viii. SUMMARY OF RESULTS OBTAINED.—In the foregoing inquiry the following facts seem clearly established :—
(1) Canonicity was, like the composition of the books itself, a gradual process. ‘The Council of Jamnia, for example, gave a formal sanction to what had already become, more or less definitely, the public opinion of Jewish writers.
(2) Such sanction appears to have been, in fact, accidental, that is to say, not by any means essential to the idea of canonicity. All the OT books, with a few possible exceptions, would have won their way into the Canon had no such council decided the matter, just as the NT became canonical without the sanction of a general council.
(3) The history of canonicity cannot be com- pletely separated from the history of the books themselves. The separate parts of a book may have been, and in some cases certainly were, accepted authoritatively before the whole was written. This was especially the case with the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Proverbs.
(4) This consideration, among others, points to the conclusion that canonicity was, in its earliest stages, a question of degree, and even, to some extent, of kind. One book, the Pentateuch, for example, was accepted hecause formally sanctioned by authority ; another acquired its authority from its long acceptance by students and writers; a third, from its liturgical use. Again, various factors contributed to the idea of canonicity ; among them, certainly, real or supposed antiquity, and also, to some extent, aatherehie by some famous person, such as David or Solomon.
(5) Lastly, while the beginnings of canonicity lie in the misty period of ancient Jewish history, it may be said to have reached its final stage at
the Council of Jamnia, where all our OT books were sanctioned; though, on the one hand, the great bulk, at any rate, were practically recognized as canonical long before; and, on the other, some hesitation in isolated cases was not uncommon
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even after the council. Since then, time, habit, and experience have continued to give strength to its decisions.
ix. CLAIMS OF THE APOCRYPHA TO CANONICITY. —So far, the investigation has concerned itself almost exclusively with the Canon accepted by the Jews and by the Reformed Churches of modern times, A few words are necessary concerning the claims of the Apocrypha to canonicity. In the Roman Catholic Church it depends upon the sup- posed inspiration of the Vulgate. Thereis, however, some truth in the canonicity of the Apocrypha. The LXX contained these books very nearly as we have them now in our English Apocrypha. The earliest extant LXX texts are certainly Christian, but the references in Hebrews to Wisdom and Maccabees, to which attention has been alread called, paeeest the probability that the Gree Bible of times was the LXX as we know it. It would thus appear that the Alexandrian Jews were accustomed to group together in their sacred literature a larger collection of books than those contained in the Palestinian Canon and sanctioned at Jamnia. It is, then, a common practice to speak of the Alexandrian Canon as distinct from the Palestinian, and it is at least a significant fact that the only book of the NT (if we make the
ssible exception of the Fourth Gospel) which has
istinet aflinities with Alexandrian thought, con- tains the two striking references just mentioned to the epocryppal books. The term is convenient, no doubt, but it is misleading if it is intended to imply that the Alexandrians τας all their sacred books, whether belonging to the Palestinian Canon or not, on the same footing. It is satisfactory enough if merely intended to mean that they made no definite distinction between the Canon and the Apocrypha. Thestatement (see above) that Philo, ¢.g.,never quotes the Apocryphal books as canonical, is to some extent outweighed, as already suggested, by his peculiar views of inspiration. His theory of an extended, if graduated, inspiration tended to weaken the conception of a special Canon. The fact that rather a ieee number of OT books * are not quoted by Philo at all, perhaps ae in the same direction. Dr. Sanday sees in the distinction between the so-called Palestinian and Alexandrian Canons the difference between the more strictly religious school and those who welcomed a wider, if more secular, culture (Jnspiration, p. 93). With reference to the quotation of the Apocrypha by Christian Fathers, it may be enough to observe that even the ultra-Alexandrian Origen very definitely recognized that the books of the Pales- tinian Canon were in a special sense those of the Covenant (testament).
The sporadic inclusion, so to speak, of altogether uncanonical books as Scripture in the NT or else- where, such as the quotation from the Bk. of Enoch in Jude,t shows that, while a small body of learned Jewish experts in Palestine had formulated a fixed Canon, there were others whose critical knowledge was less exact, and who therefore in- cluded within their conception of Scripture a far wider circle of books. [
x. SOME PECULIARITIES IN THE EVIDENCE OF THE NT AND FATHERS.—It is hardly necessary to do more than mention the curious omission by some Eastern Christian writers of well-established OT books, such as the omission of Chronicles (with Ezra and Nehemiah) and Job by Theodore of Mopsuestia and the Nestorian Canon [8 Buhl, Ρ. 53). Such omissions must be regarded as eccen- tricities outside the general current of canonical