Christianity
The Patristic Age 4—The Holy Scriptures
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, 13 July 2008
Scripture
In the midle of the fifth century, Vincent of Lérins declared that Catholic truth was distinguished from heretical falshood by the authority of the bible as interpreted by the tradition of the Church, and the latter was quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, “what has been believed everywhere, always and by everyone”. If ever these criteria left any doubt, then the synods of the Church would decide, so that doctrine could not be confused by idiosyncratic opinions. Doctrine could gradually evolve under the Church’s authority, but only subject to what proper interpretation of scripture permitted. Scripture was therefore established as the authority for belief, provided that the Church approved the interpretation of it, and this was to remain the rule for a thousands years until the reformation, the holy Church defending it by torture and murder in the name of God.
What then were the scriptures? Until the middle of the second century, the only scriptures that were at all accessible were the Jewish scriptures written in Greek as the Septuagint—the scriptural quotations used in the New Testament are from the Septuagint. By then, the gospels and the epistles had been written but were only narrowly circulated among the senior hierarchy of the Church because they were evidence that Christ had been crucified as a bandit, and therefore that Christianity was a subverive terrorist organisation. In this period, therefore, Christianity was presented as a mystery religion, the truth only being revealed to catechumens when they had been adequately prepared for it. The preparation consisted of readings from the Septuagint showing prophecies of the coming messiah, and Isaiah’s suffering servant.
The Council of Jamnia at the end of the first century was a meeting of Pharisees to establish Pharisaism as official Judaism, closing the door on messianism and apocalyptic jewish sects—indeed all other sects of Judaism besides the Pharisees—thus giving birth to the Rabbinic Judaism that has prevailed ever since, so successfully in fact that many people, even clergymen and Christian “scholars”, think that Judaism was ever thus! It had also closed the canon of Jewish scripture, excluding many texts that Jewish sects like the Essenes had revered, and, of course, also excluding novelties like the Christian gospels. It proved useful to the Church in defining what it was not, and thereby helping to separate itself from Judaism, which it was keen to do, especially after the rebellion of Bar Kosiba in 132 AD.
Because the Christians had emerged from the Essenes, who opposed the Pharisees and who called themselves “Israel”, the Christians felt justified in appropriating the name, calling themselves the new Israel, and claiming the Jewish writings as their own. Early Christians, like Paul, Barnabas, Clement and Justin mean, when the speak of “scriptures”, the Jewish scriptures and not the Christian New Testament. As we can see from the gospels, notably Matthew, the first Christians saw prophecy of the messiah throughout the Jewish scriptures by reading them not merely as history, but typologically and allegorically, so that messianic prophecies appeared in quite absurd places. This kind of exegesis came from the peshar method of exegesis used by the Essenes.
The earliest Christians to cite scripture included in their citations books which did not find their way into the set of books accepted by the Pharisees (“the Jews”) at the Council of Jamnia, so the first Christians had a wider, or different tradition than the Pharisees, who had decided to stamp out contrary and problematic beliefs that were causing dissension among Jews, and making them unpopular among gentiles. Wisdom, Esdras, Ecclesiasticus, Susannah, Bel and the Dragon, Baruch and apocryphal books generally had been quoted by Christians, but were rejected by Jews.
Later, the discrepancy between the Jewish canon (a Christian term) and the books considered scriptural by Christians led to reservations then doubts, until eventually the authorities of the eastern churches banned the use of the Apocrypha except in private. The western churches, however, remained more favourable to them. Even Jerome, though favorable towards apocryphal books, decided they were for edification only, and not for establishing doctrine. The main early authority of the Roman Church, Augustine, made no such distinction, defying the Jewish canon, and allocating 44 books as ancient scripture. The synods of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) took the same view, and before long so did the pope (Innocent I, 405 AD).
Marcion and the Canon
Irenaeus was the first to speak of the “new” testament, and acknowledge writings and scripture like the epistles and the gospels as equal to the “old” testament in sacred value, though others had occasionally spoken in the same terms, unless they were later editors’ improvements, or false interpretions of an innocent phrase, on the face of it, like “it is written” as implying a holiness that was never intended. Tertullian (c 150-230 AD) openly accepted the two testaments as equal in status. The Christian writings had become holy scripture by then.
Marcion, a wealthy man raised by Christian parents, was sick of the bad feelings for Christianity generated by its association with the Jews, yet he was a fundamentalist. He took the bible as being literally true, refusing to use allegory in interpreting it. He could not reconcile the love advocated by Christ with the harsh “justice” and legalism of the god of the Jewish scriptures. He proposed therefore to abolish the latter from books acceptable to Christians. The Jewish scriptures, he took to be true, and not allegory, so the god in them could not have been the same one as the Christian god of love in the New Testament. He concluded the Jewish creator god was the Demiurgos of Plato, not the true God, who was revealed through Christ. He considered the apparent anti-Jewish attitude of Paul to be justified.
