Canon of the Old Testament.
Terms.— Both the word and the idea of Canon appear to be Semitic. The Assyrian gang, Hebrew qaneh, Greek karma, along with the English cane and many others, all mean reed, whence the Greek kanon meant a rod or bar used to keep a thing straight or right; thus Homer calls the arm-rods of Nestor's shield kanonas (II. viii, 192f).* Thence kanon came to mean a straight-edge, thence rule, norm, standard, model; thence canons or canonical biblia came to denote Scriptures accepted as authoritative, as the rule of faith and practice, whether prescribing or prescribed. All this, however, is Christian; the Jews employed no such term, but instead of it the names al ready mentioned, to designate their regulative literature. This latter, of course, came into being gradually, indeed very gradually, and for many generations no question was raised as to the authoritative or unauthoritative character of any particular °Writing," for no such distinc tion arose into consciousness. Nor was there, for many years, perhaps hundreds, any collec tion of writings into a single body; but in the 2d century B.C. there may be discovered traces more or less distinct of such an assembling. In 2 Maccabees ii, 13ff we read: "and there were related in the records and the memoirs of Nehemiah the same things, and how he, found ing a library, collected the biblia concerning the kings and the prophets and those of David and the letters of kings concerning offeringe(anath emas). But especially this part (i, 2-ii, 18) of this book (dated by Niese 124 }Lc.), namely, the letters recommending the temple-consecra tion, ostensibly from Palestinian Jews to their brethren in Egypt, is admittedly late and un trustworthy, and its statements may be only enlarged inference from the actual mention in Nehemiah of the book of the Law (viii, 8), the book of the Chronicles (xii, 23), °the command ment of David" (xii, 24), and letters of King Artaxerxes to governors and others, touching (among other matters) the gift of timber for the gates, etc. (ii, 7-9), as well as earlier alleged proclamations of Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes, prescribing the offering of gifts for restoration of the temple, letters ostensibly copied in Ezra (i, 2-4, vi, 6-12, vii, 12-26). (Consult Well hausen's ed. iv, p. 559f, and Kfinig's 442f, for opposite judgments.) But we may detect here some faint hint of a triple or quadruple segmentation of a body of literature generally accepted but not yet pecu liarly sacred.
Ben Much clearer are the lines of cleavage in the passage already quoted from the grandson of Sirach, as well as in this, from the same context : °Whereas many things and great have been transmitted unto us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed after them, wherefore one must needs praise Israel for culture and wisdom,— and since there is need not only for such as (can) read (the original) to get understanding but also for those without to profit both by the word and the writ of the lovers of learning (the scribes), therefore my grandfather, etc." Here we dis cover not only the triple classification, Law, Prophets and the Others, but also what impulse was urging to recognition of literary values and consolidation of a body of authoritative scrip tures: It was the contact with Greek culture, in which literature played such a dominant part, that forced Israel to recoil and say in self defense, But we too have a literature, greater even than the Greek," and to make it accessible, Israel proceeded to translate it into Greek, the vernacular of culture, as Ben Sirach relates.
This contact with the Hellenic world started Israel on the path of self-vindication, which spread out into the great missionary propaganda of early Christianity.
Men of Grace.— The authors that Ben Sirach names in his tHymn of the Fathers of Old (xliv, 1; I, 24) are these: Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Job, Twelve Prophets, Nehemiah, but there is no clear indication of what or how much he attributes to each. Ecclesiastes, Daniel and Esther are not mentioned. Ruth may be included in the works of David (the Psalms), and Ezra in Nehemiah. The substance of Ezra iii, 2 is quoted in xlix, 12; the Law and the Prophecies are mentioned in xxxix, 1. Some have thought to find reference to Psalms, Pro verbs and Job in xliv, 4-5, but these verses (xliii, 3-9, 7?) all refer, as Levi has perceived, not to Israel, but to pagan worthies, the con trast with whose perishable fame begins in v. 10: these men, the pious, etc." Neither is there any hint in Ben Sirach of a closed canon, though there may be some faint allusion thereto at close of the book of Malachi (iv, 4-6: °Remember the Law of Moses Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet, etc.," words doubtless appended by a later hand. Again, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) closes with a warning against making many books and wearying the flesh (xii, 12f). These verses, also doubtless inserted later, were understood by Rabbis to forbid not only the addition of any other work to the uTwenty-four," but also the study «to weariness" of any such, and even in later times to read at all any "outside" books, was held to forfeit all slot in the future life.n First Canon.— In Nehemiah viii-x is found an elaborate account of the formal introduc tion, proclamation and acceptance of the Law on the part of the Jews returned from Baby lon. It was read and expounded from morn till noon for seven days: one may say then it was canonised from the 17th to the 24th of the seventh month of the year 444 B.C. (the year when Thucydides was ostracized and Pericles' sway established in Athens). About 200 years later the list of the prophets appears complete, and over 100 later, in the latter half of the 2d century B.C., the roll of the °Rest" was finished and closed forever, and therewith the canoniza tion of Jewish Scriptures was ended. Such at least is the face-value of the facts in evidence; but it must not be disguised that the trend of deepening research is to tower all the dates in question, to what extent it is not yet Possible to determine. Thus it is not even certain whether Artaxerxes I (Longimanus, 465-425) or II (Mnemon, 405-359), is meant in Ezra viii, viii, and Neh. ii, 1, v. 14, xiii, 6; the whole Ezra Nehemiah matter is unsettled, and there is a wide range between the radicalism of Torrey and the conservatism of Meyer.