Notes from a paper given to the Hull & District Theological Society on 5 October 2005 by the Revd Dr Loveday Alexander (Dept of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield)
RAIDERS OF A LOST ARK?
THE BIBLE, THE BISHOPS, AND THE DA VINCI CODE
1. A Crisis of Authority
The Bible in 2004: who said what?
1. The interpretation of the Bible needs to be seen in terms of the interpretation of a masterpiece rather than in terms of the interpretation of a code.
2. What we are doing is in accordance with the words of Jesus: ‘For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.’
3. The current crisis … constitutes a call to the whole Anglican Communion to re-evaluate the ways in which we have read, heard, studied and digested scripture. We can no longer be content to drop random texts into arguments, imagining that the point is thereby proved, or indeed to sweep away whole sections of the NT as irrelevant to today’s world, imagining that the problems are thereby solved.
4. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.
2. Doctoring the canon: the Bible in The da Vinci Code.
The human Bible: let’s get the story right
The human Jesus: so what did the Gnostics actually say?
• Gospel of Thomas §114:
Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.” Jesus said, “I myself will lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
3. The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven
• A responsible reading of Scripture is one that takes seriously its dual character as both the ‘word of God’ and a compilation of human texts. [Women Bishops, 2004, §3.3.4]
4. The authority of scripture: towards a biblical approach.
• What we need, I believe, is a theology of Scripture that is fully incarnational, an incarnational theology that would have nothing to fear from the growing awareness of our embeddedness in our own culture – and of Scripture’s embeddedness in the cultural practices of its writers and first readers. [Loveday Alexander]
• Living with the Scriptures is more like sailing than like building a cathedral. We don’t have control over the elements – just enough to navigate in the face of surprising shifts of wind and changed water conditions. Some would perhaps hope for more stability, but for sailors, bedrock is where sunken ships lie. [Donald Juel]
SELECT BOOKLIST
• Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (London: Corgi Books, 2004; first pub. 2003).
• Michael Haag & Veronica Haag, The Rough Guide to the Da Vinci Code: An Unauthorised Guide (London: Rough Guides, 2004).
HERMENEUTICS AND THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE
• Richard Bauckham, God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2002), esp. ch. 3 (pp.50-77), ‘Authority and Scripture’.
• F.F.Bruce, ‘Scripture in relation to Tradition and Reason,’ in Richard Bauckham and Benjamin Drewery (ed.), Scripture, Tradition and Reason: A Study in the Criteria of Christian Doctrine. Essays in honour of R.P.C.Hanson. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), pp.35-64.
• The Windsor Report 2004: Report of the Lambeth Commission on Communion (London: The Anglican Communion Office, 2004).
• Women Bishops in the Church of England? Report of the House of Bishops Working Party on Women in the Episcopate (London: Church House Publishing, 2004).
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
• George J. Brooke, Qumran and the Jewish Jesus (Grove Biblical Series B35; Cambridge: Grove Books, 2005). Clear and authoritative guide.
• George J. Brooke, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (London: SPCK, 2005).
• Randall Price, Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 1996). Fascinating account of the Scrolls controversy.
• Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (4th ed.; Penguin Books/Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). Authoritative but accessible translation of all the Dead Sea Scrolls published since their discovery in 1947.
EXTRA-CANONICAL GOSPELS
• J.K.Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: OUP, 1993).
• Robert J. Miller (ed.), The Complete Gospels (3rd ed.; HarperCollins, 1994).
• James M. Robinson, (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library (Leiden: Brill, 1977). The original, definitive translation of the Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945..
THE BIBLE IN THE EARLY CHURCH
• Loveday Alexander, ‘”This is That”: The Authority of Scripture in the Acts of the Apostles,’ in Princeton Seminary Bulletin, July 2004.
• Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (ed.), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
• Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
• James L. Kugel & Rowan A. Greer, Early Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986).
• Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).
CHURCH HISTORY
• The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is a great guide, with authoritative entries on anything you need to know.
• Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) is still an excellent clear narrative introduction.
• Joan Estruch, Saints and Schemers: Opus Dei and its Paradoxes (New York: OUP, 1995). The authoritative study from a sociology of religion aspect.
EXCURSUS: FROM CAPSA TO CODEX
• The Bible = ta biblia = the scrolls
• The first Bible was a bucket!
Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, N.Africa, 17 July 180.
Saturninus the consul asked Speratus, ‘What do you have in your book-box [in capsa vestra]?’ Speratus answered, ‘Books and letters of Paul, a just man [libri et epistuli pauli viri iusti].’
• Cf. 2 Clem 14.2, ‘the books and the apostles’ i.e. prob Jewish scriptures (=OT) and letters of Paul and/or Gospels. [Gamble, 1995, 150-51]
• Congregational libraries – cf. Gesta apud Zenophilum, Gamble 1995, 145-47.
• Justin Martyr, writing in Rome in the mid-second century, quotes Gospel material from ‘the memoirs (apomnêmoneumata) of the apostles, which are called Gospels (euangelia [Justin Martyr, Apol. I.66; cf. I.65; Dialogue 105, 106.])’, and describes how these texts are used in Christian meetings:
On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things’ (Apol.I.67).
From Bucket to Bible.
A slow and contested process happening over 200 years.
• Mini-Collections: 12 prophets, letters of Paul. Single roll.
• Roll to Codex: codex expanded from notebook to larger format capable of holding a whole gospel or all Paul’s letters. 2nd century exx: OT texts, single Gospels (P52, P75).
• Multi-use codices: gradually expanded to take 2, 3 or 4 Gospels. Invention of the quire (happening throughout the 2nd-3rd centuries).
• 4 Gospels in one codex: probably not physically possible before 3rd cent — but Irenaeus of Lyons knows the 4-Gospel canon c.180 AD!
• Pandect = whole Bible. Needs change in technology: quires + parchment. Earliest = 4th cent.
