The Jews DID NOT define their OT Canon at Jamnia!

[RebAvomai]

BS’D

Shalom,

I would think it’s fairly safe to say, That the Torah of the Septugaint is the only thing that was translated by Jews, the rest was translated later within christian circles.

 

[RebAvomai]

SteveT:

It seems it was a fair question in Justin’s day, who it was who had really tampered with the text. Still a fair question today, too. I was in a debate with a convert to Judaism about a year ago, and his major objection to Christianity was that it’s arguments for Christ as the fulfillment of OT prophecies was based on faulty translations of the OT. I pointed out that that “faulty translation” predated his Hebrew version of the OT by almost 1000 years, and that it was an open question whether the far more ancient translation was faulty, or the modern Hebrew text had been corrupted in the interim. I cited the passage from Justin as evidence to support the latter hypothesis, leaving him with something to think about.

“Faulty Translation” is really a valid point today. Josephus and others make it clear that Jewish scribes did not translate the entire Tanakh into Greek, but only the Torah. Later incarnations containging the Prophets came out of Christian circles.

I could also point to various Church Fathers such as Jerome and Origen to put things in perspective if you would like.

 

[Church_Militant]

**THERE WAS NO COUNCIL AT JAMNIA. IT WAS A SCHOOL.

THE ONLY BOOKS THEY DISCUSSED AS BEING IN DISPUTE WERE SONG OF SOLOMAN AND ECCLESIATES.
**

Correct!

 

[Exporter]

Gottle of Geer,
You made a bold statement. You said St. Peter was not the first Bishop of Rome. Infact you say that he was never a Bishop.

Your words were:" “Pope Peter”. He was not a pope. The Roman Papacy is simply a development - whether legitimate or not, is another question - of the authority of the Roman bishop. And Peter was not a bishop - he was an Apostle; which is a very different thing. That He was an Apostlem, does not in the slightest alter the Petrine office in the Church." :nope:

I want to paste a few lines from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, I believe this Encylopedia was written before 1920. It has an Imprinture. Here it is." .

If therefore Peter devoted the preponderating portion of his Apostolic activity to the Jews, this arose chiefly from practical considerations, and from the position of Israel as the Chosen People. Baur’s hypothesis of opposing currents of “Petrinism” and “Paulinism” in the early Church is absolutely untenable, and is today entirely rejected by Protestants.
IV. ACTIVITY AND DEATH IN ROME; BURIAL PLACE

It is an indisputably established historical fact that St. Peter laboured in Rome during the last portion of his life, and there ended his earthly course by martyrdom. As to the duration of his Apostolic activity in the Roman capital, the continuity or otherwise of his residence there, the details and success of his labours, and the chronology of his arrival and death, all these questions are uncertain, and can be solved only on hypotheses more or less well-founded. The essential fact is that Peter died at Rome: this constitutes the historical foundation of the claim of the Bishops of Rome to the Apostolic Primacy of Peter. St. Peter’s residence and death in Rome are established beyond contention as historical facts by a series of distinct testimonies extending from the end of the first to the end of the second centuries, and issuing from several lands.

Yes Peter was truely an Apostle, in fact you can read in Matt16:18 that Jesus told him that the Church of Jesus Christ was to be built upon him (Peter/Cephas/Simon). So Peter was the most favored Apostle of Jesus, himself. Without knowing anything else, a thinking man would reason that if the Apostle John& Paul were a Bishops; then certainly Peter would be considered a Bishop.:yup:

Peter went to Rome and spent somewhere between 12 to 14 years ministering to the Jews in Rome, that is a fact. Now consider this. For the longest, Peter was the only Priest there. Do you think Peter is going to wake up some morning and say to himself,“O.K., Peter, today I am going to make you a Bishop”. I never talked to Peter, but Peter talked to Jesus. I do not think Peter ever had the idea that he was a Bishop although he was doing the work of a Bishop.(*there was no Bishop’s school then) At that time who was the leader of the Christians in Rome. The writer of the Book of Mark was Peter’s scribe. Mark was a Priest. He was working under Peter’s guidance. Mark wrote 1st& 2ed Peter!

Gottle of Geer says Peter was not the Bishop of Rome, that Peter was not the first Bishop of Rome. This poster would like to know why Gottle of Geer said that. He seemed to be so sure.If pressed, I can find the writtings of least three Early Christians who wrote about Peter as the Bishop of Rome.:yup:
JMJ

 

[SteveT]

Reb:

“Josephus and others make it clear that Jewish scribes did not translate the entire Tanakh into Greek, but only the Torah. Later incarnations containging the Prophets came out of Christian circles.”

