Bruce Gordon is a professor at Yale who specializes in the late medieval and early modern period, so it is of course unfair of me to point out details that he has gotten wrong about a period outside his area of expertise. Nevertheless, I guess that's what blogs are for.
Last year Basic Books published Gordon's 500-page account of the history of the Bible, from its origins to modern times. I've heard great things about it. I'm reading chapter 1, "Becoming a Book" (pp. 9–40), and here are some notes, mostly corrections. (I considered calling this post "Correcting the Bible," but thought better of it.)
But before the corrections, here is something I found very valuable, all from p. 18.
For all the necessary talk of bishops and theologians, the early story of the Bible is not primarily about which books were deemed scripture and which were excluded by the sole discretion of religious authorities. The revolution of the Bible lay in Christians' distinctive attitude toward their sacred writings. Words are powerful, particularly holy ones, and for Christians this meant both spoken and written. The Gospels and the writings of the New Testament authors circulated among communities orally and as leaves. In comparison to the Jewish tradition, early Christians did not have such a reverential attitude toward the written words of scripture. [But later, p. 21: "This profound reverence for religious texts was a trait that christians inherited from the Hebrew tradition."] The writings of the New Testament were not the preserve of learned scholars but for the people. Written in common language, they were neither elegant nor refined, reflecting both their authors and their intended audience. The Christian revolution was that scripture was meant for all, whether literate or not. You did not have to be able to read or study them. They could be transmitted orally in daily conversation, prayer, and worship. They were not intended for the desk but for caring for thy neighbor.
The Bible grew organically into canon, fostered by the worship, reading, and devotional practices across Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and Africa. Canon formation was a social act by which communities granted certain texts a status of authority for a wide range of reasons, although most prominently out of the belief that those works came from the earliest writers of the faith and carried the true teachings of Christ. They were sanctioned to be read in worship. In other words, the Bible was not created by fiat. Instead, it took shape in diverse communities in which certain texts gradually emerged as its essence, even if there was not (and would never be) full agreement about that essence.
Here are the notes/corrections.
pp. 13–14. "For the Hebrew Bible, Jesus is our witness when he clearly refers to the basic three-part division of Hebrew scriptures into the Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings)." Gordon then quotes Luke 24:44. Whether this verse alludes to presently-known tripartite division of the Tanak is debatable, and debated, so Gordon's "clearly" is a bit excessive.
p. 15. "Jerome acknowledged that these texts [the Apocrypha] fostered piety and thus placed them between the Old and New Testaments, in a second tier, where they were recognized as helpful and instructive but not inspired by the divine." The sentence is wrong on its face, but almost right. Or, as Jerome might say, Gordon is right according to the sense but not according to the letter. Jerome certainly did not place the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments. That description implies a pandect, which only came to the Latin Bible after Jerome's time. But we do have medieval Latin pandects that have the Apocrypha between the Testaments, more-or-less—such as the Bibles of Theodulf—and it might be that some medieval theologians assumed that Jerome was responsible for this arrangement. At any rate, Jerome certainly did think of the Apocrypha as occupying "a second tier," lower than the canonical books but useful to Christians.
p. 16. On Athanasius' canon list from the year 367: "The difference in number from Josephus was because Athanasius often counted several books, such as the minor prophets, as one book." This parenthetical comment must represent a mental lapse, because as Gordon tells us, both Athanasius and Josephus have the same number of books for the Hebrew Scriptures, that number being 22.
p. 16. "Athanasius's was the first such definitive list and is often regarded as a turning point in the determination of the Christian Bible, establishing what was in and what was out." It is in this paragraph that Gordon cites my book with John Meade on the canon lists, which I'm glad to see, but then why would he think that Athanasius is the first? I guess it depends on what he means by "definitive," but as he goes on to say, even Athansius' list was not definitive. At any rate, the list from Cyril of Jerusalem preceded that of Athanasius (though Cyril omitted Revelation, but then again Athanasius omitted Esther).
p. 22. "the third-century Egyptian church father Origen wrote of Rufinus, who threatened his copyists with eternal perdition...." Here Gordon cites Shuve, p. 172, a typo for p. 182. But the main problem is that Gordon makes it sound like Origen wrote something about Rufinus, which is of course nonsense. Rufinus was the Latin translator of Origen's Greek works, and they lived more than a century apart. Shuve has it right: "In the preface to his translation of Origen's On First Principles, Rufinus has copyists swear...."
That's it. The rest of the chapter is a good overview (from my perspective) of early codices (pp. 26–29) and of Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (pp. 29–39).
