The Formation of the Jewish Canon 9780300164954

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The Formation of the Jewish Canon

The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library is a project of international and interfaith scope in which Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars from many countries contribute individual volumes. The project is not sponsored by any ecclesiastical organization and is not intended to reflect any particular theological doctrine. The series is committed to producing volumes in the tradition established half a century ago by the founders of the Anchor Bible, William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman. It aims to present the best contemporary scholarship in a way that is accessible not only to scholars but also to the educated nonspecialist. It is committed to work of sound philological and historical scholarship, supplemented by insight from modern methods, such as sociological and literary criticism. John J. Collins General Editor

THE ANCHOR YALE BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY

TIMOTHY H. LIM

The Formation of the Jewish Canon

AY B R L

New Haven & London

“Anchor Yale Bible” and the Anchor Yale logo are registered trademarks of Yale University. Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2013 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail sales.press@yale. edu (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Sabon type by Integrated Publishing Solutions, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lim, Timothy H. The formation of the Jewish canon / Timothy H. Lim. pages cm. — (The Anchor Yale Bible reference library) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-16434-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Bible. Old Testament— Canon. 2. Bible. Old Testament—History. 3. Canon (Literature)—History. 4. Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. BS1135.L56 2013 221.1′2—dc23 2013014159 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10

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For my mother Josephine Yu Lim (1926–2004) IN MEMORIAM

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Contents

Preface

ix

List of Abbreviations

xiii

1

Modern and Ancient Views of the Canon

2

The Emergence of the Canon Reconsidered

3

The Earliest Canonical Lists and Notices

4

The Torah in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods 54

5

The Letter of Aristeas and Its Early Interpreters

74

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The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira and 2 Maccabees

94

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The Dead Sea Scrolls and Authoritative Scriptures

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The Holy Books of the Essenes and Therapeutae 148

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Canon in the Gospels and Pauline Letters

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The Formation of the Jewish Canon

1 17

35

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Appendix 1: Some Modern Canons 189 Appendix 2: Early Canonical Lists

191

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Contents

Appendix 3: Bryennios’ and Epiphanius’ Lists

193

Appendix 4: Extra-Canonical Jewish Writings and the Pauline Letters 195 Appendix 5: Scriptural References in Sirach 44–50 Notes

213

Select Bibliography Index of Subjects

243 277

Index of Modern Authors

279

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources 281

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Preface

In the Prologue to the Wisdom of Ben Sira the grandson wrote that while devoting himself to the translation and publication of his grandfather’s book, he experienced
, a wakefulness caused by care and anxiety. The same thing happened to the epitomist of 2 Maccabees when he abridged Jason of Cyrene’s history. I had never really experienced insomnia until I began to work on this book. Probably like most people, I had been restless some nights as I pondered a particular issue or problem. But I had not had a sustained period of sleeplessness until I began in earnest to produce the book that is before you. The writing of this book consumed me more than I had previously experienced or cared to admit. My interest in the formation of the canon goes back a long way, ever since I investigated the textual characteristics of the scriptural citations in the letters of Paul and the sectarian commentaries of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Over the years I have continued to research and write on various topics, such as the “praise of the fathers” in Ben Sira, the canonical notice in 4QMMT, and the meaning of “the defilement of the hands” in the Mishnah. This long period of reflection was necessary given the scope of the subject and the burgeoning scholarly literature. There were numerous terminological and conceptual issues at stake, and they were, in turn, dependent on how key primary sources were interpreted. To compound the challenges, these sources were found within

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the fields of several subdisciplines that have as their research goals the study of the Pentateuch, Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, writings of Philo, books of Josephus, Pauline letters, and Rabbinic literature. I felt, however, that there was advantage in discussing the subject as a whole rather than piecemeal. Ever since the three-stage theory was demolished in the past generation, scholarly opinion has been divided and no consensus has emerged. Part of the reason may be found in the specialization of studies that tend to focus on narrower concerns and do not address the big picture. The emergence of the canon is a general issue that crosses disciplinary boundaries. In this book, I have proposed a theory of the majority canon. First, I reviewed the scholarly literature in a preliminary way. Then I worked on each chapter. Finally, I drafted the conclusions and rewrote the first three chapters. I have been fortunate to have “aired” some of my views beforehand in seminars and conferences. I have presented papers in the Biblical Studies seminars in Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and King’s College, London. I have spoken at the SNTS conference in Vienna, the BAJS conference in Southampton, a scrolls conference in Metz, and the Qumran section of the SBL International Meeting in London. I thank all the organizers of these seminars and conferences for the invitations. Several colleagues have also read and responded to drafts of my chapters or engaged me in discussion. In particular, I would like to thank the following: Edward Adams, Philip Alexander, Graeme Auld, Hans Barstad, Markus Bockmuehl, Juan Carlos Ossandón, Sidnie Crawford, James Davila, Karl Donfried, Steven Fraade, Jörg Frey, Florentino García Martínez, Martin Goodman, Larry Hurtado, Sarah Pearce, Tessa Rajak, David Reimer, Jean-Sébastien Rey, Raija Sollamo, Loren Stuckenbruck, Joan Taylor, William Tooman, Kristin de Troyer, and Cecilia Wassen. Alison Salvesen read the chapter on the Letter of Aristeas and gave me very useful suggestions. James Charlesworth sent me a copy of his soon-to-be-published article on Deut 27:4. Lee McDonald sent me his publications on the canon and offered valuable feedback on the book. I spent a memorable few hours of conversation with Menahem Kister in France discussing the concept of canon. I also thank the anonymous readers for taking the time to respond to the proposal and draft manuscript during the review process. I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to two colleagues, John Barton and John Collins. The former read probably half of the chapters and encouraged me to pursue a topic for which he is a leading expert. John’s gentle words were often disarmingly profound in their criticism. John Collins not only invited me to contribute to the series for which he serves as general editor, but he

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also took a great interest in the project, reading literally every word of the book, sometimes more than once! John’s well-known keen eye and sharp criticism saved me from numerous errors and helped hone the argument in a way that makes the book far better. What imperfections remain are naturally my own responsibility. I would like to thank the editors at Yale University Press—Jennifer Banks, Margaret Otzel, Heather Gold, Susan Laity, and Bojana Ristich—for the courtesy, helpfulness, and excellent support throughout the process from its embryonic proposal to publication. I dedicate this book in loving memory of my mother, who knew by heart virtually the whole of the Old and New Testament in Chinese.

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Abbreviations

The abbreviations follow the SBL Handbook of Style (1999) with the following additions. AEP The Apocrypha in Ecumenical Perspective, ed. Siegfried Meurer. New York: United Bible Societies, 1991. BETS Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society. Bible as Book The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries, ed. Edward D. Herbert and Emanuel Tov. London: British Library, 2002. Biblical Canons The Biblical Canons, ed. J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge. Leuven: Peeters, 2003. Canon and Masorah The Canon and Masorah of the Hebrew Bible: An Introductory Reader, ed. S. Z. Leiman. New York: Ktav, 1974. Le Canon de l’Ancien Testament Le Canon de l’Ancien Testament: Sa formation et son histoire, ed. J.-D. Kaestli and O. Wermelinger. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984. Canon Debate The Canon Debate, ed. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002. Canon of Scripture The Canon of Scripture in Jewish and Christian Tradi-

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Abbreviations

tion: Le canon des Écritures dans les traditions juive et chrétienne, ed. P. S. Alexander and Jean-Daniel Kaestli. Lausanne: Éditions du Zèbre, 2007. Canonization and Decanonization Canonization and Decanonization, ed. Arie van der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn. Leiden: Brill, 1998. DEJ The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel Harlow. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. DSSHC The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2000. Emanuel Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul, Robert A. Kraft, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Weston W. Fields. Leiden: Brill, 2003. HB/OTI Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), ed. M. Sæbø. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996. Jewish Perspectives Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers, ed. Tessa Rajak, Sarah Pearce, James Aitken, and Jennifer Dines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Mikra Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. M. J. Mulder. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988. OHDSS The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pentateuch as Torah The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007. Persia and Torah Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, ed. James W. Watts. Atlanta: SBL, 2001. QHBT Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, ed. F. M. Cross and S. Talmon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. Scripture in Transition Scripture in Transition: Essays on Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of Raija Sollamo, ed. Anssi Voitila and Jutta Jokiranta. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. SDB Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible. Septuagint Research Septuagint Research: Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures, ed. W. Kraus and R. Glenn Wooden. Atlanta: SBL, 2006. SSCW Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings, ed. G. J. Brooke and Barnabas Lindars. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. TAD Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, ed. Bezazel Porten and Ada Yardeni. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986–1999.

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Modern and Ancient Views of the Canon

The concept of canon is a contentious topic, and not just in Biblical and Jewish Studies. The view that there is a canon that represents the highest literary merits and core values of Western society has been championed by some and denounced by others. The “Great Books” debate in American universities is a curricular manifestation of this philosophical and cultural clash. Supporters argue that it is possible to identify a set of works of heroic stature from the time of Homer to the present day that represents the touchstones of Western civilization. Critics counter by pointing to the imperial, ideological, ethnic, political, and gender bias of such a concept, which has no place in postmodern society.1 The very idea of a canon divides and polarizes opinion in a way that few other concepts do. In Britain, the discourse took a different turn and was instigated by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who in his criticism of the public policy of multiculturalism and its fragmentation of society advocated a national culture based on the idea of canon, “a set of texts that everyone knew,” including the Bible, Shakespeare, and the great novels.2 Sacks’ view that there is a closed list of works that represents core values has been criticized, and dissenters have wondered whether ethnic and religious diversity could not be better embraced by advocating a multiplicity of canons, including those of the minorities.

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Modern and Ancient Views of the Canon

The debate in the public sphere over the canon is fueled by ideological, philosophical, political, and pedagogical contretemps. One of the vital points of disagreement is about the nature of the canon itself. Is the notion of the canon inherently prescriptive—endorsing what ought to be accepted and read—or is it endemic, validating the eminence of a set of texts in Western society? What does the canon signify by way of a common set of values? Is the concept of a single canon justified, or is it better to think of a plurality of canons, with each community championing its own set of accepted texts? This public debate could be better informed by our returning to the beginning and investigating the notion of canon in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. When did the canon of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament close? What process led to its formation? Did all ancient Jews hold a single canon, or did each group have its own canon? By shedding light on the origins of the canon, I hope that a historical perspective can be added to the public discussion of canon.

Terminological Considerations The term kanon, from Greek and literally meaning a measuring stick, rule, and (by analogy) a list, was used by the Christian church in its conciliar decisions that determined which books were to be included in the Bible. It seems an unsuitable term to use for describing the historical formation of Jewish scriptures since it is anachronistic and implies a fixed list. John Barton points out that there are two clearly identifiable scholarly traditions, one that “speaks of texts as ‘canonical’ if they are widely received as possessing authority, and another which reserves the term for those texts which, after a process of sifting and evaluation, have been approved and stand on a limited list.”3 He argues that the word “canon” is an inappropriate term to use to describe the scriptures of Jews and Christians in the first few centuries of the Common Era, primarily because there was not to be found any sense that scripture formed a closed list.4 Eugene Ulrich advocates a strict definition of “canon” to describe only the decisions made by official bodies. He nonetheless recognizes that the making of official lists is related to the historical development that saw the transformation of oral and written literature into scriptures, and he calls this activity “the canonical process.”5 A recent conference proceeding on the subject avoids the term “canon” and instead uses the term “authoritative scriptures” in its title.6 That is not a  designation that an ancient Jew would recognize, but it is not thereby unsuitable.

