ACADEMY OF INTEGRATED CHRISTIAN
STUDIES
THE LIFE AND FAITH OF THE PEOPLEOF
GOD:
OLD TESTAMENT
(BB013)
Assignment of Collection and
Canonization
Submitted to- Rev Joe Laldinpui
Submitted by- Joseph Lalrinawma
CANONIZATION
The term ‘Canon’ is borrowed from Greek, in
which kanon means a rule – a standard
for measurement. With respect to the Bible, it speaks of those books that met
the standard and therefore were worthy of inclusion. Since the fourth century
CE kanon has been used to denote an
authoritative list of the books belonging to the Old Testament or New Testament[1].
As there are many scriptures that went along with what the Israelites believed
to be authoritative texts, a need to make a proper separation of the
authoritative text from the other literature was felt important. The process of
compiling the believed-to-be authoritative scriptures was called canonization
as the books compiled have to be worthy of acceptance. The important work of
canonization was carried out under the authority of the Aaronic/Levitical
priesthood who acted as supervisors.
Dr.
Kip L. Wheeler points out that idea of a finalized Hebrew canon first began to
emerge shortly after the Babylonian exile. He notes that it was the Jews’ fear
of religious “contamination” that motivated them to create an “official version
of the various Scriptures and gather them into one organic collection”[2].
As a counterfeit of Judaism arouse under the priesthood of Manassah, who
refused to get rid of his foreign wives, Ezra and great assembly of 120 priests
believed that they could be dangerous threat to contaminate Judaism.
In order to preserve the true worship of God, it was
essential to differentiate between the sacred Hebrew texts of the Jerusalem
Jews and the Hebrew writings utilized by the apostate Samaritan Jews. The key
step was to organize the sacred Levitical documents into a final, closed canon
of Scripture. Then, accurate copies of the entire canonized text were made and
distributed to Jewish synagogues throughout the Persian Empire. Once canonized,
the Scriptures could be preserved without fear of corruption[3].
THE PROCESS OF CANONIZATION
Four closely related but distinguishable steps were
followed in the formation of the Old Testament canon.
1) Authoritative utterances- For the Israel people the canon’s principle started
when God gave His word to Moses at Mt Sinai. God gave laws to Moses which the
Israelites have to follow strictly as they are directly given to them by God.
This is considered by Israelites to be the beginning of the canon’s Principle.
God gave them rules to follow which they cannot neglect which is considered to
be the first process of canon. The seed of canon is said to be found earlier
than this when the Israelites found out that they have peculiar role in God’s
programme of redemption, treasured the commands and the promises affirmed to
the Patriarchs as sacred word from which to draw strength and comfort.[4]
2. Authoritative Documents- Moses compiled all that was told to him by God in a
form of books. He mostly wrote about the laws imparted upon the Israelites by
YHWH and the code of conducts for the priest. The five books of Moses are
called as the Pentateuch. He gave this book to the Levites who were the
Priestly tribe of Israel to protect the books safely by all means and to keep
it at the side of the covenant. As time passes the nature of human being become
sinful and they neglect these books given to them by God through Moses. Much
later during the reign of King Josiah, the laws were recovered after 18 years
of his reign. This was a landmark in the development of the Old Testament
Canon. Unlike the Kings of Persia and Egypt who try to make their desire
equivalent with the law, King Josiah fully accept the authority of the law of
God as inescapable mandate That people heard and obey the book, convinced that
God is speaking through it, is a essence of canonicity[5].
3. Authoritative collections of
writings- The division of the Hebrew texts into Three
Forms viz., Law, Prophets and Writings probably indicates stages in
the formation of the canon. The Law
were completed in their present form at about the time of King David and
certain revisions were carried out till the time of Ezra. The Prophets were divided into Former,
Major and Minor Prophets. The Former Prophets includes Joshua,
Judges, I & II Samuel, I & II Kings. Major Prophets are Isaiah,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Minor Prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah,
Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah and Malachi. The Writings include Book of Songs,
Job, Psalms, Proverb, Ruth, Lamentation, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther,
Daniel, I & II Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah.
