Français – عربي – ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ – English
During the first centuries of the Christian era, North Africa, from its large, cosmopolitan cities to its most remote rural areas, proved to be an especially fertile ground for the Christian Gospel. Carthage, the capital of Roman Africa, became a particularly influential Christian center. The Canon of the New Testament, that is, the list of the Scriptures that the Church recognizes as inspired by God, was officially defined at a Church Council organised in 397 in Carthage.
| Why write on this? The North African societies are Muslim today. It is still good to remember that our ancestors also held different beliefs. Also, it is in no way against Islam to talk about other sacred books. To the contrary: the Quran itself always talks with great respect about the books revealed by God to ancient prophets, like the Torah of Moses, the Zabour of David (also known as the Psalms) or the Injil of Jesus, and encourages Muslims to study them. All those books are contained in the Bible. يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ ءَامِنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦ وَٱلْكتاب ٱلَّذِى نَزَّلَ عَلَىٰ رَسُولِهِۦ وَٱلْكتاب ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنزَلَ مِن قَبْلُ وَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِٱللَّهِ وَمَلَٰٓئِكَتِهِۦ وَكتابهِۦ وَرُسُلِهِۦ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْءَاخِرِ فَقَدْ ضَلَّ ضَلَٰلًۢا بَعِيدًا O believers! Have faith in Allah, His Messenger, the Book He has revealed to His Messenger, and the Scriptures He revealed before. Indeed, whoever denies Allah, His angels, His Books, His messengers, and the Last Day has clearly gone far astray. (Surah 4:136) فَإِن كُنتَ فِى شَكٍّ مِّمَّآ أَنزَلْنَآ إِلَيْكَ فَسْـَٔلِ ٱلَّذِينَ يَقْرَءُونَ ٱلْكتاب مِن قَبْلِكَ لَقَدْ جَآءَكَ ٱلْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّكَ فَلَا تَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلْمُمْتَرِينَ If you ˹O Prophet˺ are in doubt about ˹these stories˺ that We have revealed to you, then ask those who read the Scripture before you. The truth has certainly come to you from your Lord, so do not be one of those who doubt. (Surah 10:94) |
Origins of the Sacred Scriptures
The Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Sacred Scriptures, recognized both by the Jews and the Christians, were written in Hebrew (with a few passages in Aramaic, another Semitic language). Jewish tradition divides them into three parts: the Torah (תּוֹרָה), or Law; the Nevi’im (נביאים), or Prophets; and the Ketuvim (כְּתוּבִים), or Writings. Together, they are called the Tanakh.
The Canon of the Hebrew Bible is centered on the Torah, the most ancient Sacred Scripture, whose authority was universally acknowledged since the 5th Century BCE. Consensus around the other Sacred Scriptures was established gradually. The oldest Canonic list, from Josephus, around 95 CE, mentions all the books we have today.
In the 3rd Century BCE, the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. This Greek translation is called Septuagint, because of the 70 translators who worked to make it. The Septuagint marks a fundamental theological break in Jewish theology: with the translation of its Sacred Scriptures into Greek, the vernacular language of the Mediterranean world, Judaism moved from a tribal religion, centered on divine revelation granted to a single people, to a universal religion, whose message is addressed to all men.
The Septuagint contains a few additional books, that are not part of the Hebrew Bible but were written more recently. Those books were never recognized by the Jews as holding the same authority as the Hebrew Bible. Some editions of the Bible still print them as appendices, under the name “deuterocanonical books” (second Canon).
The Christian Bible
The first Christians adopted the Septuagint. They called those books Old Testament (Old Covenant, as opposed to the New Covenant between God and man, sealed by Christ), the first part of the Christian Bible.
Next to the books they inherited from the Jews, the Christians also had new Sacred Scriptures, written in Greek: the Gospels (mentioned in the Quran as Injil), on the life of Jesus Christ, as well as other books written by the first apostles. Those books constitute the New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible.
Transmission of the manuscripts
From the beginning, Christianity was founded on the calling to preach the Good News of salvation in Christ to all men in the whole world. Consequently, everywhere Christians went, they took hand-written manuscripts of their Sacred Scriptures with them. Christian preachers encouraged new believers to make their own hand-written copies. For this reason, many manuscripts have been found in the whole Roman world and beyond: next to the 5800 known Greek manuscripts and fragments, we have over 10000 Latin manuscripts, as well as over 9000 manuscripts in other languages, like Coptic (1000-1500 manuscripts) or Syriac.
The oldest known fragment of a New Testament manuscript was discovered in Egypt in 1935. It is dated to 125-150, and contains a few verses from the Gospel of John. (Source) While this manuscript was copied just a few decades after the original Gospel was written, it had already traveled all the way to Egypt !
There are eleven manuscript fragments that could go back to the 2nd Century of the Christian era (meaning they would have been written less than a century after the original), although only four of them have been dated to the 2nd Century with certainty by the specialists. (Source)
The oldest near-complete manuscript of a whole Gospel is Papyrus 66, which was found in Egypt. Dated to around 200 (a bit more than a century after the original), it contains almost the whole Gospel of Mark. (Source)
Next to the spreading of manuscripts, the first Christians were also actively translating their Sacred Scriptures into other languages, in order to enable all the people of the world to read them in their native language. The first Latin Bible translation, Vetus Latina, was probably translated in Carthage, at the beginning of the 3rd Century. Punic and Libyc (ancient Tamazight) translations are not documented, but plausible. (Source)
The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus rolls, a form of paper produced in Egypt from papyrus, a plant that grows along the Nile. Papyrus is difficult to keep intact over long periods of time, which explains why all the oldest manuscripts are only fragments. Around the 3rd-4th Century, papyrus was replaced by a new, more resistant writing support: parchment, made of animal skins. Consequently, from this time on, more complete manuscripts can be found.
