The Canon

[Stuart]

Ben,

I reread the first page, and it looks like I conflated and misread a few things. Is it OK if I go back an edit out the couple of places I imply those were Trobisch's thoughts and not those of others or something I misread that was posted?

Reminder to self, never post after bedtime, you don't process the material nearly as clearly as you think you do.

[Ben C. Smith]

Ben,

I reread the first page, and it looks like I conflated and misread a few things. Is it OK if I go back an edit out the couple of places I imply those were Trobisch's thoughts and not those of others or something I misread that was posted?

Makes no difference to me.

[Stuart]

Ben,

I reread the first page, and it looks like I conflated and misread a few things. Is it OK if I go back an edit out the couple of places I imply those were Trobisch's thoughts and not those of others or something I misread that was posted?

Makes no difference to me.

Well just know I want to correct what I said. I do think Trobisch has a point on Paul, but the standard model works better for the Catholics and Gospels.

[Ben C. Smith]

Ben,

I reread the first page, and it looks like I conflated and misread a few things. Is it OK if I go back an edit out the couple of places I imply those were Trobisch's thoughts and not those of others or something I misread that was posted?

Makes no difference to me.

Well just know I want to correct what I said. I do think Trobisch has a point on Paul, but the standard model works better for the Catholics and Gospels.

I understand, and it is fine. Thanks.

[Irish1975]

I'm sure this has already been discussed elsewhere, but consider the text of this letter that seems to count in favor of the early existence of a published text called The New Testament. Eusebius cites it at EH 5.16.3 and attributes it to an anonymous anti-Montanist writer quoted at EH 5.16.3.

πλείστου ὅσου καὶ ἱκανωτάτου χρόνου, ἀγαπητὲ Ἀυίρκιε Μάρκελλε, ἐπιταχθεὶς ὑπὸ σοῦ συγγράψαι τινὰ λόγον εἰς τὴν τῶν κατὰ Μιλτιάδην λεγομένων αἵρεσιν, ἐφεκτικώτερόν πως μέχρι νῦν διεκείμην, οὐκ ἀπορίᾳ τοῦ δύνασθαι ἐλέγχειν μὲν τὸ ψεῦδος, μαρτυρεῖν δὲ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, δεδιὼς δὲ καὶ ἐξευλαβούμενος μή πῃ 1 δόξω τισὶν ἐπισυγγράφειν ἢ ἐπιδιατάσσεσθαι τῷ τῆς τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καινῆς διαθήκης λόγῳ, ᾧ μήτε προσθεῖναι μήτε ἀφελεῖν δυνατὸν τῷ κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον αὐτὸ πολιτεύεσθαι προῃρημένῳ.

1st translation (G.A. Williamson):

My dear Abircius Marcellus,

It is now a very long time since you invited me to write some kind of treatise against the sect called after Miltiades, but I have been rather hesitant until now, not from inability to refute falsehood and witness to the truth, but as a precaution against the danger that some people might think I was adding another paragraph or clause to the wording of the New Testament/Covenant of the Gospel, to which nothing can be added, from which nothing can be taken away, by anyone who has determined to live by the Gospel itself.

2nd translation (New Advent):

Having for a very long and sufficient time, O beloved Avircius Marcellus, been urged by you to write a treatise against the heresy of those who are called after Miltiades, I have hesitated till the present time, not through lack of ability to refute the falsehood or bear testimony for the truth, but from fear and apprehension that I might seem to some to be making additions to the doctrines or precepts of the Gospel of the New Testament, which it is impossible for one who has chosen to live according to the Gospel, either to increase or to diminish.

Wikipedia dates this letter to 193, although I'm not sure how that was determined. From the context in Eusebius, it seems that "Miltiades" refers to, or should have referred to, Montanus. (Can anyone explain this oddity? Another Miltiades is mentioned at 5.17, who is an anti-Montanist writer.)

Comments--

1) The 1st translation makes the textual nature of this New Testament explicit (paragraph, clause, wording), whereas the Catholic New Advent translation attempts to obscure this (doctrines, precepts, does not translate 'logo,' word).

ἐπισυγγράφειν is apparently very unusual, but its base is γράφειν, to write.
ἐπιδιατάσσεσθαι, according to Bauer/Arndt/Gingrich, has the sense of adding a codicil to a will.

These verbs seem strongly to imply adding words to a physical document, although it does seem weird that this writer should be guarding himself against being mistaken to do that, i.e., add words to the New Testament anthology.

2) There is an obvious allusion to the concluding words of Revelation:

I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (22:18-19)

Both use the verb ἀφελεῖν, take away.

(The Revelation passage does, incidentally, appear as if it could have been written by the NT redactor. It is not obvious that ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ refers merely to the book of Revelation, and not to the entire anthology. Cf. John 21:25)

3) Is it "the Gospel of the New Testament" or "the New Testament of the Gospel" ?

[Ben C. Smith]

Wikipedia dates this letter to 193, although I'm not sure how that was determined. From the context in Eusebius, it seems that "Miltiades" refers to, or should have referred to, Montanus. (Can anyone explain this oddity? Another Miltiades is mentioned at 5.17, who is an anti-Montanist writer.)

It is a longstanding issue in patristic studies; all of my information on it is rather dated, however, and I do not know whether more recent works have shed any fresh light on the matter. Refer to the comments on this passage in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, for example.

[Ben C. Smith]

Is it "the Gospel of the New Testament" or "the New Testament of the Gospel" ?

The latter: "the word of the New Testament of the Gospel." The phrase is τῷ τῆς τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καινῆς διαθήκης λόγῳ, which utilizes one of Greek's most elegant features, IMHO: nested noun phrases. One has to read the terms from outside to inside.

[Irish1975]

Is it "the Gospel of the New Testament" or "the New Testament of the Gospel" ?

The latter: "the word of the New Testament of the Gospel." The phrase is τῷ τῆς τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καινῆς διαθήκης λόγῳ, which utilizes one of Greek's most elegant features, IMHO: nested noun phrases. One has to read the terms from outside to inside.

That makes sense. The New Advent translation is simply wrong.

[Ben C. Smith]

Is it "the Gospel of the New Testament" or "the New Testament of the Gospel" ?

The latter: "the word of the New Testament of the Gospel." The phrase is τῷ τῆς τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καινῆς διαθήκης λόγῳ, which utilizes one of Greek's most elegant features, IMHO: nested noun phrases. One has to read the terms from outside to inside.

That makes sense. The New Advent translation is simply wrong.

I do not recall offhand any triply nested noun phrases like that in the NT, but there are plenty of doubly nested ones, such as in 1 Peter 5.1: μάρτυς τῶν τοῦ χριστοῦ παθημάτων ("a witness/testifier of the sufferings of the Christ," not "of the Christ of the sufferings").

This triply nested example is so cumbersome that maybe the translator was simply trying to get at the overall meaning instead of at an accurate, verbatim sort of translation.

ETA: We do something similar to these nested noun phrases in (modern) English, but we have to use hyphens: "an over-the-top comment" = "a comment that was over the top." The phrase in 1 Peter 5.1 would be "the of-the-Christ sufferings." English, obviously, does not extend this favor just to any old pairs of phrases, but in both cases a phrase in its own right is turned essentially into an adjective modifying the main noun.

[Irish1975]

Consider Bruce Metzger's outline of the problem of the canon:

The recognition of the canonical status of the several books of the New Testament was the result of a long and gradual process, in the course of which certain writings, regarded as authoritative, were separated from a much larger body of early Christian literature. Although this was one of the most important developments in the thought and practice of the early Church, history is virtually silent as to how, when, and by whom it was brought about. Nothing is more amazing in the annals of the Christian Church than the absence of detailed accounts of so significant a process. (The Canon of the New Testament, 1987, p. 1)

Thus even standard accounts of the history of the canon admit a paradox at the heart of it: the canon is both a fixed, "closed" set of texts, and a set of texts that, by the light of historical knowledge, has never been fixed as the canon, the Holy Bible, the authoritative scripture for Christians. Metzger tries to split the baby by concluding that the canon is open in theory, but in practice it is closed. That's awkward.

The paradox takes various forms. It appears that by the 4th century, as in Athanasius' 39th letter, our 27-book NT was actually fixed. But, as already observed in this thread, different churches and patriarchates and councils drew up different canonical lists well into the medieval era. Likewise, the modern NT draws upon 3 different text-types: the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine, none of which by itself is thought to be canonical. Again, for Metzger and others, it is not even clear whether "the NT Canon" means "a collection of authoritative books," or "an authoritative collection of books." The open canon concept seems to correspond to the former, while the closed canon concept characterizes the latter.

As suggested by my OP, I am proposing instead a deflationary understanding of "the canon," i.e. that it ain't what it is traditionally cracked up to be. Three books in particular are relevant to this argument: Trobisch's The First Edition of the New Testament (2000), David L. Dungan's Constantine's Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament (2007), and Charles Freeman's A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State (2008).

The theory is that two historical events are sufficient to explain the formation of the Christian Bible as the sacred text that we know today, rendering the standard modern accounts of "the Canon" unnecessary and obsolete:

(1) The 2nd century publication of the first edition, what Trobisch calls the "Canonical Edition," as simply a book, i.e., a codex anthology that could be bought and sold, copied and shared, read publicly or privately, as with any ordinary book. This remarkable codex anthology consisted of two parts, titled "Old Testament" and "New Testament," and was the unique archetype of today's Holy Bible. This was a discrete event, not a "gradual process," as per the dominant theory.

(2) The 4th century political and legal establishment of Nicene Christianity as the unique state religion, first imperially sponsored by Constantine and his successors, and then imperially mandated and imposed by Theodosius I and his successors, for the entire Roman empire (and later its successor kingdoms). An essential component of this process was the legal and financial support given by the emperors to the Christian bishops to exercise their functions in large, opulent, well-funded basilicas and other buildings, in which the Christian scriptures were to be read publicly and revered. The commission by Constantine himself given to Eusebius of Caesarea in 332 to produce 50 copies of the scriptures for use in his newly endowed churches in Constantinople is a known and critical moment in this 4th century development, as is Pope Damasus' commission to Jerome in 382 to produce the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible.

The first of these events is rather punctual and immediate, a true event: when the first edition was published. The second event is a long process that was only set in motion in the 4th century, and required a millennium to take full effect. Over the course of the middle ages, the Vulgate and the Byzantine "majority" text eclipsed local and eccentric canons, and became for modern Europe the "Holy Bible." It was only after the Reformation that it made sense to ask what "the canon" of scripture is or must be. Thus the Bible is a historical product of the late Roman Empire and its long medieval aftermath, not the result of any deliberate debate or decision by any church.

I think that this understanding of the formation of the New Testament, made possible by Trobisch's remarkable evidence-based demonstration of the 2nd century origins of the NT text, resolves the paradox in modern conceptions of the canon, such as Metzger's. The creation of the NT as book was not the same event as the sanctification of it as Canon or Holy Bible. The latter was a result of the contingencies of empire and the medieval evolution of Christianity. But together these events resulted in a fixed holy bible that was never formally closed in the pre-Reformation era.