CANON
269
CANON
of Canticles) was disputed by some rabbis as late
as the second century of the Christian Era (Mishna,
Yadaim, III. 5; Babylonian Talmud, Megilla, fol. 7).
However differing as to dates, the critics are assured
that the distinction between the Hagiographa and
the Prophetic Canon was one essentially chronolog-
ical. It was because the Prophets already formed
a sealed collection that Ruth, Lamentations, and
Daniel, though naturally belonging to it, could not
gain entrance, hut had to take their place with the
last-formed division, the Kethubim.
(c) The Protocanonical Books and the New Testa- ment. — The absence of any citations from Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles may be reasonably ex- plained by their immutability for N. T. purposes, and is further discounted by the non-citation of the two books of Esdras. Abdias. Nahum, and Sopho- nias, while not directly honoured, are included in the quotations from the other minor Prophets by virtue of the traditional unity of that collection. < >n the one hand, such frequent terms as "the Scripture", the Scriptures", "the holy Scriptures", applied in the N. T. to the older sacred writings, would lead us to believe that the latter already formed a definite fixed collection; but, on the other, tin' reference in St. Luke to "the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, while demonstrating the fixity of the Torah and ■ the Prophets as sacred groups, does not warrant us in ascribing the same fi\ity to the third division, the Palestinian-Jewish Hagiographa. If. as seems certain, the exact con- tent of the broader catalogue of the O. T. Scriptures (that comprising the deutero books) cannot be estab- lished from the N. T., a fortiori there is no reason to expect that it should reflect the precise extension of the narrower and Judaistic Canon. We are sure, of course, that all the Hagiographa were eventually, before the death of the last Apostle, divinely com- mitted to the Church as Holy Scriptures, but we know this as a truth of faith, and by theological deduction, not from documentary evidence in the N. T. The latter fact has a bearing against the Protestant claim that Jesus approved and trans- mitt, d en bloc an already defined Bible of the Pales- tinian Synagogue.
(d) Authors and Standards of Canonicity among the Jews. — Though the O. T. reveals no formal no- tion of inspiration, the later Jews at least must have possessed the idea (ef. II Timothy, iii, 16; II Peter, i, 21). There is an instance of a Talmudic doctor distinguishing between a composition "given by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit" and one supposed to be the product of merely human wisdom. But as to our distinct concept of canonicity, it is a modern idea, and even the Talmud gives no evidence of it. To characterize a book which held an acknowledged ill., in the divine library, the rabbis spoke of it as "defiling the hands", a curious technical expression due probably to the desire to prevent any profane touching of the sacred roll. But though the formal idea of canonicity was wanting among the Jews the
xisted. Regarding the sources of canonicity among the Hebrew ancients, we arc left to surmise an analogy. There are both psychological and his- torical reasons against the supposition that the O. T. Canon grew spontaneously by a kind of instinctive public recognition of inspired books. True, it is quite reasonable to assume that the prophetic office in Israel carried its own credentials, which in a large measure extended to its written compositions. But there were many pseudo-prophets in the nation, and so some authority was necessary to draw the line between the true and the false prophetical writings. And an ultimate tribunal was also needed to set its seal upon the miscellaneous and in some cases mysti- fying literature embraeed in the Hagiographa. Jew- ish tradition, as illustrated by the already cited
Josephus, Baba Bathra, and pseudo-Esdras data,
points to authority as the final arbiter of what was
Scriptural and what not. The so-called Council of
Jamnia (c. A. d. 90) has reasonably been taken as
having terminated the disputes between rival rab-
binic schools concerning the canonicity of Canticles.
So while the intuitive sense and increasingly reverent
consciousness of the faithful element of Israel could,
and presumably did, give a general impulse and direc-
tion to authority, we must conclude that it was the
word of official authority which actually fixed the
limits of the Hebrew Canon, and here, broadly speak-
ing, the advanced and conservative exegetes meet on
common ground. However the case may have been
for the Prophets, the preponderance of evidence
favours a late period as that in which the Hagiographa
were closed, a period when the general body of Scribes
dominated Judaism, sitting "in the chair of Moses",
and alone having the authority and prestige for such
action. The term general body of Scribes has been
used advisedly; contemporary scholars gravely
suspect, when they do not entirely reject, the "Great
Synagogue" of rabbinic tradition, and the matter lay
outside the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin.
As a touchstone by which uncanonical and canon- ical works were discriminated, an important influence was that of the Pentateuchal Law. This was always the Canon par excellence of the Israelites. To the Jews of the Middle Ages the Torah was the inner sanctuary, or Holy of Holies, while the Prophets were the Holy Place, and the Kethubim only the outer court of the Biblical temple, and this medieval conception finds ample basis in the pre-eminence allowed to the Law by the rabbis of the Talmudic age. Indeed, from Esdras downwards the Law, as the oldest portion of the Canon, and the formal ex- pression of God's commands, received the highest reverence. The Cabbalists of the second century after Christ, and later schools, regarded the other section of the O. T. as merely the expansion and interpretation of the Pentateuch. We may be sure, then, that the chief test of canonicity, at least for the Hagiographa, was conformity with the Canon par excellence, the Pentateuch. It is evident, in addi- tion, that no book was admitted which had not been composed in Hebrew, and did not possess the an- tiquity and prestige of a classic age, or name at least. These criteria are negative and exclusive rather than directive. The impulse of religious feeling or litur- gical usage must have been the prevailing positive factors in the decision. But the negative tests were in part arbitrary, and an intuitive sense cannot give the assurance of Divine certification. Only later was the infallible Voice to come, and then it was to declare that the Canon of the Synagogue, though unadulterated indeed, was incomplete. - — (2) The Canon among the Alexandrian Jews (Deutero- canonical Books). — The most striking difference be- tween the Catholic and Protestant Bibles is the pres- ence in the former of a number of writings which are wanting in the latter and also in the Hebrew Bible, which became the O. T. of Protestantism. These number seven books: Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Wis- dom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Machabees, and three documents added t.> protocanonical books, viz., the supplement to Esther, from x, 4, to the end, the Canticle of the Three Youths (Song of the Three Children) in Daniel, iii, and the stories of Susanna and the Elders and Bel and the Dragon, forming the closing chapters of the Catholic version of that book. Of these works, Tobias and Judith were written originally in Aramaic, perhaps in Hebrew; Baruch and I Machabees in Hebrew, while Wisdom and II Machabees were certainly composed in Greek. The probabilities favour Hebrew as the original language of the addition to Esther, and Greek for the enlarge- ments of Daniel.
