Abstract
It is recorded in the apocryphal book II Esdras that God has a conversation with the priest and prophetic scribe Ezra, giving him instructions which Ezra is prompt to obey, for he records as follows:
I took with me the five men as I had been told, and we went away to the field, and there we stayed. On the next day I heard a voice calling me, which said: “Ezra, open your mouth and drink what I give you.” So I opened my mouth, and was handed a cup of what seemed like water, except that its colour was the colour of fire. I took it and drank, and as soon as I had done so my mind began to pour forth a flood of understanding, and wisdom grew greater and greater within me, for I retained my memory unimpaired. I opened my mouth to speak, and I continued to speak unceasingly. The Most High gave understanding to the five men, who took turns at writing down what was said, using characters which they had not known before. They remained at work through the forty days, writing all day, and taking food only at night. But as for me, I spoke all through the day; even at night I was not silent. In the forty days, ninety-four books were written. At the end of the forty days the Most High spoke to me. “Make public the books you wrote first,” he said, “to be read by good and bad alike. But the last seventy books are to be kept back, and given to none but the wise among your people. They contain a stream of understanding, a fountain of wisdom, a flood of knowledge.” And I did so. (II Esdras 14: 37–48)
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Gerald L. Bruns, “Canon and Power in Hebrew Scriptures”, Critical Inquiry, vol. 10, no. 3 (1984) 462–80.
Ibid., 466. See also Robert Detweiler, “What Is a Sacred Text?”, Semeia, vol. 31 (1985) 213–30.
See Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. R. A. Wilson (London, 1972) p. 97.
See David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (London, 1975) p. 104.
Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, trans. Peter R. Ackroyd (Oxford, 1966) p. 560.
Christopher Tuckett, Reading the New Testament: Methods of Interpretation (London, 1987) p. 18.
Jan Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea (London and Atlantic Highlands, 1991) p. 260.
Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1979) p. 145.
Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign (Cambridge, 1989) pp. 25–6.
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1980) p. 304.
See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington, 1984) ch. 1: “Rabelais in the History of Laughter”.
Robert Detweiler, Breaking the Fall (London, 1981) p. 35.
See Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel (London, 1990).
Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto, 1977) p. 7.
Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1978) p. 14.
Peter Meinke, Liquid Paper (Pittsburgh and London, 1991) p. 112.
Charles Dickens, quoted in Humphry House, The Dickens World, 2nd edn (1942; Oxford, 1960) p. 126. See also p. 64.
See David Miller, “Play Not”, in Mark Ledbetter and David Jasper (eds), In Good Company: Essays in Honor of Robert Detweiler (Atlanta, 1994).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1995 David Jasper
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jasper, D. (1995). Conclusion: Art and the Biblical Canon. In: Readings in the Canon of Scripture. Studies in Literature and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376083_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376083_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-39135-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37608-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)