Link to Class Notes
The Bible contains many fine stories, ranging from the sagas of the ancient patriarchs to the parables of Jesus. Even people who do not regard it as a religious authority appreciate the Bible as a collection of ancient literature that tells wonderful stories and as the source of many others. But the Bible as a book also has a story, one as fascinating in its way as any of the stories told within its pages.
This is a course about the world’s most famous, most read, most debated, and sometimes, most detested book. How, when, and why did it enter the world? What have been the stages of its growth? In how many forms has it appeared? How has it exercised its influence? The story is a long one, stretching from the first collections of ancient Jewish Law hundreds of years before the Common Era, down to the present day, when the translation and production of Bibles in all the world’s languages and dialects remains a publishing phenomenon, making the Bible more reliably available in hotel rooms than the Yellow Pages.
Because this is the story of a book, it must include consideration of the material elements that go into the production of all books, starting with the writing and collection of scrolls and moving through the writing and copying of manuscripts and the invention of printing, which made it possible for the Bible to be in every hand in every land. And because this is a book that has spread through the world, the story is also about languages and the process of translation. What happens when the original Hebrew of Torah is translated into Greek or when the Greek of the New Testament is translated into Latin and then into all the languages of the ancient and modern world? What new meanings do translations allow and what older meanings do they obscure?
The story of the Bible is also complex. Indeed, because there are actually several Bibles, several stories must be told more or less simultaneously. Jews and Christians call different collections of compositions “the Bible” and read them in different languages. Different groups of Christians also have distinct collections that they call the Bible; although the collections of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians overlap, they are by no means identical. Both the causes and consequences of such diversity deserve attention, especially given that the process by which canonical decisions were reached, particularly within Christianity, was by no means undisputed — and remains disputed by some even today. The Bible’s story includes the history of its reading and interpretation within the diverse religious traditions that accord it a special authority. Jews and Christians not only read different Bibles, but they interpret their sacred texts from distinct perspectives and premises. Biblical interpretation lies at the heart of Jewish and Christian identity, and the story of the Bible is inextricable from the history of these religious traditions. Interpretation takes place through the deliberate work of sages and theologians, to be sure, as a book that generates countless other books. Interpretation of the Bible also occurs through communal practices of worship and through the prayer, poetry, works of art, and musical compositions of individuals inspired by biblical imagination.
This course tells the story in four stages. The first stage focuses on antiquity, tracing the way in which compositions that were written by different authors for different readers in different times and places were gathered together into collections to form, first, the Hebrew Bible, then, the New Testament. The second stage follows the process of text transmission, translation, and interpretation within Jewish and Christian communities through the medieval period. The third recounts the critical period of the Protestant Reformation, with particular attention to the implications of printing (and the possibility of individual interpretation of Scripture) and the translation of the Bible into English. The fourth stage considers the romance of the recovery of ancient manuscripts, the construction of critical editions, and the rise of critical historical scholarship on the Bible, as well as the role played by biblical translation in missionary efforts around the world.
No short course can provide “everything you ever wanted to know about the Bible,” but this one makes a responsible start on a story that especially needs telling because it is at once so little known and so widely misapprehended.