St. Ignatius I
Ignatius was the third bishop of Antioch, the city where the followers of Jesus Christ were first known as "Christians." Heis said to have been a disciple of the apostle John, and some time in Trajan's reign he was sent to Rome, where he was martyred about 110, roughly 60 years after the crucifixion. Along the way, he addressed a series of epistles to the congregations in Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, and Smyrna. He also sent letters to Polycarp of Smyrna and to the Christians in Rome. In time, his name was also attached to other letters, which are generally regarded by scholars as spurious.
I am going to be taken up several letters in detail, but at the same time I am going to assume some general familiarity with all of them and cross-reference the letters to make general points. In a translated volume, I think they amount to only about 50 pages.
The first general point I want to make is very obvious. Ignatius of Antioch, though his name is probably Latin [=Egnatius], writes in Greek, like Clement in Rome, Paul of Tarsus, Peter of Galilee. The language of the early Church is Greek, not Latin and not Aramaic. This is a rough fact for two groups: ultra-traditional Catholics who come close to worshiping the Latin texts of the Vulgate and the Mass and anti-traditional Protestants who like to imagine early Christians speaking Aramaic and reading Aramaic versions of the Scriptures. To the former group, I would remind you that until the 6th century, Greek was the common and sometimes the predominant in the Roman Church. To the latter, I would say "Good luck in finding Aramaic texts." While it is not unlikely that an Aramaic version might underly at least parts of Matthew or the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is also equally possible that in some, many, or all passages that seem to reflect the Aramaic language, we may just as possibly be dealing with a text written by a bilingual writer, whose home language was Aramaic but whose public language was Greek. There is a short version of Ignatius in Syriac, but it is now believed to be a translation from the Greek. In an earlier discussion, attention was drawn to the fact that most OT references in the NT plainly are derived from the Septuagint translation into Greek, the earliest authoritative text of the OT and clearly the proper version for Christians to use.
Let us dip into the early chapters of Ignatius' Epistle to the Ephesians. In the courtesies of the opening paragraphs, he beseeches to Ephesians to love and be like their bishop, Onesimus. He exhorts them to remain in unity (III) and in obedience to their bishop (IV) and uses the image of being attuned to the bishop as the strings of a harp. It is the bishop, so to speak, who sets the key and calls the tune. This is not simply a question of good order: In obeying their bishop Christians remain within the sanctuary, and if the prayers of one or two are effective, how much more effective are the prayers of the bishop and the whole Church.(V) In not opposing the bishop, we are subjecting ourselves to God. And, when the bishop is silent, he is the more to be feared. Since everyone sent by the master has to be received as the one who sent him, "therefore, clearly one must look upon the bishop as upon the Lord himself. (VI)
Ignatius takes the position that communion with one’s bishop is a protection against heresy (Trall. 6, Phi. 3). He tells the people of Smyrna that marriages must be performed in his presence and that neither baptisms nor the eucharist are valid without the bishop’s approval. Now, obviously, in those days each church, generally, was its own diocese, and it was only later that different parishes were under the administration of one cathedral church, where the bishop’s chair was kept, and one baptistery. Unless we reject Christ’s teachings on the Holy Spirit who would come to guide the Church, we should see this gradual evolution as both a response to the Church’s growth and as a fulfillment of its mission. It would be a serious mistake to pick a date, say 70 or 100, when liturgy and structure were fixed.
As for katholikos, the universal church is almost literally the body of Christ. See that you all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father, and the presbytery as if it were the apostles. … Wherever the bishop appears, let the congregation be present; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. [Smyrn 8,2].
Elsewhere, Ignatius champions the teaching authority of the bishops as the bulwark against heresy. I think it is safe to say, putting Clement and Ignatius together–both of them revered figures in the age that followed the apostles–that bishops were to be respected and obeyed and that a bishop from an important apostolic church (Rome, Antioch) was within his rights in advising and admonishing other churches.