4. Fixed Canon- The threefold catalog of writings is found to be
prior to 150 BCE. Ben Sirach was provided with a preface by the author’s
grandson. It seems that Ben Sirach himself recognised the threefold division of
the Old Testament canon but unfortunately left out the Writings. The Three Fold
division is implied clearly in Baba Bathra which date back to around First or
Second Century BCE, all of which are included in the present Protestant Canon.
The New Testament authors never cite aprocryphal writings directly, and it is
probably safe to assume that the Old Testament the used was identical with that
known today. There certainly were distinctions in the approaches to canon in
antiquity. The Samritans who parted with the Jews as early as the Nehemiah’s
days who established their own religious rites inclue the Pentateuch but did
not include the Prophets which are close tied to the temple in Jerusalem[6].
THE DIFFERENT CANONS OF SCRIPTURE
HEBREW, PROTESTANT AND ROMAN
CATHOLIC
There was no official canon for either Judaism or
Christianity until there were demanding factor that arises within the
community. The Jewish canon is usually associated with the Council of Jamnia
around AD 90, but Christian Canon is defined only at the fourth century and
could still be debated in both Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism as late as
the 16th century. Since the Jewish canon was not officially set, some books
were in use within Judaism that had not yet reached the status of being
authoritative. That fact allowed
different branches of the Christian church to take slightly different views of
some of these books, primarily those that dated to the inter-testamental period
of the first three centuries BCE.
The
arrangement of the canon reflected the relative status of the three major
divisions of the Hebrew canon. The Torah
was the primary foundation of the community. The Prophets both Former Prophets
(Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) and Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
the Book of the Twelve), were the practical outworking of those foundational
tenets. The Writings were the reflective
and liturgical dimensions of the tradition.
The
formation of the canonical books of the Bible is resolved along the process,
originating from the need to conserve God’s revelation fully and perfectly in
the view of the community of faith. It took time and reflection to achieve this
insight. Originally the books of the Bible were not chosen because they were
thought to be inspired. But later considerations- the origin of a book from a
man of God, its universal acceptance for liturgical services in the community,
its hormonal relationship to other sacred books as regards to the contents of
its specific motives to lead feeble to God and interior life were some of the
important factor that guided authorities to determine the canonical books of
the Bible[7].
The history of canonization may be traced into two viz., i) The Palestinian
Canon & ii) The Jews Canon
Formation
of Canon- Among the Jews there was no definite understanding about
the canon of the Old Testament books until Christian Era. Binding end of the
first century CE, there were two canons or list of sacred books in Judaism. In
90 CE the Council of the Rabbi’s at Jamnia (Near Joppa) determine once and for
all the list of inspire books[8].
The list is known as the Palestinian canon. There are only 24 books in the
Hebrew bible and today these books are considered as the Protocanonical Books.
Alexandrian
Canon- It was prepared for
the Jewish who were living in Alexandria during the 3rd Century BCE.
This is also called Septuagint in around 2nd BCE. They were 72
members and this canon is bigger than the Palestinian canon by 7 books viz.,
Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I & II Machabees and
this 7 books are called Deutero-canonical books.
The Alexandrian canon was
divided into three main parts-
i) Pentateuch: It means the
first five books and was accepted as Bible during the time of Joshua around 621
BCE.
ii) Historical Books: It
includes the book of Joshua, Ecclesiastes, I & II Samuel and I & II
Kings.
iii) The Prophets: This
includes all the Prophetic writings and are considered to be holy and
authoritative.
Qumran
Canon- The Qumran scroll
and fragments of the Old Testament represent the Palestinian Canon except for
the book of Esther. This could of course be accident although several factors
suggest that the Qumran community may have rejected the book on account of some
particular motive of their own. For instance, Esther emphasise Purim Festival
which may not have look proper to the rigid line of the Qumran essence. Besides
there is no God mentioned in the text, but only the roll of Esther. However
copies of some of the Deutero-canonical books are also found in the Qumran
collections. Thus, copies of Tobit, Sirach and Baruch together with Jubilees,
Enoch, etc have been discovered among the Dead Sea scroll. It may be inferred
from all these that the Old Testament canon was not definitely completed during
the 1st Century BCE.
