II.THE BIBLE
Chapter 9 WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
The Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament.[1]The Old Testament tells the history of the Jewish people,starting with the creation of the world.The New Testament recounts the life of Jesus Christ,his death,resurrection and ascension to heaven,and the subsequent spread of Christianity.
Neither the Old nor the New Testament is the work of a single author.The Old Testament consists of 39 books and the New of 27.In many cases these books were written by more than one author,and there is much dispute as to exactly when some of them were written and by whom.
The books of the Bible were not the only books to be written about the history of the Jews or the life of Jesus and its aftermath.The question therefore inevitably arises as to why these books rather than any others comprise the Bible as we know it today.The answers to this question are complex,but broadly speaking,acceptance by the communities who practiced the Jewish and Christian faiths and the approval of those in authority led to some books being included while others were excluded.Often the books that comprise the Old and New Testaments are referred to as“the canon”or as being“canonical”.
Once a writing was accepted as canonical,it was endowed with huge significance by believers.If we were putting together the Bible today,it is quite possible we would exclude some books or parts of books and include others in their place.[2]But nobody does that.The Bible has existed in its present form for so long that it has gained a kind of authority all of its own.
The Bible was,and still is,regarded by many people as the Word of God and so has tremendous authority.For many believers,it carries God’s instructions as to how to understand the world and how to behave.Such believers are convinced that in studying the Bible they are searching for,and can find,objective Truth.
Others argue that,in order to understand the meaning of a text,it is important to view it in context.Views of God change over time.The views of God we read in the Old Testament are often unattractive.Even believers should not feel bound to them.We should not abandon our duty to think and reason simply because of a traditional view or prejudice expressed a long time ago.Moreover,they say,in their handling of canonical texts,believers often in fact select and interpret texts in the light of their own already existing beliefs and convictions.
The Old Testament
The Old Testament consists broadly of three types of writing：books of Jewish law and history;books of prophecy;and psalms,proverbs and meditative writings.By about 400 B.C.it had been settled which books of law and history should be regarded as canonical.The same was true of the books of prophecy by about 200 B.C.The Old Testament was often referred to as“scripture”or“the scriptures.”
The Old Testament was almost all originally written in Hebrew.From the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C.a group known as the Masorites diligently preserved the sacred texts.Between 1947 and 1956 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.They date from 200 B.C.to 100 B.C.and they show how accurately these texts were copied and re-copied.
However,in the 4th century B.C.,as a result of Alexander the Great’s conquests,Greek became the main language of communication in the Jewish world.As a result,from the middle of the 3rd century B.C.the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek began to take place.This Greek translation is generally called the Septuagint.“Septuagint”comes from the Latin septuaginta,meaning seventy.According to one story,King Ptolemy of Egypt requested 72 elders to translate the Pentateuch（the first five books of the Bible）into Greek,and they managed to do this in 70 days.
The Septuagint was the version of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible mostly used by New Testament writers.It was also the text which came to be used by Christians until the monk and scholar Jerome produced a Latin Bible,known as the Vulgate,in the late 4th and early 5th century A.D.Jerome took the trouble to learn Hebrew and referred back to the Hebrew Bible when making his Latin version,which was the standard version of the Bible used in the Middle Ages.
The New Testament
The New Testament begins with four accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus — the gospels.[3]The fifth book,the Acts of the Apostles,recounts events immediately after Jesus’ ascension.There then follow the epistles[4]of St Paul,which were generally written to Christian communities around the Mediterranean about particular matters of doctrine or behaviour and which were probably read out at meetings as instructions from someone in authority.Not all of these epistles were written by St Paul.And there are also other letters,sometimes called the Catholic epistles,which were written later and for more general circulation.Finally there is the Revelation of St John,which is an apocalypse[5]or an account of visions and revelations.
Paul’s letters were the first books of the New Testament to be written.They were followed by the gospel of Mark,which is generally accepted as the first of the gospels and was written around 65 A.D.Matthew,Mark and Luke share a great deal of material in common and are generally referred to as the“synoptic”gospels.It seems that Matthew and Luke both had access to Mark or the material used by Mark as well as to another body of material Mark did not have.
The gospels are not biographies of Jesus — the writers were expecting Jesus to come again very soon and so saw no need for historical biographies.They were compilations of short passages about the words and deeds of Jesus which had been preserved from the earliest Christians and which were then rearranged.[6]Some of the material may even have been invented by those who compiled the gospels.[7]In general the compilers were more sympathetic to non-Jews than was probably the case in Jesus’ lifetime,because at the time the gospels were assembled,Christianity had ceased to be exclusively a Jewish sect.Also in the early years the authors of the gospels were anonymous;only from about 180 A.D.were names attributed to the gospels.
The last gospel,John,dates to the end of the 1st century A.D.and is significantly different from the synoptic gospels.In the synoptics,Jesus uses parables to convey his message;in John there are no parables,but lengthy metaphorical passages instead.Scholars argue that John’s gospel represents advanced theological thinking which the writer has put into the mouth of Jesus.
The Revelation of St John the Divine（not the same John as the gospel writer）probably dates from the end of the 1st century A.D.too,and was only accepted as canonical after a long period of dispute.The“Catholic”epistles（James,1 and 2 Peter,1-3 John and Jude）also only gained acceptance later,in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.
In the 4th century A.D.a number of church councils decreed which texts were and which were not canonical,although disputes on this subject continued long afterwards.In the Eastern churches,[8]for example,the Revelation of St John was not accepted until the 10th or 11th century.
注释
[1]The terms“Old”and“New”Testament only came into use at the end of the 2nd century A.D..Some scholars today prefer to refer to the Old Testament as the“Hebrew Bible.”
[2]However,scholars are agreed that the four gospels contain the most authentic material about Jesus’ life and teaching.
[3]Gospel literally means“good news.”
[4]An“epistle”is a letter.
[5]Apocalypse literally means uncovering.At the time the Revelation of St John was written,it meant the uncovering of the story of the triumph of good over evil at the end of Time.The word has come to mean an idea or vision of the end of Time.
[6]Theological scholars refer to these as“pericopes.”
[7]They would not have considered this to be forgery because they made no distinction between what Jesus said to them in his life on earth and what they believed he was saying to them in response to their prayers and petitions to him after his death.
[8]i.e.the Greek-speaking churches of the Byzantine empire,or the“Eastern Orthodox Church.”“Eastern”churches today include non-Greek and non-Orthodox churches like the Coptic,Syriac and Georgian churches,some of which were never in the Byzantine empire.