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back to DeCoding The DaVinci Code The Origins of the Bible Teabing smiled. ‘Everything you need to know about the Bible can be summed up by the great Canon Dr. Martyn Percy.’ Teabing cleared his throat and declared, ‘the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven…the Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book…More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only [four] were chosen for inclusion…The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great…’. Speaking as the person quoted above, I guess I ought to try and clarify my views a little. It is true that ‘the Bible is not a fax from heaven’ is a quote correctly attributed to me, although to the best of my knowledge, I have only ever said this in lectures, radio, TV and newspaper interviews – all in connection with understanding fundamentalism. But behind the slick sound-bite, there is in fact a fairly sophisticated theological point. Let me explain. Views about the authority and status of scripture cannot be directly resourced from the Bible itself. The Bible has no self-conscious identity. As a collation of books and writings, it did indeed come together over a long period of time. Indeed, the word ‘Bible’ comes from the Greek biblos, imply meaning ‘books’. Equally, the word ‘canon’ (here used in relation to scripture, not as an ecclesiastical title) simply means rule. So the Bible is, literally, ‘authorised books’. But as I say, the authorisation of the compilation took place after the books were written. It should be clear that Paul, when he wrote ‘all scripture is inspired by God’ (2. Tim 3.16) in a letter to his friend, Timothy, could hardly have had his own letter in mind at the time. The conferral of canonical status on his letter came later – some would say much later. My point is simple. Views about the authority and status of the Bible cannot be solely resourced from the Bible. The Bible needs to be held and understood in a particular way, independent of its content, in order to have any authority. Furthermore, behind such a view, is some kind of nascent notion of how the power of God works in the world. For some (perhaps especially fundamentalists), the power of God must be mediated through clear, pure and easily identifiable channels or agents. This guarantees the quality of that power: it is unquestionable and unambiguous. But for others – usually of a more mainstream, broad or liberal persuasion – God acts and speaks through channels and agents that are fully themselves. So God works through culture, peoples and history, not over and against them. Correspondingly, the power of God is only ever known provisionally (not absolutely); it can only be encountered ‘through a glass darkly’, and not ‘face to face’. Thus, although the power of God may be pure and absolute at source, God always chooses to mediate that power through less than perfect agents (such as language, people, times and places). And this is because God’s primary interest is in disclosing [his] love in order to draw us into relationships, and not in unequivocal demonstrations of power, which would leave no room for a genuinely free response, but merely obedience in the face of oppression. But how does the ‘fax’ quote relate to the Bible? Simple. Some Christians believe that scripture has come from heaven to earth, in an unimpaired, totally unambiguous form. Such views are fundamentalistic: the Bible is the pure word of God – every letter and syllable is ‘God breathed’. So there is no room for doubt; knowledge replaces faith. It is utterly authoritative: to question the Bible is tantamount to questioning God. But to those who believe that scripture is a more complex nexus of writings, the authority of scripture lies in the totality of its testament. Thus, the Bible does indeed contain many things that God may want to say to humanity (and they are to heeded and followed). But it also contains opinions about God (even one or two moans and complaints – see the Psalms); it contains allegory, parables, humour, histories and debates. In other words, the very nature of the Bible invites us to contemplate the very many ways in which God speaks to us, which are open to a variety of interpretations. The Bible is not one message spoken by one voice. It is, rather, symphonic in character – a restless and inspiring chorus of testaments, whose authority rests upon its very plurality. So, when Paul tells us in 2 Tim.3:16 that ‘...all scripture is inspired by God...’, he is not talking about himself. For the early Christians, the ‘scripture’ Paul refers to may have meant the Old Testament, and perhaps what they knew of the Gospels (or the so-called Q document – the sayings of Jesus). But it didn’t mean the New Testament, because as a settled volume or concept, it did not exist until the 4th Century, the same time Creeds crystallised. And that, as Dan Brown correctly points out, was partly the initiative of Constantine. But is it true to say that the New Testament is ‘the work of man’? In one sense, yes: people had to write the texts – they were not faxed! But on the other hand, there is a case for arguing that the church only chose authentic and faithful records that testified to Jesus accurately, and history bears this out. The New Testament – A Brief History: We know that from earliest times, Christians were trying to form an authorised list of accounts of Jesus. This was partly because there were so many specious and ‘heretical’ accounts appearing, especially in the second century CE. There is an early piece of evidence – the so-called Marcionite Canon. [Marcion c. 150 – which shows that lists of ‘proper’ books were already being drawn up. There is also the so-called Muratorian Fragment - about 190 – which confirms this trend. And such lists arose because of the sheer volume of Apocryphal Gospels – attributed to people such as Thomas, Pilate, Barnabas, etc – whose origins (and theology) were doubtful. Alongside these books, were others that many Christians used for spiritual nourishment, but appeared not to regard as being authoritative in the same ways as they might have read the four gospels. Such books included the Diatessaron of Tatian, Shepherd of Hermas, Didache, Epistles of Clement, Barnabas, etc. And then there were books that many Christians read, but could not agree upon their status until much later. The Book of Revelation is an obvious example, but so was Acts, and James – the latter, according to Luther, was an ‘Epistle of straw’, and in some early German vernacular versions of the Bible in the Reformation, the book appeared as an Appendix. But by the early part of the fourth century, and according to Eusebius, the list of books in the New Testament was largely settled, with the possible exception of Revelation. The criteria for books to be included in the New Testament canon was this: they must have original authors; historical reliability; and testify to Jesus Christ as Lord. So Dan Brown’s book does raise some fascinating questions for Christians as they read scripture. He suggests – in a rather exaggerated way, in my view – that the Bible is a cosy kind of serendipity, in which the church only endorses the books that in turn endorse it. This is one of the more ancient conspiracy theories, and it is interesting that it should be alive and well in the twenty-first century. I wonder what that says about the faith people now place in ancient institutions such as the church? Clearly, an explicit message of the Da Vinci Code is that the church has always protected its interests, and that scripture – chosen by the church – helps this ongoing process. But I suspect the truth is more subtle than that. Revd. Canon Prof. Martyn Percy back to DeCoding The DaVinci Code |
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