The Open Canon and the Modern Reader

The sense of the terms “canon” and “canonical” can be readily understood. They derive from the Greek word kanōn (κανών), which comes from the Semitic term kanē, and bear the sense of a reed or corn stalk that has been notched for the purpose of measuring an item’s length. It was a simple step to make kanōn metaphorical and apply it to the notion of a standard or norm, whether in art, music, literature, or even human behavior. By the New Testament era, the standards for measuring scriptural texts were very diverse and all centered on the Old Testament, as is evident from the coexistence of the Samaritan Pentateuch, the proto-Masoretic Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint. As time went on, certain Christians saw value in gathering the letters of Paul into a corpus that would offer guidance both for church organization and for personal belief and morality. To these letters were added, over time, the Gospels, the book of Acts, and other distinctively Christian texts.

In the debates of the second century, diverse groups, especially the Gnostics, put forward differing views of what should go into the Christian canon. Church councils made decisions about the written works of heretical groups and chose to discard documents they considered noncanonical once the canon in the West was closed. This controversy about the Apocryphal documents lasted until the Council of Trent in 1566. Some of these works survived into modern times.¹ We now turn to the main issues that affect an open canon—a canon that can be expanded by new revelation.

Closed versus Open Canon

Whether a canon is still open or closed has caused a great deal of controversy over many centuries. But what is a canon? It has been defined as a measuring rod whereby teachings accepted by a faith community are compared to previously revealed information to determine whether the same authoritative value can be placed upon a new body of revelation.² As we have seen, the Christian connotation of the term “canon” denotes “reed” (Greek kanōn) and points to a measuring rod, to standards, or to a general list or catalogue. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (died May 2, 373), first used the term to designate scripture. The practice of canonization stems from the Old Testament lists that were in flux until the apparent stabilization at the Council of Jamnia (c. AD 90).³

In Hebrew custom, defiled hands were forbidden to touch the Torah (kaneh), without a ceremonial washing. Therefore, Gentiles were considered unworthy of such a task. Despite such tradition, the pre-Christian Letter of Aristeas offers a somewhat fanciful account of the Old Testament translation from Hebrew into Greek being created because a need had arisen among Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt for a Greek copy of the scriptures. Thereafter, the Greek translation of the Old Testament obtained a status for community worship and public reading.⁴ Translating the Hebrew scriptures into Greek opened the door to understanding concepts like salvation, sacrifice, and divine deliverance in very different ways. The Hebrew words to form these concepts did not have a direct translation into Greek, so Jews had to find new ways to explain their views. This began the Greek influence on Semitic beliefs. Roger Beckwith captures this conundrum very succinctly: “If, however, Hellenistic Judaism was influenced by Semitic Palestine, the converse is also true: that Palestinian Judaism was influenced by the Hellenistic world, and much more deeply than used to be supposed.”⁵

During this time of translation into Greek, students of the canon argued that when a point of corruption entered the canonical process, the original purpose of the text was altered. For example, when someone in authority made a change that did not mirror the intent of the scripture, future readers of that scripture would understand it differently. Others will suggest that there was a canonical cycle after the moment of corruption that resulted in a fall into apostasy, thus moving the canonizing process into a reconstruction-and-rebirth cycle where canonical teachings were reintroduced in the light of new revelation. For example,

the People of Judah and Israel, thus restored to their territory and to the worship of their God, ruled by a Davidic monarch rather than by foreigners, their land renewed and their cities rebuilt, are now ready for the renewal of the covenant. The covenant is “not like the covenant I made with their forefathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt” (Jer. 31:31). Here, for the first time, the idea of covenant in oracles of restoration is linked with reenlandisement and the reunification of Israel. The radical newness of the covenant is emphasized by its contrast with the Sinaitic covenant: whereas the former covenant was written on tablets of stone, the new covenant would reside in the hearts of the participants in a “redeemed society”; it would be “formulated on the basis of individuals who responded to the free expression of divine love.”⁶

