THE SAMARITAN CANON

The relationship between the peoples of Israel and Judah had always been marked with suspicion and distrust and, on occasion, open hostility. When Solomon's empire was divided after his death, tensions between the two nations were never resolved. The destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians and the deportation of thousands of Israelites had not eliminated Yahweh worship in the northern kingdom but had tended to center the cult in Judah. What form the worship of Yahweh took in the Assyrian-held province of Israel is not known. In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, Jewish-Samaritan hostility reached a new peak, and the Samaritans became openly hostile to the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the temple, partially, no doubt, from fear of any form of neo-Judaean power that might affect Samaritan political or theological well-being. When the Samaritan temple was constructed (probably in the fourth century)⁵ the Samaritans, like their Jewish neighbors, possessed a body of sacred scripture consisting of the Torah or Pentateuch, which differs at many points with the Jewish Hebrew text and in some instances supports LXX readings. The exclusion of prophetic and hagiographic writings suggests that the schism took place before these collections had attained authoritative standing, although it is possible that the many anti-Ephraim statements in the prophets may have made these works unacceptable.

THE "ALEXANDRIAN CANON"

In reality, there is no "Alexandrian canon," for the Jews of Alexandria never officially canonized the LXX. The term, a misnomer, is used to designate the combined Jewish canon (Tanak) and the Apocrypha.

When the LXX was formed, the Jews had placed limits only on the Torah and the prophets. The authority of the larger group of writings out of which the Kethubhim were to be selected, had not yet been determined, although some sort of selective process must have been at work, for the LXX did not include such other well-known Jewish documents as Enoch or Jubilees or other writings now relegated to the Pseudepigrapha. What principles determined the contents of the LXX beyond the Law and the Prophets is not known.

THE QUMRAN SCRIPTURES

Like their fellow Jews, the sectaries of Qumran made use of writings now included in the Jewish Bible, with the possible exception of Esther of which no fragment has, as yet, been found. They also possessed copies of Ben Sira's work and Tobit, as well as Jubilees (at least ten copies), Enoch and The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs which are today placed in the Pseudepigrapha. In addition, they consulted writings that appear to have been uniquely their own, including a collection of thanksgiving hymns, a manual of the order of the community ("The Manual of Discipline"), an apocryphal scroll called "The Wars of the Sons of Darkness versus the Sons of Light," a Genesis Apocryphon, a copper "treasure" scroll, commentaries on the books of Nahum and Habakkuk and numerous other writings. Clearly, the library of Qumran was not limited to books later adopted by the Jews as authoritative. At the same time, there is no way to determine how the Qumran sect weighted the authority of individual writings. Jubilees, on the basis of manuscript counting, appears to have been a popular work, and is quoted in one of the sect's documents, The Damascus Document, but one cannot assume that it was given more weight than the book of Isaiah which was also represented by several copies.

THE SCROLL OF THANKSGIVING HYMNS FROM QUMRAN. Among the writings recovered from Qumran was a collection of hymns of thanksgiving, apparently composed by members of the sect. The hymns are not unlike the psalms of thanksgiving in the Bible. The scrolls were composed of parchment leather and were wrapped in linen. Decomposition was due to natural aging brought on by time and some moisture, and in some cases increased by rodents nibbling the edges of the manuscripts.

THE JEWISH CANON

The earliest reference to the Jewish canon is in Josephus' defense of the Jewish faith, Contra Apion 1:8, in which he states that the Jews have only twenty-two "divine" books. He explains that "of these, five belong to Moses," and that to encompass the period between Moses and Artaxerxes "the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their time in thirteen books," and "the remaining four books contain hymns to God." The thirteen "prophetic books" include Joshua, Judges, I-II Samuel (one book), I-II Kings (one book), I-II Chronicles (one book), Ezra-Nehemiah (one book), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, The Twelve (one book), Job, Daniel and Esther. Ruth was probably combined with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah. The "hymns" incorporated Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. Josephus' listing represents what came to be the Jewish canon, although scholars were wrestling with problems of the authority of certain writings at the very time he was writing.