Three especially well-preserved manuscripts, dating back to the 4th and 5th Century, are considered the oldest complete copies of the Christian Bible. Codex Vaticanus, dated to 300-350, is kept at the Vatican Library. Codex Sinaiticus (on the cover picture of this article), dated to 325-360, was in Egypt, at Saint-Catherine’s Monastery, at the feet of Mount Sinai, until the 19th Century, when it was “discovered” (and, according to the monastery, stolen) by the German biblical scholar Constantine von Tischendorf. It is now kept at the British Library, in London. Codex Alexandrinus, dated to 400-440, is originally from Alexandria, and also kept at the British Library.
Reliability of the manuscripts
With handwritten texts copied many times, often by believers who weren’t necessarily very educated, mistakes were unavoidable. There are obvious differences between manuscripts, even between the three great codices mentioned above. So, how can we know if the writings we have today are the same as the original?
For the Hebrew Bible, we can mention the Dead Sea Rolls. In 1946, Bedouin shepherds found papyrus rolls, completely by chance, in a cave close to the Dead Sea, at Qumran, Palestine. Archaeologists who came to examine their discovery found a collection of over 900 manuscripts dating back from the 3rd Century BCE to the 1st Century CE. Among those rolls, which belonged to a Jewish sect known as the Essenes, were the oldest known manuscripts of all the books of the Hebrew Bible, including the Deuterocanonical books, together with other Jewish religious writings. The Dead Sea Rolls are the most amazing archaeological discovery of the 20th Century! There is no significant difference between those manuscripts and the biblical books we have today.
For the Christian Bible, the answer to our question can precisely be found in the great number of manuscripts. Over 5000 Greek manuscripts of the Bible have been found, not to mention the many translations. Having so many manuscripts allows us to compare their texts. Also, the oldest manuscripts are chronologically very close to the original Scriptures: the oldest complete manuscripts were written only 3 centuries after the original, and some fragments are even older, which is proof that they are reliable.
Critical analysis of biblical manuscripts, or textual criticism, is a highly complex scientific method that involves comparing the existing manuscripts, in order to find and correct mistakes, and to reconstitute the original text as far as possible. If, for example, a small number of manuscripts contain a variation with the vast majority of manuscripts, this means that the majority version is authentic. If a variation appears only on more recent manuscripts, we can conclude that it is a mistake and the older manuscripts are correct. Specialists thus have managed to reconstruct over 99% of the original text with a high degree of certainty. As for the few remaining divergences between the manuscripts considered the most reliable, none of them concerns a major doctrine.
Formation of the biblical Canon
As for the Hebrew Bible, the first Christians had to decide which of their many writings should be considered inspired by God. Selection criteria were quite simple: an inspired book must have been written by an apostle or by someone who knew the apostles, during the apostolic era, and conform to the apostolic doctrine. The list of Sacred Scriptures is called Canon, from the Greek kanôn (κανών), a stem of reed used to determine the length of an object.
Most Sacred Scriptures, including the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, have always been recognized by all Christians. Other books, like the Epistle to the Hebrews (because it is anonymous) and Revelation, were debated. Finally, some believers wanted to add other books that finally weren’t included, usually because they weren’t written by he apostles, but by the following generation.
The oldest list of Christian Sacred Scriptures is found in the Muratorian Fragment, written around 170-200 by the Church of Rome. This list mentions 21 of the 27 books of the current New Testament, together with two other books that are not now part of the New Testament. Most of the omitted books are very short, which means they were probably not known everywhere at this time. The Muratorian Fragment also mentions books it rejects.
The theologian Origen of Alexandria, the father of biblical exegesis, did not leave us a list of the books he considered Sacred Scriptures, but he wrote commentaries of all the books of the current Bible.
After the Constantinian Reform, the Church needed to officially determine which Scriptures were to be considered sacred. The Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, the two oldest complete Bibles, both contain the books of the Bible as we know it today, which shows that the issue was consensual. A letter by bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, written in 367, also lists the same books.
The final decision was made in North Africa: in 393, a synod of bishops met in Hippo (Annaba), to officially approve the Canon of the Christian Bible as it still exists today. At the time, Augustine was not yet bishop of Hippo, but he already served as priest in this city, and certainly took part in the synod. The synodal decision was confirmed in 397, at the Council of Carthage, and then sent to the Church in Rome for approval.
Around the same time, the Christian theologian Jerome of Stridon worked for over 20 years, from 382 to 405, to retranslate the entire Bible into Latin. For this task, he settled in Bethlehem, in a cave believed to be Christ’s birthplace, where the Church of the Nativity was later built. For the Old Testament, he translated the Hebrew original texts, not the Greek Septuagint – an use that has been followed by other Bible translators since. His translation, known as the Vulgate, is the official Bible of the Catholic Church until today. Jerome is considered as the patron of translators.
The Bible in North Africa today
The history of the Bible in North Africa didn’t end with the Council of Carthage, nor even with the arrival of Islam. Last April, a team of Moroccan translators published the first translation of the complete Bible in Moroccan Darija. (Source) This Darija Bible is the fruit of 30 years of work. It is meant first for the Moroccan Christian minority, but also for all Moroccans who wish to discover a book that the Quran speaks highly of, the most read book in the world for 2000 years. It can be read on this app.
