The Cessation of the Spirit

Introduction

The Jewish scriptures are called ‘the Old Testament’ by Christians because they believe that other books are also ‘scripture’—viz., the New Testament. The implicit claim of the Christian church of the second century CE was that there had been a resurgence of prophecy within a sect of Judaism (their sect—the first Christians). This claim stands in contrast to the rabbinical view of the time that prophecy had ceased with the canonical prophets.

Rabbinical View

The Rabbis of the second century CE (who are called ‘the Tannaim’) give the opinion that prophecy ceased either upon the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE) or after the end of the canonical prophets, although some rabbinical texts admit some ad hoc continuation of prophecy.

  1. i) Texts which indicate the cessation of prophecy upon the destruction of the First Temple include Mekilta Pisha4.6. In this text, Rabbi Simon ben Azzai (a disciple of Akiba, (2c. CE)) reproduces a comment of Baruch, Jeremiah’s disciple, “Joshua served Moses, then the Holy Spirit rested on him; Elisha served Elijah, then the Holy Spirit came to rest on him. But as for me, why have I been treated differently from all of the other disciples of the prophets”? The reply to Baruch is, “Baruch b. Neriah, if there is no vineyard, what need for a fence? If there is no flock, what need for a shepherd?” and, “You find therefore that the prophets prophesy only on account of the merit of Israel”. The point here is that the phenomenon of prophecy is linked to the continued existence of Israel as a nation state, and in Baruch’s time this was coming to an end.

The same point of view is put forward in Mekilta Pisha 1.3 which is an extended presentation about how God had restrictively chosen, first the land, then Jerusalem, and finally the temple for the Divine Presence. Such a selection created a problem of how to explain the incidence of prophecy outside the land, which the text then goes on to address.[1]  More particularly, it created the problem of how to explain the inspiration of the prophets of the restoration (i.e. the post-exilic prophets), which the text does not address, the fact of which led the Rabbis to assert more generally that prophecy ceased after the death of the restoration prophets.

ii) Texts which indicate the cessation of prophecy after the canonical prophets are in the majority, the main one of which is the anonymous Tosefta Sotah3, “When the later prophets died, that is, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, then the Holy Spirit came to an end in Israel. But even so, they made them hear [Heavenly Messages] through an echo”.[2] This opinion has a precursor in 1 Macc 9:27, “So was there a great affliction in Israel, the like whereof was not since the time (avfV h-j h`me,raj) that a prophet was not seen among them”.[3] N. N. Glatzer, a Jewish scholar, notes[4] that this view is also reflected in the process of the canonization of the prophetic books in the Maccabean period.

Nevertheless, ad hoc communication did continue through other means after the canonical prophets, principally through an “echo”.[5] Such communication though was not certain. In Genesis Rabbah 37.7, a comment of R. Simeon ben Gamaliel (2c.) is recorded: “The ancients, because they could avail themselves of the Holy Spirit, named themselves in reference to [forthcoming] events; but we, who cannot avail ourselves of the Holy Spirit, are named after our fathers.” On the other hand, Numbers Rabbah 9.20 records a tale from R. Zechariah, son-in-law to R. Meir (2c.) that R. Meir anticipated an assault by a woman “by means of the Holy Spirit”.[6] J. Neusner summarizes this evidence by saying,

In the view of rabbinic Judaism, nothing ended with the cessation of prophecy—not direct communication from heaven to earth, not prediction of the future, not divine guidance for especially favoured persons concerning the affairs of the day. Canonical prophecy ended, but the works of prophecy continued in other forms, both on heaven’s side with the Holy Spirit and later on with the echo, and on the earth’s side with the sages joining in conversation through the echo, on the one side, and through Torah learning, on the other.[7]

The rabbinical opinions that the holy Spirit ceased upon the destruction of the First Temple, or subsequently upon the ending of the canonical prophets, are not necessarily inconsistent views, once it is recognized that the return from exile and the rebuilding the temple imply a need for the restoration of the Spirit. Accordingly, when the Rabbis assert that prophecy ended with the canonical prophets, they are recognising that the post-exilic restoration of the nation broke down: the Davidic monarchy was not restored, the presence of God did not return to the temple, and therefore the restoration of prophecy faded away.

New Testament

For our purposes, it is not the rabbinical claim of cessation that is important, but rather their recognition of the historical limit to their own canon. This is significant because it excludes deutero-canonical books from being in Jesus’ likely scriptures. After the apostolic period, the Christian church was not of one mind and did not immediately agree on what further books should be accepted alongside the Jewish scriptures, and the range of books that are put forward by one Christian individual/group/region or another included both Jewish and Christian works.[8]

Various factors are involved in a consideration of the canonization of the NT and different hypothetical reconstructions are debated by historians who specialize in the patristic period of the church. While NT scholars debate the date and authorship of the NT books, their hypotheses are not a significant issue for history of the canon.[9] Within the patristic period, traditional authorship of the NT books is put forward as a reason for their acceptance. Tracing the development of the canon is a matter of, (a) appraising the manuscript evidence and their grouping of texts; (b) evaluating the lists of ‘scripture’ books; and (c) assessing the use of books and comments about them by the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers. The use of the texts by the fathers of the church and by heterodox[10] groups doesn’t show a unanimous picture of acceptance. Some books were more contested and not as widely accepted, with differences to note between the Eastern and the Western churches.

