but it seems an important question to me.
What do we call the collection of books that are shared between Jews and Christians? Picking up on an article in the Chicago Tribune which claimed that the term Old Testament was insensitive to Judaism Claude Mariottini entered the debate with a firm commitment to the term for theological reasons. Chris Heard responded with a preference for Tanakh, as the Jewish term of designating them. Tyler Williams reminds everyone that this debate has been had before and has a great cartoon to boot! He notes that he uses the awkward Old Testament / Hebrew Bible. Chris Weimer goes for Jewish Scriptures, and now Claude Mariottini has returned to the fray with a stronger pleas for retaining Old Testament.
Clearly, both in terms of a non-confessional academia, and a confessional inter-religious dialogue, language is a problem. Within confessional Judaism, there is nor problem referring to Tanakh. Within confessional Christianity there is no problem in referring to Old Testament (or at least, only a small one as I note below). But most of us blog, write, speak and live within a multiplicity of overlapping contexts, and there we don’t know what to call these books. So what are the strengths and weaknesses of each name? I will leave aside until the end the issue Mariottini raise about what one then calls the New Testament if we use any term other than the Old Testament.
Tanakh has the advantage of describing the books essentially descriptively. It’s also as near as any name (other than a generic scriptures or writings) comes to being, as it were, canonised as a description in the New Testament (avoiding the question of what we cal that for the moment) — “the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44) However, unless you are a Protestant Christian, Tanakh is not co-terminous with the Old Testament, but considerably shorter.
Hebrew Bible sounds descriptive, but is probably the least satisfactory in two ways. First the minor quibble that bits of it are Aramaic. Second, and more significantly, it imports implicit Christian concepts of Bible that do not, as far as I can see, do justice to Jewish views of the scriptures. It neither highlights the priority of Torah, nor deals with the fact that in many ways Talmud and Mishnah as a hermeneutical lens for the reading of these books, that they function in ways not totally dissimilar from that of the New Testament for Christians. The same point about different canons of (OT) scripture for Jews / Protestants and Catholic and Orthodox still applies.
Jewish Scriptures sounds neutral but misses the point that these books are also Christian Scriptures. And ditto the same canonical discrepancy as above.
First Testament is increasingly the term I’m trying to favour (though years of habit mean I’m as likely to write OT / Old Testament as anything else).That is of course as much an implicit theological judgement as calling it Old Testament, but in my view a more positive one. I don’t agree with Mariottini that “The term “Second Testament” for the Scriptures of the church is not acceptable” (nor that we have to drop New Testament as a term if we say “First Testament.”) What’s wrong with calling the the NT “the Second Testament” or, being truly eschatological “the Last Testament”. In favour of either I’d adduce Paul’s language about Christ who is both “the last Adam” and “the second man” (1 Cor 15:45,47) without implying a whole sequence to come between or after. Like the traditional term “Old Testament” it cheerfully blurs the canonical discrepancy.
Old Testament is of course hallowed by tradition, and has the clarity that we know what we’re talking about (saving the blurred canonical boundary). It does, however, suffer a certain problem in modern usage, in that “Old” has increasingly become surrounded with negative connotations: obsolete, crumbling, out-of-date, irrelevant are just some of the ideas the adjective carries around with it in most contemporary English. When one adds that to the problems of finding a sufficiently respectful term in inter-confessional dialogue, one is indeed forced to wonder whether the term “Old Testament” is, well, how can I put this — old.
I’m prompted to make this second post on a fuzzy-edged Bible by the useful posting on the Better Bibles Blog listing all those English versions of the Bible that come with a complete or partial set of apocryphal / deuterocanonical books. The post also has a number of helpful comments.
Saying a “complete or partial set” indicates one part of the problem: different Christian groups differ (and perhaps have always differed) over precisely what the extent of the First Testament Canon is. The actual existence of different Bibles between the denominations / traditions creates a fuzzy edge for the Bible, where the answers to the questions, say, how many books are in the Bible, or how long is the book of Daniel, depends on the Christian tradition of the person answering the question.
The Anglican tradition deals with this fuzzy edge in a particular way. According to article 6 of its 39 articles of religion:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
[There follows a listing of the Jewish canon of the First Testament]
And the other Books (as Hierome1 saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:
[There follows a listing of the Apocrypha]
I will leave aside the dubious historical validity of “whose authority was never any doubt in the Church” — suffice it to say that the evidence shows considerable doubt over the first few centuries of the Christian era about several books of the New Testament. What concerns me here is the meaning of “the Church doth read” the other books of the Apocrypha.
The interpretation of those words must be guided, surely, by the lectionaries that accompanied the English Prayer books of 1549, 1552, 1559 and 1662. In that lectionary, to be followed compulsorily, the First Testament is largely read in cycle in the course of a year as the first reading at Morning and Evening Prayer. That cycle of readings in the earliest versions leaves out large chunks of what was regarded as “proper Old Testament” on the basis that they were mainly repetitive of other passages — Deuteronomy is largely preferred to much of Leviticus and some of Numbers, and most of Chronicles is omitted. It also includes the vast bulk of the Apocrypha — the omitted material is essentially the longer version material in Esther and Daniel. In later renditions of the lectionary the amount of material overall, but especially the proportion of Apocrypha, is reduced, but still very obvious.
“The Church doth read” means exactly what it says on the tin. The deuterocanonical writings exercise authority in their telling of the story as a guide to living for the ordinary Christian community. Their disputed status renders them non-authoritative for doctrinal arguments among the learned theologians of the church.
Some Anglicans today live in happy ignorance of all this. The last century’s worth of the Bible publishing industry has been interdenominational and correspondingly many people’s Bible’s don’t contain those books. Others of us think that the overwhelming use of the Septuagint by the early church as their First Testament, (and the many and frequent allusions in the NT texts to verses in these disputed books ) mean that the Reformers were misled by their respect for Jerome’s minority view, and that these books should have been accounted canonical.
Either way, at least for this Anglican, both historical and contemporary fact point to the apocryphal / deuterocanonical books creating yet another fuzzy edge to what we mean by Scripture.
Notes- i.e. St Jerome [↩]
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