Traditional interpreters maintain that Israel’s canon was produced by historical readings and the gathering of books in the Great Synagogue, where the canon was closed and took its final form consisting of three divisions: Law, Prophets, and Writings.⁷ These modern form critics feel there was a final editing that resulted in the finished canonical shaping of the text in the days of Ezra, who served as chief editor over the redacting process. Other critics generally do not believe the canon was ever closed, due to the shaping of the scriptures from varied sources, such as the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Samaritan Pentateuch, all of which were not edited in the Great Synagogue. In addition, the same critics do not accept that the Great Synagogue closed the canonical process, because if it did, their process would not have been obscured. One critic explains,

It is clear from the sketch of the process that particular editors, religious groups, and even political parties were involved. At times one can describe these groups historically or sociologically, such as the reforming Deuteronomic party of Jerusalem, or the editors associated with Hezekiah’s court (Prov 25.1). But basic to the canonical process is that those responsible for the actual editing of the text did their best to obscure their own identity. Thus the actual process by which the text was reworked lies in almost total obscurity.⁸

In this light, today’s canon can be considered to be an ongoing process (if one holds to an open canonical stance), which extends into the writings of modern churches and local synods. Our contemporary challenge is to evaluate the canonical issues of the past and revisit those issues with modern textual discoveries in mind to see whether the assumptions of open and closed canonical systems can be applied to today’s study of text, canon, and tradition. Modern canonical critics advance the implications of a self-authenticating canon based on the mutual reinforcement of continuing and reoccurring narratives and literary structures that are contained within the internal evidence of the text. They even claim the literary structural subunits lead to larger units on a superstructural level, which results in larger parallelisms and poetic patterns. Therefore, the internal structure of the text can point to authenticity by the establishment of the literary prose or style of the writer or editor. In the case of the Bible, this same principle can be broadened beyond a particular book and applied to a group of books or a corpus.

Open canon critics do not usually explore the diversity in the canon but try to create harmonious explanations despite tensions and differences contained within the texts themselves. This diversity, in their view, is not one of tension between the origins and associated concerns about any particular biblical document, but they believe diverse opinions arise from the differences of emphasis as one moves from one book of scripture to another. For example, the synoptic tradition within the corpus of the New Testament has a view of Christ’s life and ministry that is roughly shared by the synoptic writers. The proposed “Q” (from Quelle, “source”) hypothesis may be the source of those traditions.

Resting on a different calendrical scheme for the Passover that became accepted in the canonizing process, the Gospel of John thematically reinterprets Jesus as the Passover Lamb and reorganizes the data to center around Jesus’ identity as the great “I Am.”⁹ John is using Jesus as the communities’ personal Passover to show his identity. According to Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 200), John was a mystic heavily trained in the allegorical method of interpreting the text. Eusebius¹⁰ reiterates the same connotation.

In a similar vein, rabbis and mystical teachers taught different aspects of their message in public than they did in private tutorials—an attempt to lead disciples to a different, deeper grasp of the sacred matters that we find in John’s Gospel. Jesus himself did this too. For example, Matthew 13:10–23 included the mystical teachings of Jesus directed to the disciples. As Jesus said in verse 16, “But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.” This blessing Jesus issued as a rabbi was to demonstrate that his disciples understood his parabolic teaching. This act framed how Jesus’ followers would understand and pass on his words. As Michael Kruger said in more formal language, “The canon is not something to be judged as much as it is the thing that does the judging. When this attribute of the canon is appreciated, once again, we can see how the canon is not so much shaped by the community of faith, but a means of shaping the community of faith.”¹¹

