Christian History Magazine Collection

A century after Christ’s death, a literalist and a spiritualizer forced the church to choose how it would read the Scriptures it inherited from the Jews

by Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J. from Christian History magazine no. 80

By the year 150, the Christian church exhibited many features that would mark it for centuries: Christians baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; they celebrated the Lord’s Supper weekly; they were governed by a bishop, presbyters, and deacons. But they still lacked one thing that would become central to Christian identity: a New Testament. Their only Holy Scripture was that collection of sacred writings later called the Old Testament, which they generally read in the Septuagint version—a Greek translation pre-dating Jesus by over a century.

Of course, the documents now found in our New Testament had already been written: Paul’s letters between 50 and 65, the four Gospels and Acts by 90 or 100, and the other books by that time or a little later. Paul’s letters had gradually been collected and circulated; by 96, for example, the church at Rome had a copy of 1 Corinthians.

For the earliest Christians, who were Jews, the Sacred Scriptures were the fixed authority, and they were used to demonstrate that Jesus was Messiah and Lord. About a century later, the situation changed. Converts to Christianity, who now came from among the pagans, readily accepted Jesus as the Christand the Son of God, but they often found the Scriptures a stumbling block.

These strange writings portrayed God in highly anthropomorphic terms: with hands, feet, arms, and eyes—and passionate emotions. God could be talked out of a decision he had made by Abraham or Moses. The Hebrew preference for the concrete over the abstract led to unsettling expressions like “circumcise your hearts.”

These fell with a clang on the ears and minds of educated Greeks who, following their philosophers, held a highly abstract idea of God. God was the supreme One, Being itself, far above the world of human beings and their troubles, “Thought Thinking Itself,” as Aristotle wrote. In comparison, the God of the Jewish Scriptures was an embarrassment, even a scandal.

Unless, of course, one knew how to interpret those Scriptures correctly.

Around the year 140, two teachers put forth their own unique solutions to this problem of interpretation. Ultimately, the church rejected both—and in doing so, it clarified its own orthodox position.

Mr. Literal

The first of these teachers, Marcion of Sinope, came from a city on the Black Sea and made a fortune as a ship owner. Around 140 he went to Rome and joined the church there, to which he made a large donation. Four years later, he was excommunicated, and his money was returned to him. Thereupon he founded his own church.

Marcion read the Old Testament intently. He interpreted it literally, and only literally, and concluded that the god of the Old Testament was an inferior god, the creator and judge, distinct from the God of love who was the Father of Jesus Christ. This creator god was ignorant (he had to ask Adam where he was);he contradicted himself (first forbidding Moses to make graven images, then ordering him to make the image of a serpent); and he commanded dreadful slaughters, even of women and children. This reading led Marcion to a radical decision: these Jewish Scriptures must be thrown out of the church.

But Marcion did not leave the church without a Bible; he created the first known New Testament “canon,” or list of authoritative books. Marcion’s hero was Paul, who had rejected the power of the Law to save. Paul had also written of “my gospel” (Rom. 2:16), which must be the Gospel according to Luke, sinceLuke was Paul’s companion. But both Paul’s letters and Luke’s Gospel contained quotations from the Old Testament that, Marcion believed, had been inserted into the authentic documents by Judaizing Christians. So he purged these books of Jewish influence.

Mr. Spiritual

The author of the Epistle of Barnabas was Marcion’s diametric opposite. Probably written in Alexandria, Egypt, ca. 135, this pamphlet is also deeply concerned with the interpretation of the Old Testament in the church. But if Marcion took the Old Testament only literally and threw it out of the church, Barnabas took it exclusively as figurative.

In Marcion’s mind, the Jews interpreted the Scriptures correctly and worshiped the inferior god of justice. In Barnabas’s mind, the Jews failed to understand their own Scriptures, and they interpreted them incorrectly—that is, literally.

Barnabas worked out an extensive explanation. Moses, he wrote, received the covenant on Sinai. But, when the Jews worshiped the golden calf, the covenant was broken and never restored. The Jews then listened to a wicked angel, who told them to interpret their Scriptures literally. In fact, though, the whole Old Testament is an enormous Christian allegory.

Barnabas gives several examples. The prohibition against eating pork really means avoiding men whopray only when they are needy, for swine bellow only when they are hungry. The prohibition against eating rabbits, hyenas, and weasels really warns against deviant sexual sins (from the nature of these animals). The law of kosher, eating only animals with cloven hooves that chew the cud, means associating only with people who meditate on the Lord and have one foot on earth, one in heaven.

In his pièce de résistance, Barnabas writes that when Scripture attests that Abraham circumcised 318 men, it really teaches the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, for the number 318 in Greek (which used letters for numbers) is the first two letters of Jesus’ name (iota and eta, IH = 18) and tau (T = 300),which represents the cross.