Subject: Re: Responses
From: L. Manning Vines (lmanningvines@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 23:52:27 EDT
Jim said:
<< I don't see a lack of an absolute "fixity" in either sense as
necessary for the idea of a canon to exist. >>
Then we are, as I suspected, talking about different things.
It seems to me that "fixity" is required for a canon of the Biblical sort to
exist. It seems to me that "fixity" is a defining characteristic of such a
thing. When Luther, for instance, wants to remove a book or three, I think
it more accurate to say that Luther has or believes in a different canon and
is trying to convince others to have the same one than to say that the canon
isn't fixed. He certainly has a fixed canon himself, but he does not
recognize the authority of some part of the popular canon. Two canons that
are identical but for one book and two canons.
Also:
<< The agreement of the DSS with either the MT or the LXX, sometimes one at
the expense of the other, or with neither, is certain testimony to the
nature of the texts that the Qumran community had in their possession.
I'm not all that sure it can be said to tell us about the texts current
in larger Hebrew culture at that time. >>
I am all that sure.
We know that at least some of the Septuagint-agreeing Hebrew texts existed
within the mainstream community because at least some of them were
translated into Greek before the community existed, and we know that the
Masoretic-agreeing texts existed within the mainstream community because
they are the received texts that we have today: it is certain that neither
of them originated in Qumran. It seems probable to me that at least some of
the other variants similarly did not originate in Qumran.
Because we know that they were not created in Qumran, it is certain that
both the Septuagint-agreeing texts and the Masoretic-agreeing texts existed
in Hebrew in mainstream Jewish culture at least as late as the first or
second century B.C.E. when the Qumran community separated itself from
Jerusalem. And because it seems probable that the other texts did not all
originate in Qumran, it is likewise probable that they existed similarly.
Like I have said before, it is impossible for the isolated sect to have been
the origin of all the variants. We know that some of the texts at Qumran
were accepted at some time in Jerusalem, but no manuscripts would have left
Qumran to influence the community in Jerusalem -- if they didn't go TO
Jerusalem, they came FROM Jerusalem.
This is certain.
The variants did not necessarily exist in Hebrew in Jesus' day. Why the
variants disappeared is mysterious. But they did certainly exist, and in
the mainstream community, when the Qumran community acquired them for
archiving. It is not the case that the Qumran community had a long and
isolated Jewish tradition behind it, which would account for the
preservation of books the mainstream community had long-since left behind.
The Qumran community was a short-lived Jewish sect that began in Jerusalem
and set itself in opposition to it. The archive of books found in the caves
at Qumran includes a veritable snapshot of the mainstream Hebrew library in
the first or second century B.C.E. This is why their discovery was probably
the most important discovery of manuscripts in the history of digging up old
books. Before the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, we had no way to know
that the Masoretic wasn't always the sole text or that the Septuagint
doesn't merely represent shoddy and selective translating.
After the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, we KNOW that variant Hebrew texts
coëxisted within the mainstream community at least as late as the first or
second century B.C.E.
Also:
<< The fragments that deviate from
both the MT and the LXX are just that...fragments...so we don't know why
they deviate. They could be from [. . . .] They could be from [. . . .]
They could be anything...that's the problem :). >>
What is called, in the parlance, a fragment, is not necessarily so
fragmentary as the word itself often implies to the uninitiated. If you
don't have what seems to be a whole book, you have a fragment. Some
fragments are only a word or less, but some are longer than some complete
books.
We do know with a great degree of certainty that variants agreeing with
neither the Masoretic nor the Septuagint did exist within the Qumran
community, and thus very probably in the mainstream Jewish community at the
time that the Qumran community separated itself. Where they went after the
Qumran community left Jerusalem for Qumran, nobody knows.
Also:
<< From what I understand, the full texts that do exist in the
DSS do agree pretty well with the MT. >>
This must be the second or third time you've said that, or something like
it, and I've qualified it every time. It seems that somebody at some time
gave you part of the story and you're sticking to it.