A question here is, Where does the authority lie in the canonical process?¹² That is to say, who chose the works that would become scripture, such as the Gospels? The lofty view of inerrant inspiration assumes that the authority figure has clear, direct communication with God. The human participant or author is little more than a mechanical scribe for God’s words. This heavenly dictation would naturally carry with it the authority of God’s words. However, if God’s Spirit moved through the community and inspired members to require that books be read publicly by the Old Testament priesthood because of the books’ authority and instructional value, the community influenced the canonical shape, which influenced the growth of the revelation. We see this in the reading of sacred texts under Ezra’s direction and the following rehearsal of God’s sacred acts undertaken in the distant past (Neh. 8:13–9:38). Hence, Israel both shaped the canon and was shaped by the canonical process—an adjustment to Kruger’s viewpoint above.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has never accepted inspiration through heavenly dictation. Eastern churches maintain that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers, who were full of human shortcomings and limitations of understanding based on their personal and intellectual backgrounds. Therefore, in their view, “the Bible is the inspired word of God in terms of content rather than style, grammar, history, or frame.”¹³

After the Writings and the Prophets, or Haf Tarah, were added as scripture, the term “law,” or Torah, did not mean the first five books of the decalogue only but grew to encompass the entire codification of God’s revelation in rabbinic Judaism.¹⁴ So anything that was accepted as scripture could present lawful instruction and ethics to guide one’s conduct. By the time of the early Church, the Law and the Prophets were regarded as scripture in the general sense of the term, as shown in Luke 24:44.

One constant motif in Old Testament literature was that God was both Savior and Judge as well as judgmental and prophetic. Israel in exile needed hope and l’chayim, “life” (see Gen. 45:5; Ezra 9:8–9). By this time, with occasional exceptions, the resurrection had burned itself forever into the collective memory of Judaism. Torah was for sustaining life and, in the final analysis, was the authority that gave meaning to the canon.¹⁵ In the Hebrew frame of reference, life demonstrated reality not only for God in the heavens but in the cycle of life in worship and in everyday experiences. Even nature was part of God’s reality, not just his dominion. Expectations of a Deliverer would usher in a golden age of messianic reign (Isa. 65:17–25) in which Jerusalem would be recreated and would not be inhabited by another power, such as the Assyrians. Isaiah’s eschatological utterance was to give Israel hope no matter her condition and applied to the resurrection of all humankind.¹⁶

Christianity also effectively created a canon within the canon by selectively quoting the Old Testament verses that their leaders and theologians thought supported their version of how the last days would play out. Similar to Israel’s authoritative view for how they read the Torah, Christians also found evidence for the perspective they wanted. James Barr stated, “Protestant orthodoxy in particular read into these evidences its own ideals and convictions of a religion strictly controlled by scripture and subservient to it, and never considered the possibility that the texts might, or even must, be read in another way.”¹⁷

Barr’s point here is well-taken. Christian expositors will often recast the zitz im leben, the real-life situation, from Israel’s surroundings into a Christian fulfillment or expectation. Statements such as “Jesus is in every book of the Bible” and “Every promise made to David belongs to you” violate canonical hermeneutics in the worst possible way. Could it be that the promises to David were for him alone, and from them, we might learn what Yahweh can do to save his people in a general sense through lessons of faith? And, yes, the Old Testament pointed to the coming of the Divine Warrior, who was to be the suzerain of all nations (Isa. 18–20; 30:1–17; 31:1–3), in the house of either David (Isa. 9:7) or Joseph. And Jesus did become the new Moses and give new aspects of the Law from the mountain. But this dips into rhetorical criticism, where the interpreter identifies and understands a scriptural person’s ministry by new data that is belatedly attributed to the revelation of the original writer.

The same situation happened with Isaiah 7:3, where Isaiah’s son was seen as a coming ruler (Isa. 9:5b, which is a hapax legomenon) who would fight beside the people like an “Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Luke 1:31–35 effectively reinterprets this phrase from “the God who fights beside you in battle” to the sense of “God with us” in the form of God’s Son. As a local application, the son of Isaiah was to be the Wonderful Counselor (Great Teacher) in ancient times (Isa. 9:6). He was to bring wisdom and justice to that generation (Isa. 9:7; 11:1–5). However, the names attributed to the coming Messiah are throne names to describe rule and authority, which appear in Isaiah 9:6. The expected parallel sense in Isaiah 9:7 opens with a spelling anomaly that puzzled the rabbis and introduced confusion about who was to rule and when. A modern person can turn to the Septuagint for a clear sense of the opening phrase of verse 7: “For the increase.”¹⁸ But the ancient Jewish sages had no such option until the Septuagint was fully developed sometime between the third and first century BC.¹⁹ They had to struggle with the Hebrew text about whether the person who would bring an increase of God’s government and peace had already come or was yet to appear, bearing ultimate rule and authority. Therefore, the prophecies that originally applied to the sons of Isaiah, the two kings, have within them a broader implication of what the Messiah would do when he would establish his throne in the future as the Davidic King and choose righteousness.²⁰ He would assume his authority and apply these throne names in a larger context and wider definition as the ruling Messiah. Thus the canonical process does maintain a development of God’s kingdom in the Messiah’s ministry until the ultimate result: the resurrection of humankind.

As accurate as Old Testament scribes attempted to be, there are some ancient texts that contain slightly different readings, such as those found in the Isaiah Scrolls of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These adjust the messianically significant passages of Isaiah 53 in the later Masoretic Text. The central point of these ancient texts remains clear—namely, that the Messiah would be a true wisdom teacher and usher in divine rule. In Isaiah’s words, “of the increase of his government there shall be no end” (Isa. 9:7).

With various readings of the text, and additional prophets still yet to write, the Jewish canon continued to evolve. One scholar wrote,

There seems to be little doubt that by ca. 200 BCE most of the Jewish people had recognized in some sense a collection of writings called the “Prophets” (Nevi’im), the bulk of which existed earlier than 400 BCE. We are probably correct in assuming that some parts of the prophetic literature, as well as the Law, were an exilic canon for the Jews in Babylon. This “prophetic” collection of writings included what was called the “Former Prophets” (Joshua, Judges, the Samuels, and the Kings), and four “Latter prophets” (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and some of the books of the Twelve or the “Minor” Prophets). Some of the latest of the Twelve prophets (Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi) had not yet been written during the ministries of Ezra and Nehemiah. Pfeiffer claims that all of these books were adopted into Israel’s canon not only because of growing public interest in them but also because of their recognized value “for enhancing the national pride and the hopes for a better future.”²¹

Both the major and minor prophets, so termed by Christian canonization, characterized Israel’s national literature and theology, and they also guided Israel’s history and destiny. The canonical literature does not present history in the modern sense of the term. This very early literature framed a theologized reinterpretation of Israel’s development and theology in her temple and synagogue. The Christian church often assumed that many New Testament concepts were totally foreign to Hebrew thought and practice because of the doctrine of supersessionism, wherein the church became the new covenant Israel. In truth, the old Israel had hopes of becoming the new Israel, with pilgrimages from many nations coming back to the land to prepare for the reign of the Messiah (see Isa. 2:2–4). In a similar fashion, the Qumran community viewed itself as the new Israel.²² In the view of all these ancient groups, a filling of the spirit such as the prophets possessed would encompass the people of God’s land (Joel 2:18, 28–32).

Church Fathers

In another vein, our modern perspective often dictates that we interpret the church fathers through the lens of textual integrity. This viewpoint creates the illusion that we may use them to verify certain textual readings from the four major textual groups of the Greek New Testament that grew out of the four translation centers in the Roman and Byzantine Empires: Rome, Antioch, Byzantium, and Alexandria. The practice was misapplied because the church fathers often took license from the original text reading and applied their own spiritual and theological model to show on which side of any number of doctrinal debates they stood. It is true that all but a few New Testament verses are cited by the desert fathers and other patristic sources. However, the allusions to the text are from memory or arose from oral traditions that do not correspond to known textual readings or to the modern use of the historical method. For example,