The concept of a New Testament canon of writings is not apostolic. Our evidence for the use of the expression ‘New Testament’ as a title for a collection of writings is from the late second century at the earliest.[11] The question is this: did the apostles think they were creating a ‘New Testament’ body of writings or just adding to the Jewish Scriptures? If the apostles and their companions thought that they were just adding writings onto the end of Malachi, then there isn’t as such an ‘Old Testament’ body of scripture and a ‘New Testament’ body of scripture, even though there are (obviously) old and new covenants (2 Corinthians 3). The legitimacy of there being a ‘New Testament’ canon as opposed to just a larger canon of Jewish Scriptures is not a problem unless we read second century church history in terms of a turning away from the apostolic faith (an apostasy). On this latter view,[12] the division between the testaments is actually a false (or optional) teaching of the apostate Christian churches. Instead, all the books of the ‘Bible’ hang together in the one Jewish Scriptures.

Conclusion

Our thesis is that the apostles and their companions knew that they were writing scripture, but the scripture they thought they were writing was Jewish—they were after all (excepting possibly Luke)—Jews. Thus, theologically, there isn’t a ‘problem of the New Testament canon’ except for orthodox Christianity. There is instead a problem of deciding why the four gospels, Acts and the General Epistles, the Letters of Paul and Revelation are Jewish Scripture. The most general reason why they are part of the Jewish Scriptures is that there was a bestowal of the Spirit in the apostolic era which came to an end.

[1] See also Mekilta Pisha 1.1.1 and discussion by W. D. Davies, “Reflections on the Spirit in the Mekilta: A Suggestion” in his Jewish and Pauline Studies (London: SPCK, 1984), 72-83. Other texts linking the cessation of prophecy to the First Temple include Numbers Rabbah 15.10 (R. Levi ben Rabbi late 2c.).

[2] A. Marmorstein comments in “The Holy Spirit in Rabbinic Legend” in Studies in Jewish Theology (eds., J. Rabbinowitz and M. S. Lew; London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 122-144 (123), that this may be the source of b. Yoma 9b, b. Sotah 48b, b. Sanh. 11a, m. Hor. 3:5, m. Sotah 9:12, and Cant. R. 8.9 and his opinion is that these traditions “were almost certainly of Tannaitic origin”, (124). Other texts that are used to make the same point include 1 Macc 4:26; 14:41; 2 Baruch 85:3; Prayer of Azariah 15; and Josephus’ Against Apion 1.37-41.

[3] Whether a text refers to a general cessation of prophecy, or the local absence of a prophet, or a local anticipation of the emergence of a prophet, is a matter of interpretation—see J. R. Levison, “Did the Spirit Withdraw from Israel? An Evaluation of the Earliest Jewish Data” NTS 43 (1997): 35-57. J. Barton in Oracles of God (London: DLT, 1986), 105-116, observes that texts seem to differ in what is thought to have ceased or to be absent—the activity of ad-hoc prophesying by individuals, or a more formal type of temple prophet, or the delivery and writing of prophecy by great figures; it is this last category that Barton thinks is the rabbinical view—“there was no prophetic canon, but there was a prophetic age”, 115.

[4] N. N. Glatzer, “A Study of the Talmudic-Midrashic Interpretation of Prophecy” in his Essays in Jewish Thought (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978), 15-35 (16).

[5] Examples of the “echo” are recounted in Tosefta Sotah 13.4-6, b. Mak. 23b (R. Eleazar, 2c.).

[6] Other examples of revelation by the Spirit include Tosefta Pesahim 2.15 (Gamaliel).

[7] J. Neusner, “What ‘The Rabbis’ Thought” in Pursuing the Text (eds., J. C. Reeves and J. Kampen; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 303-320 (319).

[8] For example, the Syriac canon developed to exclude some general epistles and Revelation—J. S. Siker “The Canonical Status of the Catholic Epistles in the Syriac New Testament” JTS (1987): 311-340.

[9] The dating scheme for the NT books that we presuppose is that argued by J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1976).

[10] The terms ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ are question-begging for our period; it is arguable that Christianity was varied with differences of doctrine and practice in a state of flux between regions and centres. What became orthodox was only one developing strand in the 2c. On this, see W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1972). Our use of the terms is retrospective in terms of which writers have been ‘claimed’ as the ‘fathers’ of the church.

[11] The manuscripts typically lack the title page where we might find ‘The New Testament’. Melito of Sardis (late 2c.) refers to the ‘Old Testament’ which implies a collection called ‘New Testament’ around 170 CE (Eusebius, Haer. Eccl. 4.26 13-14); Apolinarius of Heirapolis (mid 2c.) refers to ‘the Gospel of the New Testament’ in his anti-Montanist apologetics (Eusebius, Haer. Eccl. 5.16.3); Clement of Alexandria (late 2c.) uses the title for a collection in contrast to the ‘Old Testament’ (e.g. Strom. 1.5; 2.13); and there are uses by Tertullian and Origen in the same vein. For a discussion see W. Kinzig, “Kainh. diaqh,kh: The Title of the New Testament in the Second and Third Centuries” JThS 45 (1994): 519-544.

[12] It is beyond the scope of this essay to develop this view. D. G. Dunbar, “The Biblical Canon” in Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon (eds. D. A. Carson and D. Woodbridge; Leicester: Inter-varsity Press, 1986), 299-360 (321-323), develops the orthodox position that the concept of a ‘New Testament’ was a bulwark against heresy.