How the Two Testaments Became One Bible

I love asking long-established couples how they first met. From Ruth and Boaz on, such stories often reveal the kindness and sovereignty of God in sweet and sometimes unpredictable ways, especially if the union appeared on paper unlikely, but has gone on to be happy and fruitful.

There is one couple, whose union at first seemed extremely unlikely, but which has gone on to be happy and fruitful for two thousand years: the union of the two testaments in the Christian Bible. But how did our two testaments come together? How did those books, which first-century Christians were writing about Jesus, come to be included with the Jewish Scriptures in what we call the Bible?

Uniting the Bible’s two testaments

It’s an important question, because the unity of our Bibles matters more than many Christians today realize and effects many controversial questions. The unity of Scripture means that one of the most important contexts for interpreting any biblical passage is the rest of the Bible. By approaching the Bible as one united collection of books, the early Christians were saying that the context of a biblical book within the Bible is as or more important than its original historical context in ancient Judaism or Greco-Roman culture.

The unity of the Bible is also the basis for connecting themes and symbols across the Bible. This assumes that the Bible has a grand, overarching story, rather than being an assorted collection of anecdotes, moral teachings, and theological ideas. This assumption is basic to Christian preaching, theology, and ethical interpretation of the Bible, but it only makes sense if the two testaments actually do belong together.

This was far from obvious in the first century AD. Imagine how you would feel if someone suggested that some new books, from our own time, deserved to be bound into your Bible. That’s what the early Christians started to do to the Jewish Scriptures, from very soon after the death of Jesus. From as far back in the history of the church as we can trace, it seems to have been uncontroversial among Christians that these new books, about Jesus, had the same authority as the Jewish Scriptures, which Jews had been reading, revering, and seeking to obey for centuries.

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Reading the two testaments as one book

We see beginnings of the story in the New Testament. First Timothy 5:18 appears to quote Deuteronomy and then something very similar to Matthew’s Gospel, and calls them both “Scripture.” Second Peter 3:16 unambiguously calls Paul’s letters “Scripture.” The Greek word translated “Scripture” (graphē), means anything written. But in religious contexts, it almost always meant authoritative Scriptures. When New Testament authors call other New Testament books “Scripture,” they are saying that these early Christian books have the same status as the Old Testament Scripture.

Similarly, the early-second-century Christian writer Polycarp quotes Ephesians and calls it “Scripture” (Polycarp, Philippians 12.) Justin Martyr, also in the second century, records what a worship service looked like in his church (Justin, First Apology 67). It included readings both from the Old Testament Scriptures and the “memoirs of the apostles,” which probably means the Gospels or related texts.

In contrast, the second-century heretic Marcion believed that Christians should not read the Old Testament. Marcion is interesting, because by the time he was active, only about a century after the death of Jesus, it was uncontroversial that books like the Gospels and the letters of Paul were at least as authoritative and at least as deserving of Scriptural status as the Old Testament.

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Marcion controversially tried to cut the Old Testament (and many parts of the New Testament which quote it or appear to agree with it) out of the Bible—but this means that by his time, the basic shape of a Bible with two testaments must have been well-established. In the mid-first century, Jesus’ followers were controversially writing new books and adding them to the Jewish Scriptures. In the mid-second century, Marcion was taking the old books out of the Christian Scriptures, which was only possible because no-one doubted the scriptural status of the new books.

Also in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyon was constructing a theology that assumed the unity of both testaments. His book Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching summarizes the gospel by presenting the story of the whole Bible. His very approach assumes the unity of the Bible.

This evidence shows that from very early, Christians were treating the Bible as a single book.

Fitting the two testaments in one codex

But if the Bible was already being read as a single book, was it being physically produced as a single book? The technical name for a book containing the whole Bible is a “pandect.”

Pandects were rare in the ancient world, not least because books this size would have been difficult and expensive to produce.

