On the Development of the Scriptural Canon in Judaism and Christianity

[patrick457]

Inspired by this thread, we will look at the development of the Biblical canon in Judaism and Christianity during the final centuries before Christ (specifically, during the Second Temple period) to the early centuries onwards.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCRIPTURAL CANON IN JUDAISM

1.) THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD

By the early Roman period there was a wide array of coexisting and competing forms of Judaism, a fact which was emphasized by literary evidence and archeological finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, one should be careful not to take the distinctions too far: one cannot ignore the lines of continuity between the ‘Judaisms’ of the Second Temple period, nor should one overlook the diversity present before and after it. Nevertheless, Judaism seems to not have been so pluralistic before and after this time; prior to this there seems to have been enough cohesion that the Pentateuch (the Torah) became a common inheritance to the varieties of Judaism that appeared later.

With the possible exception of the groups who produced the Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees, the various forms of second Temple Judaism seems to have held one thing in common: the recognition of the authority that the Law of Moses, the Torah holds. At the same time certain groups seem to have recognized little more than the Torah as Scripture: a prime example would be the Samaritans, who use the so-called Samaritan Pentateuch. Although in earlier studies evidence from Samaria was usually dismissed as non-Jewish, it now seems that the split between Samaritanism and Judaism occured fairly late in the Second Temple period.

The Samaritans were probably not alone in working with such a canon by this time. The Alexandrian Jews in Egypt seems to have a propensity to focus on the Torah alone, or almost exclusively on the Torah. The Letter of Aristeas, for example, relates how the king of Egypt, presumably Ptolemy II Philadephus, is urged by his librarian Demetrios of Phalaron to translate the Torah into Greek without mentioning other books. Similarly, the Alexandrian Jew Philo (On the Life of Moses 2.25-43) tells the same story and mentions a festival celebrating this translation in Pharos, and again does not mention the prophets or the other writings. Even Philo himself, who does occasionally cite other texts as Scripture, cites the Torah approximately forty times as often as other texts outside it.

 

[patrick457]

This tendency to focus exclusively or almost completely on the Torah as THE Scriptures seems to have been present within certain priestly and/or other groups in Palestine. For example, it has been suggested that Yeshua ben-Sira (Joshua/Jesus the son of Sirach, author of the Book of Sirach) knows other Jewish writings and ascribes an authority of sorts to them, he recognizes only the Law as having an authority beyond that of his own words.

Also, various Church Fathers (such as Hippolytus, Origen, Tertullian, and Jerome) point out that the Jewish sect founded in the 2nd century BC known as the Sadducees believed in the Torah alone and in a strict, to-the-letter interpretation of it. Early priestly regulations preserved in the Mishnah (Zabim 5.12) and perhaps hinted at in Hebrews 9:19 ascribe a special degree of holiness to the scroll of the Torah alone (ha-sefer, “the scroll”). This degree of holiness renders heave offerings invalid, places the scroll on the same level as the Temple vessels, and restricts the handling of the text among the priestly class. In Yadayim 4.6 the Sadducees are described as opposing the Pharisaic position that the “holy writings” (ketuvi ha-qodesh) in general “ritually defiles hands” (metam’in et ha-yadayim). By this point the rabbis, being the heirs of the Pharisees, have shifted the issue from a specific priestly concern to an issue of more potential relevance to the laity. Nevertheless, just as the earlier priestly regulation ascribes holiness to “the scroll” of the Torah alone, so do the Sadducees describe here oppose the assertion of a particular holiness of a set of writings which goes beyond the Law.

In sum, although the connections of Ben Sira, the Sadducees and these early priestly regulations are not easy to ascertain, each seems to have some connection with the priestly establishment (Ben Sira’s connection was indicated by his extended praise of the high priest Simon in Sirach 50:1-24, while the Sadducees were linked with the Jerusalem aristrocracy in some way) and each seems to accord a special holiness or authority for the Torah alone.

 

[patrick457]

Other Jewish groups seem to have seen the Torah collection as closed (with a few exceptions), but also recognized the authority of additional non-Torah documents, usually termed the “Prophets” (Nevi’im). Despite this recognition in many groups of a category of Scripture alongside Torah, they do not appear to have agreed on what books this category contained. For example, Ben Sira’s praise of the fathers (Sirach 44-49), rather than focusing exclusively on what he understood to be prophetic figures or material from a defined ‘prophetic’ corpus, draws freely from a number of non-Torah writings, found both inside and outside the Nevi’im in the modern Jewish canon. Such data militate against an assumption that Ben Sira had before him any circumscribed, ‘canonical’ collection of prophets.

Furthermore, Second Temple period texts seem to apply the term “prophet” on the authors of authoritative non-Torah works in general. A prime example is 4 Maccabees 18:10-19, where Daniel, the Psalms and Proverbs are mentioned as coming from “the prophets” (all of these books are now classified in Judaism as falling under the category of Ketuvim, “Writings”).

(Continued next post)