A MODERN THEORY of the OLD TESTAMENT CANON by R. T

A MODERN THEORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON

R. T. BECKWITH

Oxford

It is curious how often the works of two authors on the same subject are in the press together. Sometimes they may be aware of the fact, and may have exchanged ideas (if rivalry has not prevented it) in the process of preparing their respective works. Sometimes they may be unaware of the fact, and may then find themselves wishing that they could have profited from each other's researches, or anticipated each other's objections to their own conclusions, before going to press. At all events, they will certainly have opinions on what each other has written, and, having studied the subject themselves, their opinions are likely to be more fully developed than those of other readers. This was my own experience when publishing my book on the Old Testament canon. John Barton had his book Oracles of God in the press at the same time, and it appeared the following year.2 The first hundred pages of his book are devoted to the Old Testament canon. Both authors live in Oxford, and I am not sure what it says about Oxford that we were each unaware that the other was writing on the subject, but so it was. Barton has since expressed his opinion of my book in a review in Theology 90 ( 1987), pp. 63-5, beginning with lavish praise but concluding with the charge that it is an apologetic for "fundamentalism"; and the purpose of this article is to return the compliment, and to offer some reflections on his own book, so far as it deals with the same subject. After some preliminary remarks in his Introduction, and a survey of other views, old and new, in ch. 1, Barton gets down to setting out his own views in his long second chapter. Of earlier ' The Old TestamentCanon of the New TestamentChurch, and its Backgroundin Early Judaism (London and Grand Rapids, 1985). 2 Oraclesof God: Perceptionsof Ancient Prophecyin Israel after the Exile (London, 1986). 386 writers, he seems (pp. 27-33) to have most sympathy for A. C. Sundberg, The Old Testament of the Early Church (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), who holds that the first two sections of the Hebrew Bible (the Law and the Prophets) were recognized in pre-Christian times, but that the third section (the Hagiographa) had then an entirely uncertain content, allowing as readily for the inclusion of the Apocrypha in the Old Testament canon by later Roman Catholics, as for their exclusion by later Jews and Protestants. Barton claims (pp. 27-33, 56) that Sundberg's view is not as different as it appears from S. Z. Leiman's (The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: the Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence [Hamden, Conn., 1976]), who holds that the third section of the Hebrew Bible reached its present form in the mid 2nd century B.C., since Leiman thinks of the canon inclusively but not exclusively; however, this seems to be a misunderstanding of Leiman, who gives careful attention to the exclusive character of the canon (pp. 86-102, 134-5), and it perhaps arises out of Leiman's use of the term "canonical" for uninspired as well as inspired books. By "uninspired canonical books" Leiman means books which indeed have normative authority, but only as part of received tradition. They embody the received interpretation of the Bible, but do not have any claim to inclusion in the Bible themselves.3 He is not therefore implying any uncertainty about the bounds of the biblical canon. Barton considers that Sundberg's view needs further refinement to make it fully satisfactory. If the Hagiographa had an entirely uncertain content, may this not also have been the case with the Prophets? Indeed, did the Old Testament at the beginning of the Christian era really have three sections, or just two? The contention of Barton's book is that it had just two. Despite any appearances to the contrary, it consisted simply of two sections: the Pentateuch (or the settled section) and the Prophets (or the unsettled). It has, of course, usually been recognized by scholars that in ancient Jewish and Christian literature the Old Testament is sometimes given twofold titles (or short descriptions) not threefold. Barton sets out the evidence for this with exceptional fulness, and not at first in a particularly controversial way. He rightly takes it at its face value. What makes his treatment controversial is that he

3 This distiction is relevant also to what Barton says on pp. 17-18, 21, about the Mishnah and Talmud being "law", as well as the Old Testament books.