CANON
268
CANON
sacred compositions. That literature was grouped
under the Ke-thubim, or Hagiographa, which neither
was the direct product of the prophetical order,
namely, that comprised in the Latter Prophets, nor
contained the history of Israel as interpreted by
the same prophetic teachers — narratives classed as
the Former Prophets. The Book of Daniel was rele-
gated to the Hagiographa as a work of the prophetic
gift indeed, but not of the permanent prophetic office.
These same conservative students of the Canon — now
scarcely represented outside the Church — maintain,
for the reception of the documents composing these
groups into the sacred literature of the Israelites,
dates which are in general much earlier than those
admitted by critics. They place the practical, if not
formal, completion of the Palestinian Canon in the
era of Esdras (Ezra) and Nehemias, about the mid-
dle of the fifth century b. c, while, true to their
adhesion to a Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch,
they insist that the canonization of the five books
followed soon after their composition.
Since the traditionalists infer the Mosaic author- ship of the Pentateuch from other sources, they can rely for proof of an early collection of these books chiefly on Deuteronomy, xxxi, 9-13, 24-26, where there is question' of a book of the law, delivered by Moses to the priests with the command to keep it in the ark and read it to the people on the feast of Tabernacles. But the effort to identify this book with the entire Pentateuch is not convincing to the opponents of Mosaic authorship.
The Remaining Books. — The Completion of the Palestinian-Jewish Canon. — Without being positive on the subject, the advocates of the older views re- gard it as highly probable that several additions were made to the sacred repertory between the canoniza- tion of the Mosaic Torah above described and the Exile (598 B. a). They cite especially Isaias, xxxiv, 16; II Paralipomenon, xxix, 30; Proverbs, xxv, 1; Daniel, ix, 2. For the period following the Baby- lonian Exile the conservative argument takes a more confident tone. This was an era of construction, a turning-point in the history of Israel. The comple- tion of the Jewish Canon, by the addition of the Prophets and Hagiographa as bodies to the Law, is attributed by conservatives to Esdras, the priest- scribe and religious leader of the period, abetted by Nehemias, the civil governor; or at least to a school of scribes founded by the former. (Cf. II Esdras, viii-x; II Machabees, ii, 13, in the Greek original.) Far more arresting in favour of an Esdrine formula- tion of the Hebrew Bible is the much-discussed pas- sage from Josephus, "Contra Apionem", I, viii, in which the Jewish historian, writing about A. D. 100, registers his conviction and that of his coreligionists — a conviction presumably based on tradition — that the Scriptures of the Palestinian Hebrews formed a closed and sacred collection from the days of the Persian king, Artaxerxes Longimanus (465-25 b. a), a contemporary of Esdras. Josephus is the earliest writer who numbers the books of the Jewish Bible. In its present arrangement this contains 40; Jo- sephus arrived at 22 artificially, in order to match the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, by means of collocations and combinations borrowed in part from the Septuagint. The conservative exegetes find a confirmatory argument in a statement of the apocryphal Fourth Book of Esdras (xiv, 1S-47), under whose legendary envelope they see an histor- ical truth, and a further one in a reference in the Baba Bathra tract of the Babylonian Talmud to hagiographie activity on the part of "the men of the Great Synagogue, and Esdras and .Nehemias.
But the (athohe Scripturists who admit an Esdrine
Canon are far from allowing that Esdras and his col- leagues intended to so close up the sacred library as to bar any possible future accessions. The Si urn of
God might and did breathe into later writings, and
the presence of the deuterocanonical books in the
Church's Canon at once forestalls and answers those
Protestant theologians of a preceding generation who
claimed that Esdras was a Divine agent for an in-
violable fixing and sealing of the O. T. To this ex-
tent at least, Catholic writers on the subject dissent
from the drift of the Josephus testimony. And while
there is what may be called a consensus of Catholic
exegetes of the conservative type on an Esdrine or
quasi-Esdrine formulation of the canon so far as the
existing material permitted it, this agreement is not
absolute; Kaulen and Danko, favouring a later com-
pletion, are the notable exceptions among the above-
mentioned scholars.
(b) Critical views of the formation of the Pales- tinian Canon. — Its three constituent bodies, the Law. Prophets, and Hagiographa, represent a growth and correspond to three periods more or less extended. The reason for the isolation of the Hagiographa from the Prophets was therefore mainly chronological. The only division marked off clearly by intrinsic features is the legal element of the O. T., viz., the Pentateuch.
The Torah, or Law. — Until the reign of King Josias, and the epoch-making discovery of "the book of the law" in the Temple (621 b. a), say the critical ex- egetes, there was in Israel no written code of laws, or other work, universally acknowledged as of supreme and Divine authority. This "book of the law" was practically identical with Deuteronomy, and its rec- ognition or canonization consisted in the solemn pact entered into by Josias and the people of Juda, described in IV Kings, xxiii. That a written sacred Torah was previously unknown among the Israelites, is demonstrated by the negative evidence of the earlier prophets, by the absence of any such factor from the religious reform undertaken by Ezechias (Hezekiah), while it was the mainspring of that carried out by Josias, and lastly by the plain sur- prise and consternation of the latter ruler at the finding of such a work. This argument, in fact, is the pivot of the current system of Pentateuchal criticism, and will be developed more at length in the article on the Pentateuch, as also the thesis attacking the Mosaic authorship and promulgation of the latter as a whole. The actual publication of the entire Mosaic code, according to the dominant hypothesis, did not occur until the days of Esdras, and is narrated in chapters viii-x of the second book bearing that name. In this connexion must be mentioned the argument from the Samaritan Penta- teuch to establish that the Esdrine Canon took in nothing beyond the Hexateuch, i. e. the Pentateuch plus Josue. (See Pentateuch; Samaritans.)
The Nebiim, or Prophets. — There is no direct light upon the time or manner in which the second stratum of the Hebrew Canon was finished. The creation of the above-mentioned Samaritan Canon (c. 132 b. c.) may furnish a terminus a quo; perhaps a better one is the date of the expiration of prophecy about the close of the fifth century before Christ. For the otic i terminus the lowest possible date is that of the prologue to Ecclesiasticus (c. 132 b. c), which speaks of "tin' Law, and the Prophets, and the others that have followed them". But compare Ecclesiasticus itself, chapters xlvi-xlix, for an earlier one.
The Kithvbim, or Hagiographa: Completion of the Jewish Canon.— Critical opinion as to date ranges from c. 165 b. c. to the middle of the second cen- tury of our era fWildeboer). The Catholic scholars Jahn, Movers, Nickes, Danko, Haneberg, Aicher, without sharing all the views of the advanced ex- egetes, regard the Hebrew Hagiographa as not definitely settled till after Christ. It is an incon- testable fact that the sacredness of certain parts of the Palestinian Bible (Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticle
