Biblical Scholarship and the Church

A Sixteenth-Century Crisis of Authority

Allan K. Jenkins, Patrick Preston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317174363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Conflicting claims to authority in relation to the translation and interpretation of the Bible have been a recurrent source of tension within the Christian church, and were a key issue in the Reformation debate. This book traces how the authority of the Septuagint and later that of the Vulgate was called into question by the return to the original languages of scripture, and how linguistic scholarship was seen to pose a challenge to the authority of the teaching and tradition of the church. It shows how issues that remained unresolved in the early church re-emerged in first half of the sixteenth century with the publication of Erasmus' Greek-Latin New Testament of 1516. After examining the differences between Erasmus and his critics, the authors contrast the situation in England, where Reformation issues were dominant, and Italy, where the authority of Rome was never in question. Focusing particularly on the dispute between Thomas More and William Tyndale in England, and between Ambrosius Catharinus and Cardinal Cajetan in Italy, this book brings together perspectives from biblical studies and church history and provides access to texts not previously translated into English.

PART I
THE DEBATES

Chapter 1

The Roots of the Problem

Most versions of the Bible have been the work of anonymous translators (usually of many translators) who have given concrete expression in their work to the intellectual assumptions of their age and their culture, the religious and other opinions which they adhere to or respect, the prejudices and concerns which they adopt consciously or unconsciously, their education, their ability to express themselves, the conceptual range of the language they are translating into, and many other factors.¹

This chapter will examine how the question arose in the early church of the nature of the authority of a translation of sacred scripture, and in particular the effects of differing views concerning the issue on the origins of the Vulgate. The question will be explored in relation to the ‘First Bible of the Church’, the Septuagint, which first gave rise to it; secondly, in relation to Origen’s defence of the Septuagint as a divinely inspired translation; and, thirdly in relation to Jerome’s Latin version, which, in the form of the Vulgate, replaced the Greek Septuagint in the western church. The related question of the canonical status of books treated as scripture by the Christian church, but not found in the Jewish Canon, will also be touched on. The issues will be investigated on the basis of extant primary sources: the account in the Letter of Aristeas of the origin of the Septuagint translation, the writings of Origen in which he defended its divine inspiration, and the writings of Jerome, especially his correspondence with Augustine of Hippo concerning his revision of the Latin version on the basis of the original languages. The issue of authority in interpretation will also be introduced in relation to Book IV of Origen’s On First Principles, the first systematic Christian treatment of the interpretation of scripture, which set out the approach that remained dominant until the sixteenth century.

The First Bible of the Church: The Septuagint

The Greek version of scripture that came to be known as the Septuagint (‘Seventy’) is the earliest surviving translation of a major corpus of sacred writings into another language. It was produced when, following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the previous century, Greek had become the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean and knowledge of Hebrew was declining among Egyptian-born Jews.² Later tradition, epitomized by the Letter of Aristeas, ascribed its origin to the desire of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (c. 287–245BCE) for a translation of Jewish scripture for the renowned library of Alexandria, and attributed its production to Jewish scholars sent from Jerusalem for the purpose.³

The translation ascribed to ‘the Seventy’ was in fact only that of the Hebrew Torah (the Pentateuch), but within the Christian tradition the term ‘Septuagint’ came to be applied to the wider corpus of the Christian Old Testament.⁴ It included the so-called ‘apocryphal’ or ‘deutero-canonical’ books such as Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach), Wisdom, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and the additions to Daniel, none of which were included in the canon of Jewish scripture. The canonicity of these books remained problematic until the sixteenth century.⁵ By the time the Council of Trent in 1546 pronounced in their favour, however, reformed churches had either excluded them or collected them into a separate ‘Apocrypha’, a practice which is often followed today.

As early Christianity spread beyond the confines of Judea and Galilee and took root in the wider Graeco-Roman world, the Septuagint in effect provided ‘the first the Bible of the church’.⁶ Indeed, for most Christians it would have been the only version of the Old Testament that they knew. From it came a great number of the scriptural citations in the New Testament which are used to explain the significance of Jesus,⁷ including, for example, the term ‘virgin’ (parthenos) in Matthew 1:23 which came from the Septuagint’s rendering of the Hebrew ‘young woman’ (‘almah) in the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. Because of its widespread use in the New Testament, the Septuagint could be claimed to have the authority of the apostles and evangelists. As the canon of the New Testament developed within the church, the Septuagint was no longer alone in conveying scriptural teaching in translation, since the gospel writers, too, conveyed the teaching of Jesus not in its original Aramaic, but in Greek. The earliest complete copies of the Christian Bible, the fourth century uncial manuscripts, notably the Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Alexandrinus, and the Codex Siniaticus, were entirely in Greek, with the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew providing the text of the Old Testament.⁸

Inevitably, because sacred scripture was determinative for life and faith, the adoption of a particular translation gave rise to the question of its status and authority in relation to that of its original. Did ultimate authority lie in the wording or sense of the original, or could a translation claim equal authority and, if so, what criteria did the translation need to fulfil? The question gained in force when, towards the end of the first century CE, synagogue broke with church, and Judaism stipulated the Hebrew text alone as its authoritative version. Within the church itself, two views developed. One, later represented by Augustine, held the Septuagint to be divinely inspired and thus to have independent authority.⁹ The other, represented by Jerome and later by Erasmus, emphasized the authority of the original.¹⁰ The earliest document to defend the authority of the Septuagint was the so-called Letter of Aristeas.

