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Chapter Five: Structure and Form Content
without structure can overwhelm us. That's why the first sections have
addressed types of literature, historical chronology, civilizations and themes;
another approach that is often helpful for students is to begin with an
understanding of how the anthology itself is structured. What I will do next is
provide several structures to help students grasp what the anthology as a whole
is.
Names and
Order of the Books of the Old and New Testaments with the
Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books (Dates established from Oxford Annotation to
NRSV) :
The Hebrew Scriptures
The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books
The
Number and Sequence of the Books of the Bible(Oxford Companion) THE
OLD TESTAMENT
In Protestant editions of the Bible the Old Testament follows the Hebrew text as regards content, but the books in the second and third divisions are rearranged in sequence and several are divided, making a total of thirty-nine. In Roman Catholic editions the Old Testament contains the
rearranged thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Scriptures plus seven others that
are current in the official Latin Vulgate Bible and that Protestants include
among the Apocrypha. The order of these forty-six books in Vulgate manuscripts
varies greatly; in fact, the manuscripts that have been examined disclose more
than two hundred different ways of arranging the books. In current editions of
Roman Catholic Bibles (including the Douay Version, the Jerusalem Bible, and
the New American Bible), Tobit and Judith stand after Nehemiah; 1 and 2
Maccabees, after Esther (except in the Douay Version, in which these books
conclude the Old Testament); Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, after the Song of
Solomon; and Baruch, with the Letter of Jeremiah as ch. 6, after Lamentations.
Furthermore, the books of Esther and Daniel are expanded by several additional
chapters and parts of chapters, which Protestants regard as apocryphal. They
comprise six Additions to the book of Esther and the following three
supplements to the book of Daniel: the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the
Three Jews, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. In the original Douay Version of 1609-1610 an appendix after the
close of the Old Testament contains three other books, and 4 Esdras (called 1
and 2 Esdras by Protestants) and the Prayer of Manasseh. These are regarded as
apocryphal by Roman Catholics as well as by Protestants. It is curious that in
the Geneva Bible of 1560, widely used by the Puritans, the Prayer of Manasseh
is included in the Old Testament between 2 Chronicles and Ezra, though in the
table of contents it is designated as apocryphal. The Greek Orthodox Church, which uses the Greek Septuagint
Version as its official text, has generally been accustomed to follow the
longer canon of the Old Testament, including in this case also the 151st Psalm
and 3 Maccabees. The Seventh Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea in 787 and the
Council convened by Basil in Constantinople in 869 quote certain Apocrypha as
authoritative. On the other hand, writers who raised the issue concerning the
limits of the canon, such as John of Damascus and Nicephorus, express views
that coincide with those of Athanasius, who adhered to the Hebrew canon. In the
Schism of 1054 the Apocrypha were not an issue, though they became such during
the Protestant Reformation. At that time a short-lived attempt was made by
Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, to promote the adoption of the Hebrew
canon in the Greek Church. Subsequently, however, the Synod of Jerusalem (1672)
condemned Cyril and expressly designated the books of Tobit, Judith,
Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), and Wisdom as canonical. By
way of summary, the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church agree
in regarding as authoritative certain books that they call deuterocanonical and
that Protestants call apocryphal. In addition the following books are
considered apocryphal by Protestants and Roman Catholics, but are in the Greek
canon when indicated. Prayer
of Manasseh (in the Greek canon; in Appendix to Latin Vulgate).
One
can readily understand, therefore, why the reader does not find, for example; 3
and 4 Maccabees directly following 1 and 2 Maccabees. THE NEW TESTAMENT A
comparison of the extant manuscripts of the New Testament discloses that the early Church was accustomed to arrange them in four
groups: (1) the Gospels, (2) the Acts and the General, or Catholic, Letters
(that is, the seven letters which bear the names of James, Peter, John, and
Jude), (3) the Pauline Letters, (4) the Apocalypse (as in the fifth-century
codex Alexandrinus and many other manuscripts). Sometimes the Pauline Letters
precede the Acts and General Letters, thus placing first the books which had
earliest obtained canonical authority (as in the fourth-century codex Sinaiticus
and the sixth-century codex Fuldensis). Within
each of the four groups there was a great variety of order. In the early Western Church the Gospel sequence most commonly
followed was that of Matthew, John, Luke, Mark—namely, the Gospels attributed
to apostles preceding those attributed to disciples of the apostles. The Letter
to the Hebrews had no fixed place; sometimes it stood at the end of the Pauline
Letters, sometimes between Paul’s Letters to churches and those to individuals
(that is, between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy), and occasionally after Romans
(as in the third-century Chester Beatty Papyrus) or after Galatians (as in an
ancestor of the fourth-century codex Vaticanus, as is disclosed by the section
numbers in Vaticanus). In the West the Letters of Peter were frequently placed
first among the General Letters.