OPENING A SCROLL. Some scrolls were opened with relative ease; others demanded meticulous care and a maximum of patience. Here Prof. H. Bieberkrant works on one of the more difficult scrolls.

After the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, a colony of Jewish scholars led by Johanan ben Zakkai gathered at Jabneh or Jamnia, a village located near the Mediterranean about thirty miles west of Jerusalem, and by A.D. 90 were in deep discussion about the canon. Ben Zakkai had escaped from Jerusalem during the siege-according to one tradition, in a coffin-and was permitted by Vespasian, who was then a general, to establish a school at Jamnia. Ben Zakkai was a Pharisee, a well-known product of the famous school of Hillel.⁶ Sacrifice had ceased with the destruction of the temple. It was clear that the future of Judaism would have to be anchored in the Scriptures. If the Scriptures were to be the norm for faith, it was imperative that the authoritative writings be separated from all others. Jews of the Dispersion had taken a somewhat freer attitude toward sacred writings than the Jews of Palestine. Moreover, the Christian sect, which was fast developing into a religion apart from Judaism, employed Jewish writings, including some of questionable authority, to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. Because it was commonly believed that inspiration had ceased in Ezra's time, there was really little point in keeping the canon open, and there was danger that some Jews, not so well informed, might continue to use questionable material or begin to use Christian writings in matters of the faith. Finally, there was a growing desire to determine the official text and to keep that text free of scribal errors, and without an official canon this was almost impossible to accomplish.

There were no problems concerning the Law. Among the prophetic writings, only Ezekiel came under serious discussion. Certain conflicts with the Torah, which was considered to be the supreme and final source of revelation, had to be resolved (cf. Ezek. 46:6; Num. 28:11) It is said that Hananiah ben Hezekiah ben Garon, a follower of Shammai, labored day and night, burning 300 barrels of oil, to harmonize the discrepancies.⁷ Esther was accepted after much debate because of its association with Purim, and because it was said to have been revealed to Moses.⁸ The greatest controversies were concerned with Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. Ecclesiastes was judged by the followers of Shammai to be a product of Solomon's own wise speculation, but members of the Hillel school judged it a divinely inspired document. The final decision, that the book was a product of the Holy Spirit, was debated for centuries. The Song of Songs, after much discussion, was finally admitted to the canon as an allegory of God's love for Israel. Perhaps Rabbi Akiba, the famous scholar of the second century A.D., put the quietus to the argument with his emphatic declaration, "All the Scriptures are holy; but the Song of Songs is holiest of all."⁹

The principles guiding the rabbis in the selection of sacred books have not come down to us in any clear-cut delineation but appear to have included the following:

1. The writing had to be composed in Hebrew. The only exceptions, which were written in Aramaic, were Daniel 2-7, writings attributed to Ezra (Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26), who was recognized as the founding father of post-Exilic Judaism, and Jer. 10:11. Hebrew was the language of Sacred Scripture, Aramaic the language of common speech.
2. The writing had to be sanctioned by usage in the Jewish community. The use of Esther at Purim made it possible for it to be included in the canon. Judith, without such support, was not acceptable.
3. The writings had to contain one of the great religious themes of Judaism, such as election, or the covenant. By reclassifying the Song of Songs as an allegory, it was possible to see in this book an expression of covenantal love.
4. The writing had to be composed before the time of Ezra, for it was popularly believed that inspiration had ceased then. Jonah was accepted because it used the name of an early prophet and dealt with events before the destruction of Nineveh, which occurred in 612. Daniel, a pseudonymous writing, had its setting in the Exile and therefore was accepted as an Exilic document.

