Multiplicity and the Idea of Scripture

Abstract In the traditional scholarly narrative, a certain collection of ancient Israelite texts—the ‘Bible’—came to be accepted as ‘scripture’. Scholars disagree as to when or how this might have occurred, and even as to what defines ‘scripture’. Can the idea of a unique form of literature exhibiting regular characteristics ever comprehend the variegation of the Bible’s so-called reception? This article reviews trends in recent study highlighting such multiplicity. Comparativists have looked at the role of scriptures around the world. Biblical scholars have shown that the authority of written texts in ancient Israel developed only relatively late. Scholars of ancient Judaism have attended to the proliferation of revealed literature in the Second Temple period. Even as studies reconsider what texts were counted as ‘scripture’ and when, they continue to rely on a naturalized idea of ‘scripture’, whether or not the term is used, as a conceptual apparatus. On a pragmatic level, such an adoption constrains the possibilities for describing the range of what texts can be and do. I conclude by exploring how we might trace the emerging identities of biblical texts without assuming that repetition (the commonality of engagement with the biblical) indicates sameness (the operation of ‘scripture’ as a rule).