Lineages: From
Oxford Notes ...Previous New Testament The
New Testament contains two genealogies of Jesus: one in Matthew 1.1–16, which traces his descent from Abraham, and one in Luke 3.23–38, which reverses the order. While
Matthew’s genealogy is limited to the Abrahamic line, Luke’s goes back to Adam.
Perhaps as a mnemonic device, Matthew or his source divided the generations
from Abraham to Jesus into three groups of fourteen (Matthew
1.17): fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David
to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to Jesus. In
order to maintain the symmetry, the names of the kings Ahaziah, Joash, and
Amaziah were dropped from the second list of fourteen between Joram (Jehoram)
and Uzziah. Other omissions may have occurred in Matthew’s third list of
fourteen, because Luke, who presents a different lineage between Zerubbabel and
Joseph, records nineteen names for the same period. Matthew’s genealogy seems to be intentionally formed around a
predetermined number. Most likely he meant to show that Jesus is a royal
descendant of Abraham and David, in fact a new David: the sum of the numerical
value of the Hebrew consonants in the name “David” (d + w + d = 4 + 6+ 4) is fourteen, and Jesus is
frequently called “son of David” throughout the gospel of Matthew. Four
women appear in Matthew’s list, though they are not found in Luke’s. This is
notable because in biblical times lineage was traced through males. Even more
surprising is that three of these women were non-Israelites: Rahab the
Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite, and (presumably) Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the
Hittite. Their mention anticipates the inclusion of gentiles among Jesus’
disciples (Matthew 28.19). The
genealogy in Luke 3.23–38 has variations in different textual traditions. According
to most Greek manuscripts (followed by the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament), there are 11 × 7
generations from Adam to Jesus (that is, from Adam to Abraham, 3 × 7
generations; from Isaac to David, 2 × 7 generations; from Nathan to Salathiel
(preexilic), 3 × 7 generations; from Zerubbabel (postexilic) to Jesus, 3 × 7
generations). Other Greek manuscripts, the Latin Vulgate, and the Syriac
Peshitta record 76 generations, and some Latin manuscripts list 72 generations.
Most likely Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy back through Abraham to Adam to show
that Jesus is not only the fulfillment of the history of Israel, but also that
he is the savior of the world. Many
attempts have been made to reconcile the two genealogies, which after David
agree in only two names (Shealtiel [Salathiel] and Zerubbabel). Because none of
these attempts have been generally accepted, it is likely that these inconsistent
genealogies serve separate literary functions and are not to be interpreted
like modern registers of pedigree. Matthew’s genealogy is meant to show Jesus’
Davidic, royal descent, and Luke’s to underscore the universal role of Jesus as
Son of God. The
word genealogy occurs twice in a disparaging sense: in 1
Timothy 1.4 (“endless genealogies that promote
speculations”), and in Titus 3.9 (“avoid … genealogies … for they are unprofitable”).
Because the larger contexts refer to myths, the allusions may be to the various
emanations (“aeons”) between God and humankind in gnostic belief. Or, since Titus 1.14 relates to
Jewish myths and 1 Timothy 1.7 calls into question the claims of those who desire to be
teachers of the Law, the genealogies referred to may be based on biblical
sources but elaborated in the same way as the Book of Jubilees and more
generally aggadah. Bruce
M. Metzger
Visual Structure (J. Sidlowe
Baxter) The
following provides an easy memory device for learning an ordering of the books of
the Bible that will stay in the student's mind; all a student has to do
initially is remember 5, 12; 5; 5, 12 or 17; 5; 17 to group the books in the
Old Testament. The New Testament is equally easy: 5, 9; 4, 9. Old Testament 5-Pentateuch Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
Deuteronomy 12—History Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I, II
Samuel, I, II Kings, I, II Chronicles (9
pre-exile) Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (3 post-exile) 5--Writings Job, Psalms, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon 5-Major Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel 12- Minor Prophets (9 pre-exilic) Joel, Amos,
Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah (3
post-exilic) Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi New Testament Links: 6/16/03 The
Bible Library John Drane’s Introducing the Old Testament, HarpersSanFrancisco, 1987.