For Marcion, anything that was excessively Jewish could not be a testament to the true God, and so had to be rejected. He therefore drew up a canon of acceptable works, around 140 AD, comprising an edition of Luke and ten of Paul’s epistles, all with any passages that were too redolent of Judaism or its Demiurgos removed. This selection of approved works was, according to Adolf von Harnack, the eminent German scholar, the beginning of the Catholic canon. Within a couple of decades, Justin and Irenaeus were writing about the four gospels, and Tatian had put together his Diatessaron, a harmony of them, no doubt intended ultimately to replace them. Paul’s epistles were similarly put together in a collection, though they had been mentioned already by Ignatius.
With the severe measure taken by Rome consequent of the rebellion of Bar Kosiba, the popularity of the Jews fell to a low ebb, but Christians had succeeded in casting off their association with Judaism. Jews but not Christians were barred from Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), and Marcion was keen to take advantage of it to distance Christianity totally from Judaism. By 160 AD, Christian were introducing more open practices to get rid of Roman accusations that they were a clandestine, and therefore illegal, organization. Justin says gospel readings were being made at weekly services, so Christian origins were slowly coming out of the closet. It no longer needed to defend itself as a mystery religion based on a long preparation for the revelation of the shocking truth that God had incarnated as a Jewish terrorist.
Judaism, which itself, in some of its aspects—the admission of proselytes, though not those brought up as Jews—had been a mystery religion requiring preparation and initiation, had virtually closed its ranks to proselytes, significantly changing its nature under the rabbis. Meanwhile, Christians had established the Jews as perfidious murderers of the Christian God. So, after the destruction of Jerusalem, Christianity was seen as independent of Judaism, and free to do its own thing in the Roman world.
Though Marcion was parted from Christianity, only a decade later Montanism became an heretical threat to the Church, claiming a new revelation, and the bishops saw the value of following the Jews and Marcion of defining a canon of acceptable literature. The Muratorian Fragment from the late second century defines just such a canon. Of the present New Testament, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, James and 3 John were omitted, but Wisdom, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas were included. For another three centuries the canon was variable at the edges. Athanasius, in 367 AD, prescribed the 27 books now contained in the New Testament, but not everyone agreed with him for over a century.
Inspiration
The simple mindedness of Christians is perfectly illustrated by their belief that the bible is the word of God. Ask them how they know it is, and their answer is that the bible says so!
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction.1 Timothy 3:16
Then their bible tells them that God’s inspiration of it is by His Holy Spirit:
No prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.2 Peter 1:21
Not one in a hundred Christians sees any problem in this, and nor did the sages of the early Church, after all, some of them must have written it! God wrote using a human agent inspired by the Holy Ghost. The immediate problem is why an almighty being has to use such a dubious procedure. God created the universe in only six days, but cannot find a reliable way of commuicating with His top creation, man. Instead the almighty and putatively perfect being invents a mechanism as malleable as plasticine, a mechanism that slimeball crooks and clergymen can freely change and interpret any way they find convenient to rob the poor, with their consent. Surely an omniscient God has to be aware enough to realize what would happen, and did. After all, He is to judge us all at the End, we are told. Is His judgement that sound?
Moreover, surely a being able to make the universe and everything in it also makes language and can fully comprehend that imperfect men cannot be relied upon to understand it properly themselves. Many parts of the bible are obscure, even to clerical theologians who make a career out of interpreting it. Irenaeus had noticed it and excused it because the bible was “entirely spiritual”. So the Christian God is not intelligent enough to render it in concepts that material beings can understand.
To absolve themselves of problems, the Church Fathers, like modern fundamentalists, persuaded Christians that the scriptures were free of errors despite their obscurity, and contained nothing that did not mean something. It can be seen quite plainly in Origen and Jerome. Christians make their God an idiot out of the need to preserve the man made scam they promote. Yet a perfect God cannot be an idiot, and a nonexistent God can be neither idiot not genius. It is the believers in Him who are the idiots, and the professional clergy depend upon it being so.
Not all Christians thought the Jewish scriptures were free of error. A Valentinian Gnostic Christian wrote about 160 AD explaining that they were partly good and partly imperfect. They were not inspired by a perfectly good God as much of his behaviour and instructions to the Jews prove on reading them without any need of persuasion. But nor are they inspired by an evil Demiurgos as other Gnostics said. Rather they had three sources:
- an image of God, also good but not perfect—a good Demiurge
- Moses, a man inspired as a legislator
- elders of the Jews, worthy men trying to do their best.
The part attributed to the good Demiurge was itself not perfect because he was not, but part of it was perfect, divine precepts like the Ten Commandments that Christ came to fulfil, mixed ordinances that needed to be seen as types or metaphors for Christian injunctions, and bad ordinances that Christ came to supersede.
