Hanukkah, Maccabees and Jewish Literature written between the Old and New Testaments
The Canons of Scripture
Please view this interactive chart from Bible Study Magazine (Volume 1, Issue 1, November/December 2008). "What's In Your Bible?" by Vincent Setterholm.
<a href="http://www.biblestudymagazine.com/interactive/canon/"><img src="http://www.biblestudymagazine.com/images/canonthumb.jpg" alt="What's in Your Bible? Find out at BibleStudyMagazine.com" border="0" title="What's in Your Bible? Find out at BibleStudyMagazine.com" /></a>
(Or go to a search engine and input "Bible Study Magazine, Ethiopian, Syriac, Canon" and it should come up. A similar chart can be found at Wikipedia under "Bible Canon." )
Issues surrounding the Canon, or Canon's of Scripture are dealt with in my book "The Hammer of God: The Stories of Judah Maccabee and Charles Martel" and in "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible."
Setterholm lists six "canons of Scripture" these being: Samaritan, Hebrew, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Syriac, Ethiopian, Protestant.
It could be argued that there are Twelve Canon of Scripture:
- Roman Catholic
- Greek Orthodox
- Slavonic Orthodox
- Georgian Orthodox
- Syriac Orthodox
- Assyrian Church of the East
The Greek should probably clarify that the Greek Orthodox Canon of Scripture was preceded by the Hellenistic Jewish Canon of Scripture.
The Canon of Scripture was set later than people might imagine. Scholars believe that the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls most likely thought of Tobit and Enoch as being part of the Bible. There is a tradition of a counsel of Jamnia of Jewish sages that set the Hebrew Canon of Scripture at 90 AD. I t is now questioned whether such a counsel ever took place. The Jews did claim that the Bible was composed of 22 books. How did they get 22 books out of 39? They did this by counting 1-2 Samuel as one book (they did the same with Kings and Chronicles) and counting the 12 "minor" (meaning shorter) prophets as one book and such techniques.
In 325 AD, the Canon of the New Testament still wasn't set as is demonstrated by "Codex Siniaticus" which is one of the 50 quality Bibles commissioned by Emperor Constantine. It includes "The Epistle of Barnabas" and "The Shepherd of Hermes."
The question of a Canon of Scripture arose due to the church reacting against a form of extreme anti-Semitism preached by a man named Marcion. He rewrote the Gospel of Luke, removing what he viewed as its Jewish elements, and the accepted 10 epistles of Paul-also edited to remove its Jewish content. He made his Bible in the year 140.
Marcion viewed the God of the Old Testament as a false god and rejected the Old Testament. The church affirmed the Old Testament and defended the Jewish components of the New Testament.
The first books canonized by Christians were the four Gospels-the rest of the New Testament was "Deutero-Canonical" meaning canonized later.
Early Lists of the Canon:
Muratorian fragment (very early-perhaps 200 AD)
Eusebius includes a list of New Testament books-but at his time the Canon had not yet been set. Among the "disputed books" were the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, 2-3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation. So we see that certain of the "disputed books" made it into the New Testament while others did not.
Paschal Letter of Athanasius 367 AD-the first complete list of the books currently included in the New Testament.
The Assyrian Church of the East-uses 2 Peter, 2, 3 John and Revelation-but has never officially included them in the Canon of Scripture.
It should be noted that the Apocrypha is not Roman Catholic Literature-it is ancient Jewish literature. In fact, it is important Jewish literature that wasn't preserved by Jews but by Christians.
Saint Jerome coined the term "apocrypha" to designate the books included in the Christian Old Testament but not included in the Jewish Canon of Scripture. (Jerome studied Hebrew from Jewish rabbis and translated the Latin Vulgate directly from the Hebrew-instead of from the Greek Version. For the Apocryphal books, Jerome usually claims to have found an Aramaic or Hebrew version of these books, which may still have existed at his time but, with the exception of some books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, are now lost.) Starting with Martin Luther, Protestants began using the Jewish Canon of Scripture and placed the Apocryphal books in their own section between the Old and New Testaments. The King James Bible originally included the Apocrypha.
