N
Nereus
Guest
To objectively examine the Deutero-canon in detail, we must go back all the way to 598 B.C when Israel was conquered under King Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar. The Judean nation would be conquered under the reign of King Zedekiah, by the same enemy force nine years later. The majority of the Israeli population was deported while a small amount were allowed to stay back and work among the vines and fields. In Judah however, a man of royal descent with ten men, murdered the Babylonion appointed governor, and then led a large number of Judeans to Egypt. Thirty seven years later, in 561 B.C, Cyrus conquered Babylon and the Israeli captivity ended. Their return to their homeland was chronicled by both Ezra and Nehemiah. However not all returned home for some returning to Judea, finding that their family was in Egypt also headed in that direction.
Two centuries passed by. Alexander the Great reigned, and after his conquest of Egypt, he founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C. In the hands of those that would succeed him, Alexandria would have both an economic and population explosion. A harbor would be formed in 297 B.C, and a lighthouse built that is included among the Seven Wonders. But it was Alexandria’s museum that was best known as the city had become a source for research and study. Scientists and scholars were drawn there. It is not a stretch to credit Alexandria as being the center of intellectual thought. Alexandria also hd the largest library in the world, having almost 900 000 volumes, all of which were lost in 47 B.C when the library was burnt down.
The city, where Egyptians were a minority, had the Jews as holding a third of the population and the Greeks with another third. The Hebrew language began to die around the third century B.C, and because of this Demetrius of Phaleron, the libraries curator, requested that the Law of Moses be translated into Greek and be placed in the Alexandrian library. The entire Torah was compiled and translated and this is very likely the origins of the Septuagint. The Septuagint would become quite popular for the main reason that it was written in the popular language of the day.
What is strange about the Septuagint is that it is believed that included the Deutero-canonical writings. Granted the oldest copies of the Septuagint date from the fourth century, but it is still widely held that it did contain these writings. Accepting this as true, most scholars view this Alexandrian canon as being a deviation of the Hebrew canon that would have been accepted by the Israelis.
Yet others view the Alexandrian canon as being more correct, viewing the Hebrew canon, which does not hold the Deutero-canon as being the actual deviation. They belive that it was only at Jamnia in 90 A.D where the Jews of Israel decided to drop these books. This belief was propsed by an early Church father and has been adopted by some scholars. It is based almost entirely on Justin Martyr’s accusation that the ‘Jews had mutilated the Holy Writ.’ The assertion is outweighed by the historian Josephus, who writing twenty years before Jamnia, was unaffected by their supposed resolutions.
Josephus writes: “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us disagreeing and contradicting one another but only twenty two books...†(All agree that the twenty-two Books that Josephus and many early Church fathers, are simply the thirty-nine books accepted in the Protestant church today).
Josephus favored the Hellinist Alexandrians, but affirmed that the members of Israel had only twenty two books. Philo, a philosopher before Josepus, was himself an Alexandrian, and a Jew. In his writings he quotes the Old Testament without pause, but never once quotes from the Deuteo-canon.
Thus, it seems more likely that it was the Alexandrian canon that deviated from the Hebrew one. It is very difficult to accept (impossible more accurately) that the Alexandrians would have established an official canon apart from Jerusalem. This would have caused not just a stir, and some friction, but would have caused a rupture so large that the Reformation may have paled in comparison. Of such an event, we would have heard, yet Josephus, nor any historian states that such an event occurred. In fact Josephus speaks of the harmony on the Hebrew Bible, “During so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as to either add anything to tem or take them away...â€Â
So while considering them, and placing them as part of the Septuagint,
the Alexandrians must have placed a lower degree of sanctity and authority on them. That is not to say that they did not consider them the inspired Word of God, but only that after placing them among their Sacred Writings, they did nothing to promote officially their canonical status.
Kelly J. Wilson
Two centuries passed by. Alexander the Great reigned, and after his conquest of Egypt, he founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C. In the hands of those that would succeed him, Alexandria would have both an economic and population explosion. A harbor would be formed in 297 B.C, and a lighthouse built that is included among the Seven Wonders. But it was Alexandria’s museum that was best known as the city had become a source for research and study. Scientists and scholars were drawn there. It is not a stretch to credit Alexandria as being the center of intellectual thought. Alexandria also hd the largest library in the world, having almost 900 000 volumes, all of which were lost in 47 B.C when the library was burnt down.
The city, where Egyptians were a minority, had the Jews as holding a third of the population and the Greeks with another third. The Hebrew language began to die around the third century B.C, and because of this Demetrius of Phaleron, the libraries curator, requested that the Law of Moses be translated into Greek and be placed in the Alexandrian library. The entire Torah was compiled and translated and this is very likely the origins of the Septuagint. The Septuagint would become quite popular for the main reason that it was written in the popular language of the day.
What is strange about the Septuagint is that it is believed that included the Deutero-canonical writings. Granted the oldest copies of the Septuagint date from the fourth century, but it is still widely held that it did contain these writings. Accepting this as true, most scholars view this Alexandrian canon as being a deviation of the Hebrew canon that would have been accepted by the Israelis.
Yet others view the Alexandrian canon as being more correct, viewing the Hebrew canon, which does not hold the Deutero-canon as being the actual deviation. They belive that it was only at Jamnia in 90 A.D where the Jews of Israel decided to drop these books. This belief was propsed by an early Church father and has been adopted by some scholars. It is based almost entirely on Justin Martyr’s accusation that the ‘Jews had mutilated the Holy Writ.’ The assertion is outweighed by the historian Josephus, who writing twenty years before Jamnia, was unaffected by their supposed resolutions.
Josephus writes: “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us disagreeing and contradicting one another but only twenty two books...†(All agree that the twenty-two Books that Josephus and many early Church fathers, are simply the thirty-nine books accepted in the Protestant church today).
Josephus favored the Hellinist Alexandrians, but affirmed that the members of Israel had only twenty two books. Philo, a philosopher before Josepus, was himself an Alexandrian, and a Jew. In his writings he quotes the Old Testament without pause, but never once quotes from the Deuteo-canon.
Thus, it seems more likely that it was the Alexandrian canon that deviated from the Hebrew one. It is very difficult to accept (impossible more accurately) that the Alexandrians would have established an official canon apart from Jerusalem. This would have caused not just a stir, and some friction, but would have caused a rupture so large that the Reformation may have paled in comparison. Of such an event, we would have heard, yet Josephus, nor any historian states that such an event occurred. In fact Josephus speaks of the harmony on the Hebrew Bible, “During so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as to either add anything to tem or take them away...â€Â
So while considering them, and placing them as part of the Septuagint,
the Alexandrians must have placed a lower degree of sanctity and authority on them. That is not to say that they did not consider them the inspired Word of God, but only that after placing them among their Sacred Writings, they did nothing to promote officially their canonical status.
Kelly J. Wilson