Loading...Now that I have spent two posts explaining the contents, structure, and organization of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, I can move on to explain how it is we got these books in particular. Why not other books? Who decided? On what grounds? And when?
This will take two posts. In this one, I give a brief overview of the understanding that was widely held for a very long time among scholars. It was the one I was raised on!
First I need to explain what we mean by “canon.” The term comes from the Greek word for
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Not being too informed on this particular matter, I’m wondering how the Septuagint fits into these timelines?
Long ago I’d read that the Hebrew canon was finalized in 90 CE by the rabbis at Jamnia, and haven’t kept up with subsequent scholarly developments.
But I did wonder, from time to time, how it was that there could have been a completed Septuagint already circulating by the time of Jesus, if the canon hadn’t yet actually been finalized…
Yes, the Jamnia view has been debunked now. THe Septuagint actually has more books in it than the Hebrew Bible so in that sense it is not representative of the “final” form of the canon. the term “septuagint” is a little misleading because there wasnt a single translation of the Hebrw BIble into Greek, but a number in different times and places. THAt makes it tricky talking about “the” Septuagint; but there were Greek translations floating around a couple of centuries before Jesus.
Did Judaism invent the non-biblical word “rabbi” before or after 70AD? I have noticed that the word is not in the Tanakh.
I’m not sure when the word was first used, but “rab” just means “teacher” in ARamaic and “rabbi” just means “my teacher.” In the first century these were not official titles but simply designations. Only later did they come to mean something technical (it’s kind of like the difference today between someone being called a “teacher” or a “professor”)
Just a quick note: Jamnia/Yavneh is not in Galilee. It’s in the coastal plain south of Joppa.
AH, sorry!
This canon-history breakdown is genuinely valuable for me!
Bart,
Is Against Apion is the earliest source for 22 books?
Who are “the Greeks” Josephus mentions in Book 1.8?
“For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another: [as the Greeks have] but only twenty two books: which contain the records of all the past times: which are justly believed to be divine”?
I”m afraid I don’t know and I don’t know! But I should and should!
Dr. Ehrman,
You said “Eventually Judaism was to shift away—of necessity—from an emphasis on Temple, cult, and sacrifice to being very much a religion “of the book.””
Sounds like there is a lot packed into that statement. The evolution of Judaism… Care to elaborate?
It would take a book! But the basic idea is that Judaism could no longer practice sacfifice in the temple and yet continued on as a vibrant religion, focused not on sacrificial practices but on understanding God’s law as revealed in Scripture.
Given that the Jamnia hypothesis has been abandoned and that canon formation now appears to have been organic rather than formally legislated, do you think it is still historically defensible to speak of a moment when the Hebrew Bible was “canonised,” or should we instead speak only of gradual canonical recognition without a clear endpoint?
I’d say that if there was a definitive end-point, we can’t say when it was.
I think Orthodox Jews have the Jamnia view.