Modern and Ancient Views of the Canon

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In the ancient sources, scripture is denoted in Hebrew and Greek by various phrases and titles, but “authoritative scriptures” is not one of them. In Ezra-Nehemiah, several designations are deployed with the terms “torah,” referring to laws and narratives, and/or sepher, meaning book or scroll: 

 (Neh 8:13);   (Neh 8:3);    (Ezra 7:6);   (Ezra 6:18);    (Neh 8:1);      (Neh 8:18; cf. Neh 8:8); and       (Neh 9:3). Moreover, there are Aramaic expressions embedded in the documents and narratives:       (“the book of the law of the God of Heavens,” Ezra 7:12) and    (“the law of your God,” Ezra 7:26). In Chronicles, the passover tradition is retold in a way that claims dependence on the earlier prescriptions of the laws of Moses, legal ordinance, authority of the ruling king, and the prescriptions of David and Solomon (2 Chr 35:4–12). Significant is the mention that the passover tradition is to be found “in the writing of David” (  ), “in the document of Solmon” (

), and “in the book of Moses” (  ). Among the sectarian texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, designations of scriptures include the following:  (CD 4:8; 5:7; 6:4, 7; 1QS 8:15; 4Q159 fr. 5, l. 6, etc.);    (CD 5:2);   (CD 15:12; 16:2; 1QS 5:8);

 (4Q397 fr. 14, l. 10; 2Q25 fr. 1, l. 1; verso of 4QpapCrypta);     (CD 7:17//4Q266 fr. 3 col. 3, l. 18; 4Q177 fr. 1, col. 4, l. 14);   (11Q13); and    (4Q491 fr. 1, l. 4). In Jewish texts of the Hellenistic and Roman periods and in the writings of the early church, scripture is most commonly called “the writing” ( ; e.g., Let. Aris. 155, 168; Philo, Virt. 51; Gal 3:22, 1 Clem 34:6); “the writings” ( ; e.g., Philo, Cher. 11); “the holy writings” ( ! , "# !$ %&&"; e.g., Philo, Abr. 121; Mos. 2.290; 2 Tim 3:15); “the law” (' (&)*+)&),!-; e.g., Philo, Opif. 46; Contemp. 78; Luke 10:26); “the law and prophets” ('(&)*.$))/"0; e.g., Sir 1:1; 2 Macc 15:9; 4 Macc 18:10; Matt 7:12; Rom 3:21); “the book” ('112)*; e.g., Let. Aris. 316); “the holy books” ("#1012"#30; e.g., 1 Macc 12:9; )!)$112)0; e.g., Philo Mos. 2.36); and “the oracles (of God)” ("#2(0; e.g., Let. Aris. 158; "#")4 ,!)42(0; e.g., Philo, Decal. 48; Rom 3:2). In Rabbinic literature, scripture is designated commonly by “what is read” ( 5 ), “what is written” ( ), “the writings” (  ), “the holy writings” ( 5  ), “the book or scroll” (  ), “the books or scrolls” (  ), “the law” ( ), and “the law and prophets” (   ). “Authoritative scriptures” is not a term that the ancients used. In fact, whatever term one chooses would be problematic in some sense, and one could expend an inordinate amount of effort discussing terminology without

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shedding much light on the matter. It is important to maintain a sense of proportion about the terminological debates. I agree entirely with Ulrich, who wrote: “The definition of a canon is a relatively minor matter. Much more important, interesting, and ripe for analysis is the canonical process— the historical development by which the oral and written literature of Israel, Judaism, and the early church was handed on, revised, and transformed into the scriptures that we have received, as well as the processes and criteria by which the various decisions were made.”7 The essence of the problem is that ancient Jews did not use a term equivalent to “canon” or “authoritative scriptures,” but they did have the concept. Implied in the titles “the books of Moses” and “the books of the Prophets” is the idea of a collection, which is an important element of a canonical or authoritative list. Moreover, Rabbinic Judaism used the term “outside books” (6 7   ) to describe “heretical books” (e.g., m. Sanh. 10:1). This implies that there must have been books that were included, most probably in a list (b. B. Bat. 14–15), but they were not called “inside books” or “canonical books.” Those included in the list were called “holy scriptures” ( 5 ). In addition, when the rabbis debated whether the Song of Songs and Qohelet “defiled the hands” and therefore were to be considered “holy scriptures,” they also knew what was holy and not holy, but they did not explain their thinking.8

Canon and Authoritative Scriptures In this study, I will use “canon” to refer to the list of biblical books. As will be seen, there is more than one list and therefore strictly speaking more than one canon, although the lists overlapped to a large extent. This definition is consistent with the decisions of the ecclesiastical councils, the first being the Council of Laodicea in ca. 360, which decided which books were to be included in the Bible. But the definition is only broadly “conciliar” in meaning since it is not confined to the deliberations of early Christianity. Josephus’ Contra Apionem, 4 Ezra, and Mishnah Yadayim imply lists of biblical books; Baba Bathra, Origen, and Jerome enumerate Jewish lists of biblical books. I use “authoritative scriptures” to refer to the collections of authoritative writings before the appearance of the first lists. Authoritative scriptures are to be found among the post-exilic Judean community, Samaritans, Alexandrian Jewish community, communities reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Essenes, Therapeutae, Pharisees, Sadducees, Pauline churches, etc. before the end of the first century CE. My understanding of authoritative scriptures is indebted to Sid Leiman,

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although, unlike him, I avoid using the term “canon.” He argues that from the traditional Jewish perspective, a canonical book is “a book accepted by Jews as authoritative for religious practice and/or doctrine, and whose authority is binding upon the Jewish people for all generations. Furthermore, such books are to be studied and expounded in private and in public.”9 In the tannaitic period, moreover, the rabbis drew a distinction between the categories of “canonical” and “inspired,” the latter referring to those books believed to have been composed under divine inspiration (“by the spirit of holiness”). In this sense, the Mishnah and Megillat Taanith were canonical but not inspired; the biblical books were both canonical and inspired. Leiman’s equation of canon with authoritative scriptures is instructive. For traditional Jews, authority is established by the acceptance of the community in matters of religious belief and practice and is binding for all time. This authority is thought to have its origins in divine inspiration and is manifest in the command to study the books and to comment on their meaning. This definition is consistent with the biblical understanding of authority. In Exodus 24:3–7, Moses took the record of the covenant and read it out loud to the people, commanding them to do all that is written in it. The people of Israel accepted the binding nature of the commandments by declaring that they would obediently do all that the Lord had spoken. Likewise, in the time of the monarchy, King Josiah read out loud to the people the book of the covenant that had recently been discovered been in the house of the Lord (2 Kgs 22–23). Both the king and the people made a covenant before the Lord, pledging to do all that was written in the book of the covenant (  ). In the post-exilic period, Ezra is reported to have read out the book of the law of Moses (    ) before those assembled in front of the Water Gate. Ezra blessed the Lord, and the people affirmed by replying “Amen, amen,” lifting their hands, and bowing their heads and worshipping the Lord with their faces to the ground (Neh 8:1–6). Leiman’s definition, therefore, is not only applicable to Rabbinic Judaism but is also a biblical concept of canon. However, the distinction that Leiman draws between “canonical” and “inspired” is open to challenge. David Kraemer argues that in the later Rabbinic community, “the literature that embodied the norms and values of Jewish society had finally to be understood as inspired,” and therefore Leiman’s distinction between inspired and uninspired canon is untenable.10 Andrew Steinmann criticizes Leiman for combining two kinds of authoritative writings, the scriptural canon and another canon of religious literature. The critique exposes the weakness in Leiman’s failure to distinguish among different kinds of authoritative literature. In Steinmann’s words: “That religious communities oftentimes accept other collections of books as authorita-

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tive but not on the level of scripture does not mean that they have one canon divided into two categories. Instead, it implies that they recognize two collections: a collection of Scripture and a collection of other books that, though useful, are not recognized as both authoritative and inspired.”11 As an example, Steinmann points to the way Lutherans also regard the Book of Concord as authoritative when they already recognize the scriptural canon of the Old and New Testaments. One doubts, however, that Steinmann’s criticisms are justified. The comparison between the Lutheran Church and Rabbinic Judaism is questionable since the former has had a fixed canon for hundreds of years, whereas the latter has its beginnings when the Bible itself was in its formative stage.12 It is highly doubtful that the authoritative status of, say, the Mishnah in Rabbinic Judaism is comparable to the Book of Concord in the Lutheran Church. For Rabbinic Judaism the Oral Torah has an authoritative status in a way that the Book of Concord does not. The Rabbinic belief is that Moses did not receive just the Written Torah at Mt. Sinai, but also the Oral Torah, literally “torah according to the mouth” (  8 ), which has been passed down in an unbroken chain of succession. Also, in Leiman’s view the Mishnah and Megillat Taanith are canonical but not inspired. The different historical context and period, the break from the Catholic Church, and the Lutheran doctrine of sola scriptura mean that the authority of the Book of Concord is not a suitable parallel to the authority of Rabbinic literature in Rabbinic Judaism. My working definition, then, is the following: “authoritative scriptures” refer to collections of writings that were accepted and used by a particular Jewish or Christian community. The term does not refer to a fixed list of books decided by an official body but implies a community’s recognition of the divinely inspired nature of certain writings. That these divinely inspired writings were gathered in “collections” is evidenced by the titular descriptors, such as “the books of Moses,” “the books of the Prophets,” and “the Psalms of David.” That these writings were considered authoritative is shown by their acceptance and use within a community for study, commentary, worship, ritual, teaching, and moral behavior.

Prophetic Status and Revealed Writings The above terminological discussion raises the issue of authority: Are there different kinds of authority? Is a distinction to be drawn between the authority of the writings that were eventually included in the canon, which is scriptural authority, and the authority of other writings? What are the indicators of authority? There is no one answer to these questions since the

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sources under consideration are diverse. They reflect a variety of literary contexts and historical circumstances. Moreover, the evidence that is available in the sources is often indirect and oblique. For the most part the sources do not address the issue; the principles, where they exist, are implied or couched in passing comments. There are nonetheless a few indicators that will help point the way forward. Several of the sources identify prophecy as an important element. This prophetic legitimacy is expressed in different ways, and writings were considered prophetic and inspired by God. Inspiration may be attributed to God alone or through his holy spirit. The writings so characterized are, by implication, different from other kinds of writings. In Rabbinic Judaism, the hallmark of prophecy was an important criterion for distinguishing between the biblical texts and other writings. Tosefta Sotah states: “When the last prophets—that is, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi— died, the holy spirit ceased in Israel (13:2).” This means that the cessation of the holy spirit was associated with their deaths. Given that these three also wrote prophecies that “came at the end of the prophets” (bB.Bat 14a), the passage is also understood to indicate the closing of the second division of the Hebrew Bible.13 Subsequent revelation is by a heavenly voice or bat qol. The authoritative nature of Rabbinic literature is thus distinguished from the biblical texts. Important to note here is that this is a Rabbinic claim about the cessation of prophecy within the context of the sages’ worldview and theology. As such, it is distinguishable from the historical question of whether prophecy actually did or did not cease at the end of the Second Temple period.14 Also to be bracketed aside is the question of whether the bat qol was an inferior form of revelation, which is an important issue in the debate over the inclusion of Rabbinic writings along with the biblical texts as canonical.15 Josephus, in defending the twenty-two books of the Jewish canon against Greek detractors, distinguishes between the historical trustworthiness of the biblical texts with those written after the break of “the exact line of the succession of prophets.” According to him, the events from the Persian period to his own time had indeed been recorded, but the recording had not been judged to be “worthy of the same trust” as that of the books of Moses and the Prophets (C. Ap. 1.38–41). Josephus, moreover, tells us elsewhere that there were other prophets (e.g., Theudas, Ant. 20.97) after Malachi—the socalled “sign prophets”—but one would infer that these were not placed on the same level as the biblical prophets. Josephus seems to have had different kinds of authority in mind when he drew a distinction between the prophets who wrote and other authors who

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also wrote about what happened in their own time. Immediately before the passage that enumerates the twenty-two-book canon, he discusses the trustworthiness of the priestly genealogy and record for the writing history: and this [i.e., the record] is justly, or rather necessarily done, because every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer, nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets that have written the original and earliest accounts of things as they learned them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what has happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also (C. Ap. 1.37).

Significant here is the clause translated as “is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer.” The Prophets have written by divine inspiration, while others have written about the events that happened in their own times “in a very distinct manner also” (-9*). Josephus uses the adverb -9* in various ways in his writings, but given the context, it most naturally refers to writings that were composed “differently.” Those writings were drafted by men who were not prophets and who accounted for the things that had happened in their own time. The writings were not composed through divine inspiration and do not have the same authority. Philo, in recounting the rendering of the law of Moses into Greek, likened the translators to inspired prophets who came up with exactly the same wording: “They, like men inspired, prophesied, not one saying one thing and another another, but every one of them employed the self-same nouns and verbs, as if some unseen prompter had suggested all their language to them” (Mos. 2.37). Significantly, Philo uses the verbs :,)-0%; (“to be moved by a deity”) and )0# ,!)4 !)?0; Let. Aris. 313). Some, like Theopompus and Theodectes, did attempt to introduce Jewish law into their history and play, but as they were about to do so, they were struck by mental and physical illnesses. To Theopompus it was revealed in a dream that the cause of the affliction was due to “his meddlesome desire to disclose divine matters to common men” (Let. Aris. 313–316). The principle of divine origin has another aspect that helps explain why the authority of texts varies in different communities. The belief that someone “spoke from God” is based on the understanding that his prophecy has a divine origin. But that perception is open to different interpretations: one community’s “true oracle” could be another’s false proclaimer. One straightforward solution is to base the proof of true prophecy on whether the predicted event is fulfilled. The Temple Scroll offers a pragmatic fix to the quandary:18 How shall we recognize that which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the prophecy is not fulfilled and does not come to pass, that is a prophecy I have not spoken (11Q19 61:2–4).

But not all prophecy is predictive. Much of what the biblical prophets include in their oracles passes for admonition, warning, and counsel. The Temple Scroll’s solution would not apply. The acceptance that one prophecy is true and another one false, therefore, is often based on the discernment of a community. The principle of divine origins admits different perceptions of prophecy and consequently different kinds of authoritative texts.

Imperial Validation of the Traditional Torah Not all indicators of authority, however, are strictly speaking religious. It is true that the ancients did not maintain a clear distinction between the political and religious spheres, but it would seem that the promulgation of

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the Torah in the post-exilic period was influenced by the authority of the Persian imperial government. In the Achaemenid period, the Persian court lent its authority to the validation of the traditional laws of the Judeans. Petitioned by the community in exile, Artaxerxes sent Ezra to reestablish the traditional cultic worship at the Temple in Jerusalem, to appoint judges and magistrates to adjudicate in cases, and to instruct the people who did not already know the law. Punishments were threatened against anyone who did not obey “the law of your God and the law of king” (Ezra 7:26). As a consequence, the authority of the traditional Torah was reestablished in the life of the post-exilic Judean community. The Persians, however, acted in their own self-interest to secure the border regions with Egypt, and they were unlikely to have been interested in the details of the Judean Torah. What was important to them was its iconic value in reestablishing the traditional laws of a vassal state. The appeal to imperial authority is likewise evident in the Hellenistic period, when the Alexandrian Jewish community promulgated the myth of the origins of the Septuagint. This legend appealed to the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus and the great library of Alexandria as the originator of the initiative to translate the Hebrew laws into Greek. As a result, the nomos of the Jews in Alexandria gained a prestige that rivaled the works of Homer. Several of the Hellenistic monarchs before Antiochus Epiphanes regularly issued decrees confirming the reestablishment of ancestral laws. Elias Bickerman showed that it was the convention of the Hellenistic monarchs to bestow, as one of the first gestures toward a conquered people, the reestablishment of their ancestral laws.19 According to Josephus, Antiochus III did exactly that when he conquered Jerusalem. “Let all of that nation,” he delcared, “live according to the laws of their own country” (Ant. 12.142). As John J. Collins summarized it: “Neither in the case of Ezra nor in the case of the Seleucid take-over of Jerusalem, however, was there great interest in checking to see whether traditional custom corresponded to the written law.”20

Citation as Indicator of Authority Another indicator of authority is the way that several of the sources use citation as a technique. Authority may be inferred from the direct and indirect quotation of texts. Verbatim citation is an indicator of authority in the way that it draws a distinction between the source-text and the interpretation. In the sectarian commentaries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, the typical pesher takes the form of lemma + introductory formula + comment. The implication is that the source-text, represented by the biblical lemma, is

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authoritative and its words need to be interpreted. Moreover, the sectarian comment is grammatically and thematically separated from the source-text by the interposition of an introductory formula, such as “its interpretation” ( ), and a blank space. Formally, the implication is that the lemma is qualitatively different from the comment. In practice, however, the pesherist blurs the distinction because he believes that his own comments, as mediated through the prophetic figure of the Teacher of Righteousness, are also divinely revealed and therefore authoritative. The blurring of the distinction is seen in the way that the pesher controls the meaning of the biblical verse. It is the case that some ancient Jews, especially those who were influenced by Greek culture and language, also cited other sources. In 1 Cor 15:33, for instance, Paul cites a popular saying first attested in Menander’s Thaïs; Paul tells the Corinthian church: “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” Moreover, scholars have identified various preexistent slogans that Paul incorporated into his letters. What is important to note is that with perhaps a single exception, the enigmatic “do not go beyond what is written” of 1 Cor 4:6, Paul reserves the use of introductory formulas (e.g., “as it is written”; .,@* ?"0) for the citation of biblical texts. His use of introductory formulas is not invariable; some biblical texts are cited without a short opening phrase, but he does not cite sayings and slogans with an introductory formula. The technique of indirect citation or allusion is more complicated because one is less sure whether a word, phrase, clause, sentence, or passage derives from a source or is part of an unintended linguistic reflex. It would be easier to posit dependence if a purported allusion included a cluster of distinctive lexical items that could be identified in the presumed source-text. Thus the Temple Scrolls’ use of Exodus and Deuteronomy, for instance, is commonly acknowledged; the final columns of 51–66 are a close paraphrase of Deut 12–26. By contrast, it is debatable whether Paul indirectly cited books of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha since the suggested allusions are no more than literary affinities and parallels, many of which may be explained by the use of a common biblical and Jewish source. Another example from the Pauline letters would further illustrate the point. Paul does not cite directly from the Book of Numbers. However, in 1 Cor 10:8 he alludes to the incident at Shittim and Israel’s consorting with the daughters of Moab (Num 25) when he admonishes the Corinthians to abstain from indulging in immorality and idolatry. The number of those who fell (23,000), however, disagrees with Num 25:9 (24,000). This error could be due to Paul’s failed memory or his conflation of the number of males who were enrolled in the census (Num 26:62).

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This reuse of the biblical texts by indirect citation or allusion recurs regularly in ancient Jewish exegesis. Its technique is different from verbatim citation because it subsumes the source-text in its own interpretative paraphrase. There is no lemma, and the boundary between the source-text and the interpretation is intentionally blurred. There is, however, an implied sense of authority. One infers that the sourcetext is authoritative by the very fact that it is reused. The converse, the non-use of another text, does not imply that it is not authoritative. On first impression, the difference between direct and indirect citation lies in interpretative technique. The technique implies a difference in the self-perception of the interpreter as a commentator of an authoritative text (lemmatic exegete) or a participant in the unfolding of divine intention (paraphrastic exegete). However, this dichotomy is not strictly maintained, and the sources are often a mixture of these two, but the formal distinction is a useful way of thinking about the issue.21 What is important is that indirect citation also implies a sense of authority to that which underlies the technique of verbatim citation.

Recognizing the Multiplicity of Canons There is a long history of scholarship that has investigated the development of the canon. Research into the canon was thoroughly done in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From this body of scholarship, there emerged a three-stage theory of canonization corresponding to the three traditional divisions of the Tanak: the Torah or Pentateuch was fixed around 500 BCE, followed by the Nevi’im or Prophets in the fourth or third century BCE and the Kethuvim or Writings in 90 CE. In the 1970s and 1980s this consensus was challenged as scholars tore down the pillars of the theory and razed its foundations to the ground. The consensus, once fractured and burnt, did not rise again out of the ashes like the proverbial phoenix. Instead, scholarly opinion was now divided, and remains so today, between those who believe that the canon was closed much earlier—in the middle of the second century BCE, in the Maccabean period, or earlier—and those who hold that the canon remained open well into the centuries of the Common Era. The discovery of the scrolls found in caves on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea has provided us with an opportunity to think anew about the formation of the canon. This heterogenous collection of around 800–900 scrolls belonged to the sectarian communities identified by scholarly consensus with the Essenes. About one-quarter of the scrolls were recognizably biblical texts, while the remaining three-quarters consisted of sectarian, apocryphal, pseudepigraphical, and other hitherto unknown works. The scrolls were

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first discovered in 1947, but the well-known delay in the publication of all the manuscripts means that the full evidence has not been considered. Discussion of the formation of the canon based on the full evidence of the scrolls, therefore, is a desideratum. The publication of The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible in 1999 was a significant moment in raising awareness of the biblical scrolls. Long neglected in favor of the non-biblical scrolls, the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament found by the Dead Sea remained almost exclusively the concern of text critics, who studied them in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages. The translation of the biblical scrolls into English for the first time brought them to the attention of a wider circle of scholars and the public alike. It gave unprecedented insight into the important contributions that these scrolls make to our understanding of the nature of the Bible before its fixation. In the opening line of their introduction the editors of The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible state: “At the time of Jesus and rabbi Hillel—the origins of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism—there was, and there was not, a ‘Bible.’”22 To say simultaneously that there existed and did not exist “a Bible” is contradictory; it is, moreover, confusing since the key term is qualified by quotation marks, meaning that it is not to be taken literally. It is surely fallacious to assert that something was and was not. It is an informal way of saying that there was a kind of Bible, as the authors go on to explain. Also, why was this something called “a Bible.” Do they not mean the Bible? In this one sentence, the authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible have raised a host of important issues that are at the heart of the present book. What was the Bible like before its canonization?23 What is the relationship between the canonical Bible and the authoritative books before canonization? Is it historically accurate to speak about “the Bible” or “the canon” at the turn of the era? Moreover, the indefinite description of “a Bible” suggests that there was more than one Bible. Before we delve into the complexities of canonical research, it will be useful to stand back to reflect on what we might mean by the term “the Bible.” In common parlance, the term is used by Christians to refer to the books of the Old and New Testament. For Jews, the same term denotes the books of the Tanak or Hebrew Bible, which is equivalent to the Christian Old Testament. The term is also used more broadly and symbolically to connote anything that is authoritative, ranging from the sacred scriptures of other religions to any trusted volume or guide (e.g., “the Buddhist Bible or “the wine taster’s Bible”). Even if we restrict ourselves to the Judeo-Christian sense of the term and limit its reference to the first part of the Christian Bible, the Old Testament (the Jewish Tanak), it is evident that the noun preceded by the definite article,

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“the Bible,” is meaningful only relative to a community. There never was, and there is not, a definition of “the Bible” that is universally agreed upon by Jews and Christians (see appendix 1). One exception is the guild of biblical scholars (with or without religious affiliation) that agrees that the original Old Testament is the Jewish Tanak or Hebrew Bible.24 In Christianity, there are several different canons: the Protestant canon consists of thirty-nine books; the Catholic canon has forty-six books plus three additions; and the Orthodox canon totals forty-nine books plus eleven additions.25 The Lutheran and Reformed tradition, with its cri de coeur of sola scriptura, defines its canon in line with the Jewish Tanak, but even here there are differences: the count of thirty-nine books differs from the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible due to the combination or separate counting of 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and the twelve Minor Prophets. The Protestant canon, moreover, differs from the Jewish canon in its ordering and categorization of the books. Apart from the Torah or Pentateuch, which is identical, Jewish tradition divides the rest of the books into the two categories of Prophets and Writings, whereas Protestant tradition classifies the remaining books according to their genre of historical books, poetic and wisdom texts, and prophecies. Despite the plurality of canons, each religious community refers to its own collection as “the Bible,” underscoring the point that the sense of definitiveness is fixed by the community. Each community, at least in its term of reference, recognizes only “the Bible” that it advocates. Each community uses the definite form of “the Bible,” not “a Bible,” in describing its sacred scriptures as though no other rival versions exist or are recognized.

