Understanding the Bible — Inspiration and How Our Bible Was Formed
The subject before us in this study is inspiration and how our Bible was formed.
Anybody who is going to try and develop an understanding of the Bible and of how God has moved in some unique way into its composition has, consciously or unconsciously, in the back of their mind, a theory as to how this happened. In this study, I am not going to try and build that theory for you. That’s something you’ll have to do. I’m not going to try and do your homework for you. Depending on who you are and what your views are, you will have to struggle with this issue yourself. However, I think perhaps, I can provide some of the raw materials that will be of considerable use to you in trying to formulate a theory, understanding, that is appropriate to the nature of the material that is before us.
Now it is my privilege living and working in the Middle East over the past thirty years to do research in some of the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament. And it’s very interesting that on the first page there is almost always a picture of some kind. And usually this is a picture of the author, let’s say it’s Luke writing the Gospel of Luke, or Matthew writing Matthew. And Luke is always sitting there and there is usually an angel painted up in the corner dictating to him.
Now I’ve noticed that these angels are very very bright. If the manuscript happens to be a Syriac manuscript, the angel is dictating in Syriac. And if it’s an Arabic manuscript, sure enough we’ve got an Arabic speaking angel. And if it’s a Greek manuscript, why it’s a Greek angel. And a Latin manuscript, it’s a Latin angel. So those angels are much sharper than maybe we think they are. Now what I am saying is this picture is really a way by which the person who copied the manuscript is affirming his understanding of inspiration. That is, it was dictated.
Now, there are really basically five different ways in which folk with different points of view have looked at the inspiration of the Bible. Some have called it mechanical. The author was just simply a tape recorder and God spoke through the mike and this person copied it down. This is a very well known view and it’s a view such as is reflected in the pictures of these manuscripts which we’ve just mentioned.
The second is called verbal inspiration which says that God used the personality of the author but verbally inspired all the words.
A third view says, no, God inspired the thoughts of the author and then the author composed his own words. And so the inspiration is to the idea in the mind which the author then put down in his own way.
And then the fourth view says, no, this is like the inspiration of the poet who has vision for something that is given. Only the inspiration given to the authors of the Bible is on a higher level than the ordinary poet.
And then a fifth view says yes the authors of the Bible are inspired, but the inspiration of Shakespeare and Browning is basically the same as the Bible. They just happen to be in different cultures and are talking about different subjects. And so we’ve got an enormous range of point of view that has been reflected all across the centuries. And certainly, you will probably find yourself in someplace, some definition of one of those five.
Now, others say, the real way to go at this is not through a sort of logical definition of principle building around these five theories, but rather the best way to go is to take a text. And so the text of the Bible that they choose is usually 2 Timothy 3:16 which reads, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction for training in righteousness.” Now in our Greek text, the word that occurs, all ______, all writing, they mean all scripture, ___________, is God-breathed. And so folks say, well, that’s the word that ordinarily is translated “inspired” and so here the author is talking about some unique way in which God spirit moves in and through the author. He doesn’t really define for us which of the theories to nail down, precisely. But it’s an important text.
Now, folks can take that word, make a word study of it, then build a theory around it. And many have tried to do so. Part of the problem is that when that text was authored, “the Scriptures” for the author, whether it was Paul or one of his students, the Scripture at that period, in the time of Jesus and in the decades immediately after the time of Jesus was merely two-thirds of the Old Testament. The Jewish community itself had not yet selected the books which were to be for them authoritative. And so thereby, that text refers to those that were already selected and thereby certainly doesn’t refer to anything in the New Testament, and can only refer to books already known as the Scriptures which at that time meant two-thirds of the Old Testament.
So helpful though that text is, it really is not fully adequate for our understanding of the nature of our subject. Now what we’d like to do is to try and do is take a very brief overlook at how this particular collection of books came to be put together under one cover and given for us its unique authority.
It starts back in the Old Testament and either during the exile, or, many scholars think, in the fifth century after the exile—many Jewish scholars also affirm this—that the Old Testament community started off and said the first five books of the Law, the books of Moses, should be given unique authority. And so thereby they in a sense picked those as the first scriptures for their community. The Samaritans, who did not go off into the exile, were a part of that decision, apparently, and they to this day affirm only the first five books of the Old Testament as Scripture. And they think that anyone who listens to or reads the prophets, and considers them on the same level, has departed from the true faith.
Sometime after that, fifth or sixth century BC, the Old Testament community selected the prophets and they made a second book, the nebiim, the prophets. They included the books that we call the historical books, Kings and Samuel and so on, as among the prophets.
