Archaeo-Apologetics

IN THE BEGINNING
Bibles Before the Year 1000
edited by Michelle P. Brown
Smithsonian, 2006
368 pages, $45
Available in online bookstores


The New Testament didn’t spawn the Church. The Church produced the New Testament. Catholics know this. We understand, or at least intuit, the ramifications of the timeline by which Christ called, assembled and sustained his followers as a unified communion when “The Way” was young, vulnerable — and working without a codified canon of sacred texts. (The Church survived four centuries, including three under imperial persecution, before it discerned that the time was right to officially sanction 27 of the many writings circulating about Jesus, putting these on par with the 46 books of the first-century Hebrew Bible.) 

Many of us also sense that the price of all the divisions among Christians today is high. Too high. The non-Christian world often can’t hear Christians’ evangelizing voice because, to many unchurched ears, there isn’t a voice to hear. There’s a cacophony. Untold swarms of self-assured ambassadors contradict and compete with one another even on such basic doctrines as what a person has to do to be saved. All cite Scripture. 

Christendom could use a reminder about the true nature of apostolic authority as Christ established it. And Catholics could use a little help explaining the particulars on the matter, as we see it, to our separated brothers and sisters who seek to follow Jesus by the light of “the Bible alone.” The ideal resource would be non-sectarian so as to invite all comers. It would be scholarly in scope yet popular in presentation. 

Ask and ye shall receive. In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000 is a 5-pound flagstone of a coffee-table topper that wasn’t published to do the Catholic Church any favors. But its utility as an apologetics aid will be unmistakable to the Catholic with eyes to see Christian archaeology as a boon. Hard ancient evidence can help show not just that the Church has withstood the gates of hell but also how. The latter element is a key part of every Christian’s story whether he knows it or not. 

And of course the “how” behind the Bibles we hold in our hands today, messy and all too human as the process sometimes was, is as Catholic as the popes. 

Not that all the scholars who contributed essays and sidebars to this undertaking would put it quite that way. “Although various criteria — apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy (but not, however, inspiration) — were invoked” to rationalize which circulating letters belonged in the canon and which didn’t, “the compelling basis for canonical recognition was, with few exceptions, traditional use,” writes Harry Gamble, chair of religious studies at the University of Virginia. “Thus the New Testament, and with it the Christian Bible as a whole, was the cumulative result of the reading habits of the Christian communities in their liturgical gatherings.”

Their liturgical gatherings. (Please take note, American Bible Society.) Were invoked. By whom? Oh, I don’t know. Catholic bishops at a couple of councils, maybe? (Please file for future annotations, Gideons International.) 

The book is not the result of an independent publishing venture. It’s the companion piece to a museum exhibit that showed at the Smithsonian last fall and winter. What was in the display cases — the original parchment scraps, bound codices and such — is reproduced on these pages in sharp color photos. The transition works, with one minor hitch: The display plates (the small signs museums place near each item giving the basics on identity, material, date, place of origin and ownership) don’t work so well as photo captions. But flipping back through pages you’ve already read to find the section referring to the image you’re now inspecting pays off, as the rich text surely goes into far greater detail than any tour guide could have. 

Another consolation for those who missed the Washington exhibit: The tales of how the ancient artifacts were found and collected are just as interesting as the primer on the development and dissemination of the canon. Think Indiana Jones meets Scott Hahn. (Did you know the Church even played a key role in developing book publishing?) Also: Some of the later items — an embossed and illuminated Gospels cover from the late 11th century, for example — are as gorgeously rendered as the earliest ones are crudely fashioned. What once had to be hidden was now to be held high. The telling detail is that both packages present the same content.

The book lists for $45, but a major online bookseller has already marked it down to less than $30. Still too steep? Don’t think of it as a book purchase. Think of it as an investment in eye-opening evangelization by way of inadvertent apologetics. 

David Pearson is the

Register’s senior editor.