first, the supposed “text of a Father” is based upon a gratuitous assumption: namely, that a Father in any single locale or at any particular time used one and only one manuscript. In fact, a Father may have switched manuscripts daily in some cases. This possibility alone precludes any suggestions that “the” [Greek New Testament] text used by a Father can indeed be reconstructed with confidence. Certainly, while a Father was in a single location, most manuscripts available to him in that region would reflect the local text of the area; but what if now and then another manuscript from a different region came his way? It becomes no surprise to find that some Fathers possess a text that is “mixed” in a significant degree. The fact is, we can only determine which readings a Father may have quoted at certain times in his works; the actual text of the manuscript(s) he may have used remains an open question.²³

Melito of Sardis (died c. AD 190) came to the East to learn of the wisdom established by the desert fathers. In his letter to Onesimus, he expressed his desire to complete this task. In the letter’s canonical list, Melito included most of the Apocryphal books, just as Athanasius did almost two centuries later, which were Judith, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, and a four-Gospel narrative. Since it was not typical of early Christians, it is amazing to think that Melito, the father of Western Logos Christology, upheld the Apocryphal literature in his writings. Two centuries later, in Athanasius’s thirty-ninth festal letter, a key document from AD 367, he included Esther and four Apocryphal works—the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, and Tobit—that would find their way into the Old Testament Masoretic canon.²⁴

The eastern fathers previously mentioned espoused a smaller Old Testament canon than the western fathers because the classifications of these books were arranged in different canonical categories. For example, Origen’s homily on the book of Numbers stated that Leviticus should be thrown out. He later utilized Psalm 25:1–2 with Jeremiah and 1 and 2 Maccabees in his homilies. Hilary followed Origen but added Tobit and Judith to his canonical listing. Cyprian with Ambrose included Jeremiah and Lamentations and reported them to be composed by the same author. Cyril, with his twenty-two-book Old Testament canon, accepted Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah.

By approximately AD 370, Gregory of Nazianzus divided Judges and Ruth so his canon could have twenty-two books and stated that Ezekiel and Song of Songs were to be for the mature reader who was no longer a novice or a catechumen in the faith. Catechumens were to learn the Psalms as beginning apprentices. Gregory’s writings consisted of Hebrew texts and Aramaic Targums. Jerome (c. 342–420), in his great Latin Vulgate translation, declared the book of Psalms to be an incomplete corpus of literature and stated that the Hagiographa, the sacred writings, omitted Sirach but included Judith, Tobit, and the Shepherd of Hermas.

Later, Augustine (354–430) added Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, and Tobit to the list of books that he accepted as canonical. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a canonical arrangement of eighty-one to eighty-eight books, which includes extra books that are found in deuterocanonical lists depending on what is accepted by the local jurisdiction. We come upon the books of Josippon, Enoch from the Ethiopic text, Jubilees, Tobit, Judith, the additional psalm from the Septuagint, Baruch, Susanna, and others. The Proverbs are listed as two separate books: Messalë (Prov. 1–24) and Tägsas (Prov. 25–31).

In Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Odes of Solomon are recognized as canonical. This document was discovered in 1909 and points to the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit, who prepared the Son of God for his divine mission. Ode 36.1–3 states, “I rested on the Spirit of the Lord: and She raised me on high: and made me stand on my feet in the height of the Lord, before His perfection and His glory, while I was praising [Him] by the composition of His songs. She brought me forth before the face of the Lord: and although a son of man, I was named the illuminated one, the son of God.”²⁵ In Roman Catholicism, by contrast, the Prayer of Manasseh is an appendix, but it is listed in the Eastern Orthodox Study Bible as an honored text. This document and others demonstrate the openness and the fluidity regarding the development of any orthodox canon.

