Thus the evidence of the Bk. of Sirach points to the general conclusion that at the beginning of the 2nd cent. B.c. the whole of the Law and the Prophets, and a considerable number of the Hagio- grapha, were among the accepted components of sacred literature. But how far the idea of a definite list of sacred books, such as we find in later times, had been formulated, or whether the sacred character of such books was officially sanc- tioned by any public authority, are questions which the evidence at present available seems insufficient to determine; and it appears some- what rash to assume, as many writers on the Canon have done, the existence of such an * The fact that these psalms are not separately ascribed to
David, and do not belong to smaller Davidic ups, makes this all the more likely. = ae
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authority without more definite proof. It seems most likely that official sanction, when given, con- firmed rather than created public opinion.
Between the date of Sirach and the promulga- tion of the Hexateuch in 444 there is a complete dearth of evidence, and yet there is reason to believe that this period was the most fruitful in me literary activity to which the Canon of OT is
ue.
(j) Ezra and Nehemiah.—(a) Promulgation of the Hexateuch, B.C. 444.—When we go back to the times of Ezra and Nehemiah we are upon firmer ground. That the later or Eee Code was officially sanctioned is made evident by Neh 8. 9, where there are several references to what criticism has proved to be exilic or post-exilie laws (HEXATEUCH] as distinct from the ancient code of Ex 20-23 and that of Deuteronomy. These chapters of Nehemiah are also important as show- ing the origin of the conception of a Canon. A Divine law binding the people, and publicly read before them that they might understand its pro- visions, is a very intelligible idea. Had we only the account of Nehemiah to go by, we should have imagined that it was the Law proper that was so sanctioned and publicly enforced. But the con- struction of the Hexateuch, 7.e. the Pentateuch and Joshua, points indisputably to the conclusion that the narratives are an integral part of the book. Even supposing that at this time the Priestly Code had not been actually joined to the earlier strata of the Hexateuch (in itself an improbable assumption), yet in all these strata we find law and history intimately associated. The people had long been familiarized with the thought of a Divine purpose in the lives of their ancient fathers. Thus the authority of Ezra and Nehe- miah would have sanctioned the conception of a sacred book, giving the early history of man and especially the Jews, associated especially with the
eat names of Abraham and Moses, and contain- ing in many different forms the rules of a religious life. It would be hardly too much to say that the Hexateuch was the Bible of the Jews of Ezra’s time.
(8) Influence of the Hexateuch on the formation of the Canon.—That the same reverence should have come to be felt for the books of the later history and the works of the great teachers, as they were collected and aa ne is only the natural process of evolution. That in process of time a harvest of more miscellaneous, but all more or less religious, literature of different ages should have been gathered in and prized in its turn with at least something like the same degree of rever- ence, is equally natural. But, it may be asked, Why did this Canon-making process stop? The true answer seems to be that the literary ten- dencies of the period following the fall of Jeru- salem, though vigorous after their kind, were intensely conservative. The learned of that day aimed at reproducing and fixing what they already had, whether written or oral, rather than at pro- ducing. The same influences which caused the publication, to use a modern phrase, of the Mishna, closed the OT Canon. The reverence which the Jews had felt for the sanctuary was now mono- polized by the sacred writings. It was, even more than the preceding ages, an age of scribes, not of authors. If a few did write such ca gg works as 4 Ezra (the 2 Es of the Eng. Apocrypha), no Jew, in spite of the writer's own transparent artifice, dreamed of placing such a work with books long sanctified by age. It is almost inconceivable that Ecclesiastes would have been so soon after accepted as canonical had it, as Griitz would have us be- lieve, been written about this time. Ὁ
For the part attributed by Elias Levita (ἃ, 1549)
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to ‘the Great Synagogue’ in the process of Canon. formin , See art. SYNAGOGUE (THE GREAT), vu. CANONICITY OF THE DIFFERENT DIVISIONS OF THE OT.—From what has already been said, it will be seen that it is very nearly correct to say that the OT was the result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the decisions of the Council of Jamnia. It is how proposed to trace out as far as possible, for the separate ee of the Bible, the history of this process, partly by the help of the evidence already sian and partly by the light of biblical criticism. t may be premised that without a full apprecia- tion of the latter a clear view of the history of the Canon is unattainable. Though, properly speak- ing, the writing of a book or any part of a book is a distinct thing from its authoritative reception, it will be seen that there is often, in fact, a close connexion between the two.