Pandects were rare in the ancient world, not least because books this size would have been difficult and expensive to produce. We know of very few large books from the ancient world. There is Origen’s Hexapla, a copy of the Old Testament containing six different columns in multiple Greek translations. We also know of a manuscript containing all of the ancient Greek epic poem, the Odyssey (which runs to about four hundred pages in modern English editions).

When it comes to biblical manuscripts, there are four from prior to 600 AD that were probably originally pandects. They are Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Ephraemi rescriptus. In the first three, substantial portions of both testaments still survive, so it is very likely they originally contained all of both testaments. In Codex Ephraemi, we have only the New Testament and large parts of the Old Testament wisdom literature. However, the New Testament and the wisdom literature seems such an unusual combination (of which we have no other evidence) that it is likely this manuscript originally contained all the books of both testaments.

These manuscripts all contain the Old Testament in Greek translation (often called the Septuagint), since few early Christians could read Hebrew. They also contain the Old Testament Apocrypha and some contain a few early Christian texts in addition to the New Testament books (but these are placed after Revelation, which may suggest the scribes thought they were in a lesser category).

Further hints from our manuscript evidence

Of course, many of our early biblical manuscripts are small fragments and so it is impossible to know for certain what else they contained. One of our earliest manuscripts, known to biblical scholars as P52, is a tiny scrap of John’s Gospel. It is impossible to know what was in the original, complete version—all of John, all of the Gospels, all of the New Testament, all of the Christian Bible or some more unusual combination of texts?

However, some of these early, small fragments include page numbers and these generally suggest that they contained only a single biblical book. It is likely therefore that manuscripts of the whole Bible were rare and the four we know of are not only important but unusual.

Book technology at the time means that, even with these manuscripts, it’s unlikely all the books of the Bible were physically bound into a single volume. However the presentation, arrangement of words on the page and column layout is the same in each of these manuscripts all through the Bible, so it is very likely that they were intended to be used as single books, rather like a modern book produced in multiple volumes, but always sold together and with such similar font and layout that they are obviously intended to be read as one (such as N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God or some editions of The Lord of the Rings).

The origins of the pandects

What led to the production of these pandects? As we have seen, the theological belief in the unity of the testaments existed from the late first century, so it is natural that scribes should start creating manuscripts with both testaments, but it is possible there was a specific reason to produce pandects in the early fourth century.

The early Christian writer, Eusebius, records a letter he received from the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, requesting “fifty copies of the clearly sacred Scriptures” (Life of Constantine 4.36). Similarly, another early Christian writer, Athanasius, records that he made “copies of the divine Scriptures” for the Roman Emperor Constans (Defense before Constantius 4).

Are these ancient requests for pandects? Scholars disagree at this point. It is possible that “fifty copies of the clearly sacred Scriptures” means fifty copies of the Gospels, or even a combination like ten sets each containing five manuscripts, one of the Gospels, one of the Pentateuch, one of the Psalms, one the Prophets and one of the letters.

However, there is no indication in the context that this is what Constantine or Constans intended and the natural reading of the definite article in Eusebius’s account is that “the clearly sacred Scriptures” includes everything in the category of clearly sacred Scriptures (just as if one spouse says to another “I’ll collect the children from school” without further clarification, this means all their children and only their children). Fifty pandects would certainly be an exorbitant request, but Roman Emperors were hardly known for their modest tastes or restrained demands.

Were any of our four surviving pandects produced in response to these demands? It is impossible to be sure.

Were any of our four surviving pandects produced in response to these demands? It is impossible to be sure, but Sinaiticus and Vaticanus both probably come from about the right time and Sinaiticus, in particular, probably comes from about the right place. What is even more important than identifying individual manuscripts with Constantine’s or Constans’s order, is the simple fact that these Emperors were likely commissioning pandects at all. It seems that Constantine believed that a well-ordered and united Bible would help build a well-ordered and united church, which might even help create a well-ordered and united society.

Conclusion

The production of physically united Bibles began in the fourth century, quite possibly because this was the first time there were Christian emperors who could support the production of such large books. But even more important is the fact that, when these emperors requested such Bibles, the idea made sense—because Christians had been trusting and treasuring a unified Bible for centuries.