The Majority Canon Like the modern controversies over the literary and religious canons, the debate over the formation of the canon of the Hebrew Bible is an issue that is in need of further discussion. What I attempt to provide in this book is an investigation into the formation of the Jewish canon.26 The hypothesis is that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 CE there was not one official canon accepted by all Jews; there existed a  plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities. The Pharisees had a canon of twenty-two/twenty-four books that became the canon of the Hebrew Bible in Rabbinic Judaism. The Samaritans regarded only the Pentateuch as authoritative. There is no clear evidence that the Sadducees had a notion of canon. The Therapeutae probably had a concept of authoritative scriptures that included their own sectarian

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writings. Philo’s description, however, is ambiguous, and the shape of the authoritative scriptures cannot be described with certainty. As for the sectarian communities, whom I identify with the Essenes, my argument is that they held a broadly bipartite collection of authoritative scriptures that included the Torah or Pentateuch and an open-ended category of “prophetical books.” This core of biblical texts was supplemented by other texts that have a graded authority. In the New Testament, the pattern is varied. The letter of Jude cited 1 Enoch as prophetic literature and considered its authority in a way no different from other Old Testament texts. But the letters of Paul presuppose the Pharisaic collection of authoritative scriptures that itself had not yet been finally defined. Luke attests to a tripartite collection that included the psalms in the third division. My approach is distinctive in the way that it problematizes authoritative scriptures in relation to a community. For me, the concept of “authoritative scriptures” in the abstract is much less meaningful than when it refers to a community; 27 the issue of “authoritative scriptures” would be better accompanied by the question “Authoritative for whom?” This approach means that I will focus on what a community cited as authoritative texts, rather than what it included in its library. It will be argued that the sources do not support the postulate of a definite canon, closed once and for all. Differences of opinion continue to be expressed. However, by the end of the first century CE there was a determined canon that was accepted by most Jews. Almost all the books included in this majority canon are to be found in the lists. There were disputes only about a few books, especially Qohelet and the Song of Songs.

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The Emergence of the Canon Reconsidered

Today, scholarly opinion is deeply divided between those who believe that the canon was closed in the Persian or Maccabean period and those who hold that the canon remained open well into the centuries after the turning of the era. Fundamental disagreements exist not only about the interpretation of such passages as the Prologue to the Wisdom of Ben Sira, 2 Maccabees 2:13–15, 4QMMT C 10–11, Matthew 23:34–36, Luke 24:44, Mishnah Yadayim 3.5, Josephus’ Contra Apionem 1.38–42, and Bavli Baba Bathra 14b–15a and what they may or may not say about the formation of the canon, but also about the theoretical framework of how the development of the canon should be discussed. Disputes over the significance of these loci classici center on the meaning of various descriptors of the prophets and writings found in the ancient sources. Are they formal titles of defined sections that correspond to the traditional divisions of the Nevi’im and Kethuvim? Or should they be understood in the generic sense of “prophetical books” and “writings”? For instance, when the Prologue of Ben Sira mentions, along with “the Law,” “the prophets/prophecies” and “the rest of the books,” is it referring to the books that belong to the traditional sections of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings? Or again, when Luke 24:44 directs the reader to the fulfillment in Jesus of

17

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“the law of Moses,” “the prophets,” and “the psalms,” does the Evangelist have in mind the tripartite division of the Old Testament? There is much less dispute about the interpretation of the references to the law of Moses than about those of the other two sections. In fact, there is wide agreement that very early on what the sources called “the Torah” included the five books of Moses that are preserved in the traditional Bible. When this section closed varies in the view of one scholar to the next, and often the socalled “Samaritan schism” is identified as the historical key to the dating.

The Three-Stage Theory Scholarly disagreements are also evident on the question of how the development of the canon should be discussed. The three-stage theory, as articulated in the nineteenth-century studies of Frants Buhl, Gerrit Wildeboer and especially Herbert E. Ryle, assumes a stage-by-stage closing of each section of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings in sequential order.1 This linear development of the closing of the canon has been criticized by Roger Beckwith, who has argued that all the books of the Old Testament were canonized very early on. The tripartite division of the canon was not closed in three but two different stages, first the section of the Law, followed by the two sections of the Prophets and Writings together: “The Law was never the whole of the canon, and the other two sections were formed not so much by canonizing fresh material as by subdividing material already canonical.”2 John Barton also found difficulties with the three-stage theory and proposed that throughout the post-exilic period to the time of the New Testament and beyond, “Scripture was bipartite rather than tripartite,” consisting of “the Torah and prophets.”3 The canon did not develop stage-by-stage, as Ryle and others have suggested, but consisted for a long time of the Torah or Pentateuch, “the only corpus of material that was “Scripture” in the fullest sense, the only set of documents on which the character and integrity of Judaism crucially depended.”4 All other holy books may be described under the general and open-ended category of “prophets.” These books were secondary to the Torah, and their use depended upon the particular interests of the various groups. There was no third division because there was not yet a second one: “the prophets” was not a fixed and closed second division.

The Samaritan Schism More specifically, scholars found difficulties with the way that the threestage theory depended upon the dating of two historical events, the Samari-

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tan schism and the “council” of Yavneh. It is argued that the Samaritans, when they separated from the Jews, took with them the Pentateuch, which they considered canonical. Ryle dated this schism to 432 BCE and understood this date as the terminus ad quem. He inferred that the Pentateuch must have been closed before this date and suggested that it must have been some time in the fifth century.5 But the dating of this schism is itself highly problematic. Ryle argued that the renegade Jewish priest Manasseh, mentioned by Josephus (Ant. 11.306–312), should be identified with Eliashib’s grandson in Neh 13:28, and it was through this self-same Manasseh that the Samaritans obtained their Torah. But the historical value of the Josephan account is disputed.6 Hugh Williamson subjected the various theories to scrutiny and concluded that Josephus’ account was a garbled variant of the account in Nehemiah. Moreover, to arrive at the date of 432 BCE, Ryle had to use Josephus’ account selectively; he rejected, for instance, Josephus’ date, which he considered inaccurate.7 Beckwith criticized Ryle’s dating of the schism and instead pointed to the destruction of the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim by John Hyrcanus in ca. 120 BCE as the decisive moment of the parting of the two groups: “It is in this period, therefore, namely from the second century BC onwards, and not in the time of Nehemiah, that the religious breach between Samaritans and Jews is likely to have become, for the first time, complete.”8 Beckwith argued that the relationship between Jews and Samaritans varied over time. For the Jews antipathy toward the Samaritans was consistent ever since they returned from exile. There was only a brief period, between the second and third centuries CE, when the Samaritans were viewed more favorably than the gentiles by the rabbis, tolerating as they did the partaking of meals with them. By contrast, the Samaritans pretended to be the kinsfolk of the Jews, descended from the northern tribes, in times of prosperity, but in adversity, they denied such links, claiming their origins as colonists from abroad who were brought to Judaea by the Assyrians. Beckwith found support for his second-century dating of the Samaritan schism in the palaeographical and text-critical analysis of James Purvis, who argued that the script, spelling and textual tradition of the Samaritan Pentateuch were paralleled in the scrolls, which are to be dated to the Hasmonean period between the mid-second to mid-first centuries BCE. But Purvis’ view that the Samaritan sect originated at this time is not a necessary conclusion of his palaeographical and text-critical study. While it is the case that the Qumran scrolls include a number of texts of the Samaritan text-type, such as 4Qpalaeo-Exodusm and 4QNumb, it is to be doubted that one can then re-

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construct the origins of the Samaritans on the basis of the text-type of their Pentateuch.9 Beckwith’s reading of the evidence of the so-called “Samaritan schism” is one-sided; it perpetuates the biases against the Samaritans in Josephus’ account.10 Recently, Magnar Kartveit has reviewed the evidence from both the Jewish and Samaritan sources and has proposed that the “Gerizim project,” which he dated to the first part of the fourth century BCE, was the most likely origin of the “Jews of Samaria.” For Kartveit, it is the establishment of a Yahweh-worshipping Temple on Mt. Gerizim (MT: Mt. Ebal), in accordance with Deut 27:4, that constitutes the birth of the Samaritans.11 The Samaritans were Jews who remained in the land while their compatriots were exiled to Babylon. They worshipped Yahweh and venerated Moses over the prophets who followed him. In Kartveit’s conception, therefore, there was no “schism” in the way that it usually implies the Samaritans splitting off from the Jews. Rather, the Samaritans were Jews who were fulfilling the precepts of the Pentateuch in establishing a cultic site of worship on Mt. Gerizim. They shared Israel’s foundation document, which already included a discussion of the relationship between Moses and the prophets, but later expanded it to emphasize the Mosaic elements and significantly to change the imperfect verb “he will choose” to the perfect “he has chosen” in relation to the place of cultic worship on Mt. Gerizim in Deuteronomy. This version, then, was selected around the turn of the era or later to become the Samaritan Pentateuch. Kartveit concluded that “there was one version of the Pentateuch in circulation at the time when Deut 27:4 provided the temple founders with their necessary hieros logos for the project, but their version of the Pentateuch was deliberately chosen around the turn of the era or later. It is impossible to date the Samaritan ‘schism’ after the supposed ‘canonization,’ or to date the ‘canonization’ before the ‘schism.’”12 The use of the dating of the so-called “Samaritan schism” as a decisive moment in the formation of the Torah is thus called into question, be it dated to the fifth century, as Ryle would have it, or to the second century, in Beckwith’s view. The extant sources are biased, redactionally complex, and incomplete.13 It is unwise to build one theory on the shaky foundations of another. Before we move on to the other historical pillar of the three-stage theory, the gathering of rabbis at Yavneh, brief mention should be made of an alternative reconstruction of the development of the canon by Andrew Steinmann.14 Steinmann obviated the whole issue of the Samaritan schism and simply assumed that the whole canon was closed toward the end of the fifth

The Emergence of the Canon Reconsidered

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century BCE. In subsequent centuries, he maintained that the books of this canon were differentiated among various Jewish and Christian groups; the oldest organization of the canon was the books of “the Law and Prophets” before the tradition split it into two strands, one maintaining the bipartite division of “the Law and Prophets” and the other dividing the canon into the three parts of “the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms/Writings.” Steinmann’s work is not about the closing of the canon as such; it is about the closed canon’s subsequent development into two or three divisions. Steinmann based his assumption upon David Noel Freedman’s theory of the symmetry of the books of the Bible and its implications for the closing of the canon.15 According to Freedman, the whole Bible could be divided into two groups, one called “Primary History” (consisting of the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets) and another group that combined the Latter Prophets and the Writings (without Daniel, which he dated to the Maccabean period). Freedman pointed out that the two groups show remarkable symmetry, containing as they do 149,641 and 149,940 words respectively, and this symmetry could only be achieved once all of the books had been assembled into collections at about 400 BCE and its final shape was formalized at ca. 160 BCE, when Daniel was added. Freedman’s theory of symmetry and of the closing of the canon is open to question. His division of the Hebrew Bible into two groups is artificial; he had to invent a category of “Primary History” because he could not find a name for this group in the ancient sources. Moreover, the statistical count is based upon the Leningrad Codex of the Middle Ages and on the questionable assumption that the Masoretic Text was not only the dominant text-type, but also that its textual form was already fixed by the time of Ezra.16 He ignored the earliest evidence of the biblical texts from Qumran that shows a diversity of text-types, including the proto-MT text, the Samaritan text, septuagintal text, and others besides. In the past, the evidence of the Qumran biblical scrolls was marginalized; they were seen as sectarian and not representative of mainstream Judaism. This marginalization cannot now be maintained, as it is increasingly becoming clear that the scrolls found in caves by Khirbet Qumran consisted of a heterogenous collection of writings, including sectarian and non-sectarian texts. All the scrolls may have belonged to the collection, but they are not all sectarian in the sense that they represent only the peculiar views of a small group. Rather the scrolls also represent the textual situation of the biblical texts in the Second Temple period generally. Steinmann’s alternate reconstruction of the development of the canon, therefore, rests on some contentious assumptions.