In his Epistle to the Magnesians, Ignatius goes even further, telling them to "be zealous in doing all things in harmony (homonoia) with God, with the bishop who sits in for God, and the presbyters in the place of the Council of Apostles, and the deacons, who are most dear to me, entrusted with the service of Jesus Christ...[Mag 6]. At this time deacons probably distributed the bread and wine but may also, as they later did, manage the Church's charity (not easy to distinguish from distributing the elements).
The rest of the epistle is largely taken up with a contrast between heresy and orthodoxy. Those who parade "the name" (i.e., Christ or Christian) but do not live the faith are ravening dogs (7), while the Ephesians are worthy of praise for staying away from evil teaching (kake didache), and he exhorts them to be steadfast in faith but humble and gentle in rebuking false doctrine (10). In these last times (11), they should meet more frequently (13), probably to receive communion more frequently, because by doing this they shall confound the powers of Satan by the concord (homonoia) of your faith. Then, the mystical note so frequent in Ignatius: "There is nothing better than peace, by which every heavenly and earthly beings is abolished." A brilliant coda, as it were, comparing Christian discord with Satan's rebellion. This is a theme that echoes through the early Fathers. Contrast this spirit--so prominent in St. Dionuysius of Alexandria--with, for example, the bitterness of Montanists like Tertullian or the later holier-than-thou sects such as the Novatians.
In joining faith with love, Christians will live without sin, and he does not hate who obtains love. As Our Lord told us, the tree is known by its fruits, so Christians are known by the things they do, which are not a matter of professions and promises but of the faith that a Christian maintains unto the end. (14) In this connection--of those who talk a good game but do not persist in leading a life of faith--Ignatius says silence may be better than speech. Teaching is good, but only when the teacher acts on his own professions. Preaching false doctrine is worse than destroying a family (by murder or seduction, presumably), and if those who corrupt according the flesh are made to suffer, the false teacher will go into the everlasting fire. (16)
F inally, a few words on true doctrine and its mysteries. Quoting Paul on the foolishness of those who are wise in their own conceit and disputatious (against the apostolic teachings), Ignatius reminds us of the dispensation by which Mary conceived by the Holy Ghost. (18) Her virginity and childbirth were hidden from the Prince of This World, as was the death of the Lord. By His mysterious birth, illumined by a star, the powers of magic and wickedness were destroyed. While it is true that one might stretch parthenia to mean something like the years when Mary was a maiden, the way in which he couples it with childbirth as a world-changing mystery should remove all doubt about this reference to the virgin birth, a teaching he appears to take for granted
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Amen to Woodcutters comments at 48. The Holy Spirit works in us, the Body of Christ, (see I Cor 12) and gives wisdom, insight and discernment. I appreciate the discussions I am reading here and eventhough there are differing views of the early Fathers writings there is still a commonality of understanding "most" of what was written. As noted these men were daily dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit the Apostles teaching and the Word such as they had it. Even in difficult circumstance the supernatural love of Christ and a deep humility shines through.
In reply to PcH, when the earliest OT text that we had, the Leningrad text, now in the British Museum, about AD 1000, was compared with the Qumran documents of the OT from a 1000 years earlier, the consonants were identical. The rabbis were very careful about their texts, so sacred was The Word. They even copied faithfully what are clearly scribal errors, the most famous of which is the position of Job 31, 38-40. When such an error was copied, the rabbis wrote their correction only in the margin. Vowel points, of course are another matter, and were available neither to Jerome nor the LXX, and are truly Medieval. There is no evidence of the Rabbis tampering with the text, except for a possible change Job 2:9. (The MT has “bless God”. ) See the Stuttgartensia on all of this. (my edition is 1981). PcH needs to quote his sources that say or prove such putative rabbinical tampering for the purpose of attacking Christians.
The earliest LXX MS that we have is the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus from the AD fourth century. There are of course scraps of the LXX that are earlier. I know of no effort issue an new edition of the LXX based on these scraps. The Göttingen series <i<Septuaginta, the critical edition, has many of the scraps . The LXX was written in Alexandria. It was used in the Diaspora. In Palestine, the Targum was used. See Karen Jobes Invitation to the Septuagint, London: 2000, the standard introductory work.
