The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

70 SCROLLS FROM QUMRAN AND THE CANON
dated to the end of the first or the beginning of the second century C.E. 7
It is a list of biblical works “according to the Hebrews” and reflects the
same twenty-two-book canon we find in Josephus, echoed in the independent
canonical lists of Origen and Jerome. The twenty-four-book
canon mentioned in 4 Ezra (= 2 Esdras; ca. 100 C.E.) 8 and in the rabbinic
sources (most elaborately set out in b. B. Bat. 14b–15a) almost certainly is
identical in content but reckons Ruth and Lamentations separately. The
uniting of Ruth with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah, is quite old,
to judge from its survival in the Septuagint and the explicit testimony of
Origen to the Hebrew ordering. The rabbinic tradition that Samuel wrote
Judges and Ruth (in addition to Samuel), and Jeremiah the book of
Lamentations, may be an indirect witness. The association of Ruth and
Lamentations with Qohelet, Song of Songs, and Esther in the Five Megillot
evidently reflects a secondary development, growing out of their liturgical
usage in the festivals. One notes also that Josephus and the early list place
Job among the Prophets; the old list places Job in close association to the
Pentateuch. The use of Paleo-Hebrew for Job alone outside the Pentateuch
as a biblical hand suggests that this is an early feature, as does the rabbinic
tradition attributing the authorship of Job to Moses.
Evidence derived from the Kaige Recension suggests a terminus post
quem for the fixation of the Pharisaic canon. We have noted (above) that
these revisers used as their base a proto-rabbinic text-type, not the final,
fixed Rabbinic Recension. Similarly, their revision extended to Baruch
and a longer edition of Daniel, an effort difficult to explain if the book of
Baruch and the additions to Daniel had already been excluded from the
Pharisaic canon. Since their recensional labors can be dated to the late
first century B.C.E. and their Pharisaic bias is clear, it follows that, as late
as the end of the first century B.C.E., an authoritative canonical list had
not emerged, at least in its final form, even in Pharisaic circles. 9 On the
other hand, the pressures and needs leading to the final form of the text
and canon of the Rabbinic Recension are well under way.
7. See the study of Jean-Paul Audet, “A Hebrew-Aramaic List of Books of the Old
Testament in Greek Transcription,” JTS, NS 1 (1950): 135–54. Not all of Audet’s
arguments for the early date of the list are convincing, but his conclusion appears
sound and even overly cautious.
8. 4 Ezra (2 Esd) 14:44–46.
9. See the discussion of Emanuel Tov, The Septuagint Translation of Jeremiah and Baruch
Discussion of an Early Revision of the LXX of Jeremiah 29–52 and Baruch 1:1–3:8 (HSM 8;
Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), esp. 168—70; and idem, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll
from Nahal Hever (8HevXIIgr) (The Seiyal Collection I) (ed. E. Tov, R. Kraft, and P. J. Parsons;
DJD 8; Oxford: Clarendon, 1990). On the date of this manuscript, see Peter J. Parsons’s
contribution to The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, 19–26. Parsons and Theodore C. Skeat date
the manuscript in the late first century B.C.E. Of course, 8HevXIIgr is not the autograph.