ON THE CANON OF HEBREW SCRIPTURE

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

Historical scholarship shows that there was no single, universally accepted Jewish canon of Scripture in the Second Temple period, when Christ lived on earth and accomplished his temporal ministry. Different Jewish communities recognized different collections of sacred texts, reflecting variations in theology, language, geography, and communal authority, which was hotly contested at the time between Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and various other Rabbinic schools. As a result, the concept of a fixed, uniform “Old Testament” did not exist at the time of Jesus or the Apostles, outside of the Five Books of Moses, which were the uncontested foundation of Jewish and Samaritan identity. 

The Sadducees, who were closely associated with the Jerusalem Temple priesthood and held political control after the Hasmonians, only recognized only the Torah as authoritative Scripture. Ancient sources indicate that they rejected later writings such as the Prophets and the Writings, as well as doctrines like the resurrection of the dead and belief in angels, which they believed were of later invention. This limited scriptural framework is reflected in New Testament encounters between Jesus and the Sadducees, particularly in discussions concerning resurrection, which Jesus not only believed, but ultimately proved. 

The Samaritans likewise preserved a canon consisting solely of the Pentateuch, which is obviously known as the "Samaritan Pentateuch", which differs textually from the later Masoretic Hebrew tradition significantly in both content and the spellings of words. They also centered worship on Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem, where Solomon built the First Temple. Although they shared Israelite ancestry, their scriptural and liturgical traditions developed independently from those of Judean Judaism, due in part to a different view of temple authority, and also because they lacked the editorial process of streamlining the text during the Prophets and after the Babylonian Exile, which is explicitly referred to in Jeremiah 36:9 and Nehemiah 8. This process is documented fastidiously by such scholars as Fr. Paul Tarazi, under whom I had the privilege of studying Bible in the Antiochian House of Studies, and who helped me to understand how this obvious process of telling and re-telling the Ancient Covenant of God was a prophetic work, accomplished by those who had the authority to do so, and directly led into the life and ministry of Jesus Christ... who then fulfilled all these things!

The Pharisees, whose influence increased significantly after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, transmitted a broader body of Scripture that eventually became the basis of Rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud, and the later forms of Judaism that arose in the Medieval and Modern periods. By the early second century, a Hebrew canon corresponding roughly to the 39 books of the modern Protestant Old Testament had become normative within Rabbinic circles. This canon excluded certain texts that were preserved in Greek and other traditions, and especially the Enochian tradition, which the Jews saw as challenging their strict monotheistic views (implying that there were "two powers in heaven"), and explicitly excluded the writings that would later form the New Testament. 

Other Jewish groups maintained even broader collections of sacred writings over history. The Essenes, associated with the Qumran community and the Dead Sea Scrolls, preserved copies of the Torah, Prophets, Psalms, and additional texts such as Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, Jubilees, and 1 Enoch. Their library demonstrates that boundaries between “biblical” and “non-biblical” texts were still fluid in this period. There definition of Scripture is much closer to the Early Christian view, and the texts unearthed in Qumran have silenced much of the extremely critical language that Jews previously had toward the Christian use of the Old Testament, showing that the Christian position was not only historical, but consonant with other schools of Judaism that were either enfolded into Early Christianity or died out due to Roman persecution. 

Greek-speaking Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean world used the Septuagint, "The Seventy," a Greek translation of Jewish Scriptures begun several centuries before the time of Christ in Alexandria, and was the liturgical and congregational text of the Hellenized Jews, from communities like the one that Jesus Ben Sirach headed in Alexandria a century and a half before the time of Christ. The Septuagint includes books later termed “Deuterocanonical” by Christians and was widely read in synagogues of the diaspora, and are heavily associated with the Alexandrian Jewish practice, which many still do not fully realize had its own Temple, its own Sanhedrin, and its own sacramental/sacrificial practice. The New Testament writers frequently quote Scripture in forms that correspond to the Septuagint rather than the later standardized Hebrew text, and many of the Early Christian leaders were of Alexandrian Jewish extraction. 

Ethiopian Jewish communities ("Beta Israel"), which developed in relative isolation from Rabbinic Judaism, preserved additional texts beyond the later Pharisaic canon and in consonance with the Alexandrian tradition. Their scriptural tradition overlaps significantly with the Ethiopian Christian canon, further illustrating the diversity of Jewish textual traditions in ancient days, and undermining the myth of monolithic Scripture as held by a single Jewish community. Ethiopian biblical studies have still not made the mark that they should have upon western scholarship, but Orthodox scholars are quickly realizing the value and importance of reincorporating Amharic/Ge'ez biblical studies into our arsenal of ancient Christian sources that prove the reliability and historicity of the Ancient Christian Scriptural Tradition. 

In summary, Jewish communities of the Second Temple and early post-Temple periods recognized different bodies of scriptural texts: some limited to the Torah, such as the Sadducees and Kerites, and others including prophets and writings, and still others preserving a broader sacred library that reflects the fullness of Christian Tradition, such as the Ethiopian Jews. There was no single, universally binding Jewish canon during this time, and any insistence to the contrary is either a Judaizing or Protestantizing argument. The consolidation of the Hebrew Old Testament would only occur in the 8th and 9th centuries through the work of the Masoretes, and take another five hundred or so years to gain full recognition by the Jewish Community. This means that the Old Testament that the Protestant Reformers took to be both ancient and "original" had only been circulating amongst the Jews for about one hundred years previously. 

This historical context is significant for understanding early Christianity, the Old Testament Canon, and the attitude Christ and His Apostles had on the Bible, and what was transmitted down to the Ancient Church. The earliest Christians inherited their Scriptures through living communities, liturgical use, and apostolic teaching, which was focused on hearing, scribal inheritance, and ritual use of text - not through a fixed biblical list or the later perceived immutability of text proliferated through the printing press. The formation of both Jewish and Christian canons was a gradual process shaped by worship, authority, and communal interpretation rather than by the principle of "Scripture Alone", which is a false, superimposed, anachronistic principle, invented for political purposes and not to reflect the history or culture of ancient Judaism or Christianity. From a historical perspective, then, the Christian Bible emerged within the Church as texts were received as sacred revelation, read publicly, and recognized as apostolic and authoritative, based upon the confirmation of the Holy Spirit found within the communion and practice of the faithful. The development of the canon reflects this ecclesial process rather than a pre-existing, universally defined scriptural collection, which was somehow "dropped from heaven" rather than "preserved in the midst of the congregation."