Subject: Re: Responses
From: L. Manning Vines (lmanningvines@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 15 2002 - 21:19:31 EDT
Jim said:
<< The position you're arguing for
is a null hypothesis dependent solely upon a lack of evidence (-there was no
Biblical canon in Christ's day-). Any evidence at all works against it.
[. . .]
I think the fact of being chosen for Greek translation is significant. When
you're translating either to fill a library or meet the needs of a
community,
you translate the works most important to you and the community you are
serving.
And when we look at the NT quotations of the LXX, we need to recognize that
the
text is quoted with significant authority -- pointing to a Biblical canon
rather
than a literary canon.>>
You have mentioned as evidence several times that certain books were
selected or chosen to be in the Septuagint (or, as I assert, chosen just to
be translated and later compiled as Septuagint) or to become a part of the
Jewish canon. I think that I have suggested, but might not have already
said outright, that there wasn't much of a selection that I know of.
A canon, it seems to me, is exclusive. But if any pre-Exilic (or even
shortly post-Exilic) texts were written in the Hebrew language, they were
canonized, they failed to survive, or they are so obscure that I've never
even heard of them. If you know of them, let me know! because I'd be quite
delighted to read them. But I doubt that they exist.
I think that the evidence is ample that Jews around year zero had a small
library of books available to them, most of which came in several variations
and seemed to be, at least until some time, rather open to emendation. All
of the books that seemed to them really old were at some time whittled down
to one version each and, it seems to me, took on a different sort of
existence -- one like modern Bibles. Prior to this time, different versions
of all of those old-to-them Hebrew books -- the same ones because there
weren't any others -- were translated into Greek by various folks and
probably for various reasons. Sometime later, they were compiled. It seems
to me that the time of compilation is probably when this one, too, took on
the sort of existence had by modern Bibles.
The books had authority all along, of course. And there was a rather
definite list, too, because not many books were around. But the contents of
individual books were actually allowed to change.
It seems to me that we're haggling over the probable date of an event the
exact nature of which we don't know or don't agree on. You seem to be
saying that a list of books that can be referred to with authority is a
canon: and we both agree that year-zero Jews had such a list. But I am
suggesting that this is not surprising, because they had a limited list of
Old Jewish Books, and they were ALL authorities -- but they existed, I
think, differently than the Bible exists now. The shiny nickel that I've
been trying to put on the table is simply that "canonization," in any way
that I would like to define it, could not have occurred for the Hebrew Bible
until each member of the list had a single True form. We know that as late
as the foundation of the Qumran sect this had not yet happened. The
transformation into God's Canon With No Undivine or Changeable Letter had
not yet happened.
That is really all.
-robbie
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