Until the Protestant Reformation, Maccabees, and other apocryphal books, were thought of as part of the Old Testament. In fact, the Book of Maccabees was one of the more popular books of the Old Testament. Judah Maccabee was thought of as an Old Testament hero, along with Abraham, Moses, and King David.
The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books
Extended Version of Esther
Wisdom of Solomon
Jesus Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
Letter of Jeremiah
Additions to Daniel (Prayer of the Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon)
Prayer of Manasseh
(Slavonic Orthodox add-2 and 3 Esdras)
In this lecture we will examine these books 1-4 Maccabees, Tobit, Jesus Sirach, Esdras, and Enoch.
Judah Maccabee was most likely an Aramaic speaker. But scholars examining the texts believe that 1 Maccabees was originally composed in Hebrew. Why was it written in Hebrew instead of the more common vernacular of Aramaic? Because the writer most likely intended for it to be or hoped that it would be included in the Old Testament. Why didn't this happen? Well, it did-in Greek translation for the Catholic and Orthodox Canons. The Jews ultimately rejected it for the following reasons:
Judah Maccabee was a Jewish hero-but there was controversy about his successors-his brothers and nephews. They established the Hasmonean Dynasty-which produced rulers who were controversial and hellenistic. No copy of Maccabees was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls-most likely because the that community was anti-establishment that rejected the Jerusalem priesthood-with whom the Hasmoneans had connections. Also, King Herod Agrippa 1 & 2 were descended from a Hasmonean princess.
After the failure of the Jewish War, the Bar Kochba Revolt and a Jewish war between them, perhaps the Jews wanted to de-emphasize a militaristic hero-hence the focus of the Hanukkah celebration becoming a manufactured legend about oil miraculously lasting for eight days rather than the military victories it was originally established to commemorate.
Copies of Tobit have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew and Aramaic. It was supposed that it was originally written in Aramaic but translated into the Sacred Tongue of Hebrew. I think that this is most likely. Others believe that it was originally written in Hebrew and that the Aramaic Versions are Targumim.
The story of Tobit is set in Assyria and tells the story of an Israelite (not Judean) exile there.
This book is also known as Ecceliasticus. It is a book of collections of proverbs similar to Ecclesiastes but longer. It was written in Hebrew. All we had was the Greek versions (and other translations from the Greek) until the original Hebrew was found at the Cairo Genizeh, the Dead Sea Scrolls and at Masada.
Some people claim that there are several allusions to the Wisdom of Sirach in the New Testament. These include the Virgin Mary's magnificat in Luke 1:52 following Sirach 10:14; the description of the seed in Mark 4:5,16-17 following Sirach 40:15, Christ's statement in Matthew 7:16,20 following Sirach 27:6 and James 1:19 quoting Sirach 5:11.
The distinguished patristic scholar Henry Chadwick has claimed that in Matthew 11:28 Jesus was directly quoting Sirach 51:27, as well as comparing Matthew 6:12 "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." (KJV) with Sirach 28:2 "Forgive your neighbor a wrong, and then, when you petition, your sins will be pardoned."
Sirach was written before the Maccabean Revolt. Like Hebrews 11, he gives an important overview of the Old Testament. He praises "Simon the Just" a Jewish sage who lived around 200 B.C. By his time, the Jewish practice of not uttering the Sacred Name, and the use of circumlocutions for the Name of God, had become an established tradition, and it may have been a recent development at the time.
Esdras is a Greco-Latin variation of the name of the scribe Ezra. It is found in the titles of several books, associated with the scribe, that are in or related to the Bible. The books that are listed as "Esdras" can be a little confusing. Here is a list that illustrates that fact.