It has long been observed that the early church fathers quoted all but a handful of verses contained in our New Testament. Until recent times, scholars of the Apocrypha did not explore the church fathers or the pseudepigrapha. With the advent of James Charlesworth’s groundbreaking two-volume set of the pseudepigrapha,²⁶ scholars and laymen have access to this third category of ancient Near Eastern literature now paired with the Old and New Testaments. With the pseudepigrapha in hand, we can now better identify the literary trajectories that flowed from one group of canonical writings to another to form a literary train. Perhaps surprisingly, this train extends from Israel and its neighbors into the wisdom traditions of Solon in Greece, where Solon’s proverbs were shared with Judah, and to the interaction of Psalms with the Canaanite collection of the same type, one example of which is Psalms 118 through 122.

The wisdom writings composed during the Axial Period, approximately the sixth century BC, were derived from one Mediterranean culture and were localized in smaller nation states, who promoted their own reactions to these international wisdom sayings. According to the Letter of Aristeas, by 280 BC the Septuagint translators in Egypt considered Israel’s primary canon and Apocryphal writings to be the Holy Writings, or the Hagiographa. The Apocryphal books and versions of the Septuagint were often read thereafter in the Jewish diaspora because of the hidden wisdom they contained in interpreting Daniel and the other wisdom books that came into existence after the days of Ezra. The early church interpreted the wisdom of Daniel’s prophecies within the time frame and structures set forth in the books of 2 Esdras, which the church understood to take place in their day. Modern scholarship now suggests there may be echoes from noncanonical writings in the words of Jesus. For example, Matthew 25:31 is an echo from 1 Enoch, and Matthew 23:37 is from 2 Esdras 2.²⁷ Because this larger body of original Hebrew literature was no longer in existence, it echoed principally through the Hellenistic synagogue outside ancient Palestine, where many of Jesus’ statements in the Greek text follow within the Septuagint tradition. The church fathers had to rely on the writings of the Septuagint to draw upon the source material that was not included in the Masoretic Hebrew text, which became fixed in only the tenth century AD.

Traditional commentators often see the modern stable canonical process as originating from a four-stage model. They base this formula on (1) the Law, (2) the Prophets, (3) the Lord Jesus, and (4) his Apostles. The broader Christian approach reads the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus and the Apostles, and their canon is rooted in how the Christian faith began and how the corpus of our New Testament was framed. The church fathers add a fifth layer by establishing the traditions that early Christianity would develop and maintain.²⁸

The Septuagint

The view that the canon remains open is still a minority position in western Christianity. When one holds to a closed canonical position of the text, one is locked into the historical and doctrinal positions that are held within the accepted canonical books, whatever their strengths and weaknesses may be. The character of the canon can vary in the relationships between the books that are canonized. But attempts to join to the canon theological works and other documents from the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha are often met with a great deal of resistance. However, the discussions among scholars are changing, especially in regards to 1 Enoch’s influence upon the New Testament, particularly in the book of Revelation. Until now, scholars assigned these references to apocryphal sources in an offhanded way that did not result in giving Enoch and other pseudepigraphal literature primary consideration for their theological importance. The extra Daniel literature contained in the Septuagint entitled Bel and the Dragon, as well as the additions to Esther, which the Masoretic Text compilers received from Jewish traditions as a minority report and, along with the Song of Solomon, were almost left out of the Jewish canon, have always been considered minority, secondary texts. The book of Esther and the erotic love poetry of the Song of Solomon were considered not to have primary standing in the canon because the name of God was not specifically mentioned.

Concerning the differing lengths of individual books, the Septuagint tradition generally follows the longer versions of these documents. The copies of the Song of Solomon text are very stable between the Masoretic tradition and the LXX. One notable exception in this case is Jeremiah.

