Partly repeating the Introduction and chapter 3 of Cantwell Smith, "What is a scripture?"
What are these writings?
How did they come about?
How do these writings function in their particular tradition?
Our understanding of the Bible is what St. Augustine thought the Bible meant.
1. Historical aspect of the study.
Mid-end of 19C - shift in attitudes to scriptures.
Increasing importance given to the book of Prophets - ideas of social justice. Focus on the other Gospels than St. John's (Synoptic Gospels - ?)
Increased importance of the writings of St. Paul
Islam
In the Mid. Ages when Islam is dominant and active - great emphasis on the verses about humans as active agents (of God's will - ?)
Last two centuries - overtaken by the Western powers - stress on the verses about fatalism and resignation.
1879 - Müller published "Sacred books of the East" - first contact with other culture's scriptures.
Shift. Before - scripture is a metaphysical term - God's revelation. Today - sociological term, less lofty.
Metaphysical - based on speculative or abstract reasoning; abstruse.
Abstruse - difficult to understand.
The same change affected the words culture, civilisation, values - now can be applied to others' cultures, not only our own. Consider the meaning of words "uncultured", "uncivilised".
Changes in the use of the word Bible: originally - Ta Biblia - plural, then the Bible - sing. Now going back to plural again.
2 Variety Oral texts - oral scripture: Vedas, Avesta
Written: Bible, Torah
Balance of the two - Islam
Our obsession with history is not shared by other civilisations. Idea of God's intervention over time is introduced in Torah - history, history going somewhere.
Vedas - timelessness.
Sacred books can elevate people to the highest nobility of their religion or bring them to the worst inhumane behaviour.
3 Scripture.
Sacredness given by society "People make texts into a scripture, and keep it by treating it as such".
"Scripture is a human activity"
Quote: Intro. - pp. 16 - 19
Manicheans - dualists
Parallel: Quran - Jesus
Codification of the Scripture - "Scripturising centuries"
7th cent. The Quran
6th cent. Talmud
4th cent. Mani (216-76) - idea that religion must have books. Value of the book itself, not the material it makes available.
Mandean texts - idea of a pre-existent text. Semitic idea (Babylonians, Canaanites)
Christians - drawing up a coherent Latin scripture. St. Jerome - Vulgate Bible Unified, boundaried, authoritative unity. Reaction to Marcion (d.160) - compiled St. Luke + St. Paul, left out the rest.
2-3d cent. Mishna
Gnostic - of or relating to intellectual or spiritual knowledge
Corpus Hermeticum (mystic, Gnostic) Astrological Texts
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At the same time the Greek tragedists are edited - Sophoclis, Euripidis, Aeschylus are left, the rest - "deleted".
Comedians - Aristophanes only is left.
The same process of selection and consolidation as with the scripture.
All done in Alexandria. There too - translation of the Jewish Bible into Greek with additions and editions (Septuagint LXX).
There too - development of allegorical interpretation - often to deal with repugnance of the obvious meaning of texts.
Philo of Alexandria.
Idea of pre-existent text fed there too.
Writing began in 2000 BC simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Egypt !500 - 1300 BC - alphabet
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Chapter 8 of Smith.
We live in post-classical period. Place of Virgil in the British culture. In the 18-th century in the House of Parlament, Virgil was quoted more than the Bible. Now - decline of the study/knowledge of the classics.
Change in the attitude to the authority.
Middle Ages - need for authority. Bible - authority. Now - cultural shift from this.
Reverence for AUCTOUR.
Example:
Galen was a recognised medical authority. In his writings he mentioned an organ of a human body. When the autopsies began to be performed, this organ was not found. Conclusion was made that the human anotomy has change since his time, because it could not be conceived that he was wrong.
The change - modern period began - year 1662.
The Royal Society is formed, under the motto: "Nullus in verba", No-one's words. No authority, everything has to be tested.
Before, in the Middle Ages, past was viewed as infinately better than the present. Fontanelle: "The dead are more powerful than the living".
Freud defined neurosis as "exessive attachment to the past".