The third collection which was called, finally, the writings, was not selected by the time of Jesus. The Psalms were kind of included as a part of the scriptures, but not really officially so by any leadership group. And so, for example, at the end of the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is on the road to Emmaus, in the 24th chapter, in verse 44, Jesus makes a statement about the nature of the scriptures as he understood them. We read, “Then he said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything written about me in the Law of Moses,’”—there’s the first collection—“‘and the prophets’”—there’s the second collection—“‘and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’” Ah, so the third collection, the Psalms, was already starting to have some special place in the community of faith.
Now what happened after this? Well there was a war, as you perhaps know, and that the Jews revolted against Rome. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed, but before it was destroyed, a very famous rabbinic scholar by the name of Johan ben Zakkai, put himself into a coffin, so tradition says, and got his disciples to carry the coffin out of the city as though he were dead. You see, the zealots didn’t want anybody to desert. But OK bury the dead; that’s all right. He got out and he then managed to get his way through the Roman army. And the Romans said, OK, we’ll let you do your thing. e went down to a village on the sea coast of Palestine, called Jamnia. And he set up there a school of rabbinic studies. In effect, he carried on his own academy. He was a scholar known in Jerusalem before that and had students and he just continued in his reflection on the law.
When Jerusalem fell, he became the leader of a new nucleus of people who were trying to carry on the old traditions of Judaism through the eyes of this branch of Judaism, namely the branch of the rabbinic scholar. After his death, the academy which he founded there in Jamnia had a council and they said we’ve got to finalize our collection of The scriptures. They took the Psalms, Chronicles, Daniel, Ezra, Esther, the Song of Songs, Lamentation of Jeremiah, all of which were not in the nebiim, not in the book of the prophets, and they said, oh yes, also Ezekiel. They said these also should be authoritative for us. They called them the writings. And so the writings became the third collection.
The Christian church went along with that decision. And so the Old Testament for them, and for us, becomes basically the same collection. Some people who were working with the Old Testament in Greek, added a few extra books. And these are called the apocrypha. And so the Hebrew bible had a shorter collection and the Greek bible had a longer collection.
The Reformers, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, said Aha, the early church had a difference of opinion on this question and so the question is open for us. They looked at it again and they decided, no, these extra Greek books we don’t think are of the same quality as those Hebrew books. We’ll keep to the shorter Hebrew Old Testament.
OK, so the early church starts off the writings in the time of Jesus are two-thirds of the Old Testament. By the end of the first century is the whole Old Testament. But, they have also started to say, we have other books that we are beginning to sense have unique authority. By the end of the first century as best we can figure it out, the four Gospels were given unique authority. They were kind of added to the Old Testament for the Christians.
When we come to the second century, there was a big debate over other books and gradually the writings of Paul were included. There was a man who came along about the year 140. And his name was Marcion. And he had a lot of heretical ideas. And he in fact threw the Old Testament out. And he took the New Testament and he began to cut out bits and pieces. And he developed theories that the church said this really isn’t Christian and we want no part of this. He picked Luke and the writings of Paul and said this is the scripture. Pressure from him probably speeded up the process and by the end of the second century, Christians had selected the Gospels and the writings of Paul as a part of The Scriptures.
But still there was debate. The debate was over 2nd and 3rd John. They said, “We really don’t see that there’s that much important stuff in it that we should include this as a book of authority for us.” They were nervous about 2nd Peter. They said the style isn’t like 1st Peter and we’re nervous about who wrote it. They were a little bit worried about Jude because it quoted books that are not in the Bible. And they said, by including this book are we thereby saying those are also authoritative for us? They were nervous about Revelation because they couldn’t understand it. They were nervous about the book of Hebrews because they didn’t know who its author was.
And so in the third century, these disputed books were still under discussion. It wasn’t until the year 367 that Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria, in his letter at Easter time, said to all the people in that letter, “We have general agreement as to what the books are that should be authoritative for us as Christians.” He then read out the names of the 27 books that we have in the New Testament. So it took the church 300 and some 60, 350 years, to make this decision.
In the earlier part of this long debate, the issue was what are the books the apostles have passed down to us. They didn’t say the books which the apostles wrote. They wanted to know did the early apostles endorse these books. Now Luke wasn’t one of the apostles, but he wrote a book. The book had apostolic endorsement. Later on in the process, they kind of forgot—this is two hundred years later—they said, no, no, what are the books the apostles wrote. Luke, well he got it from Paul and Paul was one of the apostles. But really, the earlier question was what have the apostles endorsed? It’s important for us to remember that because when we take a scientific question and ask ourselves, “Is the author of Second Peter the same person as the author of First Peter?” we’re not really debating its quality or its worth. We’re merely asking who wrote it. And if the question is apostolic endorsement, then we really don’t care who wrote it. We do care whether or not the early apostles endorsed the book. And if they did, then it’s a book of quality for us to take seriously. So the question of authorship is an open question and not a question on which hangs the question of inspiration.
