Bible

B

4

The Prophetic Books

Few if any of the prophetic books were written entirely by the person whose name serves as the title. Moreover, in most instances even the words of the original prophet were recorded by others. The story of Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch (see Jeremiah 36; see also Isaiah 8:16) illustrates one of the ways the spoken prophetic words became books. The various utterances of the prophets would have been remembered and collected by their followers and eventually written down. Later, most of the books were edited and expanded. For example, when the Book of Amos (circa 755 bc) was used in the time of the exile, it was given a new and hopeful ending (Amos 9:8-15). The Book of Isaiah reflects centuries of Israelite history and the work of several prophets and other figures: Isaiah 1-39 stems primarily from the original prophet (742-700 BC); chapters 40-55 come from an unknown prophet of the Exile, called Second Isaiah (539 bc); and chapters 56-66, identified as Third Isaiah, come from various writers of the period after the exile.

C

The Canon

The Hebrew Bible and the Christian versions of the Old Testament were canonized in different times and places, but the development of the Christian canons must be understood in terms of the Jewish Scriptures.

C

1

The Hebrew Canon

The idea in Israel of a sacred book dates at least from 621 BC. During the reform of Josiah, king of Judah, when the temple was being repaired, the high priest Hilkiah discovered “the book of the law” (see 2 Kings 22). The scroll was probably the central part of the present Book of Deuteronomy, but what is important is the authority that was ascribed to it. More reverence was paid to the text read by Ezra, the Hebrew priest and scribe, to the community at the end of the 5th century bc (see Nehemiah 8).

The Hebrew Bible became Holy Scripture in three stages. The sequence corresponds to the three parts of the Hebrew canon: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. On the basis of external evidence it seems clear that the Torah, or Law, became Scripture between the end of the Babylonian exile (538 BC) and the separation of the Samaritans from Judaism, probably by 300 bc. The Samaritans recognized only the Torah as their Bible.

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The second stage was the canonization of the Nebiim (Prophets). As the superscriptions to the prophetic books indicate, the recorded words of the prophets came to be considered the word of God. For all practical purposes the second part of the Hebrew canon was closed by the end of the 3rd century, not long before 200 BC.

In the meantime other books were being compiled, written, and used in worship and study. By the time the Book of Sirach was written (circa 180 bc), an idea of a tripartite Bible had developed. The contents of the third part, the Ketubim (Writings), remained somewhat fluid in Judaism until after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70. By the end of the 1st century ad the rabbis in Palestine had established the final list.

Both positive and negative forces were at work in the process of canonization. On the one hand, most of the decisions had already been made in practice: The Law, the Prophets, and most of the Writings had been serving as Scripture for centuries. Controversy developed around only a few books in the Writings, such as Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon (Songs). On the other hand, many other religious books, also claiming to be the word of God, were being written and circulated. These included the books in the present Protestant Apocrypha, some of the New Testament books, and many others. Consequently, the official action of establishing a Bible took place in response to a theological question: According to which books would Judaism define itself and its relationship to God?

C

2

The Christian Canon

The second canon—what is now the Roman Catholic version of the Old Testament—arose first as a translation of the earlier Hebrew books into Greek. The process began in the 3rd century BC outside of Palestine, because Jewish communities in Egypt and elsewhere needed the Scriptures in the language of their culture. The additional books in this Bible, including supplements to older books, arose for the most part among such non-Palestinian Jewish communities. By the end of the 1st century ad, when the earliest Christian writings were being collected and disseminated, two versions of Scripture from Judaism were already in existence: the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Old Testament (known as the Septuagint). The Hebrew Bible, however, was the official standard of belief and practice; no evidence indicates that an official list of Greek Scriptures ever existed in Judaism. The additional books of the Septuagint were only given official recognition in Christianity. The writings of the early Fathers of the Church contain numerous different lists, but it is clear that the longer Greek Old Testament prevailed.

The last major step in the history of the Christian canon took place during the Protestant Reformation. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he rediscovered what others—notably St. Jerome, the 4th-century biblical scholar—had known: that the Old Testament had originated in Hebrew. He removed from his Old Testament the books that were not in the Bible of Judaism and established them as the Apocrypha. This step was an effort to return to the presumed earliest—and therefore best—text and canon, and to establish in opposition to the authority of the church the authority of that older version of the Bible. See Apocrypha; Apocryphal New Testament.

D

Texts and Ancient Versions

All contemporary translators of the Bible attempt to recover and use the oldest text, presumably the one closest to the original. No original copies or autographs exist; rather, hundreds of different manuscripts contain numerous variant readings. Consequently, every attempt to determine the best text of a given book or verse must be based on the meticulous work and informed judgment of scholars.

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