The Formation of the Jewish Canon

✍ Scribed by Timothy H. Lim (editor); John Collins (editor)

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 302
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides unprecedented insight into the nature of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament before its fixation. Timothy Lim here presents a complete account of the formation of the canon in Ancient Judaism from the emergence of the Torah in the Persian period to the final acceptance of the list of twenty-two/twenty-four books in the Rabbinic period.

 

Using the Hebrew Bible, the Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the Letter of Aristeas, the writings of Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature as primary evidence he argues that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 CE there was not one official “canon” accepted by all Jews; rather, there existed a plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities. Examining the literary sources and historical circumstances that led to the emergence of authoritative scriptures in ancient Judaism, Lim proposes a theory of the majority canon that posits that the Pharisaic canon became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
1. Modern and Ancient Views of the Canon
2. The Emergence Of The Canon Reconsidered
3. The Earliest Canonical Lists and Notices
4. The Torah in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
5. The Letter of Aristeas and its Early Interpreters
6. The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira and 2 Maccabees
7. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Authoritative Scriptures
8. The Holy Books of the Essenes and Therapeutae
9. Canon in the Gospels and Pauline Letters
10. The Formation of the Jewish Canon
Appendix 1: Some Modern Canons
Appendix 2: Early Canonical Lists
Appendix 3: Bryennios’ and Epiphanius’ Lists
Appendix 4: Extra-Canonical Jewish Writings and the Pauline Letters
Appendix 5: Scriptural References in Sirach 44–50
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index of Subjects
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources