Tuvo the wizard king - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

William Cloud Hicklin · 01-29-2009, 12:30 PM

Unfortunately we have very little direct evidence of the formation of the Old Testament canon. The oldest extand manuscripts are those from Qumran near the Dead Sea, which only give a partial picture of a dissident sect's library, and only in the 1st Century CE. (Aside from the Dead Sea scrolls, the earliest surviving Hebrew scriptures are medieval, the Masoretic texts).

We do have various copies and part-copies, mostly Christian, in Greek and Syriac; but, again, these are removed from the originals by a very wide span of years. What we do know is that the Septuagint (3rd-1st c. BCE) included a number of books which were excluded from the 'Palestinian canon', the Jewish and Protestant Old Testaments; but when the ketuvim "Writings" were selected the Song made the cut. Why? Who knows? Why is Ecclesiastes in and Ecclesiasticus out?

It does seem to be the case that the concept of a definitive Canon was not yet fixed; the New Testament authors (all of them originally Jews) quote from Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses, and Psalm 151.

01-29-2009, 12:30 PM	#38
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	Unfortunately we have very little direct evidence of the formation of the Old Testament canon. The oldest extand manuscripts are those from Qumran near the Dead Sea, which only give a partial picture of a dissident sect's library, and only in the 1st Century CE. (Aside from the Dead Sea scrolls, the earliest surviving Hebrew scriptures are medieval, the Masoretic texts). We do have various copies and part-copies, mostly Christian, in Greek and Syriac; but, again, these are removed from the originals by a very wide span of years. What we do know is that the Septuagint (3rd-1st c. BCE) included a number of books which were excluded from the 'Palestinian canon', the Jewish and Protestant Old Testaments; but when the ketuvim "Writings" were selected the Song made the cut. Why? Who knows? Why is Ecclesiastes in and Ecclesiasticus out? It does seem to be the case that the concept of a definitive Canon was not yet fixed; the New Testament authors (all of them originally Jews) quote from Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses, and Psalm 151. __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.