The Catholic Church explained the difference between the Old Testament and the New in the view of Irenaeus, that the earlier one pertained to an earlier stage of human development, a view still held by liberal Christians who will not be held to any doctrine of infallibility. Christ fulfilled the whole of it with his simpler commandment to love others as yourself. No Demiurge, good or bad was needed to explain the difference. The prophets were inspired by the only God, but the imperfections and obscurity of their vision was caused by the difficulty humans have of seeing the future, even though inspired. Eventually, Augustine summarized the Catholic position succinctly as:
In the Old Testament, the New is concealed. In the New Testament, the Old is revealed.
The inspiration of the Holy Spirit was thought as being a kind of demonic possession, using demon in its original sense of a god (daimon). Philo explained that prophets spoke God’s words through their own mouths, having no idea what they were saying, though, unlike the joke of speaking in tongues, what they said was meant to be comprehendable, otherwise what was the use of it? Jesus extended the notion to every Christian when he told them to proselytize with no thought as to what they said, making any Christian lie into God’s truth. Modern Christian leaders like Bush and Blair take full advantage of God’s directions to them, having evident difficulty knowing what truth is. The Church fathers, though, thought a state of ecstasy was needed, so not everything that a Christian said was necessarily God’s words.
Interpretation
So, scripture was accepted as inspired, but its spiritual nature left it needing interpretation. What were the principles, then, of Christian exegesis? First, the content of the Jewish scriptures was entirely Christian. Everything in them pointed to the coming of Christ. In a noncanonical Christian work, the Preaching of Peter, the apostles claim to say nothing that is not in scripture concerning Christ, “scripture” here being the Old Testament. Justin Martyr said to Tryppho, the Jew:
The scriptures are much more ours than yours, for we let ourselves be persuaded by them, while you read them without grasping their true significance.
The problem of making everything in the Jewish scriptures refer to Christ was made easier by resorting to allegory, Barnabas saying that the mistake made by the Jews was to take the scripture too literally, though Philo, a Jew, had recommended allegorical interpretation of the scriptures at about the time of Christ.
The Church Fathers took it from Paul the apostle that allegorically was a proper way to interpret scripture. He said the story of Abrhaham’s two sons was an allegory of the two testaments. In allegorical exegesis, the contents of a scriptural passage are considered to symbolize something accepted as a sacred truth. Plainly, it is simply a question of fervid imagination and eager explanation to turn any scripture into any such imagined truth. By using it, Philo found Platonic philosophy in the Jewish scriptures, proving that you can find anything you like by this method.
Modern exegetes make a distinction between allegory and what they call typology, which usually boils down to finding incidents of the New Testament in the Old. People and events in the Jewish scriptures were types that later happened in the New Testament. The Jews themselves had seen their scriptures as typologically prophesying future events, and the Essenes were fond of it, calling themselves prophets for their skill at it.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Jews expected a prophet of the type of Moses, who had led the Jews from oppression in Egypt. “That Prophet”, Moses himself had prophesied, was expected of the same type to lead the Jews from oppression by the Romans. One such type was Jesus! Joshua had then actually led the Israelites into the Promised Land described in the biblical myth, and another Joshua was expected to lead the Jews into God’s kingdom on earth—heaven on earth, the kingdom of god. Jesus also had that role too, and from it probably came his supposed name, really a title—Joshua, the meaning of Jesus. This leader typified by Moses and Joshua was also typified by David, the first successful king of the Israelites in biblical mythology. All of these types were rolled into the messiah, which Christians say Jesus was.
The church Fathers used both allegory and typology—if they are different—the Alexandrian Fathers inclining to allegory, whereas the Antiochene Fathers preferred a more literal interpretation, and so typology. The distinction is far from precise. Origen was keen on allegory, arguing that scripture had three faces or levels corresponding to the body, the soul and the spirit. Simple believers read it literally as history, more sophisticated ones saw a bit deeper taking moral lessons from it, while the most advanced readers took from it spiritual truths and knowledge of the mysteries of Christ and the Church. Using such methods, largely derived from Essenic exegesis, the readings possible were unlimited, but Jerome concurred, insisting that allegory was necessary because of the inconsistency, incongruity and opaqueness of the bible.
The greatest theologian of the early Roman Church, Augustine, delighted in allegory, expanding Origen’s three levels to four. He laid down the rule that, if a biblical passage taken literally, was inconsistent with doctrine, then it was to be read as allegory. It assumes doctrine is known, and naturally the Church knew it. More broadly still, Augustine thought nothing in the scriptures could be interpreted as being contrary to the love of God or the love of man. At least with this exegetical rule, the Christian could not use scripture to foment hatred between people. Even so they did. They just discarded the rule!
At Antioch, where a more literal interpretation was preferred, the Fathers sought spiritual insight (theoria) as well as the simple literal meaning. Severian of Gabbala (c 400 AD) disdained “to force allegory out of history” instead preferring “to preserve the history while discerning the ‘theoria’ over and above it”. Diodore added that it was important that the insight must not exclude the simple historical reading because then it was merely allegory. A simple example would be Jonah and the whale which was literally true but was at the same time a type of Christ’s three day entombment, and his resurrection.