I’ll again cite the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“As to the Pentateuch the following view seems plausible, and is now commonly accepted in its broad lines: The Jews in the last two centuries B.C. were so numerous in Egypt, especially at Alexandria, that at a certain time they formed two-fifths of the entire population. Little by little most of them ceased to use and even forgot the Hebrew language in great part, and there was a danger of their forgetting the Law. Consequently it became customary to interpret in Greek the Law which was read in the synagogues, and it was quite natural that, after a time, some men zealous for the Law should have undertaken to compile a Greek Translation of the Pentateuch. This happened about the middle of the third century B.C. As to the other Hebrew books – the prophetical and historical – it was natural that the Alexandrian Jews, making use of the translated Pentateuch in their liturgical reunions, should desire to read the remaining books also and hence should gradually have translated all of them into Greek, which had become their maternal language; this would be so much the more likely as their knowledge of Hebrew was diminishing daily. It is not possible to determine accurately the precise time or the occasions on which these different translations were made; but it is certain that the Law, the Prophets, and at least part of the other books, that is, the hagiographies, existed in Greek before the year 130 B.C., as appears from the prologue of Ecclesiasticus, which does not date later than that year.”

Certainly, the legendary translation of “the 70” pertained only to the Law, but the idea that the rest of the OT wasn’t translated into Greek and widely available long before the Christian era is without foundation. Indeed, it is generally recognized that all of the citations of the OT recorded in the NT are citations of the Greek Septuagint; it hardly seems plausible that the earliest Christians undertook to mis-translate the Hebrew bible into Greek specifically to make it accord with their doctrines, nor that a Jewish scholar who had studied under Gameliel (Paul) would so frequently mis-translate the Hebrew scriptures in his letters addressing the arguments of the Jews and the Judaizers.

“I could also point to various Church Fathers such as Jerome and Origen to put things in perspective if you would like.”

Jerome, of course, was much later in time. Early in his career, he regarded the Septuagint as the superior text, but changed his mind later after spending much time among Jewish rabbis. This association also led to Jerome’s dismissive comments on the Deuterocanonicals - we don’t follow him there, why should we on the Septuagint? I could dismiss Origen as a heretic, but I will acknowledge that in his hexaplar he does give greater weight to the Hebrew text available to him than to the Septuagint text. However, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no argument recorded of Origen for that opinion, so for all we know it was just a personal speculation of his. Given the unreliability of some of his other speculations, I don’t think we should give it too much credence.
To the best of my knowledge, Justin’s comments are the most ancient on the subject by any Christian writer.

 

[RebAvomai]

BS’D

Shalom Steve,

I appreciate your well thought out reply. However, for the sake of brevity and thread integrity, I’m going to keep my reasponse short. I’m just going to pose a question…

If relgious Jews had indeed translated the entire Septugaint and preserved it, how come nothing of the Oral Tradtion or anything of Midrashic nature creep into the translations like they did in other languages?

 

[RobedWithLight]

THERE WAS NO COUNCIL AT JAMNIA. IT WAS A SCHOOL.

THE ONLY BOOKS THEY DISCUSSED AS BEING IN DISPUTE WERE SONG OF SOLOMAN AND ECCLESIATES.

You are correct.

A mere “gathering” or “meeting” of a small group of Jewish rabbis, would in fact have been more accurate.

Gerry

 

[Checkmate]

Howdy!

DavidFilmer’s link for the Jamnia site is busted - try this: ww.ibri.org/13/jamnia.html

Thanks!

 

[SteveT]

Reb:

“If relgious Jews had indeed translated the entire Septugaint and preserved it, how come nothing of the Oral Tradtion or anything of Midrashic nature creep into the translations like they did in other languages?”

You have in mind the Aramaic Targums, of similar antiquity??? I don’t know, Reb. Perhaps the Alexandrian community was more disciplined in segregating commentary from the text than the Palestinian community? One can only speculate.

 

[SteveT]

Reb:

Stumbled across this footnote the other day in my studies and thought you might find it interesting and pertinent to this discussion. It pertains to Dt 32:8b, “He set up boundaries for the people according to the number of the sons of Israel.”
The footnote says this is according to the Masoretic text, but that the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls have it “… sons of God”. Fascinating that the more ancient Hebrew text should agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic text.

