Let's start with the title. According to Burton Mack in Who Wrote the New Testament?, the first evidence of the term comes from the second century. "Testament" is a mistranslation of diatheke, which was used in the sense of covenant (qv. etymonline). The new testament is a new promise that God makes to His people. However, it will take another couple of hundred years before it becomes the title of a book. Why? Because there was no "book" until Constantine started asking for one in the 4th century.
You see, Constantine is the first Christian Emperor, though it is disputed whether or not he was a Christian. He certainly made nice with the Christians. In fact, he turned Christianity into a unified, global religion. He called councils of bishops to codify beliefs and settle disputes (Remember the Nicene Creed? It came from the Nicene council.) and he asked his bishop buddy Eusebius to make a Bible for him, a definitive book of what's what in Christianity. The key word then was less "canonical" and more "apostolic." In other words, show me the documents that can be traced back to the apostles. One glaring leftover of this strategy is the rather absurd claim that the apostle Peter was the first Pope. Anyway, eventually Constantine got his canon, with its Old and New Testaments compiled around the same time.
Why include the Old Testament with the New one? The most important reason for this is that the New Testament wasn't "sacred" at first, it wasn't "scripture," just really cool stuff that helped define what Christianity was. The "scripture" was what is now called the Old Testament. When did the New Testament become sacred? I don't know exactly. Maybe it was a gradual process, and certainly it required that they make some decisions and finally say exactly what was in the New Testament... which is starting to bring us into the 5th century.
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Fascinating stuff, Don. Hmmm. When did the NT become sacred? I'll be interested in following your progress in unravelling that.
ReplyDeleteMy bet is that you'll conclude that this remarkable transmogrification was perfected during the middle ages as the RC church installed itself in medieval Europe as the infallible authority over all matters of religion and faith.
I believe that it was during that period that a new relationship between the Old and New Testaments was "realized": that events and allegories in the Old are mirrored in the New--if only the truth seeker or scholar were bright and blessed enough to piece together all the clues. Those folks went nuts trying to employ numerology, especially, to demonstrate that the Old Testament completely predicted the new deal.
And, having proven that, isn't it obvious that both are of the same design by the same maker, even though the media (e.g., direct revelation of God's word versus the accounts of apostles and prophets) had changed? (Yes, you may infer a touch of snark there.)
I know I've read about this topic somewhere back in the days when my memory still worked. Don't have a copy handy, but I believe that the "Age of Faith" volume in Will and Ariel Durants' History of Civ might be worth checking out to help trace this evolution.
-TT
TT, the trend of pointing to the OT started very early, as 2nd century Christian apologists defended their faith from Jewish critics by showing how their Jesus was prophesied in what is now called the Old Testament. But yes, it wasn't until much later when the new texts themselves were being declared sacred. They used to be just declarations of sacredness for the New Messiah. Then they themselves became sacred. Fascinating. Maybe it was simply a matter of waiting long enough!
ReplyDeleteYup, the meme that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied (or "prophesized", if you prefer Bob Dylan's word choice) in the OT was there from the gitgo. If nothing else, that was John the Baptist's role in the movie and you can't escape giving him a major credit. And it was certainly a good sales gimmick, too, to appeal to Jews.
ReplyDeleteBut the mystical machinations I'm talking about during the Middle Ages went way beyond matching obvious OT prophesies with NT fulfillments and restatements. I'm referring to complex and often convoluted observations that, we are led to believe, demonstrate that the NT is much more than simple expository prose that could have been written by multiple ordinary writers. It is a labyrinthine set of puzzles that could only occur by divine design.
Medieval clerics loved 'em their puzzles. What I'm talking about is more akin to the Nostradamus-Hitler crap they show ad infinitum on the History Channel until you either barf or fall prey to the compelling weight of conveniently selected coincidences and word plays.