1 Esdras= Ezra
3 Esdras=Book entitled 1 Esdras in Protestant Apocryphal Canon
4 Esdras= Book entitled 2 Esdras in Protestant Apocryphal Canon
[4 Esdras=2 Esdras 3-14]
[5 Esdras=2 Esdras 1-2]
[6 Esdras=2 Esdras 15-16]
The Epistle of Jude, the Brother of Jesus, quotes from the Book of Enoch. Some of the church fathers quoted from Enoch as if it were part of the Old Testament. Tertullian quoted from it, but mentions it is controversial and yet defends it. Fragments of a Greek edition of the Book of Enoch has been preserved. The Ethiopian Coptic Church preserved the complete book of Enoch and it is the only complete version. The Ethiopians hold Enoch as Canonical. Large fragments of Enoch, in Aramaic, have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and it seems that the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls held Enoch to be canonical. There are stories that a complete copy of the Book of Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is being held by a private collector.
The Book of Enoch has several parts-the two important parts are "the Book of Giants" and "The Book of Similitudes."
The Book of Giants tells the story of the Nephalim, the offspring of fallen angels and human women. This story is alluded to in Genesis and is interpreted in a variety of ways.
The Book of Similtudes has not (yet) been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It contains messianic prophecies about the coming of the Son of Man. Some believe that these prophecies seem to be of Jesus Christ so some have argued that perhaps these passages were added by a later Jewish Christian hand, but scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of the Book of Enoch believe that these prophecies are part of the original Book of Enoch and are pre-Christian.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gabriel Stone
The Dead Sea Scrolls date from 250 BC until 70 AD. They seem to have been produced by a distinct Jewish sect that called themselves the "Yahad."
To read the Dead Sea Scrolls, I recommend "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible" and "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls" by Martinez. It is probably next to impossible to collect the complete Dead Sea Scrolls, since there are many scattered fragments, but the Martinez version is the most exhaustive and useful version I have found.
The Dead Sea Scroll Stone contains Hebrew words written, not engraved, upon a stone, it is called the "Gabriel Prophecy" and seems to contain a prophecy of the Messiah dying and rising on the third day.
New Testament Apocrypha
The Diatesseron of Tatian
The Gospel of Thomas
The Doctrine of Addai
The Book of Enoch
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
The Odes of Solomon
The Revelation of Elschai
The Ascents of James
For more information:
The most complete collection of Extra-biblical writings is "Old Testament Pseudo-pigrapha" (Pseudopigrapha means "false writings" ) which comes in two volumes by James H. Charlesworth.
I would recommend the purchase of a Bible, preferably a Study Bible that includes the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments. Certain editions of the 400th year commemorative edition of the King James Bible include the Apocrypha. Also, one could purchase a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox version of the Holy Bible, such as the Jerusalem Bible.
The Question of Canonicity
The word "canon" comes from the Greek word for "reed" or "rod," used as a straight edge or ruler for measurement. Since the books of the Holy Bible were regarded as the rule of truth and faith, the word "canon" came to be used to designate that Rule that was written. In biblical studies when we talk about a "canon," we mean the list of books that a community considers both authoritative and inspired. Thus, the adjective "Canonical" came to be applied to a book included in the Canon of Scripture. Canonical books form the standard against which other writings, doctrines and practices are measured.