The canon produced by the Jamnia Council is usually dated in A.D. 90, but in reality represents the results of discussions taking place over many years. The canon was not closed easily. Debates over controversial books continued, and some writings, such as that by Ben Sira, continued to be pushed toward canonization. Ultimately the canonical norm was fixed in accordance with the decisions of Jamnia to include Torah, Nebhiim and Kethubhim. The three-fold division reflects the order of priority. Within the last two divisions, there was some fluctuation in arrangement of books. The poetic books-Psalms, Proverbs and Job-were grouped and placed first in the Kethubhim, perhaps because of the religious significance of the Psalter. Next, the five festal scrolls (Megilloth) used in Jewish festivals were brought together in the order in which they now appear in the Tanak: The Song of Songs, which was recited at Passover; Ruth, which was used in the Festival of Weeks; Lamentations, which was associated with the commemoration of the fall of Jerusalem; Ecclesiastes, which was associated with the feast of Tabernacles and Esther, which was read at Purim. Daniel, treated as a prophetic work, followed Esther, and finally came the historical works-Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles.

Gerald A. Larue

Chapter 32 - Texts, Manuscripts and Translations

THE task of the textual critic, to recover, insofar as possible, what the original writer wrote, is formidable. No autographs have been found, and in some instances our oldest manuscripts are separated by many centuries from the original writing. We are dependent upon the work of copyists, and some of these made many errors. A glance at photographic reproductions of the Qumran documents demonstrates the fallibility of copyists in scribal schools,¹ for it is apparent that, from time to time, the scribe himself recognized and corrected his own errors.

The importance of protecting manuscripts from mutilation was slowly recognized by the Jews, and by the time this awareness had become a principle, numerous additions had been made to some documents, as we have seen in the literary analysis of the texts. Books were reproduced in quantity in scribal schools and, on occasion, by special request for some wealthy collector. Because there was no sense of literary ownership or copyright, there was no reason why additions or deletions might not be made. Only when books acquired sanctity and authority were efforts made to maintain the purity of the text. The first major step toward accurate preservation came with canonization, and even after that, both voluntary and accidental changes were made.

Before attempting to recover the text, the textual critic makes certain basic assumptions. First, he assumes that the original author would not deliberately write a text devoid of meaning. If the text before him is incoherent, it is because it does not accurately represent the original. Second, he works believing that no text is to be treated as though it were infallible in all of its parts. Even the best texts are based on earlier works that may contain errors, and the most careful copyist may make mistakes. Third, he does not assume that earlier manuscripts are automatically better than later ones. Late manuscripts may accurately reproduce good early copies, and an early copy may be the work of a careless scribe. When it is possible, the text critic may attempt to ascertain the ancestry of a document. Certain "families" of manuscripts tend to be more reliable than others. Fourth, he treats with cautious respect quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament, early Church fathers and early rabbinic sources. Quotations may be from memory and may be generally correct, but not precise,² or may be a compilation of several sources.³ Fifth, where the text appears to be meaningless, he may, with extreme caution, venture conjectural emendations. Such emendations presuppose exhaustive knowledge of the textual history and languages involved.⁴ A partial list of the most common errors found in manuscripts includes:

1. Dittography or the repetition of a letter, syllable, word, clause or sentence. Once such an error was made, it was faithfully reproduced. In the Hebrew text of Lev. 20:10, the first five Hebrew words "If a man commits adultery with the wife of . . ." are repeated. The translators of the King James Version of the Bible incorporated the dittography in the English text, but in the Revised Standard Version the repetition is eliminated by placing one statement in the footnotes.
2. Confusion in transmitting letters. Many Hebrew letters look enough alike that, unless care is taken in writing, confusion may result. Because the Hebrew letters "n" and "r" were confused, the name of the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar was transmitted as "Nebuchadnezzar." When the letter "m" was confused with a "b" the name Merodoch-Baladan in II Kings 20-12 appeared as "Berodoch-Baladan."⁵
3. Errors of hearing. When the reader dictated from a master scroll and the scribe misunderstood, something that sounded like the original words was often recorded. On this basis, Psalm 100:3 was written "and not we ourselves" rather than "and we are his." The change in preferred readings of this verse may be seen by comparing the passage in the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version.
4. Errors of seeing, such as homoioteleuton. When the scribe copied from a manuscript and his eyes skipped from a line ending in one word to another line ending in the same word, all intervening material was omitted. This is what happened in I Sam. 14:41, which reads:

   "Therefore Saul said, O Yahweh, God of Israel why hast thou not answered thy servant this day? If the guilt is in me or in Jonathan, my son, O Yahweh, God of Israel, give Urim; But if the guilt is in thy people Israel, give Thummim."