 

[JPrejean]

Boy, this is a complicated issue. There is some irony in raising this issue as evidence of the Catholic position, since J.P. Lewis’s rejection of Jamnia was actually used to support the Protestant notion that the Hebrew canon predated Jamnia (i.e., that the deuterocanonical books were always known to be non-canonical). As I understand it, recent scholarship has begun to question whether Ryle wasn’t right in the first place and whether J.P. Lewis’s challenges to Ryle based on the anachronism of the “council” concept weren’t misguided.
Albert Sundberg, Jr., writes:

What, however, should be the answer if we would ask for the venue of Cross’ proposal? Are there alternatives to Jamnia (or later Usha)? As we have seen, it was at Jamnia that the tradition says the Hillelites gained the ascendancy over the house of Shammai. It was the school at Jamnia that became a substitute for the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. It was at Jamnia that the third section of the Hebrew canon was first named. It was the Jamnia decisions that, while not “official,” came to be generally accepted in post-destruction Judaism. It may be that we have followed too quickly after Lewis in his attack upon Jamnia in order to foster his belief in a Hebrew canon from pre-Christian times. But that case, as we have seen, is confounded by numerous difficulties. With the time of canonization of the Hebrew tripartite canon now probably fixed between 70 and 135 C.E., and as a triumph of the Hillelite Pharisee in post-destruction Judaism, what alternatives are there to Jamnia as the venue?

department.monm.edu/classics/Speel_Festschrift/sundbergJr.htm

BUT … (cont)

 

[JPrejean]

(cont) (the rest of the story)
Sundberg’s observations don’t help the Protestant cause much, because he comes to his conclusion that the canon was likely closed at Jamnia based on F.M. Cross’s argument that the idea of a closed canon itself was a novelty that was introduced by the Hillelites. Sundberg notes that the early Jews seem to have been relatively indifferent to allowing different opinions on what was and was not Scripture (much as the early Christians were). He also writes:

The earliest evidence of the protorabbinic text in Samuel was found in the recension of the Theodotionic School, the so-called Kaige Recension (discussed above) from the end of the first century B.C.E. Since the Kaige Recension included the book of Baruch and the long form of Daniel, it is clear that an authorized Pharisaic canonical list had not yet emerged, at least in its final form, by the end of the first century B.C.E. Cross is persuaded that the same pressures that led to textual revision also led to canonization and that Hillel was the moving force in these actions. Both were undertaken to protect the Hillelites from rival doctrines of cult and calendar, alternate legal prescriptions, theological doctrines and mythological excesses of apocalyptic schools and proto-Gnostic sects. “The principles guiding the exclusion of works [such as fill the Qumran library] from the Pharisaic canon reflected in Josephus notices no doubt also operated in eliminating works offensive to Hillel and the house of Hillel,” Cross (1992:155) remarks. He sees the hand of Hillel in the promulgation of both a Pharisaic revised text and canon recognized in the rabbinic saying, “When Israel once again forgot [the Torah], Hillel the Babylonian came up and re-established it” (Cross 1992:155). Moreover, Cross recognizes that this text and canon were not immediately received. The general acceptance of the Hillelite text and canon came with ascendancy of the Hillelites during the interval between the wars against Rome, 70-135 C.E. After 135, despite some continued rabbinical questions about certain marginal books, the text and canon of the Hebrew canon remained fixed.

Thus, while Sundberg’s argument might affirm the closure of the canon at Jamnia, it would also strongly suggest that the drive to close the canon as well as the principles used to close the canon were Pharasaic innovations that only gained prevalence with the ascendancy of the Hillelites well after Jamnia. IOW, the Protestant notion that there was a well-known and accepted canon of Scripture to which the deuterocanonicals were “added” would be entirely false. Anyway, Sundberg’s article is simply fascinating; it’s a very good read for anyone curious about the use of deuterocanonica and apocrypha in Jewish culture.

Edit – BTW, if you want to compare Sundberg’s 1997 article to the 1976 (rev’d 1983) Newman article DavidFilmer posted above (which at least in my mind argues for the Protestant position that “there appears to have existed a consensus on the content of the Old Testament in the first century AD which was already ancient at that time”), this link should work: ibri.org/13jamnia.html.