Lately, I've found myself more and more talking with other people about the Bible in terms of a kind of evolutionary pressures understanding of composition and preservation. In doing this, I guess I take it as plausible that writings that helped people tend to get preserved and copied while those that didn't got 'lost'. This means that where people found something in a writing that resonated with their sense of God, they would go back to it, and commend it to others. Where they found things that expanded their understanding of God and God's ways, they would copy it and pass it on. Where they found that challenges were productive, they'd engage with them and teach others to do similarly. Sometimes, I guess writings would be commended, and passed on because they had gained an aura of authority or because authoritative figures commended them.
For this reason, I think it is important to talk about not just storytellers, but also editors and especially hearers and then readers. There would've been a reciprocal relationship around texts between these various people. Storytellers would adapt their telling to audience reactions -what 'tells well' would become a normal telling. Audiences would by their responses, requests and questions influence what was told and became an informal 'canon'. Editors would collect stories and writings with such matters in mind. But also they would have an eye to social and political conditions. 'Inspiration' in this view doesn't just belong to a writer but to the dialogical processes of telling, hearing, retelling, refining, reflecting, commending> I like to think that at key points were people paying attention to the divine resonances so that stories were also sifted for their spiritual value. Somewhere in all of this would be considerations of teaching and learning: what stories and texts promoted good reflection and wise conversations? This doesn't preclude 'divine inspiration' but it does take the focus off original authors being uniquely inspired -a model which seems suspiciously like the Romantic movement's views around the time when doctrinal bases dealing with scripture were being discussed, debated and codified.
An evolutionary approach suggests to me a survival of the fittest, and in this case that would mean that texts that were fittest for connecting people with God and God's purposes, would be the most likely to survive.
Anyway, I thought I recognised in the title and blurb for this book, an approach that may help me to think about this approach more. So, I read with a question about how far this book would help me to develop and challenge this kind of approach.
Adkins sees what we now call Genesis 12:1-4 as the originating, kernel, story. And he spends some time in giving a potted version of the bigger narratives of the Hebrew scriptures. The book spends quite a lot of space retelling in summary the narratives and history of the accumulation of scriptures with some comment, history and framing to give a sense of development. I was intrigued by the naming of the NT as the Christian Sequel and will consider using this naming from time to time, myself. The rehearsal of the writings that become the bible raises the issue of canon, and canonisation is one of the matters that is touched on, as well as the non-canonisation of other writings.
I'd consider putting this book into the hands of people who were curious about the sweep of biblical history and open to consider how what we now call 'scriptures' interrelate with history. I think that there are challenges her to those who have a 'take it as it comes' approach to the writings of the Bible, and the author doesn't offer much to help such readers to consider and understand the critical scholarship which implicitly questions the 'straight forward' /face-value reading which doesn't really entertain the possibility that the texts we now have might have a back-story and not be written in the kind of way that someone now writing a novel or a textbook might write a complete work. Admittedly, something of the overview of critical scholarship comes when the history reaches the 1800s.
One of the interesting things that this book does, is to not only consider the formation of Jewish and Christian canons, but to incorporate consideration of the Qur'an alongside consideration of the Jewish Mishnah and Talmud. I think that this is a necessary consideration if one is taking a 'natural history' approach. The other interesting approach here, for me, is not to consider the Christian canon closed until the reformation is well underway. And indeed he points out that until the council of Trent, the 27 books were not considered a closed canon. It is also important that it considers the matter of translations and textual history which in actuality are big parts of discussions today about bible and authority in some parts of the church.
So, I didn't get my desired exploration of the kinds of forces that would drive 'natural' (cultural) selection nor a theology of canon, reception and inspiration that would take account of it. There are hints, to be sure, but mostly this is a historical summary of 4,000 years of story and reflection. It's a fair introduction but the further reflection I was hoping for is not part of it.
I may have to do that myself ...
Links
A Natural History of Scripture Website
Keith H. Adkins’ Website
#ANaturalHistoryOfScripture
I should give a declaration of interest here. I received a pdf of this book as part of an agreement to review it, even if only briefly. There was no implication or explicit agreement that I should make the review favourable or otherwise. So I have simply stated what interested me and given my reactions.
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