The Bible in the Early Church
Justo L. González
Baker Academic (2022). 204 pp.
Book Review
Most pastors and seminarians are familiar with Gonzalez’s work on church history. His two-volume The Story of Christianity serves as the standard historical text in first year history courses in addition to offering one the best pathways into church history for a general audience. Gonzalez’s work is standard reading for good reason. He has the rare ability to synthesize deep scholarly knowledge and present it in a way that is readable for eighteen-year-olds. He does this, moreover, while still offering enough substance to be informative for seasoned students of theology.
His most recent work, The Bible in the Early Church, is another well integrated work of scholarship that is written so that almost anyone can understand it. The purpose of the book is not to make an argument per se, but to offer an account of the historical formation of the Bible, including how it was used and interpreted in the earliest centuries of the Church. Gonzalez writes with both faith and humility. He can write of the formation of the Bible as “providential path” (1) and acknowledge that we as Christians are tied to Scripture, even as we “must be conscious of our fallibility and sin” (3).
After a preface and introduction, the book is divided into three main parts. The first deals with “the shape of the Bible”, that is, the formation of the canon and the collection of the texts of the Bible. Chapters within this section detail the way early Christians appropriated the Scriptures of Israel, especially the LXX (8-9), in their worship, and the formation of the New Testament canon. Chapters in the first part also deal with the physical characteristics of early Bibles, as Gonzalez sketches the history of writing on papyrus (25) and the later transmission of manuscripts through to printed Bibles.
The second part focuses on the way that the Bible was used in the early church. This includes how the Bible was used in worship (with a special focus on the Psalms), how it was read privately, and how the Bible was used in education and social order . Gonzalez reminds us that “when today we are told we should read the Bible, what we normally understand is that we should set aside some time to read Scripture in private… In antiquity… very few people could read the Bible privately” (60). He goes on to point out that “most believers knew the Bible not because they had read it themselves–which most could not do–but because they had heard it read to the congregation of the faithful” (64). The Bible has always found its home in the Church, and Gonzalez’s book reminds us of this important truth.
Finally, the third section of the text covers the way the Bible was interpreted in the early church. Gonzalez includes plenty of examples such as the way early Christians read creation, exodus, and the Word. In these chapters, Gonzalez points out that “for a sizable number of authors, typology–or ‘analogy,’ as Augustine called it–was the preferred method for relating the Hebrew Bible to the Gospel of Jesus and to the life of the Church” (138). In other words, if we want to understand early Christian thought, we have to grapple with typological readings of Scripture.
The last pages of the text include brief descriptions of important early Christian thinkers, suggestions for further reading, and a couple of indexes.
One of the strengths of all of Gonzalez’s work is its readability. This holds true for The Bible in the Early Church, but this very strength can also be a detraction. What I mean to say is that though Gonzalez is able to accurately summarize a breadth of historical sources, omitting footnotes and deeper explanations might leave the reader without the tools for further study. This book would have been far stronger, for instance, if the body of the text remained the same, but a spartan set of footnotes pointed interested readers toward primary sources.
Another criticism of the text comes from the way it often drifts from the focus outlined in the title. While the bulk of the text focusses on the Bible in the early church, there are many places where Gonzalez traces the lines of history through to the sixteenth century. For instance, in discussing the role of the Bible in education, Gonzalez spends considerable time talking about the Protestant Reformation (101-5). This happens relatively frequently in the text and means its arguments often go beyond what readers might expect or want to know.
With all of this being said, the utility of this book is far greater than anything that might detract from it. It will serve as a great resource for students, pastors, and curious Christians as they seek not only to read Scripture, but to understand its history in the early church.
Cole Hartin is an associate rector at Christ Church in Tyler, TX. He earned his PhD from Wycliffe College/University of Toronto. Cole is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
