’ Twenty-two Book Canon and the Qumran Scrolls1

Jonathan G. Campbell

1. Scripture and Canon

The old consensus about the Jewish canon’s formation, first put forward by Ryle and others in the late nineteenth century, saw in the Hebrew ’s tripartite shape as , Neviʾim, and Ketuvim the three-stage emergence of a Palestinian canon during times.2 Among supportive evidence, threefold references to Scripture, such as “the Law and the Prophets and the other books”3 in the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus, appear to reflect such a three-stage development that culminated in the Rabbinic council of Yavneh in circa 90 C.E., where the contents of the Ketuvim and, with it, the whole were finalized.4 However, this consensus has broken down in recent decades due largely to difficulties with the theory itself, as is widely acknowledged.5 Lewis demonstrated almost fifty years ago that there was no Yavneh council, for example, while Sundberg dismantled the Alexandrian Hypothesis, a corollary of Ryle’s thesis posit- ing that Diaspora possessed the canon.6 And as Barton has noted more recently, since Scripture was normally referred to through twofold formulae like “the Law and the Prophets,” we should not assume that “the Law,” “the Prophets,” “the other books,” or similar labels neces- sarily denote the later Hebrew Bible’s canonical divisions.7

1 I am most grateful to John Barton, Tessa Rajak, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter. Any shortcomings that remain are, of course, my responsibility alone. 2 Herbert C. Ryle, The Canon of the (London: Macmillan, 1892). 3 Translations of primary sources are taken from NRSV, LCL, and DSSR, unless other- wise stated. 4 See Ryle, Canon, 10, 89, 118, 122, and 153. 5 For instance, Lee M. McDonald, The : Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (3d ed.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2007), 11; and Andrew E. Steinmann, The Oracles of God: the Old Testament Canon (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 21. 6 Jack P. Lewis, “What Do We Mean by Yabneh?” Journal of Bible and Religion 32 (1964): 125–32; and Albert C. Sundberg, The Old Testament of the Early Church (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). 7 John Barton, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1986), 44–55. 20 jonathan g. campbell

Indeed, over the past thirty years, long-known primary data have been subject to re-evaluation due to the consensus’ shortcomings, while new Qumran evidence has been taken into account, especially given the scrolls’ full publication since 1991. Consequently, scholars now adopt various posi- tions on late Second Temple Scripture, some close to the old consensus but others departing substantially from it.8

1.1. Refining the Consensus Among the former, it is often believed that Ryle’s position requires only modest changes. Accepting there was no Yavneh council, for instance, Beckwith holds that a threefold canon was in any case complete by Mac- cabean times.9 Evans maintains that a tripartite late Second Temple canon akin to the Hebrew Bible obtained in both Palestine and the Diaspora.10 And Dempster posits that the common twofold way of referring to Scrip- ture was merely an abbreviation for a less frequent but more significant tripartite division.11 Such suggestions remain within the bounds of reasoned debate, but they tend to entail a certain unnaturalness in handling primary data.12 Limitations of space mean that one instance must suffice by way of illus- tration. Thus, in arguing for the emergence of a threefold canon in the mid-second century B.C.E., Beckwith appeals to the following passage: [] founded a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David, and letters of kings about votive offer- ings. In the same way Judas also collected all the books that had been lost on

8 See, for example, essays in Arie van der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn, eds., Canon- ization and Decanonization (SHR 82; Leiden: Brill, 1998); Edward D. Herbert and Emanuel Tov, eds., The Bible as Book: the Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries (London: British Library, 2002); Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders, eds., The Canon Debate (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002); J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge, eds., The Biblical Canons (BETL 163; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003); and James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Bible and the : the Princeton Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls (3 vols.; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006). 9 Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the Church (London: SPCK, 1985), 152. 10 Craig A. Evans, “The Scriptures of Jesus and his earliest Followers,” in McDonald and Sanders, Canon Debate, 185–95 at 188–89. 11 Stephen G. Dempster, “Torah, Torah, Torah: The Emergence of the Tripartite Canon,” in Exploring the Origins of the Bible: Canon Formation in Historical, Literary, and Theologi- cal Perspective (ed. Craig A. Evans and Emanuel Tov; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2008), 87–127 at 107–25. 12 Barton, Oracles, 58, makes a similar point.