The ancient Jews had two sets of canon of the Old Testament-one held by the Jews who lived in the land of Israel the other was held by the Alexandrian Jews and other members of mostly Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora. The Jewish people who lived in the Holy Land spoke Hebrew and Aramaic. Most Jews that lived outside of the Holy Land spoke only Greek. Therefore, it became necessary for the Greek speaking Jews to translate the Old Testament into Greek so that they could read and understand the Holy Bible. The early church canonized the Greek Version of the Old Testament that is called the Septuagint. (The Septuagint is a Jewish translation and is pre-Christian. It was translated from Hebrew manuscripts older than any we possess today. The Dead Sea Scrolls have shown that in certain places, the Septuagint has preserved the original reading of the Hebrew where the traditional Hebrew text, called the Masoretic text, has not.) Most of the Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament are from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. (Since they quoted it as Scripture, it could be argued that the apostles and writers of the New Testament recognized the Septuagint as being divinely inspired.) When the church accepted the Septuagint as scriptural all the books in the Septuagint were canonized. This included the books we now call the Apocrypha. These books had come to be universally acknowledged to be part of the Old Testament by all Christians until the Protestant Reformation. (In fact, a movie version of the book of Maccabees is entitled "The Old Testament" because the story of Judah Maccabee is part of the Old Testament canon of Scripture used by Roman Catholics.) Martin Luther revised the canon and removed these books from their canonical status. (Luther was following an earlier tradition from Saint Jerome, who recognized a distinction between the canonical and the apocryphal texts.)
The Jews of the Holy Land claimed there were twenty-two books that made up the "Tanakh," or the Old Testament. This list is actually identical to the list of 39 books that make up the Protestant Old Testament. The reason they counted 39 books as 22 is because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. So, how did they get 22 out of 39? They counted 1 and 2 Samuel as one book, 1and 2 Kings as one book, and 1 and 2 Chronicles as one book. They included Jeremiah and Lamentations as one book and Ruth as a part of Judges. They also included all the minor prophets, Hosea through Malachi, twelve books, as one book. And they included Ezra and Nehemiah as one book. (To me this seems a very artificial and inadequate way to order the Books of the Bible. "Tanakh" is not a Hebrew word. It is an abbreviation: TNK from "Torah," the Law of Moses, or the Pentateuch, meaning "five books" in Greek, being Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, "Ketubim," meaning "the Writings," which includes Psalms and the wisdom books, and "Nebiim," meaning the Prophets. While the Jewish canon of Scripture is identical to the Protestant Old Testament, the Books are arranged differently. For example, while Malachi is the final book in the Protestant order, in the Jewish order, 2 Chronicles comes last. While the Jews of the land of Israel accepted 22 books in their canon of Scripture (39 really) the Jews of Alexandria accepted 46 books. The "extra" books are the books we know as the Apocrypha. These include Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Jesus Sirach, Barak, and additions to Esther and Daniel. The books we call "Apocrypha" are called Deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians because they are included in their canon of scripture even though they were added to the canon later.
The formation of the New Testament Canon of Scripture was a long process. The earliest official list of New Testament Scriptures was by the Anti-Semitic heretic named Marcion (circa 150 A.D.). He omitted several books in his canon and rewrote certain books of the New Testament because they were in his view too "Jewish." The Muratonian Canon is a very ancient list of the books of the New Testament that most scholars date to 170-200 A.D. The four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the thirteen epistles of Paul along with 1 Peter and 1 John were universally recognized by Christians by the year 130 A.D. and were elevated to the same level of divine inspiration as the Old Testament by the year 170 A.D. These could be considered the "Proto-canonical" books of the New Testament. The other books took a longer period of time to be universally acknowledged to be the divinely inspired Word of God by all Christians.