   The scribe moved from the word "Israel" in the first line to the word "Israel" in the next-to-last line and omitted the italicized portion. The full reading was preserved in the LXX.
5. Deliberate changes. On occasion, a scribe might deliberately alter a reading to make it conform to his beliefs. We have noted the change in the name of one of Saul's sons from Ish-ba'al ("man of Ba'al") to Ish-bosheth ("man of shame") by someone who disapproved of Hebrew royalty bearing the name of a Canaanite deity.

These and other errors demand of the textual critic a high degree of perspicacity. Sometimes he can determine precisely what happened to cause a particular textual variation, but at other times he can only guess.

Until the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, the earliest Hebrew biblical manuscripts were from the ninth century A.D. Pious Jews destroyed worn-out copies to prevent them from falling into impious hands. There were, of course, earlier versions in other languages. With the discovery of the Scrolls, scholars were enabled to move back nearly 1,000 years in the history of the Hebrew text.⁶ The fidelity of textual transmission was obvious, for despite numerous variations no major alteration of the text had taken place.⁷ Some Qumran manuscripts are closer to the LXX or Samaritan than to the Hebrew text, demonstrating that manuscripts with varying texts were in circulation during the first centuries B.C. and A.D., and that no one text had attained unique priority among the scribes of Qumran.

As Hebrew and Aramaic continued to be living languages during the first 500 years of the Christian era, there was little cause for concern about proper reading of the text. When these languages began to die, a group of Jewish scholars known as Massoretes⁸ came into being in Babylon and Palestine. Their work embraces a period roughly between A.D. 600 and 1000. They were, in a sense, successors to the scribes and deeply concerned with the purity and preservation of the text, but their efforts extended beyond care in copying because of the emergence of new problems. The Hebrew text had been written without any division between words.⁹Because Hebrew and Aramaic had become dead languages, the words were separated to give ease in reading. To keep the text constant, the Massoretes developed mechanical checks and counted the number of words and letters, noted the number of times the divine name was used or special words appeared, and determined the middle verses, words and letters of individual books. Any manuscript that failed on any of these counts was defective. Efforts were made to correct scribal errors, although some "corrections" appear to have been made on dogmatic grounds.¹⁰ The Hebrew text had been recorded without vowels.¹¹ The Massoretes invented a vowel system which was added to the text to preserve correct pronunciation. Where the Massoretes questioned the reading, special notations were added, and the Massoretes distinguished between Kethib, what is written, and Qere, what is to be read. Perhaps the best known alteration was the placing of the vowels of 'Adonai under the tetragrammaton YHWH, indicating that although the name is written YHWH ( Kethib) it is to be read 'Adonai ( Qere). Most other notations of this kind rest upon grammatical rather than dogmatic reasoning. Massoretic notes placed in the margins of manuscripts became so extensive that they had to be compiled separately.

Not all Massoretic traditions were in agreement. Babylonian scholars had developed a vowel system that differed from that of the Palestinian or Tiberias school. Because the Palestinian pattern prevailed, manuscripts with other notations fell into disrepute and began to disappear. Two of the most famous and most authoritative manuscripts by Palestinian Massoretes are from the tenth century: one by Moses ben David ben Naphtali is known as "ben Naphtali," and the other by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher is known as "ben Asher." The ben Asher text, the product of a family of Massoretes, is preferred and is the basic Hebrew text used by scholars and translators. The Massoretic text is designated by the letter M.¹²