Note that our present two Books of Samuel, two of Kings, two of Chron icles are each reckoned as one book; also the Twelve Minor Prophets as one, and Nehemiah is included in Ezra, which reduces our present 39 by 3 + 11 + 1, i.e., by 15, to 24. It is perhaps not quite accidental that this number is the double of the sacred Number Twelve, the num ber of the Tribes of Israel. By its peculiar spiritual properties, as the most divisible of all small numbers, Twelve justly reigns among symbolic and significant numbers, though Ten, as the number of fingers on the hand, has very unfortunately displaced it as the basis of notation.
In IV Ezra xiv, (written shortly before Domitian's death, 96 A.D.) we find a purely imaginative account, with mythologic elements, of the writing or copying of 94 books, by Ezra with five assistants in 40 days, at command of God. Of these, the "Four-and-Twenty, which thou didst first write, thou shalt publish, for the worthy and the un worthy to read; but the last 70 thou shalt hold back and give only unto the wise of thy people. For in them is the vein of insight and the well of wisdom and the river of knowledge." The 70 books, regarded here and also in wide circles of the Jews as superior even to the 24, are the Apocrypha, of which this IV Ezra is itself a great part. The number 70 is also sacred and symbolic as in the 70 (strictly 72) translators (the Septuagint), the 70 disciples (the univer sal mission, Luke x, 1-18), and elsewhere.
The number 72, as six times 12, was also emblematic, and 22 was the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet; hence Ephi phanius divides the foregoing 94 into 22+72, and Josephus actually gives 22 as the number of the Books (con. Ap. i, 39, Niese), and Origen also, as quoted in Eusebius (Historia Ecclesim) vi, 25, who omits the Twelve (Minor) Prophets, and reckons Judges and Ruth together, as well as Jeremiah, Lamentations, and his Epistle in one; these three reductions leave only 21, but Origen adds, °And besides these are the Mac cabees, which are entitled Sarbeth Sabaniel.* Whence it might seem he regarded this work as canonic, though it is not now so reckoned by Jews or Protestants. From a Mishnah (B. B. 13b, 14b), it appears that each of the books (after the Law) had to be written on a distinct roll, except that Judges might be written with Ruth, and Jeremiah with Lamentations, each pair on one roll; which would then reduce the number of rolls, and hence in the reckoning of some, the ntunber of Books, to 22. But the examples of Josephus and of Origen (who, tau_ght by Jews, had uncommon knowledge of things Hebrew) show that the number and names of the Books °that defile the hands* was not absolutely settled till late in the 3d century of our era.
The order of the Prophets, °Jeremiah,.Ezelciel, Isaiah,* is at first surpris ing. Fanciful explanations have been devised but soberer criticism regards it as merely that of size, like the orders °Psalms, Job, Proverbs,* and °Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,* the largest leading. This explanation seems suffi cient, but is not therefore necessarily correct; deeper analysis may yet show that the order of time has been roughly observed. Ben Sirach gives the familiar scheme, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, but then inserts Job before the Twelve Prophets (xlviii, 22; xlix, 7-10). The order of the historical works., Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, is chronological and fixed, but in the Writings (Hagiographa) the greatest uncer tainty prevails: Ginsburg tabulates at least eight different sequences, forming three grand classes: the Liturgic (of the Five Rolls), the Masoretic according to size, and the Talmudic according to time. This diversity testifies clearly to the comparatively late formation of the third part of the canon. It is interesting to note how Nehemiah, a man of affairs, glorified by Ben Sirach (xlix, 13) and evidently much more important than Ezra, priest and scribe, gradually retires before the latter, who rises steadily to the highest pinnacle in Jewish tra dition, following the waxing ascendancy of the priestly idea in the course of Israel's history (though the Rabbis think it a rebuke to Nehe miah's vainglory; cp. Levy's (Worterbuch,) II, p. 184b).
A closer determination of the canonization of 'Prophets' and 'Scriptures' has been repeatedly attempted but with no great success. Josephus (100 A.D.) departs from the
ordinary, both in the number 22 and in the division of the Books into three classes: Mosaic (5), historical (13), poetic and didactic (4), apparently counting Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah. His witness is so important as to deserve quotation; after mentioning the measures taken to preserve the purity of the Jewish blood, and that writing is confined to the prophets inspired of God, and eye-witnesses, he continues (con. Ap. 38-41) ; aFor there are not with us myriads of Books discordant and embattled, but only two besides the 20 containing the record of all past time, which are justly believed (divine*). And of these, five are of Moses, which contain both the Laws and the tradition of the origin of man kind, till his death, and this period lacks little of 3,000 years. But from Moses' death till the reign of Artaxerxes the King of the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets write down the doings in their days in 13 books; and the other four contain hymns unto God, and for men, precepts of life. And from Artaxerxes to our time details have been written, but have not been esteemed as of like credence with those before them, because of there not having been the exact succession of the prophets. And it is evident indeed how we have believed in these Scriptures of ours, for during so many ages as have already passed, none has dared to addt or subtract or to change anything in them; yea, it is inborn in all of the Jews im mediately from their very birth to esteem them as doctnnes of God, and to abide in them, and for them, if need be, gladly die.* Others.— In a passage of disputed genuine ness ((De Vita Contemplativa,' 3), Philo names four divisions, °laws, and oracles pro claimed through prophets, and hymns, and the rest whereby knowledge and piety wax together and are perfectedp—athe rest* referring ap parently to Proverbs and the Wisdom-litera ture. The New Testament (Luke xxiv, 44) agrees with Philo in the three divisions, Law, Prophets and Psalms, but elsewhere the con stantly recurring division is twofold, into the Law (or Moses) and the Prophets. The Psalms are cited thrice (Luke xx, 2; Acts i, 23, xiii, 33), and David nine times (Matt. xxii, 42; Mark xii, 35ff ; Luke Int, 41f f ; Acts i, 16, ii, 25, iv, 25; Rom. iv, 6, xi, 9; Heb. iv, 7), but the New Testament consciousness of the other Hagiographa seems exceeding faint Even Melito, bishop of Sardis, writing to the unknown Onesimus, speaks of the Law and the Prophets only, in giving the first detailed list of °the ancient books,* of only 21 however, for he omits Esther, separates Judges and Ruth, but unites Samuel and ICings into one. Jerome (340-420 A.D.) in his preface to Daniel declares that °all scripture is divided by them (the Hebrews) into three parts: Law, Prophets, Hagiographa, i.e., into five and eight and eleven books*; but in the preface to Samuel and Kings, the famous °helmeted beginning to all the books which we tum from Hebrew into Latin,* he is convinced there should be and are properly only 622 books of the ancient Law: of Moses five, of Prophets eight, of Hagio grapha. nine.* For there are only 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet,* of which °five are double, Caph, Mem, Nun, Phe, Sade, written one way as the beginning or middle and another as the end of words. Whence also, by the most, five books are accounted double: Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Jeremias with Cinoth, i.e., his Lamentations. Therefore, just as the elements are 22 by which we write in Hebrew all that we speak, and in these primes the human voice is embraced; so 22 volumes are reckoned by which, as if by letters and pre ambles, the infancy of the righteous man, while yet tender and fed on milk, is instructed in the doctrine of God.* This passage deserves quo tation as perhaps pointing to a diversity of judgment among the Rabbis at whose feet Jerome had sat, and as throwing a vivid light on the Fathers' habits of thought and of ad justing facts to a keen sense of the eternal fitness of things, in presage of the great con ception that truth is harmony.