Old testament canon, (Hastings' Dictionary)

i. Definition of the term ‘Canon.’ i ΞΟ ἘΦ Se on of the Reformed Churches and the Ro: Church compared. ats iv. Jewish origin of OT Canon. y. Divisions of Hebrew Bible—their significance. vi. Evidence for the Jewish Canon— (a) Baba Bathra. (Ὁ) Talmudic extracts concerning disputed books. (c) Council of Jamnia. (d) The Second Book of Esdras. (e) Josephus.

ΟἽ The New Testament: (1) the way in which the OT was regarded by our Lord and His disciples ; (2) books of Scripture quoted or referred to in NT; (8) NT evidence to extra-canonical books; (4) 2 aa estimate of NT evidence. ilo. πὴ Prologue to Sirach. Ὁ Sirach. Ezra and Nehemiah: («) prom Hexateuch ; (8) influence of the the formation of the Canon. tion of the exateuch on vii.

Canonicity of the different divisions of the OT— (a) Preparatory stage, culminating in the cancnization of the Hexateuch by Ezra-Nehemiah, @ The prophetico-historical Canon. οὖ The canonicity of the Hagiographa. Summary of results obtained. Claims of the Apocrypha to canonicity. Some peculiarities in the evidence of the NT and Fathera . ‘The influence of our present knowledge of the OT Canon upon religion. Kure Literature. i. DEFINITION OF THE TERM ‘CANON.

’—The word ‘Canon’ may be roughly defined as the list of books authoritatively declared to be Holy Scripture. Speaking a priori, the authority by which they are so declared may differ in degree and even in kind. It may be, for example, that of a Church Council having power to lay down the law for the whole Church, or it may be the expression of an enlightened public opinion, or, again, the opinion of a few leading scholars, whose views have gradually found general acceptance.

For authoritatively declared it might therefore be deemed suflicient to substitute wniversally received ; but it is preferable to start with a wider definition, leaving the nature of the Ἀπ ΠΌΣΙΣ ft be decided in each case by the evidence.

he term Holy Scripture suggests—(1) in some peculiar sense a Divine origin, (2) in connexion with this a special sanctity distinguishing Scripture from all other books, (3) reading for devotion or edification in public worship, (4) quotations for the purpose of establishing doctrine or argument.

But only the first, or perhaps we should say the first two, and even these with some necessary modification, can be considered as belonging to the n con- notation of the idea; the second, third, and fourth are obviously the result of the first, and all are to some extent questions of degree.

In the Jewish Church several of the books which are unquestion- ably canonical are not read even now, and have never been read, in public worship, namely Chron- icles, Job, Proverbs, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. On the other hand, in the English Church, not to mention the Protestant communities, parts of several books are read in public worship, such as Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch, which are not received as canonical ; whereas the canonical Song of Songs is altogether omitted.

Again, a difference of degree, and even to some extent of kind, in the inspiration of the various books has been generally admitted ; while, on the other hand, many writers have recognized that we have no right to deny inspiration altogether to books outside the Canon. This was admitted even by Jewish writers, as we may see from the following quotation from the Talmud: ‘According to R. Judah, Samuel said, “‘Esther does not defile the hands” [t.e. is not canonical ; see below].

Could Samuel have meant ἊΝ this that the Bk. of Esther was not the work of the Holy Spirit? No, he meant that it was pro- duced by the Holy Spirit, but only for esding. not as Holy Scripture’ (Bab. Meg. 7a, quoted by Buhl, Eng. tr. p. 31). Here we see that it might be sup- posed that a Jewish Rabbi regarded a book as inspired in the highest sense, and yet as not a part of Holy Scripture.

The subject of Inspira- tion goes far beyond our present inquiry ; it will be enough here to state that from the earliest times, among both Jews and Christians, it entered ree as largely as it does now into the idea of oly Scripture ; whereas the holiness of Scripture was felt even more keenly by the Jews of the early Christian era than among the Christians of the present day. With the Jews, as we might have expected, the thought of the holiness of Scripture took a τοῖν material form.

We see this in the jealousy wit which they regarded the slightest alteration in the text, and in the highly fanciful symbolica] OLD TESTAMENT CANON meanings that came to be attached to what were originally (many of them) the purely accidental idiosynerasies of a single Hebrew MS. The formal establishment of this as the authorized text is probably the work of the school of Jamnia in the early part of the 2nd cent. A.D.

But the πες which gave rise to it was certainly much older, and is probably referred to by our Lord in Mt 5%. The words ‘one jot or one tittle’ have much more point if they ba ea the spiritual counterpart to the exact literalism of the Rabbis of His day, which made the alteration of the smallest letter or particle of a letterasin.

This materialistic view of the sanctity of Scripture appears even more curiously in the definition of what we should call canonical books as those which ‘defile the hands,’ the idea being that the desecration of a holy thing, as by touch, required expiation much in the same manner as material defilement. To avoid this ‘defilement’ the books which were read in the synagogue were covered.

Thus we hear that at a certain period, before the canonicity of Esther was pas d established, wrap- pings of the rolls of that book were declared b certain teachers to be unnecessary (Bab. Sanh. 100a, referred to by Buhl, p. 31). ii. SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT.—We have, then, to consider what books belong or should belong to the Canon of the OT in the sense already explained, and if possible when and how they received ecclesi- astical sanction.

The plan proposed is first to trace the evidence backwards, and afterwards to reconstruct, as far as the evidence allows, a con- nected history of the Canon. iii. CANON OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES AND