The Canon as You Read It

Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not. And law is what you must do, whether it is good for you or not.
   -  Dallas Willard

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library. 
   -  bell hooks

And he said to him,
   What is written in the law of the Torah?
   How do you read it?
   -  Jesus (as translated by Luke, as translated by Willis Barnstone)

Lynn Z. Bloom is pretty smart.  And so are bloggers Henry Neufeld and Brian LePort.  They are particularly intelligent when it comes to what makes a real canon.  They understand the goodness of subjectivity.  And therefore, they resist the sort of teachers who - and that type of teaching that - would force on you the following: "What you must read" and "Which works you should read."  It's all very aptly personal.  Lynn is interested in the essay canon; Henry in the best Bible version; and Brian in the canon of the Bible.

I first met Bloom by email after reading something she'd written that I decided to read while doing early research in my Ph.D. program.  She was kind to me, enthusiastic about her own research, and excited at the prospect of the possibility of my expanding some on what she'd started.  Bloom had noticed "how the essay, a belletristic genre in the 18th and 19th centuries, became critically undermined in the 20th century as a consequence of pedagogy that emphasized its utilitarian rather than aesthetic and intellectual functions."  She noted:  

"Canon-makers make pronouncements and lists.  Although I am not now and never have been related to any other Bloom of canonical persuasion, neither Harold ('Read my list!') nor Allan ('Read Great books!'), I make the following claims.  This article [of mine] is the first to define this -- or any -- contemporary essay canon, the first to define that canon empirically rather than critically, and the first to discuss its formation, significance, status, and implications.  Whether or not critics pay attention to essays, teachers [like me] do, and consequently so do their students.  Thus this contemporary essay canon has profound implications -- intellectual, aesthetic, pedagogical, and political -- not only for what but also for how our [American] nation's 2.2 first-year college students read, and think, and write -- and for how they'll think about reading and writing for the rest of their lives.  The teaching essay canon may, indeed, constitute the core of a liberal arts education for many of these students."

I've just now quoted her own essays, or articles, entitled respectively, "Once More to the Essay: The Essay Canon and Textbook Anthologies" and "The Essay Canon."  In her anthology co-edited with Louise Z. Smith, Bloom builds her own essay canon for her own students.  As The Arlington Reader: Canons and Contexts, their publisher Bedford/ St. Martin's makes this available to any of us and all of us teaching.  In the Introduction, they write:  "A canon is a list or other compilation of the most important members of a particular group or category, developed through agreement -- either implied or explicit -- by people who know the subject."  And they go on to give examples:  "the biblical canon," and "the canon of rock musicians" and other "canons that reflect taste, influence, and popularity -- those applying to music, books, art, or cars...."

Neufeld is interested in the canon of Bible versions.  And personally he notes:

"[S]omething is always present in translation as well. The question is just what you’re looking for. For example, I prefer the more formal style of the Revised English Bible. I even like its Anglicisms. I spent much of my teens in a former British colony (Guyana), and I was born in Canada. Those things are comfortable for me and they give me a familiar feel.

Should I therefore recommend that everyone read the REB? Hardly! For others, features that make it work for me may be a hindrance to understanding. Then there’s the question of just what it is that I want to understand, or more importantly that you want to understand.

What seems to escape so many people who prescribe what a translation must and must not do is that it matters not what is there if the reader doesn’t understand. Admonitions to 'get a dictionary' are both pointless, and in my opinion, arrogant. This kind of talk suggests to people that if they would just put in enough work, they’d be able to understand–well–what the talker believes they should want to understand."

Do you see what he's done?  Neufeld has let you decide just has he has decided, rather subjectively and individually, what is best in a version, an English translation, of the Bible.

LePort acknowledges canons of the Bible of all sorts of people of all sorts of faiths.  Then he does something starting.  He suggests that it's okay to fess up to the fact that, even in your own community, you have a different canon, or, as he puts it, a canon-within-the-canon.  He recalls and advises, practicing what he preaches:

"A couple of years ago I shared a chart that compares the biblical canon according to the following forms: Samaritan, Hebrew/Jewish, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Protestant (see here). If you are part of one of these groups you likely adhere to the canon as understood in that tradition. Yet practice is often a more trustworthy sign of what you believe than mere confession, so even though I am an evangelical it would be a bit disingenuous for me to act as if the canon influences me equally."

He then goes on to say what he reads and what he does not read so much of in his evangelical [Christian] Bible.  What about you, he asks.  

If I had more time, maybe when I do have a little time to spare, I might share my canons, my essay canon, my Bible version canon, and my canon within the biblical canon.  I might share in comments below.  If you have the time and inclination to share, then I think that'd be just fine.  It would certainly be as smart and as encouraging as Lynn Z. Bloom and bloggers Henry Neufeld and Brian LePort.