FORMATION OF THE BIBLE

RESEARCH PROJECT
LEONARD LAMINA

QUESTION
HOW DID WE GET OUR BIBLE?

THESIS

AN ARTISTIC CONGLOMERATION OF
RELIGIOUS WRITINGS SPANNING 1500
YEARS

PAPYRUS

MANUSCRIPTS
PAPYRUS

PAPYRUS

PAPYRUS

PAPYRUS

PARCHMENT

OLD TESTAMENT

Torah!
Prophets!
Hagiographa

NEW TESTAMENT
Gospels
Pauline Corpus
Catholic Epistles
Revelation

Textual Criticism

Variants
most of the changes were accidental, the
result of scribal ineptitude, carelessness,
or fatigue.

Canon of the OT
Tripartite View!
Documentary Hypothesis!
the canon was not in any way an arbitrary accumulation of books
that were gradually recognized as authoritative by the Jewish
community; rather it was a genuine work of art

Transcription
Compilation
Integration
Prophets, as a rule, do not write, nor do most of them have secretaries; they
speak, and if we have a record of their oracles it is because scribes wrote down a
report of their speech

NT in EARLY 1 CE
Oral Tradition
And the sacred books of
[the Christians] were read
aloud

COLLECTIONS

The

Codex

It is commonly recognized that the formation of the NT was less a matter of selective
discrimination among individual documents than a collection of collections.
Christians favored the codex
particularly for the writings they
treated as scripture

EMERGENCE OF SCRIPTURE

!
!

. the canon was originally conceived to combat heresy

THE GOSPELS

Gnostic Gospels
Gospel Harmonies
For we ourselves, brothers, receive both Peter and the other apostles as
Christ, but the pseudepigraphal writings in their name we reject, as having
experience in such thing, knowing that we did not receive such writings by
tradition

PAULINE CORPUS

Marcions Canon(140 CE)

What is Canonicity?

reed, measuring rod

Canon of scripture means the list of books accepted

as holy scripture

The canon of Scripture is not a book which fell

from heaven.!

Reserving the terminology canon for only the Final

collection of books obscures the continuity that
exist[ed] at earlier times

The Final stage[of the canon] represents a

culmination of a process rather than something
radically new[out of nothing].

Criteria for Canonicity

USE
APOSTILICITY
ANTIQUITY
ORTHODOXY

THE
ENGLISH
BIBLE
- William
Tyndale

- KJV 1611

Why many
translations?
Translation Techniques
Text Types

CONCLUSION

Uncertainty
Complexity
Awe

Works Cited

!
!
!

Bruce, F. F. The Books and the Parchments. Rev. ed. N.p.: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1950. Print.
Dempster, Stephen. "Canons on the Right and Canons on the Left: Finding a Resolution in the Canon Debate." Journal of THE Evangelical Theological Society 52.1 (2009):
47-77. Print.
Evans, Craig A., and Emanuel Tov, eds. Exploring the Origins of the Bible: Canon Formation in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2008. Print.
"An 'Extraordinary Fact': Torah and Temple and Contours of the Hebrew Canon, Part 1." Tyndale Bulletin: 23-56. Print.
Gamble, Harry Y. "The Canon of the New Testament." Society of Biblical Literature (1989): 201-43. Print.
Hill, Charles E. "The Four Gospel Canon in the Second Century." Society of Biblical Literature: 1-21. Print.
Kruger, Michael. "Manuscripts, Scribes and Book Production within Early Christianity." Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture. Ed. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W.
Pitts. Vol. 1. Leiden [u.a.]: Brill, 2012. 15-40. Print.
Kruger, Michael J. "The Definition of the Term 'Canon': Exclusive or Multi-Dimensional." Tyndale Bulletin 63 (2012): 1-20. Print.
Kyrtatas, Dimitris J. "Historical Aspects of the Formation of the New Testament Canon." Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture. Ed. Einar Thomassen.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2010. 29-44. Print.
McDonald, Lee Martin. "The Integrity of the Biblical Canon in Light of Its Historical Development." Bulletin for Biblical Research 6 (1996): 95-132. Print.
Toorn, Karel Van Der. "Making Books: Scribal Modes of Text Production." Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: Harvard, 2007. 109-41. Print.

Reference Works
!

Bruce, F. F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity, 1988. Print.

Coggan, Donal. The English Bible. N.p.: Longman, 1963. Print.
Coogan, Michael David. The Oxford History of the Biblical World. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Daniell, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003. Print.
Gilmore, Alec. A Dictionary of the English Bible and Its Origins. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000. Print.
Greenlee, J. Harold. Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism. Revised edition. ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Kenyon, Frederic George. Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts. N.p.: Harper, 1952. Print.
Kloppenborg, John S., and Judith Hood Newman, eds. Editing the Bible: Assessing the Task past and Present. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Print.
Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Print.
- - -. "Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudipigrapha." Journal of Biblical Literature 91.1 (1972): 3-24. Print.
Mulder, M. J., ed. Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading & Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism & Early Christianity. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004.
Print.
Paget, James Carleton, and Joachim Schaper, eds. The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to 600. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013. Print.
Pattison, Thomas Harwood. The History of the English Bible. N.p.: Forgotten, 1914. Print.
Rollston, Chris A. Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. Print.
Schniedewind, William M. How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization in Ancient Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.
Skeat, T. C. The Collected Biblical Writings of T. Ed. J. K. Elliott. Online-Ausg. ed. Leiden [u.a.]: Brill, 2004. Print.
Toorn, Karel Van der. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2009. Print.
Trebolle Barrera, Julio. The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Print.
Trobisch, David. Paul's Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994. Print.