In the book How the Bible Became Holy, Michael Satlow covers the material in the Old Testament starting with King David and ending with Ezra. Satlow argues that "Jews and Christians gave to the texts that constitute our Bible only very limited and specific kinds of authority until well into the third century CE and beyond" (3). Satlow then defines the three different kinds of authority: normative, literary, and oracular.
The question I had was would it be possible to use Satlow's breakdown of authority to determine what is a bible and what is scripture? For example, the first day of class we examined different mediums of the bible from the children's bible to the comic book. Looking at the comic book by itself, I would say that it has oracular authority but not normative or literary. Since it only fit one of the authorities, I would say that it is a scripture instead of a bible.
These different mediums exist because society is always trying to produce new texts that will reach wider audiences. The scribes of Judah, like today's writers, also tried to reach more people by creating more texts, however, "a claim to authority is not the same as actual authority and...some texts were better received than others" (32). This is especially true when looking at mediums focusing too much on the sexual context of the bible (yes, I'm talking about that pornographic bible we looked at in class).
Finally, I do agree that if a Bible meets each of Satlow's authorities, they constitute as a true Bible and is inherently holy.
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