Now, another shift took place. Earlier on the question was which books should we consider authoritative? Later, in the debate, the question shifted to which books are inspired? The earlier question was the foundational question. For a couple of hundred years, the church really didn’t ask, or even as much as 250 years, really didn’t ask the question of inspiration. That’s kind of a late question. They wanted to know, if you are a Christian, which books should have unique authority over what you believe and what it is you’re going to do?
The final two principles we can summarize and say they were interested in two things. What books did they perceive the early apostolic community had endorsed? That was important; they wanted to know, was it early? And the second principle was, does it have general acceptance? If it’s a book that they read in Egypt but nobody in Italy really pays any attention to it, put it on the shelf. If the people up in Syria like it but in southern France they never read it, well probably not that important. If it’s a book that all of God’s people everywhere find uniquely speaking to their souls, then we’ve got to pay serious attention to it.
So, you see, supposing we found Paul’s third letter to the Corinthians. Supposing we were very sure he had written it. Should we include it in our New Testament. If we would follow the principles used by the early church, we would say, hey, it’s not enough that Paul wrote it. Put it on the shelf. Let it cool it heels for 300 years. If after 300 years we find that it has consistently across the centuries spoken uniquely to God’s people, we will then be able to say, Aha, God in some indefinable sense comes to us through this book. Go ahead and put it is.
I’m glad personally that the early church did not say let’s put together a committee and they can have a real quick meeting and be sure we get done in time for supper on a Friday afternoon. And then the committee has a majority report and they send the report out. No, this was done very carefully, very thoughtfully. And it was a very slow and a very careful process. The issue was not what are we going to include, but what can we throw out? They put the books on the table and said we can throw out this and this and this. Finally the list got shorter and shorter and finally they said these are books we cannot throw out. They speak for themselves. The final witness to their authority was not the church which said they have authority because we’ve given it to them, but rather they have authority because they have spoken to out hearts.
It’s a difference between a man who comes up to you and says you give me your money and he’s got a gun. Now you don’t create the authority of his gun; you surrender to it. You recognize that authority. You pull your wallet and give it to them. The church did not create the authority of the scripture. They surrendered to it. It’s different.
Now the thing we want to really focus on here after we’ve seen that fleet(?) of some hundreds of years as to how our Bible came together. We want to look at the one Gospel in which the author tells us how he got his material. And this is the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verses 1 to 4. . . . This is very very helpful for us because it will give us an insight into what the Bible itself says about itself. Whatever your view on inspiration is , certainly Luke’s own witness about how he composed his own Gospel must be taken very seriously.
Now in these opening verses, Luke is telling us how he did it. We’re going to put his words, or at least the outline of what he had to say, on to a chart. And this we’ll put on your screen and try to follow along with us on this chart.
Here you see before you, A, B, C, D. And the numbers above them, we will talk about in just a minute.
[ A — 30; B — 45; C — 60; D — 75 ]
Now the first stage that Luke mentions, he says that “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative.” All right, many have written. What he means by that is he has many friends who have put together shorter collections of various kinds. We’re not sure what these were. Different scholars have different ideas. But Luke says he has written sources. Then Luke goes on. “Of these things which have been accomplished among us.” The word things can be translated events. So here we have on our chart, events among us. Those are the events which he is recording. He doesn’t say we’ve written good plays. He says we are recording things that happened in history. We are not coming with just better ideas, but we are talking about God has entered history to save.
He then goes on and says, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word. . . . The Greek word minister is _________, which you see on your screen. We’ll have to come back and talk about that word in just a minute.
Then finally, Luke says to Theophilus, For some time past, I have decided to write an orderly account. So under D we have the word an orderly account.
So let’s talk about the dates.
A—30. Life and ministry of Jesus.
B—45. The eye-witnesses and ministers of the word were functioning about the year 45.
C—60. Just to make it easy we’ll add 15 years and say the small collections were made about the year 60.
D—75. And to make it simple, we’ll say the Gospels were composed about around the year 75. Some of them perhaps earlier, some of them perhaps later.
So Luke says there were events. There were special people who were eye-witnesses and ministers of them who recalled them. Many people have taken to compose narratives. And now I’m giving it to you in an orderly account.