Samaritan
Canon- It were originally Jews from the tribe of Israel. They
mixed with the non-Jews of Samaria and gradually began to separate themselves
from Jerusalem Community. Moreover, they established arrival sanctuary on Mt.
Gerizim in opposition to the Jerusalem temple. Disagreement between Samaritan
and the orthodox Jews is apparent in the days of Nehemiah around 414 BCE. But
it is probable that Schism was not compete until the beginning of 4th
Century BCE.
They have only the Pentateuch as their canonical
scripture. We may inferred, therefore, that until the 4th Century
BCE the Pentateuch was the canonical scripture. With the acceptance of
Pentateuch, collections of other books were being made, and in course of time,
they also were canonized as inspired and authoritative.
Differences
between Protestant and Catholic Canon[9]
In the third century B.C.,
the Jewish scripture was translated into Greek for the convenience of the many
Jews who were not fluent in Hebrew. This translation was known as the
Septuagint [SEP tuh jint], often abbreviated as "LXX." The name Septuagint
comes from the Greek word for ‘seventy’ (hence the symbol LXX, 70 in Roman
numerals) and refers to the tradition that seventy-two rabbis worked on the
translation.
The
First Christian Bible
At the time the Christian
Bible was being formed, the Septuagint was in common use by Jews and Jewish
Christians, and Christians adopted it as the Old Testament of the Christian
Bible. However, around 100 A.D., Jewish rabbis revised their Scripture and
established an official canon of Judaism which excluded some portions of the
Greek Septuagint. The material excluded was a group of 15 late Jewish books,
written during the period 170 B.C. to 70 A.D., that were not found in Hebrew
versions of the Jewish Scripture. Christians did not follow the revisions of
Judaism and continued to use the text of the Septuagint as the Old Testament.
Protestant
Bibles
In the 1500s, Protestant
leaders decided to organize the Old Testament material according to the
official canon of Judaism rather than the Septuagint. They moved the Old
Testament material which was not in the Jewish canon into a separate section of
the Bible called the Apocrypha. So, Protestant Bibles then included all the
same material as the earlier Bible, but it was divided into two sections: the
Old Testament and the Apocrypha. Protestant Bibles included the Apocrypha until
the mid 1800s, and the King James Version was originally published with the
Apocrypha. However, the Apocrypha was considered less important, and Bible
publishers eventually dropped it from most Protestant editions. The books of
the Apocrypha are also known as the deuterocanonical books.
Catholic
and Orthodox Bibles
The
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches did not follow the Protestant revisions,
and they continue to base their Old Testament on the Septuagint. The result is
that these versions of the Bible have more Old Testament books than most
Protestant versions. Catholic Old Testaments include 1st and 2nd Maccabees,
Baruch, Tobit, Judith, The Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus),
additions to Esther, and the stories of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon which are included in
Daniel. Orthodox Old Testaments include these plus 1st and 2nd Esdras, Prayer
of Manasseh, Psalm 151 and 3rd Maccabees.
The following chart shows the
different books of different canon-
|
Jewish
|
Catholic
|
Orthodox
|
Protestant
|
|
Torah
|
Pentateuch
|
Pentateuch
|
Pentateuch
|
|
Genesis
|
Genesis
|
Genesis
|
Genesis
|
|
Exodus
|
Exodus
|
Exodus
|
Exodus
|
|
Leveticus
|
Leveticus
|
Leveticus
|
Leveticus
|
|
Numbers
|
Numbers
|
Numbers
|
Numbers
|
|
Deuteronomy
|
Deuteronomy
|
Deuteronomy
|
Deuteronomy
|
|
Prophets (Former)
|
Historical Books
|
Historical Books
|
Historical Books
|
|
Joshua
|
Joshua
|
Joshua
|
Joshua
|
|
Judges
|
Judges
|
Judges
|
Judges
|
|
I
& II Samuel
|
Ruth
|
Ruth
|
Ruth
|
|
I
& II Kings
|
I
& II Samuel
|
I
& II Samuel
|
I
& II Samuel
|
|
|
I
& II Kings
|
I
& II Kings
|
I
& II Kings
|
|
|
I
& II Chronicles
|
I
& II Chronicles
|
I
& II Chronicles
|
|
|
Ezra[10]
|
Ezra
|
Ezra
|
|
|
Nehemiah
|
Nehemiah
|
Nehemiah
|
|
|
Tobit
|
Tobit
|
|
|
|
Judith
|
Judith
|
|
|
|
Esther
(with
additions)
|
Esther
(with
additions)
|
Esther
|
|
|
I
& II Maccabees
|
I,II,III
& IV
Maccabees
|
|
|
Prophets (Latter)
|
|
|
|
|
Isaiah
|
|
|
|
|
Jeremiah
|
|
|
|
|
Ezekiel
|
|
|
|
|
Book
of the Twelves
|
|
|
|
|
The Writings
|
Wisdom Books
|
Wisdom Books
|
Poetic Books
|
|
Psalms
|
Job
|
Job
|
Job
|
|
Proverbs
|
Psalms
|
Psalms
|
Psalms
|
|
Job
|
Proverbs
|
Proverbs
|
Proverbs
|
|
|
Ecclesiastes
|
Ecclesiastes
|
Ecclesiastes
|
|
Song
of Songs
|
Song
of Songs
|
Song
of Songs
|
Song
of Songs
|
|
Ruth
|
|
|
|
|
Lamentations
|
|
|
|
|
Ecclesiastes
|
|
|
|
|
Esther
|
|
|
|
|
Daniel
|
|
|
|
|
Nehemiah
|
|
|
|
|
I
& II Chronicles
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wisdom
of Solomon
|
Wisdom
of Solomon
|
|
|
|
Ecclesiastes
(Sirach)
|
Sirach
(Ecclesiasticus)
|
|
|
|
Prophets
|
Prophets
|
Prophets
|
|
|
Isaiah
|
Isaiah
|
Isaiah
|
|
|
Jeremiah
|
Jeremiah
|
Jeremiah
|
|
|
Lamentations
|
Lamentations
|
Lamentations
|
|
|
Baruch
|
Baruch
|
|
|
|
|
The
Letter of
Jeremiah
|
|
|
|
Ezekiel
|
Ezekiel
|
Ezekiel
|
|
|
Daniel
(with
additions)
|
Daniel
(with
additions)
|
Daniel
|
|
|
The
twelves
|
The
Twelves
|
The
Twelves
|
Bibliography
Anderson, G.W, A critical Introduction to the Old
Testament. London: Gerald Duckworth & CO. Ltd. 1959
Archer, Gleason, A survey of Old Testament introduction. Telangana:
Authentic Books. 2015
Brown, S.S. Raymond E, Joseph A.
Fitzmyer, S.J. and Roland E Murphy, O.Carm. The
New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Bangalore: Theological Publications in
India. 2009
Bruce, FF, et al, The origin of the Bible. Telangana:
Authentic Books, 2015
Sanford Lasor, William, David
Allan Hubbard and Frederic WM Bush, Old
Testament Survey. Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994
Webliography
[1] Bruce, FF, et al, The origin of the Bible (Telangana: Authentic
Books, 2015), 51
[4]
Sanford Lasor, William, David Allan Hubbard and Frederic WM Bush, Old Testament Survey (Michigan: William
B Eerdmans Publishing Company,1994) 18
[5]
Sanford Lasor, William, David Allan Hubbard and Frederic WM Bush, Old Testament Survey (Michigan: William
B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994) 19
[6]
Sanford Lasor, William, David Allan Hubbard and Frederic WM Bush, Old Testament Survey (Michigan: William
B Eerdmans Publishing Company,1994) 21 & 22
[7]
Brown, S.S. Raymond E, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. and Roland E Murphy, O.Carm. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Bangalore:
Theological Publications in India. 2009), 1043-1054.
[10]
Ezra and Nehemiah were put together as one book.
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