As the Rabbis were careful with the Tanakh, so Christians were careless with the NT. An examination of the question will show text variations for almost every verse in the NT. So a modern Greek NT is really the judgement of text-critical scholars as to the best text. Take a look at the standard critical edition, The Greek New Testament, Kurt Aland et al. (mine is from 1983), and notice the text variations that are just the major ones. The list of Mss and parchment scraps is included in this edition. See also the exhaustive work of Bruce M. Metzger. When the first historical-critical text study was done in the 18th C, some pious folk were upset when their favorite Bible verses began to fall apart. There is a reason for Christian carelessness with their scripture. Scripture just wasn’t that important to early Christian; the liturgy and the visible Church was more important, as we have seen in Clement and Ignatius. Sola Scriptura isn’t an early Christian principle. It’s not even a Tannaitic one. After the Marcion heresy, Christians got a bit more careful.
Dear Mr. Cundiff,
One irony of the post-Christian approach to the Bible is that the Alexandrene manuscripts mentioned above are the only ones permitted for the NT because they are "the oldest," but the same manuscripts are forbidden to be used for the OT in favor of manuscripts which are more than 600 years newer. This is a glaring inconsistency. The former proscription is the more disturbing since more than 94% of all NT manuscripts agree precisely.
Identical to what? The readings taped together from the fragments and scraps of Qumram manuscripts differ widely among themselves and favor the ancient Septuagint over the medieval Masoretic. Weblinks are not the convention here, but you can easily find this analyzed by doing a search for " grant septuagint " and click on the site entitled "Notes on the Septuagint."
Legend and fable are colorful and lovely but not very useful when empirical data such as the above and below contradict them.
Since you mention Jobes and Silva, let us have a look on what they actually say.
Dr. Fleming is correct. A quick look at "Notes on the Septuagint" more emphatically demonstrates that the NT overwhelmingly quotes the LXX and a closer look demonstrates exclusivity. ON the same page they indicate the now lost Hebrew texts that form the basis for the medieval Masoretic were not standardized until 200 years after Christ, so any carefulness "about their texts" can only apply to after ca 1000 AD.
On pages 82-83 they remind us of St. Justin Martyr's testimony that non-Christians obviously deleted portions of the OT, such as references to the resurrection, the virgin birth, the heavenly standing of Christ, etc, and all this can be easily verified at CCEL in his letters to Trypho. See also St. Augustin's quite loud denunciations of Jerome in his letters also at CCEL.
In regard to Qumram, on page 281, Jobes and Silva clearly state that the Judean desert material proves there were many Hebrew versions used at any one time.
So much for Codex leningradensis ca 1000 AD being the original text!
As to the allegation that Christians are incompetent copyists, I repeat that 94% of all manuscripts of the NT agree with precision and as an example of the textual work in that regard I give an example quote from a mailing from Wilbur Pickering, PhD:
Stricly speaking, the NT is here off-topic, so the above is brief. To oversimplify, Dr. Pickering has collated all available manuscripts for a number of books and found that all in the Majority textual family are word-for-word identical, or differ in one letter, breathing mark, or other such trivia. Search " pickering walkinhiscommandments ."
PcH,
Your posts at 50 and 53.
I was in a "discussion" over this very topic about two three hours ago at church; how I wish I had had the facts as you have marshaled them in the two posts! You have given an excellent overview of the issue.