Tov argues that the Book of Jeremiah existed in two distinct Hebrew forms: a shorter edition from which the extant Greek was translated, and an expanded tradition that became the MT. He proposes that the shorter version of Jeremiah—reflected by 4QJer^b,d and the Greek version—is the older edition of Jeremiah. Fragments of both the shorter and longer Hebrew texts were found at Qumran. The oldest of the Jeremiah fragments, 4QJer^a (also called 4Q70)—as well as 2QJer (also called 2Q13) and 4QJer^c (also called 4Q72)—reflects the MT tradition and is thought to date from approximately 200 B.C.E., while 4QJer^b,d is dated somewhat later, to the first half of the second century B.C.E.²⁹

In this case, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain both longer and shorter versions of the book of Jeremiah. Are they a compilation of the traditions, the Septuagint, and the Masoretic, or was there a distinct tradition of Jeremiah’s record that was separate from the other two textual streams and brought together in the Qumran community?

Those who favor an open canon generally support the Septuagint readings and its additional documents, while the closed-canon position simply regards these writings as mere additions without primary canonical authority. The open-canon position sometimes assumes that the writings of a later date represent the theology and liturgical practices of earlier but now-lost writings that do not have a canonical classification. In a different but enlightening vein, the extra canonical documents go not only into time schemes for earth’s redemptive history, as contained in Jubilees, but also into the seven to ten heavens from the ascension literature of Enoch’s heavenly travels.

Moreover, there are additional stories about Jesus that add to the oral sayings in the literature of the Gospels, such as those about Jesus’ childhood contained in the Gospel of Thomas. For example, the Gospel of Thomas 2:2 features a story about the clay bird the youthful Jesus made that came to life at his command and flew away, showing his divinity from an early age. Most scholars have seen this as just a fanciful story reported at a later date in the Qur’an (sura 5:110) about the Lord Jesus, effectively underlining Jesus’ genuine mortality in the face of viewpoints that held Jesus to be only a numinous person.

Additional stories exist about the potter’s field that may have been part of the original composition of Jeremiah. In the New Testament, the reference appears in Matthew 27:9–10. Various attempts have been advanced throughout the centuries to explain how this reference fits into the death of Judas. Most scholars and commentators maintain that this insertion is out of context with the narrative in Matthew. However, several different reports lead to other possibilities.

When we think of some of the things which have been said about it [the potter’s field] by leading Christian scholars and commentators we cannot but feel shame. The devout and scholarly Alford, of all commentators, calls it a “slip of the pen” by Matthew! Bishop Wordsworth says it is a mistake allowed by the Holy Spirit to teach us not to trouble ourselves as to who the writers were, but to receive all prophecy as direct from God! Augustine suggests that Matthew was only quoting “from memory”! Eusebius and others say that the passage was originally in Jeremiah, but that the Jews cut it out, though they cannot prove this. Bishop Lightfoot and others suggest that Matthew puts Jeremiah as representing the whole body of the prophets, but why Matthew should do so is hard to see. Perhaps we are getting nearer the truth in the view of Origen and some others, that the passage which Matthew refers to was in another writing of Jeremiah which became lost. Or we may be still nearer the truth in the suggestion put forward in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, that some annotator wrote “Jeremiah” in the margin and that it thereby crept into the text.³⁰

No matter which textual explanation we adopt, the material attributed to Jeremiah was not yet fixed in any textual tradition.³¹ The differences are apparent when one studies the larger Septuagint renderings.³² It is most likely that this reading in Jeremiah dropped out of use over time or was inserted into the so-called Apocryphon of Jeremiah. Let us remember the text says that “then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet” (Matt. 27:9). Evidently, the purchase of the potter’s field followed the pattern of a purchase initiated by Jeremiah, although we have no specific citation for this fulfillment. The thirty pieces of silver, which was the “blood money,” comes from Zechariah. Is there, then, a difference between the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy and the reports which were circulated at the time of the death of Jesus?

Other texts such as the book of Wisdom are particularly helpful with our understanding of the wisdom traditions which had international acclaim during the Axial Period. The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees and the successful course of the Maccabean revolt have been viewed as possessing historically viable information. And the books of 1 and 2 Esdras established an early church eschatology that rested on Daniel chapters 2 and 7.