Some texts in Qumran DO agree pretty well with the Masoretic text; some of
them, actually, agree with certain peculiarities and obscurities shockingly
well. Some texts in Qumran DO NOT. The Qumran scrolls DO vouch to an
extraordinary degree for the accuracy of transmission that the Masoretic
text has had. The Qumran scrolls DO NOT suggest that the Masoretic text has
always enjoyed the status of One True Text that it enjoys now. The Qumran
scrolls DO demonstrate quite irrefutably that it has not.
I either do not remember or never knew exactly what books are complete; but
whether the evidence comes from complete books or nearly-complete fragments
or not-at-all-complete fragments, these things are quite generally
acknowledged by reputable people who ought to know and are confirmed by what
direct experience I have, however unsatisfactory that quantity of experience
may be to my desires.
Then:
<< And I have to wonder what you do with this passage from Josephus,
written about 90 AD. >>
I do nothing with it, since it was written late in the first century C.E.,
about two or three centuries after the time that I'm talking about. It
appears that Josephus had a canon very fixed in form, however it was for
content. The way he talks makes it appear to me that it was probably quite
fixed in content, too. The first of the sentences you quoted, in which he
says "only 22," makes him sound to me like someone with a Bible. I am
supposing that to sound that way requires a Bible quite fixed in form and
substance both. But nobody who can rival Josephus for antiquity that I've
ever read has a sentence about Hebrew books that rings quite that way in my
ear.
And:
<< This division (and I think this may have been brought up before) seems
to be referred to as early as 132 BC in the book of Sirach, in which
reference is made to "the law and the prophets and the other books of
our fathers" and "the law itself, the prophecies and the rest of the
books." Given Josephus' comments, I think parallel statements in the NT
about the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (which I know you said
earlier could be generic references) are more likely to refer to
specific groups of books than writing in a generic sense. >>
It seems to me that "the other books of our fathers" and "the rest of the
books" might mean just that: the other books about Jews, all of them. It
demonstrates to me that the Jews who wrote these words and words like them
had books, and I know that they had far fewer than I do. They had books of
law, and books about prophets, and other books. Classification as such is
not surprising. But comments like these do not make it clear to me that
they had a Bible; even if they did have something like a Bible, comments
like these don't suggest to me that it was something like what is called a
Bible today.
I don't remember how this conversation started, but it seems now like we're
repeating ourselves with different and more numerous words. Maybe
conversations between the two of us that relate in one way or another to
religion will always end up this way. I think, anyway, that we're two for
two, now (or zero for two, depending on how you look at it). I keep
thinking that this one has just about run out of momentum, and then I find
that it hasn't. We're not saying many new things now, so I cannot imagine
that this can sustain itself long.
The bottom line for me, and how I think this somehow started but can't
really remember, is that in the last pre-Christian centuries the text of
what I now call the Hebrew Bible was not standardized. It really, really
wasn't. Really. It was many books and had several versions. On this
basis, and this basis alone, I thought and I think that as late as the last
pre-Christian centuries The Hebrew Bible qua Hebrew Bible did not exist, at
least not like it came to exist shortly afterward. It seems to me that the
standardization of the text, by which I simply and exclusively mean the
elimination of varying versions, changed the books and the way they would be
treated very fundamentally. To designate this, I perhaps mistakenly used
the word "canonization."
My assertion is not bold, it does not rest on controversial foundations. It
is a simple, albeit usually unuttered, observation.
Beyond it I think I was responding to your various comments, but never
really changing this bottom line. I don't think there's very much more to
it.
-robbie
P.S. I just remembered how this started. I asserted that the first word of
Western Literature was "Rage" (or "Ménin"), by which I controversially
meant, of course, that this was the first word of Homer. And this was a
parenthetical comment in a thread concerned with the comparison between
Catcher and the Glass Saga. Oh, the great circles.
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