The Letter of Aristeas

The Letter of Aristeas purports to be a letter from Aristeas, a Jew of Alexandria, to his ‘brother’ Philocrates, giving him an account of events that took place during the time of Ptolemy II (c. 287–245BCE), of which Aristeas was both eyewitness and participant. It includes a diversity of material, including detailed descriptions of the gifts sent by the king to the High Priest Eleazar in Jerusalem, Aristeas’ impression of the city and of the awesome sight of the High Priest leading worship in the Temple, a lengthy account of the banquet in Alexandria at which the king tested the wisdom of the Jewish elders sent to by Eleazar in response to Ptolemy’s request, and it culminates in the account of their translation of the Jewish Torah into Greek.¹¹

Scholars have struggled to provide an explanation of the purpose of Aristeas which does justice both to the centrality of the concern with the translation and to the other material which forms the bulk of the narrative. The connecting thread is the story of the translation of the Jewish Torah into Greek by the 72 Jewish scholars sent for the purpose, and the fact that the story of the translation itself, extracted from the large document, was later frequently retold suggests that it was considered to have an important bearing on the issue of the status of a translation of scripture.¹² Indeed, it has recently been claimed that one of the main purposes of Aristeas was in fact to claim authority for the Greek translation it describes.¹³ In any event, the story of the translation throws important light on the factors involved in establishing the authority of a translation of the Bible. Six factors stand out particularly strongly:

Royal patronage The question of whether or not the Greek translation was actually the product of Ptolemy’s efforts is one on which scholars remain divided, but the persistence of the tradition that a Gentile king should be responsible for the translation of Jewish scripture suggests that it may well be historically accurate.¹⁴ In any event, the writer of Aristeas accorded the king a vital role, especially in ensuring the quality and careful preservation of the resultant translation (317).

The quality of the original text The translators brought with them manuscripts of the Hebrew books to be translated, which are noted to be ‘valuable parchments, on which the law was inscribed in gold in Jewish characters’ (176), a description which attests that they were of the highest possible quality.

The sanction of the religious authority The vital role of the High Priest in the translation project needs little emphasis. He selects and sends suitably qualified translators and ensures that they work from acceptable manuscripts.

The religious credentials of the translators Because of the sacred character of what they were translating, there is emphasis throughout Aristeas on the religious credentials of the translators. The king himself recognised that they needed not only to be skilled in translation but also familiar with the Jewish Torah themselves, and accordingly he asked for elders of exemplary lives, skilled in the Torah and in the ability to interpret it (39). There was a fundamental recognition that the translation of holy scripture is best undertaken by those who practice the religion concerned.

The scholarly credentials of the translators It goes without saying that those entrusted with the translation needed expertise in both the languages involved, and such was indeed the case. In Aristeas’ words, ‘They were men who had not only acquired proficiency in Jewish literature, but had studied most carefully that of the Greeks as well’ (121–22).

It is important to note moreover that in the earliest version of Aristeas translation was a scholarly procedure and the collaborative work of a group of experts. The translators divided up the tasks among themselves, and ‘they set to work comparing their several results and making them agree’ (302). The precise way in which they did this, whether by majority or consensus, is not specified, but there is no suggestion of direct divine guidance or inspiration of the sort introduced into later versions of the story.

The approval of the religious community The translators were selected by the High Priest in the presence of the whole assembly (46). Upon the completion of the translation its credentials were established by the approval of the entire company of Jews called together to hear it read. They affirmed it as an accurate translation and attested that work of the translators preserved the sacred character of the original (310–311). The work of the translators was thus subject to the consensus of the religious community, not only as regards to its language, but also for the way that it conveyed the religious content of the Torah.

***

The criteria set out in the Letter of Aristeas as attesting the authority of the translation fall into two categories. First, there are those which are common to all translation, namely: the quality of the manuscripts of the text in its original language and the scholarly credentials of the translators, including their competence in both languages. Second, there are those criteria which are specific to sacred writings: the sanction of the religious leadership, the religious credentials of the translators both in terms of personal holiness and also of their understanding of religious matters, and approval by the religious comm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I The Debates
• Part II Documents
• Bibliography
• Index of Bible References
• General Index