Scripture (Old and New Testament): Canon, Text, and Patristic Reading
The Scripture domain tests how Orthodoxy receives the Bible: which books make up the canon, which text underlies the liturgy, and what hermeneutic governs interpretation. Questions here turn on the Septuagint, the lectionary, and patristic exegesis rather than on source criticism.
Canon and text
- The Orthodox Old Testament follows the Septuagint tradition and includes the books Western Bibles label deuterocanonical: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, the additions to Esther and Daniel, and Psalm 151.
- The New Testament is the 27 books. Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter (367) lists exactly these; the Muratorian fragment (c. 200) is the earliest surviving Latin canon list.
- The Septuagint is the liturgical and patristic base text. Its differences from the Masoretic text are often weighty: Isaiah 7:14 reads parthenos ("virgin"), Proverbs 8:22 reads ektisen ("created"), and the psalm numbering diverges (LXX 50 = Hebrew 51).
- The Byzantine lectionary begins John at Pascha, then Matthew, Luke and Mark; Revelation is never read in the Byzantine rite.
Hermeneutic
- Scripture is read inside the Church, not by private judgment (2 Peter 1:20); the consensus patrum functions as a boundary, not a substitute for reading.
- Alexandria (Origen, Cyril) favours allegory; Antioch (Theodore, Chrysostom) favours the literal-historical sense. The Church holds both, with theoria permitting a fuller Christological reading.
- The four senses - literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical - systematised by John Cassian (Conferences 14) describe patristic practice rather than a rigid method.
- Typology is normative: Luke 24:27, John 5:39, 1 Corinthians 10:1–11.
Worked example
Why does the Church read "virgin" at Isaiah 7:14? The Hebrew 'almah denotes a young woman of marriageable age; the Septuagint renders parthenos; Matthew 1:23 quotes the Septuagint. The reasoning chain is: the apostolic citation is normative, the Septuagint is the Church's received text, and the immediate sign given to Ahaz does not exhaust a prophecy fulfilled typologically in Christ. The correct answer is not "the Hebrew means virgin" - it does not.
Traps
- Claiming the Orthodox canon is identical to the Roman Catholic one; Orthodoxy has never defined the status of the "readable" books with equivalent precision.
- Treating the Masoretic text as the original and the Septuagint as a derivative translation of secondary value.
- Confusing inspiration with dictation, or typology with free allegorical play.
- Forgetting that lectionary use, not chapter-and-verse citation, is the Church's native mode of reading.