All right, let’s talk about this. Here is Luke recording how he got his gospel, how he got his material. He does not say there was an angel dictating to me in Greek. Now let’s talk about these four stages. The second stage is critical. We called them on our chart the eye-witnesses and ministers of the word. In the Greek text, there is only one definite article on those two words. According to Greek grammar, it’s thereby possible for us to say these are the same people. That would be the more natural way to read that sentence.
Now who are these ministers of the word? We think immediately of evangelists or preachers. No, that is not what it means. Because the word, _________, was the Greek word for a special person in the synagogue, a Greek-speaking synagogue. In a Jewish- speaking synagogue, he was called the hazzan, and in the Greek-speaking synagogue, he was called the _________. Who was he? He wasn’t the head of the synagogue. They had names for them. The one was called, rosh kanisha, if he was in an Aramaic or Hebrew-speaking synagogue. And he was called the _______________, the head of the synagogue, if he was in a Greek-speaking synagogue. That was number one.
But number two was the _________. Now who was he? He swept the place out. He led the worship services. He had the keys to the cupboard in which the scrolls appeared. He would invite people to read and we have this fellow functioning. We see him at work in the fourth chapter of Luke where we’re told that Jesus was given the scroll. He read Isaiah, rolled it back up, and gave it to the _________, which we sometimes translate as attendant or minister. Sure enough, there he is. He was also responsible for the school that taught the young students Hebrew. So he had a variety of functions. He was the _________ of the synagogue.
Now here we have this title in a synagogue used in a different way. He’s called the _________ of the word. What word? The Old Testament? No, they called that the scriptures, or two-thirds of it. Well, what’s he doing. The word hazzan in Hebrew really officially means keeper of the keys to the cupboard, as we mentioned. So, these people in the Christian church had to be eye-witnesses. To be a minister of the word, you had to be an eye-witness to the historical Jesus. That means, these people after one generation are going to be gone. Thereby at the earliest stage in the life of the church, they created a ministry they knew was going to die.
Now, what ministry was it? I think the best way to understand this is these were special people who were especially designated with a special title to be watch dogs on the oral tradition. And so, if so and so, Ken Bailey, somebody else, is a member of the early church, but has not been an eye-witness, he doesn’t recite the oral tradition in the meeting of the assembly. Somebody who was an eye-witness, who has been given this title, will stand up and say, I heard Jesus say. Then he will quote it. Then I can stand up and preach. In a sense they had a living Bible amongst them.
Now these folks, what language were they working in? Well, they must have known Aramaic. Did they know Greek? Well, some of them did. John Mark was one of them; he’s mentioned as being one of them. In the book of Acts, when Paul goes off to Cyprus, why he’s mentioned as being with them as a _________. So he knew Greek.
Well, when these fellows stood up to talk about the words of Jesus or the events of Jesus’ life, did they talk about it in Aramaic, their first language, or Greek, their second language? Well, we don’t know. They could have done one or the other. Well, how about this little collection of books which Luke says he has on his table? What languages were they in? Well, some of them may be Aramaic, others quite likely Greek. We do know that stage one in our chart, Jesus was talking in Aramaic. Ah, but he grew up in a society that also spoke Greek. And he also went over to the region of the Decapolis which is a Greek-speaking region and we assume he could talk to people. So he certainly also knew Greek.
Now we do know that Luke wrote in Greek at the end. The first three stages, these little collections that were put together, are they in Greek or are they in Aramaic? We don’t know. Perhaps one, perhaps the other? How many books did Luke have on the table? We don’t know. How many eye-witnesses and ministers of the word were there? We don’t know that either.
Now you see folks, what we’re talking about is in some mysterious, undefinable way God moved through a community. From events happening in the year 30 through eye- witnesses and ministers of the word through a collection of people who put together small books, finally to Luke who edits all of this into a Gospel. Through a long period of time, through translators and preachers and recallers of the word and compilers of small collections and through the final selector and editor of the material. However you come out, whatever you feel comfortable with, in your understanding of how scripture comes together, certainly you can see the importance of taking seriously Luke’s own witness to how he composed his Gospel. And thereby we must see composition through the process of a community which preserves, records, assembles, and finally puts together a Gospel.
Hopefully, with this brief understanding of how the books of the New Testament, and Old Testament were selected, and Luke’s witness to how he put together his Gospel, you will be able to formulate in your mind an understanding of scriptures that will be most helpful as a background for your reading and being moved by that which forms as Christians both our identity and our life-styles.
Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey