419 - Which Books Belong In the Bible? A Study of the Canon

Which Books Belong In the Bible? A Study of the Canon
By Floyd V. Filson
174 pp. Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1957. $3.00.

Among the great questions that not only bear re-thinking but require to be re-thought is that having to do with the canon. Reconsideration was given to it at the Reformation, and is opportune now because of the recent publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Apocrypha, the preface to which refers to the Bible as "containing the Old and New Testaments" and to the Apocrypha as "significant documents of a most important era in religious history." Editions of the Revised Standard Bible which contain the Apocrypha will have them, not between the Testaments as in earlier English versions, but at the end. The translation, undertaken at the request of the Protestant Episcopal Church, is available to all who wish to use it either for private study or for public worship.

While the central portion of Filson's book (which originated as the L. P. Stone lectures at Princeton Seminary) has to do with the Apocrypha, he deals also with the Christian use of the Old Testament, circumstances under which the New Testament came into being, and the relationship betweenScripture and tradition. With respect to the canonical standing of the Apocrypha, Filson writes out of long study and rich experience. As a member of the Standard Bible Committee he served on the section translating the Apocrypha. His proposals, invariably treated with great respect, often carried the day. Filson's work is marked always by completent scholarship, by independence of judgment, and by careful exposition of positions thoughtfully arrived at and firmly held.

In the volume tinder review he is primarily concerned with the theological issues involved in the question of the canon, but several times notes that the historical process "by which the books in our Bible were tested, collected, and recognized as Scripture" cannot be overlooked.

420 - Which Books Belong In the Bible? A Study of the Canon

His own reading of Church history compels him at several points to challenge widely held ideas.

He thinks, for example (p. 83), that "it would be to the credit of scholarship to stop making the unqualified statement that the Septuagint . . . proves that the Jews had an Alexandrian canon much larger than the Palestinian canon." His own position is that "the Egyptian Jews had no fully defined and definitely closed canon" (p. 81). No Alexandrian listing of authoritative books has survived; the manuscripts vary in what they contain; and Bible users in Egypt (later Christian as well as Jewish) seem to have a tendency to be as inclusive as possible.

That the Church made the Bible is another common assumption challenged by Filson. The "history, the message, the revelation" contained in the Canon, he contends, are all "prior to and superior to the Church" (p. 40). Acknowledgment by the Church of the significance of these writings is, indeed, recognition "that the Church was not the original fact. God's work as attested in the gospel was the original fact, which preceded the rise and formation of the church" (p. 40).

Like the reviewer, Dr. Filson subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith, which accords no authority to the Apocrypha. Our authority finds this position vindicated by historical study, but insists that the real answer must be the answer of faith. The only canon we can really have he says (p. 42), is based on "Church-fostered, faith-founded, grateful con temporary witness." The decisive reason for rejecting the Apocrypha according to Filson, is their non-use in the New Testament. The sermon summaries in Acts make no mention of "the men and events of the Apocrypha" (p. 94). Many suppose, however, that Hebrews 11 reference to some heroes of the Maccabean revolt, and John 10: 22 can have no other reference than to the feast commemorating a deed of the Maccabees. Consideration is not given to the disputed question as to whether some of the Psalms may even have been of Maccabean origin.

Filson believes that the canonical books confirm themselves as we hear them "read in the worship of the Church" (p. 42). It is precisely because Anglican lectionaries include readings from the Apocrypha that Episcopalians asked to have them freshly translated. It is at this point also that the reviewer has greatest difficulty. Presbyterians are not committee to lectionaries, but the official Hymnal contains (number 55 in "Ancient Hymns and Canticles") a section from the Apocrypha.

One Presbyterian pastor reports that his most effective sermon patriotism is based on the Maccabean love of country. Another says he would gladly trade the Song of Solomon for the Prayer of Manassen When Hugh T. Kerr died, another ex-moderator of the General Assembly read at the funeral a passage from Ecclesiaticus. When Robert E.

421 - Which Books Belong In the Bible? A Study of the Canon

Speer died, Mrs. Speer, replying to expressions of sympathy, quoted from the Wisdom of Solomon. Over the entrance to a Presbyterian hospital a quotation from Ecclesiasticus. Filson is sure that the extent of the Canon is not "a matter for the individual Christian to decide." Yet it appears that when Presbyterian theology throws the Apocrypha out the window, Presbyterian piety brings them right back in again by the front door!

J. Carter Swaim
New York, New York