The Literary Quality Of Scripture As Seen By The Early Church -- By: Michael Graves

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 61:2 (NA 2010)
Article: The Literary Quality Of Scripture As Seen By The Early Church
Author: Michael Graves


The Literary Quality Of Scripture As Seen By The Early Church

Michael Graves

Summary

Christians in the first five centuries of the church lived in an environment that placed a high value on literary and rhetorical expression. Within this context, cultured critics of Christianity often disparaged the literary style of the Christian Bible in its Greek and Latin forms. The most common response in the first Christian centuries was to concede Scripture’s simple style but to assert the superiority of its divine content. But eventually Christians began to suggest paradigms for seeing artistic crafting in the biblical text. One stream of thought, exemplified by Jerome, looked to the original language of the Old Testament to discover the literary quality of Scripture. Another stream of thought, developed by Augustine, explored the literary quality of Scripture by reflecting on the relationship between human conventions and divine inspiration.

1. Introduction

The Christian church came into being and developed within a cultural context that cared deeply about the stylistic qualities of language. When confronted with the claims of the Gospel, educated Romans wanted to know how the sacred writings upon which the Gospel was based compared to the great literary works that set the standard for Graeco-Roman high culture. Educated Christians responded to this challenge partly for apologetic reasons, and partly because they, too, felt the need to explain why their Scriptures seemed different from the pagan classics. Fortunately, the Roman cultural context not only demanded an explanation, it also provided the tools to formulate one. Early Christians took the tools of Graeco-Roman criticism and used

them to make important observations about the literary quality of Scripture. They also made significant contributions to the theology of Scripture by describing the artistic nature of biblical writings in light of their divine inspiration. In the end, Graeco-Roman culture provided the intellectual framework that enabled Christians to go beyond Graeco-Roman conventions in their thinking about the artistic nature of Scripture.

My first task will be to paint a brief picture of the literary culture of the Graeco-Roman world and the negative reception that the Bible received when it first entered that world. Then, I will consider the various responses given by different Christians to this negative reception. In the earliest centuries, Christians conceded that their sacred writings were not great literary art (as seen from the Graeco-Roman viewpoint), but argued that that was not their purpose. In later centuries, Christians defended the literary quality of Scripture by reaching beyond standard Graeco...

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