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The “Council” of Yavneh The other historical event that propped up the three-stage theory was the gathering of rabbis at Yavneh in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. Ryle suggested that the third division of the canon, the Writings, was closed at the “council” of Yavneh in 90 CE. Searching critiques have since queried such a characterization of the gathering of rabbis. The label of “council” has been shown to be anachronistic. In 1964 Jack Lewis criticized the translation of beth din, beth ha-midrash, yeshiva, methivta, and “in the vineyard of Javneh” by “council” or “synod”: “Though these are legitimate renderings of these terms, sixteen hundred years of ecclesiastical usage and twenty-one ecumenical councils have given these latter words certain ecclesiastical connotations of officially assembled authoritative bodies of delegates which rule and settle questions.”17 Rather Lewis proposed that “school,” “court,” or “assembly” would be more suitable terms for conveying the nature of the gathering at Javneh. Terminology aside, Lewis also made the important point that the specific “canonical discussion” at Javneh did not include all scripture but only Qohelet and the Song of Songs and that, moreover, the so-called “decision” settled nothing, as evidenced by the ensuing debate about these same two books. It is now recognized that the modern, Christian-influenced conception of the gathering at Javneh can be traced back to the work of the Jewish scholar Heinrich Graetz, who suggested that the canon was closed by the “Synode” of Javneh. In an excursus to his study of Qohelet or Ecclesiastes in 1871, Graetz suggested that the third division of the writings was assembled in two stages, first by the Pharisees and Sadducees in 65 CE, and then at the synod of Javneh in 90 CE. The final closing of the canon took place only with the redaction of the Mishnah, which he dated to 189 CE. The first two divisions of the Torah and Prophets having been previously decided, the synod of Javneh confirmed the closing of the canon.18 Subsequent scholars modified Graetz’s dating by making the “synod/council of Yavneh” not just the confirmation but also the final closing of the canon.19 Graetz’s view is based on a passage in the Mishnah that he interpreted as describing the tumultuous leadership succession of Johanan, Gamaliel II, and Eleazar ben Azariah in the academy of Yavneh (m. Yad. 3.5–4.4). In the same passage, the sages ruled that “all the holy scriptures defile the hands,” an enigmatic criterion for deciding the canonicity of books, and reported disputes over the status of the Song of Songs and Qohelet. David Aune has investigated the source and influence of Graetz’s views and has suggested that he must have read Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, pub-

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lished in 1670, in which Baruch Spinoza proposed that the canonization of sacred scripture took place at a “concilium pharisaeorum” some time in the late Second Temple period. For Aune, both Graetz and Spinoza used the conciliar decisions of the church as a model for conceptualizing the Jewish process of defining the extent of the Hebrew Scriptures.20 Lewis, in an update of the discussion, doubted that it could be known “whether Graetz borrowed the idea of a synod from Spinoza.”21 If Yavneh was not a “council” or “synod,” what then did it signify? Shaye Cohen has argued that the gathering of rabbis at Yavneh was a “grand coalition” of different groups and parties. It was not a “pharisaic triumph,” as it is often described in the literature. While many, if not most, of the sages were Pharisees or their descendants, there was no attempt to make anything of their ancestry, nor any intention of defining orthodoxy.22 Yavneh saw the end of sectarianism self-definition. Whether it is the Sadducees, Essenes, or members of the house of Hillel or Shammai, the rabbis allowed all Jews of whatever persuasion “to agree to disagree.” The rabbis at Javneh did not experience a sense of crisis and did not feel a need to use exclusion as a means of establishing a normative religion. Rather there was a grand coalition representing the cessation of sectarianism. Before Javneh, Cohen argued, Judaism was characterized by sectarianism and the exclusion of some Jews by other Jews who did not agree with them. The destruction of the Temple, therefore, provided the impetus for reconsidering the damaging effects of internal divisiveness. Martin Goodman has recently challenged Cohen’s depiction of the post-70 reconstitution of Rabbinic Judaism at Javneh.23 In particular he questions (1) whether any of the groups before 70 really separated from the Temple, and (2) whether variety within Judaism really came to an end after 70. Goodman argues that before 70 the centrality of the Temple remained for all Jews, with the sole exception of the extreme allegorists attacked by Philo (de migratione Abrahami 89–93). For Goodman, Josephus did not hide disagreements among Jews on the cultic service, but such differences of opinion did not “prevent unanimity between these groups on the value of the worship carried out in Jerusalem by the priests on behalf of the whole nation.”24 Goodman then discussed the Essenes and the community (yahad) of the Dead Sea Scrolls, arguing that the scholarly view that these groups abandoned the Temple is wrong. First, the only explicit reference to the Essene separation from the Temple is found in the Latin version of AJ 18.19, which states that the Essenes “send votive offerings to the Temple but do not offer (non celebrant) animal sacrifices.” Philo, describing the Essenes, states that they are “utterly dedicated to

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the service of God (,!!"$ ,!)4), not offering up animals, but judging it more fitting to render their minds truly holy” (QOP 75). Goodman argues that reading these passages as an avoidance of the Temple is possible but not necessary. In fact, the Essenes seemed to have participated in the Temple, only they used their own distinctive rituals. Thus Josephus states that the Essenes, “sending votive offerings to the Temple[,] perform sacrifices with a difference of purifications” and that they “carry out sacrifices by themselves, being banned from the common precinct” (AJ 18.19). This suggests to Goodman that the Essenes were restricted to certain areas in Jerusalem, near the Temple site and perhaps by the Essene Gate. On Philo’s description, Goodman argues that it is an idealization and should not be understood literally as a disapproval of animal sacrifices. Turning to the scrolls, Goodman accepts that the references in the Pesher Habakkuk recount the dispute between the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest. Nonetheless, he does not see any evidence that the the scrolls precluded a continuing participation in the Temple cult. The Temple Scroll details the rules for the Temple; the mishmarot texts contain calendars of priestly courses; there are references to priests, Aaron, and Zadok; the Copper Scroll contains a list of Temple treasures; the Damascus Document legislates on sacrifices and offerings in the Temple; MMT provides advice to the high priest on the administration of the Temple. Most of all, Goodman sees the importance of Deuteronomy among the biblical scrolls, which “renders deeply implausible the notion that those who treated this text as authoritative will simply have ignored its injunction.”25 Goodman concludes by suggesting that the destruction of the Temple meant not so much the end of sectarianism, but the end of a public stage on which the disagreements were played out. After 70, Jews could disagree without having to confront each other in person; they could do so in “untroubled isolation.”26 Goodman’s view that the Essenes and yahad of the scrolls did participate in cultic worship at the Temple is possible but not inevitable. The importance of the book of Deuteronomy in the corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not decisive, as he seems to think. Goodman believes that Deuteronomy centralizes the cult at Jerusalem. In fact, in Deut 12 the verb is significantly in the imperfect, and five times it states that the Lord God “will choose” the place of his habitation (Deut 12:5, 11, 12, 18, 26). At least in Deuteronomy, the place has not been decided as Jerusalem. It is only in the Samaritan Pentateuch that the verb occurs in the perfect, “has chosen,” and that the cultic site is Mt. Gerizim and not Jerusalem.27

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Goodman’s appeal to a host of scrolls, from the Temple Scroll to the Copper Scroll to the Damascus Document, does not exclude an interpretation of the anti-Temple stance by one or more communities of the scrolls. These scrolls are not all sectarian and vary in genre. The Temple described in the Temple Scroll, for instance, is clearly idealized. The Temple Mount, according to the dimensions stipulated, would span across the Kidron Valley and occupy the Mount of Olives. It is more like the Temple of the book of Revelation than the Herodian Temple. The Copper Scroll is most likely a fictional text about the hiding of treasures, akin to the rabbinic tractate masseket kelim, and not a real treasure map. Finally, the evidence that Goodman cites to support the view of Jewish unity all comes from Josephus’ Against Apion (2.193–195; 2.196; 2.179–81), where the overarching rhetorical strategy is to contrast the disunity of the Greeks with the singular agreement of the Jews. As far as the canon was concerned, it was the Pharisaic 22/24 books that became majority canon. Uniformity of canon followed diversity. John Collins applied the significance of Yavneh to the formation of the canon: “If most rabbis at Jamnia were Pharisees, it was inevitable that Pharisaic opinion would prevail. So it was with the canon. If the twenty-two or twenty-four book canon had taken shape before 70 CE, as it seems likely, it was the canon of a party, not of all Jews. After 70, through the influence of Jamnia, other Scriptures were ignored and lost.”28 Collins’ view that the Pharisaic canon became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism is the basic model that I have followed in this book. It is widely accepted that Rabbinic literature holds a broadly Pharisaic point of view. What is interesting is the way that the canon has been connected to the end of sectarianism. It means that before Yavneh, different collections of scriptures were held by different sects. Unlike Collins, however, I would place less significance on Yavneh. The link between the canon and Yavneh is based on Mishnah Yadayim, in which it is thought that R. Eleazar ben Azariah replaced Rabban Gamaliel at Yavneh, a tradition that is textually and historically unsound.29 Also, the debates about the canonical status of Qohelet and the Song of Songs, as well as the Wisdom of Ben Sira, did not end but continued into the second century CE and beyond.

The Temple and the One Canon A central criticism against the three-stage theory is the conception of the sequential closing of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Linear development, however, persists in subtler forms, whether it is in Leiman’s and

26

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Beckwith’s theory of the Maccabean dating of the closing of the canon or in Barton’s bipartite theory. Assumed in the linear development is the view of an official canon that all Jews recognized. Sid Leiman argued that the Torah and Prophets were considered to have been inspired and canonical by 450 BCE, shortly after the cessation of prophecy between 500 and 450 BCE. Some books, such as Job and Psalms, were excluded either because “they did not properly belong in a religious history of the Israelite nation” or because the books, such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, were composed after the prophetic canon was closed. Leiman admitted that it was rather speculative but that the earliest canonical activity could be traced back to the time of Moses, Samuel, Solomon, and Hezekiah. By contrast, he believed that the closing of the canon could be established with some certainty: it took place around 164 BCE under the aegis of Judas Maccabee.30 Beckwith too advocated a modified view of the sequential closing of the canon. In his theory all the books of the Old Testament were canonized very early on. The tripartite division of the canon was closed in two stages, first the Law, followed by the Prophets and Writings together. Based on 2 Macc 2:14, he argued that in 164 BCE Judas Maccabaeus must have classified and subdivided the single, non-Mosaic collection into a second and third section of Prophets and Writings by “compiling a list.” Beckwith even wondered whether the list of the order of the books of the Prophets and Writings in b. Baba Bathra 14a originated with Judas.31 This is entirely conjectural since 2 Maccabees does not mention any list-making activity by Judas. Arie van der Kooij questioned the historical trustworthiness of the account and pointed out that “the tradition about Nehemiah founding a library is generally assumed to be fictional. Furthermore, the text does not offer any indication that the collection of books by Judas should be interpreted as a classification of the books in the sections of the Prophets and Writings.”32 Moreover, the order of the biblical books in b. Baba Bathra was not fixed, as evidenced by its continued fluctuation in Hebrew manuscripts and codices to the Middle Ages. On the origins of the canonization of the Torah, Beckwith was uncharacteristically vague. He distinguished between the process of canonization and final fixation of an individual book: “Could it be that the earlier (often shorter) books which formed the original nuclei of certain canonical books were already, in their original shape, recognized as canonical, and then simply remained canonical as they were elaborated, completed and located in one of the three ultimate sections of the canon?”33 This view of the origins has some similarities to Leiman’s discussion of the

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earliest canonical activity, although Leiman clearly noted that this earliest stage also included non-canonical works (e.g., book of the Wars of the Lord, Num 21:14).34 According to Beckwith, books or portions of books of the Law were canonized very early, the dating of “the Decalogue, perhaps from the time of Moses and Deuteronomy, from the time of Josiah.”35 He did not give precise times but presumably was thinking of the traditional dating of Josiah in the seventh century BCE and Moses in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BCE. Linear development can also be detected in John Barton’s theory of the bipartite canon of “the Law and the Prophets.” For him, the Torah was defined and closed at some early time. All other authoritative books were considered under the general rubric of “prophets” and remained so throughout the post-exilic period and the first few centuries after the turning of the era. There was no third division of Writings because there was not yet a fixed, second division of Prophets.36 The sequential closing of the canon as such is not problematic. The traditional division of the Hebrew Bible into the Torah, the Prophets, and Writings can be seen as a clue to its development. More difficult is the implication of an official canon in such a linear development. Leiman, Beckwith, and Barton all supposed that there was an official canon in ancient Judaism, and it was this canon to which the ancient sources referred. Leiman and Barton, to their credit, did recognize the possibility of the existence of other canons among the Qumran community, Philo, and other esoteric groups.37 Beckwith, by contrast, believed that there was only one canon that was the common inheritance that all ancient Jews accepted. There was no disagreement among the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes about what he called “the public canon.” On the Qumran-Essene community, Beckwith argued that they did not have a different, enlarged canon. The apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic works that they esteemed were regarded by them as “a sort of interpretative appendix” and of a lower order than the canonical books. The Essene canon was the public canon that all Jews, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Therapeutae, accepted as authoritative, the enumeration of which was twenty-two books; the variant figure of twenty-four books found in 4 Ezra and rabbinic literature is due to the different numbering of Ruth and Lamentations with or separately from Judges and Jeremiah.38 Beckwith’s view that the Essenes held a twenty-two-book canon is based on the questionable assumption that the Greek translator of Jubilees was an Essene who inserted a reference to this number of scriptural books in Jubilees 2:23. As James VanderKam summarized it: “Beckwith learned from Milik

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that there was no space in a Qumran manuscript of Jubilees for this additional line (which is lacking in all Ethiopic manuscripts), so he argues that it must have been added by the Essene scholar who translated Jubilees into Greek no later than the first century C.E. But this line of argument is completely unconvincing.”39 Beckwith argued that from the time of the Maccabees to the destruction of the city of Jerusalem in 70 CE there was a public canon that was “laid up” in the Temple. This Second Temple custom followed the earlier Israelite practice of the First Temple and Wilderness periods that saw the deposit of “an incipient canon of Scripture” in or beside sacred objects, such as the Ark of the Covenant in the Tabernacle, and in the sanctuaries, such as Shechem. According to Beckwith, this practice not only continued in the Second Temple period, but from the time of Judas Maccabee in the second century BCE, it was also the closed canon of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings that was deposited at the Temple in Jerusalem, serving as the canon for all Jews: “It seems, therefore, that for as long as the Temple stood there was no essential disagreement among the different Jewish schools about the public canon.”40 There are several problems with Beckwith’s historical reconstruction of a public canon. First, as mentioned above, he accepted the account of 2 Maccabees in his argument that the canon was closed under Judas in the second century BCE. As will be shown in chapter 6, the view that Judas, like Nehemiah, founded a library, is not supported by a close reading of 2 Maccabees 2:13–15. Second, the evidence that Beckwith adduced from Josephus and Rabbinic literature is insufficient to show that “the Temple Scriptures” included the whole of the Tanak. Josephus’ evidence explicitly mentions the Law (War 7.150), and it may also have alluded to Joshua (Ant. 5.61), but it says nothing about the rest of the prophets and the writings at the Temple. To find reference to these, Beckwith cited Tosefta Kelim Baba Metsia 5.8, which states that the books of Ezra, the Prophets, and “the Fifths” make the hands unclean if they come out of the Temple. Beckwith took it for granted that the books of the Prophets corresponded exactly to the books of the second division. As for “the Fifths,” he interpreted it not just as a reference to the Psalter, but the whole of the Writings.41 The title of “the Fifths” may refer to the Pentateuch or the Psalter, but even when it points to the latter, it is doubtful that it could mean the whole of the Writings.42 In Tosefta Kelim B. M. 5.8 6  most likely refers to “the five books (of Moses).”43 Third, Beckwith felt compelled to reconcile his theory of the public canon with the view of Origen (Against Celsus 1.49; Commentary on Matthew 17:35f) and Hippolytus (Refutation 9.29) that the Sadducees, who controlled

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the Temple, had a canon that consisted only of the Pentateuch.44 Whether the church fathers were correct in their reports is moot. Hippolytus’ account, for instance, is not as reliable as Beckwith believes it to be. In the same work, Refutation of All Heresies, Hippolytus clearly conflated the Essenes with the Zealots and Sicarii (9.26). Moreover, a late midrash implies that the Sadducees knew more than the Pentateuch.45 Preferring the testimony of the church fathers, Beckwith advanced a further theory of the Sadducees, their canon, and the Temple to explain the apparent discrepancy between the patristic sources and his theory of the public canon. According to him, when the Sadducees took over the Temple in the second century BCE, they inherited the public canon that had already been accepted, even though they themselves held a canon that contained only the Pentateuch. Then, in the second and early third centuries CE and in the aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the Sadducees “joined up with the Samaritans” since their own cultic center was now in ruins. The evidence for this view is based on the highly questionable account of the Samaritans and Sadduceans in Hippolytus’ Refutation 9.29, which is likely to be another instance of conflation.46 It is improbable that the Sadducees, who were aristocratic priests based on the cultic centrality of Jerusalem, would now abandon that ideology and become part of the group that had established the rival cultic site on Mt Gerizim.47 There is scant information about the Sadducees, apart from the fact that they were part of the Judean nobility, from whom some of the high priests were appointed. Beckwith’s view is entirely unconvincing, compounded as it is with one questionable view piled on top of another. Notwithstanding Beckwith’s theory of the public canon, it should be asked whether there was a canon that all Jews accepted. Arie van der Kooij has argued that from the second century BCE onward there existed an “official and authoritative” canon, as evidenced by the Wisdom of Ben Sira, both in its original conception by the grandfather in 39:1–3 and the Prologue of the grandson. According to van der Kooij, the tripartite division of “the Law,” “the Prophets,” and “the other books of our ancestors” in the Prologue matches the three divisions that Josephus enumerates in Against Apion 1.38–43. The first two divisions of the Law and Prophets are defined and closed. As for the third division, van der Kooij followed Beckwith in arguing that the definite article of “the other books of our ancestors” ("# A22 " 1012) also indicates that it was closed. The twenty-two-book canon of Josephus is not an “ad hoc construction” but reflects the canon of the Pharisees.48 The Prologue, van der Kooij continues, differs from the original conception

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of the grandfather; in chapter 39:1–3, it is not the tripartite canon that is in view. Rather the ideal scribe is to reflect on “the Law of the Most High,” “the wisdom of all the ancients,” and “the prophecies.” The “wisdom of all the ancients” seems to imply “a wider literary horizon than the wisdom literature of ancient Israel,” whereas the grandson’s Prologue emphasizes the threefold structure of the collection of books, a thorough study of these books, and the exclusive use of “the books of the ancestors.” Van der Kooij attributed this shift as a corollary to the Maccabean revolt and its increased nationalism.49 There are several difficulties with van der Kooij’s theory of an official and authoritative canon. It is undoubted that the Temple served as the depository of some of the scriptures, especially the Torah and the Psalms (cf. Josephus, Ant. 12.323). Josephus reports that at the capture of Jerusalem “the Law of the Jews” was taken as booty along with the golden table, candlesticks, and lamps to Rome to be deposited in Vespasian’s palace (War 7.148, 150, 162), and Titus gave him the concession to keep the holy books (Life 418). But Against Apion 1.38–43, a passage on which van der Kooij depended, says nothing about the Temple. The context is an apology for the historical accuracy of Jewish history. Josephus, in a polemical flourish, was attempting  to show his Greek readers that Jewish history was both accurate and consistent because “every Jew” considered the twenty-two books as the decrees of God. His account is marked by rhetorical exaggeration that every Jew “will cheerfully die for them” (i.e., the books) and that “no one has ventured whether to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable.”50 The Wisdom of Ben Sira, both the Prologue and the original instruction, also says nothing about the presence of these books in the Temple. Moreover, the act of depositing something in the Temple, whether in the library or archive, as such does not necessarily imply “canonization.” Other important works and documents were deposited there for safekeeping. The lists of priestly genealogies, for instance, were deposited in the Temple and were consulted in the event that a priestly lineage needed to be established (Josephus, Apion 1.34–36; cf. War 2.427, 6.354; Life 1.6). Conversely, holy books were not just deposited in the Temple; they were also found in the synagogues (Josephus, Ant. 16.164). What Josephus says about the canon in Against Apion will be discussed below. Suffice it to note here that van der Kooij’s assertion that the Prologue of Ben Sira corroborates the closed, Pharisaic canon of Josephus is open to challenge. Josephus and Jesus ben Sira’s grandson do not appear to have the same conception of a closed canon. Notwithstanding any surface similarities between the two notices (e.g., in the description of “the remaining books”), Josephus’ conception of canon is closed and fixed, as evidenced by his enu-

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meration of five, thirteen and four books for each of the sections of “the books of Moses,” “the Prophets,” and “the remaining books” respectively. For him, there are only twenty-two books in the Jewish canon. By contrast, the Prologue does not provide a similar book count for each section nor a total for all three sections. As will be shown in chapter 6, both the Wisdom and Prologue describe the curriculum of the scribe. John Barton has argued that in the context of the Prologue “the other books” is more naturally understood as “all other books” since the point is that all books lose something in translation, not just scripture. Barton’s interpretation of books in general is in keeping with the general thrust of the Prologue, which describes the grandfather as not only learned in scripture but simply learned.51 Finally, it should not be supposed that the Temple authorities served like a church council or synod in decreeing a canon that was to be followed by all Jews. There is no evidence that the scriptures of the Temple were considered normative in this sense. Canon was not, for the most part, a point of contention in ancient Judaism as it was in Christianity. Rather, disputes centered on the halakhic interpretation of the biblical texts; what constituted a “biblical text” was simply assumed. The eventual adoption of the Pharisaic canon by the rabbis may be explained by the membership of those who founded Rabbinic Judaism. The other sects that joined this “grand coalition” presumably were willing to accept this canon. Why they did so cannot now be known, but one possibility is surely that their canons shared a considerable common core of authoritative books, and their halakha did not depend upon the books whose status is disputed.

Scriptural Scrolls Deposited at the Temple There were no “Temple Scriptures” that served as the public, common, or official canon of all Jews.52 This does not mean that there were no scriptural scrolls kept at the Temple. Josephus explicitly mentioned copies of the law in connection with the Temple. Scrolls of scriptures were used for public reading and worship. Psalms were sung during worship at the Temple, and it is not unreasonable to assume that there were copies of one or more versions of the psalter kept there for this purpose. The scriptural scrolls of the Temple did in specific times and cases have an authoritative function: the discovery of the law book was a catalyst for cultic reform in the reign of Josiah in 622 BCE, and the three Torah scrolls, according to Rabbinic literature, were used to establish a standardized text. But these instances are not indicative of an official canon kept in the library of the Temple.

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In pre-exilic times Hilkiah, the high priest, discovered “the book of the law,” identified by many with the book of Deuteronomy or a version of it (Urdeuteronomium), when repairs were being made to the Temple (2 Kgs 22). The book was brought before King Josiah and read aloud by Shaphan, his secretary. Upon hearing its words, King Josiah tore up his clothes and sought to know what Yahweh had intended for him, his people, and Judah, for he perceived that divine wrath was directed against them on account of the disobedience of the ancestors to the words written in it (v. 13). He was filled with remorse, and his response to the hearing of the words of the law was deemed suitably chastened. Huldah, the prophetess, described how King Josiah had “softened his heart” and “humbled himself before Yahweh” (v. 19), the reward of which was that he would not see the divine wrath on Judah and would die in peace (v. 20). The discovery of the law book precipitated an extensive cultic reform program, as Josiah made a covenant with Yahweh to keep all commandments, purged the Temple of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah of idolatry, and reinstated the observance of the feast of passover (2 Kgs 23). This reform lasted one generation, as his sons Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim again did what was evil before Yahweh and returned to what the fathers had done in practicing idolatry (2 Kgs 23:32).53 The law book found in the Temple clearly had an authoritative function in Josiah’s cultic reform program, but it was not a public canon. First, it consisted of only one book and not the Torah or Tanak.54 Second, unlike the Deuteronomist who compiled the history, the law book was not recognized by the Judean kings before and after Josiah as the standard by which to guide their behavior. The kings before Josiah neglected the law book, and his sons Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim subsequently abandoned it. The law book would be better described as a book of reform rather than a public canon.55 Third, the narrative does not presuppose a “Temple library.” 2 Kgs 22 does not specify a place within “the house of YHWH.” It was presumably a place for the safekeeping of valuable treasures and documents. “Library” is a convenient term, but it misleads if one also thinks of it as an institution that was accessible to the public and was primarily for books. In the Chronicler and Josephus’ versions of the story, the accounts of Hilkiah’s discovery also included a reference to “the silver” (2 Chr 34:14) and “the gold” (Ant. 10.58) that was being brought out of the same place as the book of the law (cf. Ezra 6:1; bSanh 22a). Karel van der Toorn described the place of depository as an area closed off from the public, “a storage room.”56 It is often thought that in the Hellenistic period a designated library at the Temple could be identified. The letter embedded within 2 Macc 2:13–15 may be legendary as an account of its foundation by Nehemiah, but the reference

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to a “library” (10120),.;0!. [Epiphanius] and )>)0. [Bryennios list] does not correspond to anything in the Hebrew title of Leviticus,  5 , and is likely to be a significant error in the text-critical sense of the term). As for its date, Audet offered several arguments, including the view that the Bryennios list, which he called “the Jerusalem manuscript,” circulated among Greek-speaking Christians. There must have been lists, like the Jerusalem manuscript, in circulation among the churches in Asia Minor that were creating confusion and that led Onesimus to seek clarification about the state of the Old Testament canon. Along with his request for extracts of passages from the Old Testament sections of the Law and Prophets that testified to Jesus, Onesimus asked Melito for “accurate facts about the ancient writings, how many they are in number, and what is their order.” The fluidity of canonical lists is presupposed in Onesimus’ request, and it could only prevail before the establishment of Origen’s influence in Palestine and in the Greekspeaking countries.18 If Audet is correct, and he has made a substantial case for his dating, then a Jewish list of canonical books, agreeing in content but not in order, division, and count to the list of Baba Bathra, existed by ca. 150 CE at the latest. This conclusion in itself does not address the question of when the canon was closed. To do so, we must look at passages in the Mishnah, Josephus, and 4 Ezra.

Canonical Notices around the End of the First Century The evidence of the formation of the canon changes as one moves back in time. There are no longer any lists to examine and compare; what appear in the sources are passages that mention collections of books without explicitly enumerating what they included. Three passages that date to around the end of the first century or beginning of the second century CE provide different accounts of the state of canon. In Against Apion, Josephus states the following: Among us there are not thousands of books in disagreement and conflict with each other, but only twenty-two books, containing the record of all time, which are rightly trusted. Five of these are the books of Moses, which con-

44

The Earliest Canonical Lists and Notices tain both the laws and the tradition from the birth of humanity up to his death; this is a period of a little less than 3,000 years. From the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, king of the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets after Moses wrote the history of what took place in their own times in thirteen books; the remaining four books contain hymns to God and instructions for people on life. From Artaxerxes up to our own time every event has been recorded, but this is not judged worthy of the same trust, since the exact line of succession of the prophets did not continue. (1.38–41; emphasis added).19

Much scholarly ink has been spilled over the question of whether Josephus’ notice attests to the closing of the canon. Questions have been raised about the total number of twenty-two and its division into the five books of Moses, thirteen books of the Prophets, and four books containing hymns and ethical teachings. These have caused many difficulties for scholars who approach Josephus in the context of a linear development of the canon. If we start from the earliest Jewish lists, however, and discuss the various orders of the books and systems of enumeration, many of these difficulties disappear. The count of the twenty-two-book canon is not remarkable and is clearly one possible counting; according to Jerome and corroborated by the earlier sources, it is, in fact, the count of the majority. The division of all the books into a tripartite canon was evident in the canonical list of Baba Bathra and Jerome but was not the only system of ordering books or of dividing them into collections. Most important, the lack of agreement on book order and sectional division did not imply that there was disagreement about which books were to be included in the canon. Bryennios and Origen simply listed them; Melito differentiated between the five books of Moses and the Prophets in a bipartite division. Even when Baba Bathra and Jerome agreed on the tripartite division, they differed on the order of Jeremiah-Ezekiel-Isaiah, and PsalmsJob and the placement of Ruth in the Prophets or the Writings. In other words, a book’s canonical status is not dependent on its position within an ordered sequence or section. Josephus’ passage falls short of a “canonical list” since he did not specify which books were included in his description of “our books.” It provides a summary of a twenty-two-book canon as it is divided into three sections. The five books of Moses are almost certainly the Pentateuch. The order of the five is unknown; it could be the traditional order or one reflected in Melito’s list, with Numbers before Leviticus. Melito’s list, after all, was not a popular version, as was evidently the Bryennios list; the bishop of Sardis determined the content and order after careful investigation, which involved travel to Palestine and consultation of the authorities.

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As for the prophetical books, Josephus enumerated them as thirteen. The same number may be deduced from Antiquities 10:35 when he extolled Isaiah as a wonderful man, speaking in truth, writing down his prophecies, and leaving them behind in books. Isaiah did not do this alone, Josephus stated, but there were other prophets, “twelve in number,” who did the same. Several suggestions have been made as to the content of the Prophets in Josephus’ canonical notice. Beckwith believed that they were as follows: Job, Joshua, Judges (+ Ruth?), Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah (+ Lamentations?), Ezekiel, Twelve Minor Prophets, Daniel, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther.20 Beckwith was unsure about the inclusion of Ruth and Lamentations in the prophetic section. They may alternatively be found in the four-book-section on the hymns: Psalms (possibly with Ruth), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (alternative: Lamentations). The contents of these lists are no more than educated guesses.21 Steinmann provides an alternate list with some justification. His list is based on references to, or allusions to episodes in, the books elsewhere in Josephus’ writings. His prophetic list includes the following: Joshua, Judges-Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah-Lamenations, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Twelve Prophets. But Steinmann had to resort to an assertion about the inclusion of Job and Chronicles: “This leaves only Job and Chronicles as not mentioned by Josephus. Since these books are attested as early as Ben Sira, we have no reason to doubt that Josephus’ list includes these books also.”22 There really is no sure way of knowing which other books Josephus would have included in his other twelve prophets. The delineation of his canon based on use is promising.23 In addition to scripture, he used various sources, archival material, lists of kings and priests, Jewish and Hellenistic authors, and extra-canonical books (1 Maccabees, additions to Esther, 1 Esdras) in his writings.24 Josephus appears to have distinguished among different kinds of authority. Scholars often suppose that Josephus’ canon was the canon of the Pharisees of his time.25 The basis of this claim needs to be probed. One obvious place to start is his autobiographical account. In the description of his ancestry, as found written in the public records, Josephus was born of priestly, Hasmonean lineage (Life 1–6). At the age of sixteen, he tried out the three sects or schools of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes with a view to selecting the best. He also gained experience in the ways of ascetic life by devoting himself to Bannus and his manner of living in the wilderness for three years. At the age of nineteen, he stated that “I began to conduct myself according to the rules of the sect of the Pharisees” (Life 10–12).

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The Earliest Canonical Lists and Notices

Doubts have rightly been expressed over Josephus’ curriculum vitae for the simple fact that his numbers just do not add up. There are only three years between sixteen and nineteen, and yet he was apparently able to squeeze into that time experience with not only the three sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, whose initiation period alone, he tells us elsewhere, was two or three years long (War 2.137–142), but also three other years in the wilderness with Bannus. Steve Mason has mounted a case against the prevailing tendency to view Josephus either as a Pharisee or a pro-Pharisaic apologist in AntiquitiesLife. The anti-Pharisaic passages in his oeuvre cannot be attributed to his sources on the grounds that he could not have written them. Mason has argued that the key phrase, to be translated as “following the Pharisaic school” ("E F0-; ?-!0 .".)2),9; Life 12b), should not be understood literally but rhetorically. It was “a necessary function of his entry into public life.”26 While Josephus was not and never claimed to be a Pharisee, he acknowledged the influence of the school when he returned from the wilderness to the city to begin his political life. Josephus knew a lot about the Pharisees, but he disliked their reputation for “accuracy” (
.01!), which he thought was undeserved.27 On Josephus’ canon Mason argued against the prevailing scholarly consensus. He contended against the sectioning of Josephus’ canon, which he believed was closed, into three or two divisions in Against Apion 1.37–43. Instead, he tried to show that Josephus’ classification of the Judaean records was according to genre: Moses’ writings included both laws and tradition; the prophets wrote history or tradition; and the rest of the collection consisted of hymns and hortatory advice. He concluded that this classification was “generic.”28 Mason emphasized the genre to the exclusion of the division and enumeration of the books in Against Apion. It may be the case that he classified the Judean records according to genre, but Josephus also grouped the various genres into categories, marked as they were by the number of works in each division as five, thirteen, and four respectively, totaling a twenty-two-book canon. Moreover, Josephus described these categories or divisions as “the books of Moses,” “the Prophets,” and “the remaining four books.” The fact that each section contained various genres of writings does not then mean that the three divisions or sections did not exist.29 Josephus may not have been a Pharisee, but there are good reasons for thinking that he was advocating the canon of the Pharisees. The first is circumstantial. Josephus recognized that the Pharisees had an increasing influence over the masses. According to him, so great was “their power over the

The Earliest Canonical Lists and Notices

47

multitudes” ("G H-IJ # "K 2,!0) that when they spoke against the king or high priest, they were immediately believed (Ant. 13.288). Whether this recognition was a result of political expediency—in an attempt to convince the Romans that the Pharisees were the party to support for keeping peace in Palestine—or simply an acceptance of the political reality, the implication for canon is the same: it would be in Josephus’ interest to advocate the canon of the dominant party at the end of the first century CE.30 Second, while Josephus’ twenty-two-book canon was at odds with the enumeration of the biblical books in Baba Bathra and other rabbinic texts, according to the combined attestations of Origen and Jerome, it was one of the two ways of counting the biblical books among the Hebrews. In his commentary on the Psalms Origen referred to the twenty-two canonical books, corresponding to the Hebrew alphabet, “as the Hebrews have handed them down” (apud Eusebius, EH 6.25). The phrase “as the Hebrews” (., L1)*) is ambiguous since Origen used the term in various ways. Nicholas de Lange’s warning should be heeded: “There is nothing to urge, and indeed much to counter, the suggestion that Origen’s Hebraioi are necessarily ‘rabbinic’ or Aramaic-speaking Jews, or even that Origen made this distinction.”31 Yet Origen could, and indeed did, use hebraioi here to refer to contemporary Jews, as de Lange himself argued.32 Origen knew a great deal about the rabbis: he was acquainted with Jewish institutions and could speak about the succession of the patriarchate; he consulted many Jews and even mentioned the patriarch Huillus/Ioullos by name; and he may even have referred, in his commentary on the Psalms, to Hoshaya “the Great,” who lived in Caesarea at the same time.33 Origen’s count of the twenty-two canonical books is related to the Hebrew alphabet. In this, he showed that he was influenced by Jewish mystical theology, which attributes to the Hebrew alphabet a central role in creation. In Sefer Yesira, the mystic used the Hebrew alphabet to hew out the foundations of the universe.34 A late Rabbinic source, Midrash Psalm 1, states that “R. Joshua b. Qorha and R. Judah (second century) say:  occurs 22 times in the Psalms, like the letters of the alphabet.”35 Josephus’ canon did not include this mystical element; he did not relate his canon to the Hebrew alphabet nor delve into the mysteries of the number twenty-two. His discussion of the canon, even with due allowances for exaggeration, was framed in a way that represented majority opinion and not the views of an esoteric minority. It has to be supposed, then, that at the time when Josephus was writing Against Apion, the twenty-two-book canon, which presumably any of his readers could verify, was the way that most Jews counted the books before the canon was adopted by mystics, who found deep significance in the coin-

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cidence of the number twenty-two with the Hebrew alphabet. The twentyfour-book canon, as attested for the first time in the apocalypse of 4 Ezra, then became the normative enumeration in Rabbinic Judaism. Third, both Josephus and rabbinic literature use the cessation of prophecy in relation to the closing of the canon. Tosefta Sotah states that “when the last prophets—i.e. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—died, the holy spirit ceased [ 5  5] in Israel. Despite this, they were informed by means of oracles [13:2) [5 ).” Josephus too used the same argument, although his formulation at first glance appears to be rather different. In Against Apion 1.41, he admitted that Jewish history from the time of Artaxerxes to his own day was not deemed equally worthy because of the “failure of the exact succession of the prophets” ("M&G!?-,0"G"9)0.01)4 to refer to a textual emendation among Homeric grammarians undertaking their form of textual criticism. This same verb is used in the Letter of Aristeas §31, which referred to the emended form of the books to be deposited in the Alexandrian library.39 Honigman’s dating is based on the intellectual climate of Alexandria in the second century BCE, specifically the textual standardization of the Homeric works.40 By its nature, it is circumstantial, but it reaches that level of probability to which one is accustomed in investigating ancient historical matters.

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The Origins of the LXX and the Canon of the Alexandrian Jews The concept of “charter myth” is dependent on the notion of cultural memory. A community that perpetuates a myth of this kind creates a composition based upon reminiscences of what it believes to have happened in the distant past. It is not necessarily unhistorical; it is just not entirely factual. The task then is to separate history from subsequent embellishment in the Letter of Aristeas. Legendary elements within the main theme are likely to include the number of seventy-two elders who translated the Jewish laws into Greek in seventy-two days (§307). The deference that the Ptolemaic king pays to both the original manuscripts and translation (§177–178, 317) also smacks of an overt concern for royal approval among the second century Alexandrian Jewish community. The central claim of the Letter of Aristeas, however, is likely to contain a historical kernel. The Jewish laws were remembered to have been translated into Greek some time in the early Ptolemaic dynasty, whether during the reign of Soter or Philadelphus. This memory is not entirely inaccurate and is supported in a general way by the earliest septuagintal manuscripts found in Egypt. The first-century BCE fragments known as Papyri Fouad include Greek translations of Genesis (PFouad 266a) and Deuteronomy (PFouad 266b, 266c). They were found in Fayyum and attest to the phenomenon of translating the Jewish laws into Greek in Egypt. Papyrus Ryland 458 (Deuteronomy), moreover, dates a century earlier and is likely to have come from the same area. This activity is not restricted to Egypt. The finds of the Judaean desert likewise evidence the same translational phenomenon. Fragments of Greek Deuteronomy (4QLXXDeut [4Q122], ca. 200–150 BCE), Numbers (4QLXXNum [4Q121], ca. 40 BCE–10 CE), and Leviticus (4QpapLXXLeva [4Q119], ca. 125–1 BCE; 4QpapLXXLevb [4Q120], ca. 100–1 BCE) were found in one of the caves by Khirbet Qumran. These have been dated to the first or second century BCE. Cave 7, which contained only fragments of Greek manuscripts, also yielded a few fragments that have been identified by the principal editors as early septuagintal manuscripts of Exodus (7QpapLXXExod [7Q1]; 100 BCE) and the Epistle of Jeremiah (7QpapEpJer [7Q2]; 100 BCE). A notable find is the Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever (8HevXIIgr; 50–1 BCE). This Greek text not only attests to a collection of six of the Twelve Minor Prophets books in one scroll (Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Zechariah), but its textual character also shows that the revision of existing Greek translations toward the proto-MT had already

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begun.41 This has been described as a kaige recension, by virtue of its stereotyped translation of the Hebrew gam by the Greek kaige, or more commonly as the proto-Theodotion recension, signaling the affinities of the Theodotion recension to this scroll. Translations from Hebrew to Greek had already taken place in the second century BCE, as indicated by the earliest Greek manuscripts from Egypt and the land of Israel. The process had likely begun before that time. Further corroborating evidence may be garnered from the identifiable citations and references in the works of Jewish Hellenistic authors, most notably that of Aristobulus, who referred to an early Greek translation of “the narrative of the leading forth of the Hebrews,” followed by “the complete translation of the Law and all its contents” under Ptolemy Philadelphus (in Eusebius, Praep Evang. 13.13.2).42 The Letter of Aristeas itself hints at even earlier Greek translations that were misused by the historian Theopompus (ca. 376–300 BCE) and the tragic poet Theodectes (ca. 380–334 BCE) with serious psychological and physical consequences (§314–316), although this account of the use of Jewish laws by renowned Greeks could be a literary topos.43 Additionally, it has been shown that the language of the Septuagint of the Pentateuch is consistent with the Koine of the third- or second-century BCE Egypt. John Lee’s comparative study of the Septuagint of the Pentateuch and the papyri confirms that the translators were familiar with the “vocabulary of their time.”44 Greg Horsley, moreover, has shown that the Septuagint translators did not use a special form of Jewish-Greek, as was suggested by earlier scholars, but that they used idiomatic Koine Greek.45 The cumulative force of this evidence points to the second or the third century BCE. Various translations were carried out in several localities (Fayyum, Judaean desert) and not just in Alexandria. But in the Letter of Aristeas the second-century Alexandrian Jewish community claimed that the translation took place in its city and under the royal patronage of the early Ptolemaic dynasty. The standardization of the Homeric epics in the second century, as Honigman suggested, may have given an anonymous Alexandrian Jewish author the impetus to produce his own account of the origins of the translation of the Jewish laws based on the communal recollections of earlier generations. These cultural reminiscences are not entirely accurate. The reference to Demetrius as librarian is clearly a mistake, although he may have been associated with the translation in some way.46 The ostensible acquisition of a library copy is also likely to reflect the concerns of the Jewish community in the second century to establish the official Alexandrian translation.47 The more likely reason probably had to do with the changing linguistic use and

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facility of Greek over Hebrew among the Jews in the diaspora and in the land of Israel in the period that saw the Hellenization of the ancient Near East. The Prologue of the Wisdom of Ben Sira attests to this need to translate a work from Hebrew into Greek. Among the scrolls found at Qumran, there is evidence of knowledge of Greek.48 The number of translators is also unlikely to be correct and is probably symbolic of the tribal organization of ancient Israel conflated with the elders who witnessed the events on Mt. Sinai (Exod 24:1, 9). Rabbinic tradition mentions five as the number of translators (Avot of Rabbi Nathan B 37, 94f), which would be consistent with the textual assessment of the translation of the Pentateuch as having been done by a handful of translators.49 The Letter of Aristeas attests to the beliefs of the Jewish community in Alexandria. Its “charter myth” claims the story of the origins of the translation in reaction to the standardization of the Homeric epics. Other translations, not mentioned by the Letter of Aristeas, also took place elsewhere. As propaganda, it speaks first and foremost for what the Jewish community of second-century Alexandria believed about the significance of the translation of the Jewish laws into Greek.

The Jewish Laws and the Pentateuch It is widely held that the Letter of Aristeas attests to the translation of the first five biblical books, the Pentateuch. This is possible, but nowhere in the composition is this explicitly mentioned. What was translated is described as “the divine law” (',!)*(&)*; §3); “the laws of the Jews” ("%O)>; (&0&; §10); “the law” ()&),!-; §176, 313); “the books” ("%1012; §176, 317); “the entire law” ('%"(&)*; §309); and “the rolls” ("#"!=I0>;&0 plus \I of 39:1. The grandson designates the ancestral writings “books” in the same way that he calls the Wisdom of his grandfather “this book.” Ben Sira’s original expression may not have included the word sepher (cf. Sir 50:27; Masada Ms B reads:     , “instruction, understanding, and suitable proverbs”). The law corresponds to “the law of the Most High.” The reading of the prophets is another way of expressing the scribe’s concern with prophecies. In 39:1, the mention of prophecies comes after the reference to wisdom. And “the other books of our ancestors” is a summary of everything else. This miscellaneous third category is alternatively called “the rest of the books” and refers to all the other books of wisdom, discourse, parables, and proverbs. Notable is the use of the adjective “[our] fathers” (";) that qualifies “the other books,” which corresponds to the “ancient Israelite ancestors” (
I;) of 39:1. The Prologue refers only to Israelite literature. However, it is not a closed canon. The third category of other books is not a closed, third division. In fact, it is not one category at all but an undefined number of categories in the way that is implied by the formulation of “the other books” and “the rest of the books.” It is an open-ended way of referring to books other than the law and prophecies. That the grandson did not have a closed canon is further evidenced by the grammar of the Prologue in v. 3. Two participial clauses are followed by an indicative and infinitive that complete the sense. Thus the grandfather “having devoted himself” (L"M>)=*) and “having acquired considerable proficiency in them” (:")=")0*.GTV0!0)00#)(), which is also found in Jdt.

Rom 10:6

Based on a conflated quotation of Deut 9:4 and 30:12, Paul’s rhetorical question, “Who will ascend to the heaven” ("*
1-!"0!H*"M)S(), is paralleled in Prov 30:4 and Bar 3:29. The sacrifice to demons and not God is found in Bar and in LXX Deut 32:17b.

1 Cor 10:20

1 Cor 2:9

Col 2:3

The exact source of this quotation has not been identified, but there may be a detectable allusion in the final clause of 1 Cor 2:9 to Sir.: “He lavished her [i.e., wisdom] on those who love him”.8 The general theme of hiding is shared and the phrase “the treasures of wisdom” () ,.0), Sir). The phrase “keeping the commandments” ("0,/.0) belonging to Israelites in Paul and Sir. Cf. Sir 44:12 above. Paul cites the LXX Gen 17:5, whereas Sir paraphrases it. The generalization of the Abrahamic promise is not found in Genesis. Both Rom 4:13 and Sir 44:21 express the view that Abraham is not only the father of many nations, but also the one who is to inherit the earth. But Paul is not dependent on Sir, as the expressions are very different. It is more likely that they both drew upon a common Jewish interpretation. Cf. Jub 19:21 below.

The quotation is derived from Isa 22:13, which expresses the consequences of eating and drinking in view of death, which is inevitable. The saying is proverbial and is found also in Wis. Both use the common terminology of “righteousness” (>0.0)-=*
q>0(") grieve for those who are asleep. For Wis those who die quickly are the ones who have no hope ()SITV)-0:2>) or comfort on the day of decision. The metaphor of the athletic accolade in the form of prized laurels is found in both passages. The cognate terminology of “crowned” (-"!