Conclusions

All this data supports the conclusion that the canon was both fixed and flexible in the literature of Judaism and early Christianity. The closing of the New Testament canon was probably an effort to stabilize the canon from the five canonical lists³³ that were accepted by various local communities and used primarily for local liturgical and worship practices. When the canon becomes too rigid and fixed, valuable additional theological and historical material is diminished or rejected wholesale. On the other hand, the problem with an open canonical concept is that there is greater tension with the primary canon because of the amount of potential source material that becomes available to add to scripture.

As examples, the current canon has the story of Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28:10–17, which has a description of exaltation but does not deal with the broader genre of Ascension literature that echoes this teaching. The Old Testament describes in Ezekiel and Isaiah the saints being exalted on the mountain of God (Ezek. 34:14; Isa. 2) and their odyssey being fulfilled at the top of the mountain, where complete restoration takes place in fulfillment of the Day of Atonement narrative. This theme is repeated in Micah 2. There is also tension and confusion created between the writers of Psalm 146:4 and Ecclesiastes 9:5, which seem to indicate that there is no consciousness once the dead depart from this mortal life. If one holds a closed canonical position, this stance is quite tenable and ancient. However, with the Hellenization of Judaism through the Greek-speaking synagogue and the major prophets articulating the search for eternal life through exaltation and going up to the mountain, there is a clear affirmation of the consciousness of the departed dead (for example, Gen. 37:34–35). A tension develops between these two narrative approaches to the resurrection. Some resolve these issues by asserting that later revelation progressively clarifies the rest of the redemptive story. Others judge that Judaism went off the rails into pagan apostasy.

It is against this backdrop that the New Testament Apostles and early church fathers began the development of the church canon and New Testament streams of thought that diverged from Old Testament teachings. Where these narratives come together is in the motifs of judgment followed by resurrection and the new creation. The canonical positions of the Ethiopic Church, for example, have room in an open-canon context for all of this material. Even the Muratorian canon (late second century AD) listed books that were not accepted later by the church at large. This may be an indication that other books not contained in the current primary canon were accepted in the early church’s liturgy and practice. When one reads the Gospel according to Phillip (second century AD), additional information about the Holy of Holies is entertained that connects with the Song of Solomon and eternal marriage. We also have the forty days of the appearances of the Risen Messiah, entitled Evangelium Quadraginta Dierum, that are joined with our Lord’s other bodily manifestations after his Resurrection (Acts 1:3; 1 Cor. 15:5–8).³⁴ This is followed by the Ascension narrative in Acts 1:6 (see also Luke 24:30–51). As the church developed the doctrine of deification from the Ascension of Christ, the pseudepigraphal work that is called the Evangelion of Mary grew in acceptance, and her deification became prominent.³⁵

The stabilization of the canonical process became paramount due to the scriptural and intellectual bulwark needed for the defense of Christ’s redemption being the salvation of the world, a teaching which stood against the Gnostic ideologies of an escape from the physical body and an evil world created by an imperfect creator-god. During the second and third centuries AD, Gnostic teachings about a pure spiritual resurrection challenged the church’s view of Jesus’ bodily Resurrection. The Gnostic position rested on a view borrowed from the Greek world that the body was evil. Moreover, the Gnostics held that only the true light and wisdom from the Demiurge, a creature subservient to the Unknowable Father, would enlighten men and women throughout the eons. Significant alternative texts and debates about the nature of celestial marriage in the resurrection would connect with the secret teachings about the Holy of Holies, the crowning of marriage, and temple liturgy, as seen in the writings of the early church fathers. These and other Alexandrian views about, for example, the premortality of all humans have been rejected by the church at large. But in the viewpoint of an open canonical connection, Gnostic literature and other ancient texts become a part of the theological spectrum of patristic Christianity and are essential to our full understanding of Christian theology and history.