Unsettled Christianity

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April 1st, 2013

Melito of Sardis and the Book of Wisdom

A few weeks ago, I had a discussion about Melito’s canon. As we know, he was the first among the early Church (that we know of) to publicly advocate for a Hebrew canon for the Old Testament. It wasn’t until Jerome that the West moved in this general direction, two hundred years later.

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Tags: canonization
Posted in Melito of Sardis, Wisdom | 9 Comments »

August 3rd, 2009

Canon within a Canon (Meme, anyone?)

Last week, John Anderson wrote about his canon within a canon. He writes,

Brevard Childs has argued that the process of canonization allowed for a certain ‘leveling,’ a general equality as it concerns the various books of the Bible. Obadiah is just as authoritative as the gospel of Matthew, and Genesis just as seminal as Philemon. While I do think there is great merit in such a view–quite a Jewish view, no less, as the Jewish Midrashim affirm just such an equality, using one text to interpret another–none of us is an entirely disinterested interpreter. We all have our own experiences, ideologies, and idiosyncracies that inform our reading of texts. And because of this, the canonical ‘leveling’ is in a way distorted.

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