I'll try to keep this simple. I don't think a proper discussion of textual questions can be carried out except by people who have throughly learned the languages in question and studied paleography and textual traditions. I have hardly done much more than crack open a Hebrew grammar, and anything I have to say on the question of Hebrew mss. would amount to selective quotation from people I agree with. On the case of the NT, I do not regard myself as an expert scholar, though I am confident of knowing more Greek than most people who claim to be NT scholars. I once tried to get up to speed on the text of the NT, but that was long ago. One thing I can say is that the textual tradition of the NT presents few problems when compared with the text of, say, Aeschylus or of most classical writers. The differences are mostly trivial, though there are a few serious questions. To make a proper comparison of the two ms. traditions, one would have to take so many things into account--number and age of mss., circumstances under which they were written, etc., that the whole thing would quickly become moot. Unless there are Hebrew scholars and text critics writing in, I would rather not take up these questions. Let me insert a paragraph from a noted Protestant scholar who praises the purity of the OT text but points out the percentage of variation:
"Dr. Robert Dick Wilson has pointed out that there are about 284,000,000 letters in the manuscripts considered by Kennicott and that among these manuscripts there are about 900,000 variants, approximately 750,000 of which are the quite trivial variation of w and y. 4 There is, Dr. Wilson remarks, only about one variant for 316 letters and apart from the insignificant w and y variation only about one variant for 1580 letters. The variants for the most part are supported by only one or by only a few of the manuscripts. Dr. Wilson has elsewhere said that there are hardly any variant readings in these manuscripts with the support of more than one out of the 200 to 400 manuscripts in which each book is found, except in the full and defective writing of the vowels, a matter which has no bearing on either the pronunciation or the meaning of the text.
His last point is not, perhaps, unchallengeable if we look backwards into the prehistory of the text, since we cannot know if in every instance the scribes who inserted the vowel signs were correct. The relationship with the Septuagint text remains a matter of controversy, and while many or most scholars think the LXX text has errors which derive from the lack of vowels in their Hebrew texts, others have drawn different conclusions. But, the larger issue and far more important is the inclusion in the LXX of texts that seem to point the way to Christ. The elimination of these texts during the Reformation would seem to be an error arising from the Judaizing tendencies of some, though by no means all the Reformers. This is question for Aaron Wolf.
Until we have a MS of the Tanakh from the period of the writing of the LXX, we cannot say if the LXX reflects a better, more authentic translation, and to say othewise is to make an argument from silence. What we can do is compare the LXX to the Qumran documents (which include the entire text of Isaiah). (I have never said the Leningrad is the oldest text.) Then we can compare the Qumran Isaiah with the Leningrad. The consonants are almost identical. (If the MT vowel points reflect the ancient use is another matter.) It is therefore not unreasonable to think that the rabbinical tradition preserved the consonants of the text rather well. The question is when this stabilization of the text took place. Probably no later than the council of Jamnia, and Qumran suggest earlier.
If it is true that Qumran used a variety of differing texts for the Tanakh, then it would seem possible also for the translators for the LXX. The LXX itself has many versions and variations, as the Goettingen critical text shows. It too has to be pieced together by text critical scholars, whose work is often "best guess".
And it most probable that the first Christians, Our Lord and the Twelve, used the Targum for the Tanakh, not the LXX.
As for the NT texts being 97% identical, here one throws up one's hands. Even a cursory glance at the Aland proves otherwise. We have in fact two versions of Luke. Romans has all kinds of textual problems. II Corinthians might be more than one letter. The first chapter of the Gospel of John is a text-critical nightmare, and various denominations and sects have used various Mss for their theological struggles.
More importantly,for cultic/liturgical religions (Temple Israel, early Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, etc), Scripture serves the cultus, not vice versa. The Bible's home is the Mass and the Divine Office. It is Islam, Protestantism, and post A.D. 70 Rabbinical Judaism where the text and its study assumes the supreme, if not sole, position. So I really don't worry about Scripture, and leave it to text-critical scholars to put together the best text.
Since the topic is Ignatius, his comments in the Letter to the Philadelphians #8,2, might be germane to the discussion of the role of Scripture in the early church, and I look forward to Dr. Fleming's interpretation. I am aware that there is much controversy among scholars about this passage. Is the Greek "archeious" or "archaious"? Does it refer to the OT, or the NT, or just "official records"?
And I look forward to Dr. Fleming's remarks on Ignatius' Letter to the Romans, at the beginning, stating Rome holds the presidency "in the place of the countryof the Romans", en topo chorion Romaion. Does it mean a presidency that is held only in the country of the Romans and no place else? Or does it mean Rome holds the presidency everywhere and just happens to be located in the country of the Romans?
