As Ezra is called " a ready scribe," and his labours in connection with the law were important, he may have organized a body of scribes who should work in harmony, attending, among other concerns, to the preservation and correction of the national literature. It must be admitted, however, that the priests enumerated in Nehemiah x. 1, fee., and the "company of scribes"[3] in 1 Maccabees vii. 12 (comp. ii. 42), afford no basis for such a college. Still, there is nothing improbable in the hypothesis. A succes sion of scribes and priests, if not conjointly, at least in harmony, continued to labour till the corporation ceased to exist with Simon the Just, who is mentioned as the last belonging to it, i.e., from 444 B.c. till about 200. What they did can only be inferred from the proceedings of Ezra himself, and from the prevailing views as well as wants of the times they lived in. Those who began with Ezra, see ing what he did, would naturally follow his example, and would not scruple, if it seemed best, to revise the text in substance ; but their chief work related to the form of the text. After the last canon was made, about a century or more anterior to the Christian era, the text was not con sidered inviolate by the learned Jews ; it received modi fications and interpolations long after. The process of redaction had not ceased before the time of Christ. This was owing, among other causes, to the state of parties among the Jews, as well as the intrusion of Greek litera ture and culture, whose influence the Palestinian Jews themselves were not able to withstand altogether.
The canon did not include all the national literature ; and if it be asked on what principle books were admitted, it is not easy to answer. The higher the value of the writ ings, the more conducive to the religious life and advance ment of tha people, they were the more readily accepted. Real or apparent importance determined their adoption. In judging of their value different considerations weighed. Some were regulative in the department of the legal and ethical ; the prophetic claimed a divine origin ; the lyric or poetic touched and elevated the ideal faculty on which religion acts. The nation, early imbued with the theo cratic spirit, and believing itself the chosen of God, was favourably inclined toward documents in which that stand-point was assumed. The names of men renowned for their piety, wisdom, or knowledge of divine things, which some books bore, ensured their admission. A variety of considerations contributed to the gradual formation of the canon ; and the best part of the national literature was incorporated.
Of the three divisions, " The Law " or Pentateuch was most highly venerated by the Jews. It was the first trans lated into Greek, and in Philo s view was inspired in a way peculiar to itself. " The Prophets," or second division, occu pied a somewhat lower place in their estimation, but were read in the public services as the law had been before. The "C thubim," or third division, was not looked upon as equal to the Prophets in importance; only the five Megilothwere publicly read. The three parts of the collection present the three gradations of sanctity which the books assumed successively in Israelite estimation. A certain reverence was attached to all as soon as they were made canonical ; but the reverence was not of equal height, and the supposed authority was proportionately varied.[4] The consciousness of prophetism being extinct soon after the return from Babylon was a genuine instinct. "With tho extinction of the Jewish state the religious spirit almost evaporated. The idealism which the old prophets proclaimed in contrast with the symbolic religion of the state gave place to forms and an attachment to the written law. Religion came to be a thing of the understanding, the subject of learned treatment ; and its essence was reduced to dogmas or pre cepts. Thus it ceased to be spiritual, or a thing in which the heart had free scope for its highest aspirations. The narrow prophetism that appeared after the restoration was little more than an echo of the past, falling in with an ex ternal and written legalism. The literature of the people deteriorated in quality, and prophecy became apocalypse. When the three divisions were united, the ecclesiastical respect which had gathered round the law and the prophets from ancient times began to be transferred to the c thitbim. A belief in their sanctity increased apace in the 1st century before the Christian era, so that sacred-ness and canonicity were almost identical. The doubts of individuals, it is true, were still expressed respecting certain books of the c thubiin, but they had no perceptible effect upon the cur rent opinion. The sanctity attaching to the last division as well as the others did not permit the total displacement of any part.
The origin of the threefold division of the canon is not, as Oehler supposes,[5] a reflection of the different stages of religious development through which the nation passed, a& if the foundation were the Law, the ulterior tendency in its objective aspect the Prophets, and its subjective aspect the Hagiographa. The books of Chronicles and others refute this arbitrary conception. The triplicity lies in the manner in which the books were collected. Men who be longed to different periods and possessed different degrees of culture worked successively in the formation of the canon. It resulted out of the circumstances in which ifc was made, and the subjective ideas of those who made it.
The places of the separate books within the first divi sion or Torah were determined by the succession of the historical events narrated. The second division naturally begins with Moses s successor, Joshua. Judges, Samuel, and Kings follow according to the regular chronology. To the former prophets, as Joshua to Kings were called, the latter were attached, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, succeeded by the twelve minor prophets, arranged for the most part according to their times, though the length of individual prophecies also influenced their position, together with similarity of contents. The arrangement of books in the third division depended on their age, character, and authors. The Psalms were put first, because David was supposed to be the author of many, and on account of their intrinsic value in promoting the religious life of the people. After the Psalms came the three poetical works attributed to Solomon, with the book of Job among them, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ecclesiastes. The book of Esther followed, since it was intended to further the observance of the Purim feast ; with the late book of Daniel, which had some affinity to Esther in its relation to heathenism and to Greek life. To Ezra and Nehemiah, which were adopted before the other part of the chronicle-book and separated from it, were added the so-called Chronicles. Such was the original succession of the third division or c thubim ; but it did not remain unaltered. For the use of the syna gogue the five Megiloth were put together, so that Ruth (originally the last part of Judges), and the Lamentations (appended at first to Jeremiah s prophecies) were taken out of the second and put into the third canon. This caused a separation of Canticles and Ecclesiastes.
- ↑ See Buxtorf s Tiberias, chapter x. p. 88, &c.
- ↑ Ilerzf eld s Geschichte des Volkes Israel,ol. i. p. 380, &c.
- ↑ 2vvay(ay}] ypa/j./*a.Tfcav, without the article.
- ↑ Dillmann, in the Jahrlucher fur dcutsche Theologie, BJ. iii. p. 422.
- ↑ Article " Kanon " in Herzog s Encyklopcedie, vol. vii. p. 253 ; and the same author s Prolegomena zur Thcologie des alt. Test., pp. 91, 92.