Law
Books Pentateuch: five books
traditionally associated with Moses, contains accounts of humanity’s
beginnings. (Genesis 1-11), accounts of
Israel’s forefathers (the rest of Genesis), and accounts of Israel’s escape
from Egypt and journey to the promised land (parts of Exodus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy). But above all, it
contains ‘laws’: regulations for religious and social life, and great moral
laws built on the Ten Commandments. History
Books These books tell the story of the Israelites from their
first entry into Canaan until their return there after exile in Babylon. Joshua
and Judges are about the conquest and settlement of the land. The books of Samuel are mainly about Kings
Saul and David, and Kings concerns first Solomon and then the kings of the
divided kingdoms until the monarchy ended with the exile. Chronicles covers similar ground from a different viewpoint, and is linked to Ezra
and Nehemiah and the resto of the stories of the returned exiles. Poetry
and Wisdom Books The book of Psalms
is the hymnbook of the Old Testament, containing a wide variety of poems
on both personal and national themes.
The three wisdom books are very different from each other: Job is a
dramatic poem on the problem of suffering, Ecclesiastes is a set of reflections
on the apparent meaninglessness of existence, and Proverbs is a collection of
wise sayings about everyday living. The
Song of Solomon is a love poem. Book
of Prophecies There were prophets right through Old Testament times, from
Moses on. The prophecies of the great
prophets from the last three hundred years of Old Testament history were
collected in writing. The major prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—are long
books each developing a characteristic understanding of God and his ways. Daniel is part story, part apocrypha. The twelve minor prophets reveal the word of
God as given in a variety of ways at different periods of history. The Bible Narrative People of the Covenant, Oxford
University Press,1996 Narratives of
Creation and Fall Genesis 1-11 These narratives set the background for
understanding the rest of the Hebrew story.
These chapters make profound statements about the creation of the world
and the beginnings of humankind and history: these are questions concerning
primary significance and are not answered easily by science. The fundamental human predicament—that of
separation from God through choice—is addressed by God’s work through Israel’s
history. The questions answered in
these chapters are those of who we are, how we’re related to the world and each
other, and what the nature of ultimate reality is. Almost no historically
concrete data appears: these are events and people representative of humankind.
Genesis makes clear from the beginning that for the Hebrews, human history
begins with the intervention of God as creator: God very simply is stated to
be. From that evolves human history and
its rebellion against the Creator. Responsible
relationship means recognition of God and human beings as significance in
carrying Godly image. Human beings
existentially wrestle with reality and their own egotistical denial of the
sovereignty of the Creator. The
fact that Genesis poses these questions in its first chapters should suggest to
the student that here is enough reason for the reading of this book and the
others that make up this anthology. The
scripture is clear: God (stated simply as fact) created an orderly world.
Whatever else science and religion may disagree on, both agree that light
belonged to the early creation. It might be noted that light is present even
before the creation of the sun.Unlike surrounding mythologies, Genesis makes
clear that the sun and moon are not divinities; they are markers of time—the
difference between day and night. The authority for creation is also clear: God
created by word. Whatever
is recorded in primeval history, the account is taken up from a distance by a
people who are looking back from what is to what has been: the Edenic
experience ends quickly—by chapter three.
From this point--from expulsion from the ideal into the real, from unity
into disunity, alienation, and brokenness—the finite experience is
characterized by aspiration and crushing limitation. History and the space-time box becomes the saga of human
suffering in the god-like act of bridging the pressing dichotomies of the
creature separated from it Creator. Genesis three tells the story sadly: the
Lord God walks in the garden in the cool of the day, but man and wife hide
themselves from Divine presence. They
are naked, vulnerable, and eager to explain away the responsibility for their
acts. The future is clear: for humans,
relentless activity (work), desire, pain, and mortality replace the rest and
blessing of God’s sabbath rest. The
theme will be taken up over and over in the books to come: Canaan will be the
land of promise which can be taken only by the futile actions of human
conquest; the book of Hebrews takes up the story: the Israelites had failed to
enter into God’s rest—“there remains a sabbath rest for the people of Hod; for
whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his
(4.8). Only in Revelation, when the old has passed away, when the dwelling place of God is with us,
will our tears be wiped away, our pain assuaged, and death and mourning be
ended (21.3,4). Genesis through
Revelation is then the story of the journey away from and back to the
ideal—away from and back to unity. The
narrative dips back into the primeval and prehistorical and soars into
futuristic vision. From alienation,
pain, suffering, and despair, the voice of God’s spokespeople—the prophets
among us—return us to what we were and hold out for what we can become. “Israel’s
worship celebrated Yahweh, who was lord and controller of history… the creator
and sustainer of creation” (People of the
Covenant, 96). The faith of the
Hebrew was a faith in the Creator of creation and the Controller of history. The
Biblical narratives are those of the creation and fall, the patriarchal and
matriarchal forebears, the exodus and giving of the law and wanderings in the
wilderness; the story is that of Israel in Canaan, its worship in Jerusalem,
the periods before, after, and during exile; sprinkled in are the narratives of
worship, wisdom, instruction,and poetry. Bible
Transmission
The
collection of thirty-nine books in the Old and New Testament is an anthology of
heterogeneous writings. These are books of history, instruction, and prophecy.
The Old Testament scripturally is called simply Holy Scripture, Scripture, or Law. The common designation is that of “the Law and the Prophets” or
“Moses and the Prophets.” In Luke
(24.44), it is called “Law, prophets, and psalms.” In 130 CE, Jesus ben Sirach
referred to it as “Law, prophets, and other books of our ancestors.” The
Old Testament (Curt Kuhl, The Old Testament, John Knox Press, 1961) is written in West
Semitic Hebrew, the language common to Canaan and Judah. In a very few places,
we find Aramaic. The alphabetical
script is written from right to left in the older books. The Hebrew quadrat
script or Assyrian script appeared after the exile and was introduced by Ezra
for the Torah. The oldest documents
were carved in stone (Exodus 31.18, 34.1), engraved on tablets (Isaiah 30.8,
Habakkuk 11.2) of clay or lead, or written on book rolls with a pen (Psalms
45.1 and Jeremiah 36/18). Ezekiel
speaks of carrying an ink horn at the belt (9.2).The picture of King Jehoiakim
slashing off columns of Scripture dictated by Jeremiah (36.21) is an
unforgettable one suggesting Egyptian papyrus as the material written
upon—later to be replaced by leather or parchment. The translation of the Bible
had to be then a laborious one as well as costly, requiring painstaking copying
and subject to human fallibility. The miracle of miracles is that we have the
old transcripts we have and that we have the intricate unity of the thirty-nine
books recognized as belonging to the canon. The
way in which the books of the Bible are counted leads to the premature
conclusion that books are being omitted; differences in count, however, can be
explained by an old Jewish tradition which counted the twelve minor prophets,
the two books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles as one book; this is also true
of Ezra and Nehemiah. Josephus further
reduced the number by including Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with
Jeremiah. The Oxford
Companion to the Bible summarizes these structural differences at some length: An anonymous tannaitic tradition (Bab. Bat. 14b), no later than ca. 200 ce, lists the order of the books of the Prophets and the
Writings. This presents a problem because the codex form was not adopted by
Jews before the fifth century ce
and because the general and favored scribal practice—with one exception—was to
restrict each scroll to a single biblical book. What then is the meaning of
term “order” in the rabbinic text? The most likely explanation is that it
refers to the manner of storage and the system of classification and cataloguing
in vogue in the libraries and schools of Palestine. The library procedures of
the Hellenistic world would have required each of the three collections of
canonical works to be placed in a separate armarium, with the scrolls arranged
in their appropriately assigned order. The sequence of the Former Prophets following the Pentateuch is:
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings. This arrangement never varies and presents one
long continuous history of Israel from the beginning of the conquest to the
fall of the Judean kingdom, the Babylonian exile, and the release of King
Jehoiachin from prison in 561 bce.
(See Deuteronomic History.) The variations in the order of the books occur in the Latter
Prophets and particularly in the Writings. A majority of manuscripts and most
printed Bibles feature Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, which is the proper
historical order. The above-cited source, however, followed by some
manuscripts, lists Isaiah in third place in juxtaposition with its contemporary
Hosea. Another tradition has Jeremiah after Kings and before Isaiah and
Ezekiel. This is because that prophet was active during the last years of the
monarchy, and Jeremiah
39 and Jeremiah 52 largely duplicate 2
Kings 25. The small prophetic books, generally known as the “Minor Prophets,”
were habitually transcribed onto a single scroll and were collectively
designated “The Twelve” (so already in Sirach 49.10,
ca. 180 bce). Their internal
arrangement is: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk,
Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. This is also the order of a scroll of
the second century ce from Wadi
Murabba>at (See Dead
Sea Scrolls)
containing the Hebrew Minor Prophets, and it apparently reflected traditional
views about their historical sequence. The same order, but with Micah following
Amos and succeeded by Joel, is given in 2 Esdras 1.39–40.
This groups together three prophets of the eighth century bce. The order of the Writings in Hebrew printed Bibles is: Psalms,
Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther,
Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles. Passages like 2 Maccabees 2.13–14 and Luke 24.44 seem to attest to the great antiquity of the
initial place of Psalms. The aforementioned tannaitic source has Ruth before
Psalms due to the concluding genealogy of David, the reputed author of the
Psalter. The Aleppo Codex (end of ninth century ce
and the Leningrad Codex of 1008 ce
both open the Writings with Chronicles, probably because that work duplicates
the Pentateuchal genealogies and much of the Former Prophets. The tannaitic practice, also found in manuscripts and ultimately
standardized in the printed editions, was to conclude the Hebrew scriptures
with Chronicles following Ezra-Nehemiah. This must have been a very early
tradition, for it is reflected in Matthew 23.35
and Luke 11.51. The inversion of the chronological order must
have arisen out of a desire to close the canon on a note of consolation, and to
make the statement that the fulfillment of biblical prophecy involves the
return of the Jewish people to its ancestral land. Apart from this messianic
exegesis, it also serves to encase the Hebrew scriptures within a framework of
historical narrative, for Chronicles begins with Adam and its last sentence
contains the same two key Hebrew verbs of redemption with which Genesis
concludes (pqd, >lh, Genesis
50.24–25; 2 Chronicles 36.23). Christian editions reverse the order of Prophets-Writings, so that
the closing words of Malachi (Malachi
4.5–6 [3.23–24 in Hebrew])
concerning Elijah become transitional to the New Testament, and connect with
the role of John the Baptist (see Matthew 11.13–14; Mark 1.2; Mark
9.11–13; Luke 1.16–17). Least stable in respect of order are the small books in the corpus
of the Writings. The tannaitic source follows Proverbs with Ecclesiastes and
the Song of Solomon because all three are attributed to King Solomon. Most
medieval manuscripts preserve this association in one way or another.
Lamentations, Daniel, and Esther are grouped together since they all belong to
the period of the exile. In medieval times, the Song of Solomon, Ruth,
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther were all clustered together in that
order, based upon their use as lectionaries in the cycle of the Jewish
religious calendar, commencing with Passover. This system became the rule in
the printed editions. Greek Bibles differ considerably from the Hebrew
scriptures in that the books are arranged according to genres of literature.
Ignoring the additional Apocrypha that are interspersed among the canonical
works, the following classification emerges. First comes a narrative-historical
collection that comprises the Pentateuch and Former Prophets, with Ruth
attached to Judges, and Chronicles following Kings. Second is a prophetic
collection consisting of: Isaiah; Jeremiah, to which is adjoined Lamentations
for thematic reasons and traditions of authorship; Ezekiel; Daniel, because he
is regarded as a prophet, a contemporary of Ezekiel, and is identified with the
personality of that name mentioned in Ezekiel 14.14; Ezekiel 14.20; Ezekiel
28.3; and the Twelve in a
slightly different internal order. The two complete Greek codices, the
fourth-century ce Vaticanus and
the fifth-century ce Alexandrinus,
share these characteristics. However, the latter has Esther and Ezra-Nehemiah
immediately after the prophetical collection, while the former places
Ezra-Nehemiah after Chronicles. The third part is a poetic-didactic collection.
Codex Vaticanus has Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Job, and
Esther. The order of Codex Alexandrinus is Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
and Song of Solomon. Also the sequence of the second and third collections
interchanges in the two codices. Canon
Selection Criteria
The
Old and New Testament lay the basis for canonicity differently; in the New
Testament, the emphasis is upon apostolic authority. Other factors are used for the Old Testament: quality of inherent
divine inspiration and authority recognizable to leaders of the Hebrew religious
community through illumination by the Spirit of God (Moses, for example); role
and authorship; and internal consistency of teaching and overall unity of theme
and message; and use of books by the religious community. Moses and the Seventy Prophets(Numbers
11.18-30) God
says to Moses, when he asked why the burden of a people craving meat has been
laid upon him, that he is to find seventy elders: “I will come down and talk to
you there [Moses’ tent]; and I will take some of the spirit which is upon you
and put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden the people with you”
(11.17). A later verse (25) reveals that the Lord came down in a cloud and
rested upon the seventy and they prophesied. Looking
at the human writers of the Bible, one discovers quickly that roles are
important: we find lawgivers, judges, prophets, priests, and kings. The
“Word of the Lord” is largely a reporting of the covenant experience. In the covenant, these books achieve unity
of theme and message. The
religious community studied, copied, and obeyed the books they considered
sacred. Their use of particular
documents no doubt affected canon selection and consistently used books came to
be known as belonging to the canon. Disputed
Books
Some
books were “spoken against” because their interpretation was an issue: Esther
(because it nowhere includes the name of God), Proverbs (more earthly than
divine wisdom), Ecclesiastes (pessimistic and hedonistic overtones), and Song
of Solomon (erotic nature of love poetry); and Ezekiel (due to bizarre antics
and visions and teachings on sacrifice). Apocrypha
This
collection of books comes from the intertestamental period. Depending on
numeration, the apocryphas books are fourteen or fifteen. These books were
composed between 200 BCE and 100 CE. The books are written in Hebrew, Greek,
and Aramaic; they are preserved in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, Copic, Arabic,
Syriac, and Armenian languages. They
include six genres: didactic (teachings), religious, romantic, historical,
prophetic epistolary and apocalyptic, and legendary literature. Martin
Luther’s assessment of the Apocrypha is valid for understanding the Protestant
rejection of the Apocryphal books as canonical: they are not equal to the Holy
Scriptures but are profitable to read and valuable for personal edification.
Pointedly, however, with the rejection of these books, a gap of four hundred
silent years seems to exist between the Old Testament and the New. To learn about this history, one needs to
read these books as well as the early historians. The Oxford Companion describes
the Apocrypha in the following way: The
name, which means “things hidden away,” is inappropriate, since none of these
books (with the possible exception of 2 Esdras) was ever regarded as hidden or
secret. For the most part, they are simply those books found only in
manuscripts of the Septuagint (LXX), the ancient Greek translation of the
Hebrew scriptures, and therefore possibly regarded as “canonical” by
Greek-speaking Alexandrian Jews, though ultimately rejected by the Jewish
community of Palestine and rabbinic authorities of later times (2 Esdras and
the Prayer of Manasseh are not covered by this definition). Their preservation
is largely due to the Christian community, which, for most of the first four
centuries ce, accepted the Greek
Old Testament as normative for its life and thought. In modern times the term
“apocrypha” has been extended more loosely to other books from the later
Hellenistic and early Roman periods but which, so far as we know, never
attained even quasi-canonical status (these books are more commonly designated
as pseudepigrapha), and has also been extended by analogy to a large group of
early Christian writings excluded from the New Testament canon in its final
form. Whatever else is concluded, students should realize that these fourteen books were recognized and widely circulated and read in both early Judaism and Christianity. Judaism began using portions of the Hebrew Bible as early as the period of the Babylonian exile (587 BCE); Christianity shared the Hebrew Bible with Judaism and began producing its own scripture, the letters of Paul being used by some Christians by the end of the first century. The movement is clear: from works of literature, these books were elevated to scripture. What may have happened in the establishing of a canon is that Jews moved to preserve, examine, and reconconsider what God’s will was His people. These characteristics are important for establishing any canon of literature, scriptural or otherwise: an ancient ancestry is preserved; what the past has been, what the present is, and what the future can be becomes clearer by self-examination; and how God has worked decisively in history and the purpose of humankind becomes a significant discovery of careful reconsideration. Because these people, indeed, are our ancestors, then we should want to study our inheritance. Link: Copyright 1997MWSC/Jeanie C. Crain
All
rights reserved.
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