I thank PcH for his contributions, however we might disagree on the matter of the LXX as translation.
Please, please, please. This is not the proper forum nor are our discussants the proper people to carry on a discussion of textual history. As for what texts were used by Christ and his disciples, it is entirely wrong to use phrases like " probable" when in fact we know nothing apart from the written texts we have. Any attempt to import historical conjectures into the Sacred Tradition is a grave mistake. And, LET REPEAT THIS IN BOLD ENOUGH LETTERS THAT EVERYONE MAY READ THEM: MOST OF THE VARIANTS IN THE NT ARE TRIVIAL, AND HARDLY ANY CAN BE TWISTED TO SERVE A DOCTRINAL ARGUMENT.
Sid and PcH,
I admire your interest and learning and perhaps even your stubborn willingness to continue to debate these textual issues in the face of requests to wait for a better time and place. But if we are going to take this meandering trail as a way back to the discussion of the early fathers let us put it in all perspective.
"
[edit] (i) The Biblical Attack
The origin of the Biblical attack is familiar to all, simpler, and much easier to account for than are most extravagances in religion.
From its origins, the Catholic Church had adopted Holy Writ as the Inspired Word of God. It began by accepting the traditional Hebrew Books because Our Lord had appealed to their authority and had sanctioned it, because they led up to His Incarnation and Messianic Mission, because the first witnesses to His Miracles, His Resurrection and His own claim to the Godhead were steeped in, and appealed to, those Books; but above all because She, the Church, who knew herself to be the divinely appointed judge of Truth, recognized the sanctity of this scriptural inheritance and confirmed it.
The decision of the Church to stand by the Jewish Scriptures was not maintained without difficulty. The documents were alien to that glorious civilization of the Mediterranean which the Church penetrated and transformed. Their diction was, in its ears, uncouth and irrational. The deeds they recounted (with approval) sounded barbaric and often absurd: taken as moral examples, some were found repulsive, others puerile: and the whole was of another and (to Greek and Roman) lesser and more degraded world. We have remaining echoes of the reaction against them including the fury of those heretics who ascribed them to the Devil; and even after they had been flooding Christian study for nearly four hundred years you may find such an ardent follower of them as St. Augustine confessing that they had disgusted his cultivated taste and that their alien style had presented for him an abject contrast to the noble tradition of classical letters.
But the Church firmly maintained their supernatural value and revered them as Divine Oracles bearing testimony to Her Founder. She did not indeed accept them of themselves. Of themselves they would not have concerned her. As law they were superseded. But they introduced and pointed to the Divine Event whence She sprang, and as such were sanctified.
The Church added to the Canon further books which were of greater moment, for these were not adumbrations and forerunners but records of the essential doctrines whereon She was founded. The precepts of Our Lord Himself as collected by His companions and their immediate associates, the chief events of His Mission, His Passion, His Rising from the Dead, the inward meaning of all this as He revealed it to the Apostolic group whom He had chosen (and in particular to St. John) these formed the Gospels of the Church: Her new and good tidings for men. These stood unique and on a different plane from aught else in the collection. To them were added the letters and exhortations written by the first propagators of the Faith and their successors, as also apocalyptic and symbolic treatises.
The process of deciding what among the books read in the Churches should be admitted as inspired was long. There was a sifting of the older Hebrew books, which left some of them outside the Canon; of the newer Christian books, which excluded some of these also (as the Epistles of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas). By the fourth and fifth centuries the thing was fixed. Its original Greek version in the East, its Latin translation in the West, had reached final form and Europe was henceforward in possession of the Holy Bible preserved and imposed by the Authority of the Catholic Church.
