The Jewish Tanakh contains Torah (Law), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Kethuvim (Writings). I think it is generally agreed the Torah and the Nevi’im were fixed by the time of Christ. Indeed, the NT often refers to them.
Yes.
I really don’t think the Kethuvim was fixed yet. After all, the Christian didn’t make the Septuagint. It had previously been translated, and I believe it reflected at least some Jewish corpus that was held in high regard.
Well, sure, in one sense Christians did not make the Septuagint, if by that you mean the actual translations. However, I’ll argue that our modern understanding of ‘the Septuagint’ is actually a Christian construct. Heck, the term ‘Septuagint’ is even a Christian creation.
I’ve mentioned this in other threads, but strictly speaking, that old legend about the seventy-two translators originally only involved the Greek translation of the Torah. However, the early Christians tweaked the story; they claimed that the seventy-two (sometimes rounded to seventy) translators actually translated
all of the sacred Jewish literature into Greek. They began to call this supposed translation/s ‘the version of the Seventy’ -
versio septuaginta in Latin.
You might say that it’s partly the early Christians’ fault why the definition of ‘Septuagint’ is kind of fuzzy, because they really applied this term to the Greek translations of OT books that they commonly encountered and used. Depending on who you ask, it can either mean:
(1)
The earliest Greek translation of the Torah only. This definition of ‘Septuagint’ is more faithful to the original version of the legend. The other earliest surviving translations of OT books are given a separate category: ‘Old Greek’ or
OG.
(2)
The Greek Torah + ‘Old Greek’ translations. This is the more common definition nowadays; when many people say ‘Septuagint’ it’s usually shorthand for this, the earliest surviving translations of OT books (in contrast to the later Greek translations/versions like Aquila’s or Theodotion’s.)
(3)
The Greek translations used by early Christians, irregardless of whether they are the earliest versions or not. For example: early Christians generally preferred Theodotion’s Greek version of Daniel over the earlier (Old Greek) version of the book. As per definition (3), you might consider Theodotion’s Daniel to also be a ‘Septuagint’ version.
Also, in Ethiopia, where Judaism was strong, but somewhat isolated from the rest of the Jewish community, the Jewish canon is also bigger.
There’s still much that we don’t know about the Ethiopian Jewish canon (since there’s still very little research done in that area), but I wouldn’t hold my breath about it.
The Ethiopian Jewish canon considers the
Orit (the Torah + Joshua-Judges-Esther) to be of utmost importance; all the other OT books are secondary. On the third tier are the works which are influential but not really ‘scriptural’; these tend to be the more recent works composed or adopted by Ethiopian Jews. (The latest of these works actually date from the 18th century!)
Now from what I’ve read, there’s really been some sort of interchange between Ethiopian Christians and Ethiopian Jews; in fact, the majority of Ethiopian Jewish literature actually seem to have reached Ethiopian Jews via Christian sources. That’s why on that third tier you have works such as the
Te’ezaza Sanbat, which was originally a 15th century Christian homily. Christian stuff - material from the homilies of Jacob of Sarugh - actually show up in these Ethiopian Jewish works.
IMHO that could explain why Ethiopian Jews have a rather ‘Septuagintal’ canon and use works such as Enoch and Jubilees (works which early Christians were familiar with and used). Ethiopian Jews could have simply been influenced by their Christian neighbors who were using these books.* In fact, some argue that much of the distinctive customs of the Ethiopian Jews were not really ancient, but actually reached them in the Middle Ages via the Ethiopian Orthodox. Given how close the two communities historically were, my idea wouldn’t be too far-fetched, I think.
In fact, it might even solve the dilemma of why the Ethiopian Jews have Enoch and Jubilees, works which were only written in the 3rd-2nd century BC, and why they are so distinctive when Yemenite Jews (who practice Rabbinic Judaism) are just close by (just a short boat ride away).
- There was in fact a story that a renegade Christian monk named Qozmos wrote out the Orit for the Ethiopian Jews who rallied under him in the 15th century; up until then Ethiopian Jews never seem to have possessed a written Scripture but were a non-literate culture. In fact, it was really in the 15th century onwards that Ethiopian Jewish literature began to flourish.
I suspect the narrower canon of 24/39 books took hold early among most Hebrew-speaking Jews in Palestine, but was slower to be accepted among the rest of Jews (and as I said, Ethiopian Jews never adopted the narrow canon at all).
This is actually related to the idea of an ‘Alexandrian canon’ existing side-by-side with the Palestinian canon. The problem with that idea is that there’s simply not enough evidence for the idea that the geographical separation between Palestinian and Alexandrian Jews was paralleled by a division on linguistic and theological lines. In fact, the evidence seems to point the other way, to Diaspora Jews having the same
de facto canon as Palestinian Jews and being
more conservative than their Palestinian counterparts.