The living voice of the Church must obviously be the organ of doctrine, and tradition its main support. But the Church also persistently maintained the parallel authority of Scripture. Doctrine was confirmed by quotation from it and a ceaseless appeal was made throughout the centuries to the written text of the Canon. Though no Bible had existed, the Church would have sufficed to give her own witness to truth: but to the Bible, Her book, She perpetually referred. Thus the Primacy of Peter was amply founded in an unbroken acceptance of the doctrine: but She emphasized the Petrine texts and has engraved them on Her central shrine at Rome. The dogma of the Eucharist is Hers to affirm and define: but She also sends Her adherents, as well as Her opponents, to excerpts from the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper."
Now understanding this let us can we please go back to the text of the Early fathers and the Christian Tradition in the broadest sense of that "Thing."
I would very much like to stay away from issues like the Reformation or the Council of Trent. We are trying to look, somewhat naively if possible, at what these texts are actually saying rather than use them as cannon fodder in sectarian wars. . . .
I'm tryin' . . .
The elimination of these texts during the Reformation would seem to be an error arising from the Judaizing tendencies of some, though by no means all the Reformers.
It would seem so, at least to some Roman Catholics who have preconceived ideologies ("Judaizing tendencies") about the theological clarifications of "the Reformation." We can say that these were the "tendencies of some, though by no means all the Reformers," but I'm not sure what that means practically, in this context. After all, Luther held that the books called Apocrypha by Jerome are "not regarded equal to Holy Scripture and yet useful and good to read." In this context, that would damn Luther as one of those with "Judaizing tendencies," so I'm not sure who would be left on the "by no means all" list. (More on this in a minute.)
We aren't really talking about anyone's hatred or rejection of the LXX text of the undisputed books of the Old Testament Canon. After all, the Vulgate that was itself canonized at Trent comprised Jerome's translation from Hebrew (save for the Psalms and the Apocrypha). What we seem to be criticizing is the exclusion from the canon of those books called Apocrypha, which is seen as a natural result of preferring Hebrew to every word of whatever LXX tradition was in hand at the time of the Reformation.
It is said that to give any lesser regard to the books called Apocrypha is somehow to disrespect the authority of the apostles who cited them (a handful of times). This argument does not hold water. St. Jude (14-16) quotes not the Apocrypha but what both Rome and Protestants recognize as pseudepigrapha. (See Enoch 1:9.) In fact, St. Jude's citation is virtually word for word, whereas the other few "citations" of the Apocrypha seem more like allusions. In no case in which the Apocrypha is referenced does the NT writer lend the authority of "it is written."
Some suggest that Protestants feel compelled to reject the Apocrypha because they fear the text of 2 Maccabees, which supposedly supports Purgatory. Second Maccabees tells of Judas and his men burying the pagans they had slaughtered, under whose robes were found idols. This does not jibe with any Roman understanding of purgatory. Nor do I think that any Roman Catholic would have such Judaizing tendencies as to endorse everything the Judas "The Hammer" did, simply because it is recorded.
It is said that the books called Apocrypha should not be excluded because they point the way to Christ. Probably not Bel and the Dragon. But certainly, this is true of Sirach/Wisdom/Ecclesiasticus. Most of the allusions or citations of "the Apocrypha" in the NT are from Wisdom, which is also treasured by the Fathers. Lutherans love Wisdom—it is oft cited by our Confessors and by our theologians, including the great Gerhard. So great do we love Sirach that even one of our most popularly recognized (see Garrison Keillor) Lutheran hymns, "Now Thank We All Our God," is based on Sirach 50:22-24! The Lutheran Confessions do not, in fact, say anything about the canonicity of the "Apocrypha."
How can we love something that we do not regard as on the same level as the "undisputed" Old Testament? We could ask Jerome, Origen, and Eusebius.
Or (hat tip to Fr. Weedon) we could ask St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who wrote (On God and Man) concerning books outside of the "Protestant/Jewish canon": "If there is anything else besides these, it is not among the genuine."
Or Athanasius, who wrote of the canon he lists in Festal Letter 39: "These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these." What books did he list? Those of the "Jewish" canon.
Athanasius goes on: "[T]here are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being [merely] read . . . "
That is, in a nutshell, what Luther said about them, and that is why he included them in his German translation of the Bible. The KJV had them as well. In fact, all "Protestant" Bibles had them until the 1820's. Thus, they were not "eliminated by the Reformation," but simply regarded in the same way that many others of good repute regarded them.
Speaking of Augustine's conflict with Jerome regarding the usefulness of translating the Hebrew . . .
It is certainly true that Augustine criticized Jerome for daring to go outside of the LXX for the Old Testament. Later, in City of God, however, after Jerome's work had been circulated, Augustine's views are more nuanced, as evidenced in Book XVIII, Chapter 43 and following. "Our times, however, have enjoyed the advantage of the presbyter Jerome, a man most learned, and skilled in all three languages, who translated these same Scriptures into the Latin speech, not from the Greek, but from the Hebrew."
Now clearly, Augustine still prefers the Septuagint, but now he finds that BOTH traditions have authority:
"[I]f anything is in the Hebrew copies and is not in the version of the Seventy, the Spirit of God did not choose to say it through them, but only through the prophets. But whatever is in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew copies, the same Spirit chose rather to say through the latter, thus showing that both were prophets. For in that manner He spoke as He chose, some things through Isaiah, some through Jeremiah, some through several prophets, or else the same thing through this prophet and through that. Further, whatever is found in both editions, that one and the same Spirit willed to say through both . . ."
My knowledge of these matters, including what follows, is fallible.
The canon of the Tanakh for Jews (and thus the OT canon for Protestants) was establish finally at the Council of Jamnia, which met in the decades after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in aD 70. That destruction marked the shift in Judaism from a cultic religion to a scriptural one. It is relevant to our discussion of the early Fathers because it is contemporary with them.
The rabbis at the Council decided the canon following three rules:
1. A book of the canon had to come from prophecy, at least prophecy as the Rabbi’s understood it.
2. A book had to be written before 167 BC, the year Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple, and thus when, for Jews, prophecy stopped. (Thus the appearance of the Baptist, dressed as Elijah, was considered remarkable.)
3. A book had to be written in Hebrew, and available to the Rabbis in a Hebrew text. Thus the entire LXX was rejected by the Rabbis as authoritative, and those books in the LXX that had no Hebrew equivalent became the so-call “Apocrypha”. (Those books of the “Apocrypha” that are in the Catholic Bible are called “Deuterocanonical”.) It should be added that some of these books that the rabbi’s tossed out have now been found in Hebrew. With the decision of the Council, Hebrew became the language for Jews even in the Diaspora.
NONE of these three principles are Christian principles for the canon. Why the reformers chose the Jamina canon, or questions about the Reformation in general, Dr. Fleming has asked us to avoid.
The council also issued the notorious Birkat ha-Minim, a curse upon Christians and other perceived heretics, that was included in the synagogue service. With this curse, it became impossible for Jewish Christians to be both Jewish and Christian. Thus there was a final break between the two religions. And thus the early church Fathers no longer needed to appeal to Jews, unlike Paul in Romans chaps 9-11, written c. a.D. 53-55 . Luke makes a veiled reference to the Birkat (“you will be expelled from the synagogues”) suggesting his composition is contemporary with the Birkat. The final redaction of John’s gospel might reflect the post aD 70 Jewish-Christian break. Given Ignatius’ location, the Birkat would likely be known to him. I wonder if the effects of the Birkat among Christians is reflected in the Letter to the Magnesians 8,1; 10,3; 11; and to the Philadelphians, 8,2.
By the way, the Birkat remained part of the synagogue service until the Medieval period, when Christians forced Jews to eliminate it. Then with Innocent III’s Constitution Licet perfidia Judaeorum, D772-773, the “Magna Charta of toleration for Jews”, Jewish Christian relations improved. May they continue to do so.
I thank PcH and Dr. Wolf. I’ve learned something from them.
Jesus Himself shall thank you Thomas!
Clyde
Robert M. Peters and Sid Cundiff:
Thanks for the compliments. People here sure are nice.