In 325 A.D., Eusebius dealt with the question of canonicity of the New Testament (Ecclesiastical History 3.25.1-7). He listed three types of books, those universally recognized as Scripture, those disputed and then books he listed as spurious. The disputed books were held by some Christian books to be part of the Bible, but not by others. The recognized books included Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of Paul, the epistle of Peter and the epistle of John. The disputed books listed by Eusebius included Hebrews, James, 2 and 3 John, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. (Eusebius viewed the "Revelation" as a forgery but admitted that other Christians reckoned it as inspired Scripture.) Included with the disputed books in Eusebius's list are 1 Clement, the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas. Other books such as the Shepherd of Hermes are listed in Eusebius's disputed list. So we see some of the disputed books eventually made it into the New Testament, but others did not. Before the close of the fifth century, the New Testament canon was not set. (It should be noted that Constantine had nothing to do with the setting of the Canon of Scripture. Neither is he responsible for many of the things he is falsely accused of. Constantine is unfairly demonized by liberals and even by some professing Chrisitans.) The Didache was considered a part of the New Testament by many of the early Christians. (Eusebius also mentions "heretical and impious books" and places the Gospel of Thomas, with which he was familiar, in that list. Speaking of the Gospel of Thomas and other "apocryphal" writings, Eusebius says of them, "Moreover, the character of the style also is far removed from apostolic usage, and the thought and purport of their contents are completely out of harmony with the true orthodoxy and clearly show themselves that they are forgeries of the heretics. For this reason they are not to be reckoned with disputed books, but are to be cast aside as altogether absurd and impious." While important, the Gospel of Thomas must be used with caution.)
The ancient writing entitled, "The Teaching of Our Lord [Jesus] to the Gentiles given through the Twelve Apostles," is also known as the Didache, which is from the Greek word for "teaching." Many scholars date this document to around 70 A.D. Other scholars date it to as early as 50 A.D. Some date it to the early years of the second century. Those who argue for the early second century concede that it was based on much older material. The Didache is an ancient Christian teaching manual that gives basic doctrine, instructions on how to baptize and how to observe that Lord's Supper and it also contains moral instruction. The Epistle of Barnabas was written sometime between 70 AD to132 AD. The author is not the same person as the Barnabas mentioned in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Both of the Didache and Barnabas contain a teaching called the "Two Ways." This is a very ancient set of Christian moral instruction. In fact, a fragment of a "Two Ways Document" was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q473). A significant teaching of the "Two Ways Document" is the condemnation of abortion as murder. So, in two of the most ancient Christian writings we possess, writings that were once considered part of the New Testament, abortion is listed as a sin. With the Didache we have an ancient document from the first century containing the teaching of Jesus Christ and including His teaching against abortion. This doctrine is attributed to Christ and the apostles. The early church fathers, including men who personally knew the apostles, wrote that the apostolic teaching is that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life. The right to life of the unborn child and that the unborn child is a human being is an ancient and essential teaching of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.
The complete list of the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments was made at the Fourth Counsel of Rome in the year 382 under Pope Damasus. The official canon of the New Testament was set at this counsel and at the Counsel of Hippo (393), the Third Counsel of Carthage (419) and by the "Gelesian Decree" by Pope Gelasius which is dated 494-496 A.D. (Athanasius of Alexandria, a pope of the Coptic Church of Egypt, wrote a list of the Canon of Scriptures, which is identical to our own around in year 367 A.D. Athanasius lived from 293 until 373 A.D. Africa produced many leaders of the early church. This includes men like Athanasius, Tertullian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo. This was before the rise of Islam. After Islam conquered regions of Africa, the Christians there were cut off from Europe and they struggled to survive for centuries under savage and intense persecution at the hands of the Muslims.) 2 Peter, Jude and 2 and 3rd John and Revelations were never officially canonized by the Assyrian Church of the East. These Aramaic Christians do use these books. The reason they didn't include these books in the canon was because when they set their canon, these books had not yet become universally recognized as part of the New Testament. Assyrian Bibles printed in their Aramaic language do include 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John and Revelation, although the Assyrian Church has never officially added these books to their canon of Scripture. The Syriac-Aramaic Canon of Scripture is different from what most people are familiar with. The Nov./Dec. edition of "Bible Study Magazine" has an interesting article on canonicity of Scripture. On page 47-48 there is an article entitled "What they don't tell you in church: What's in your Bible?: Jews and Christians throughout the centuries have produced bibles that vary in content and organization." This article includes a chart is a sampling of the different lists of books considered part of the Holy Bible that are used today by different ancient Christian groups (as well as the Samaritans and the Jews). The chart lists the books recognized as canonical by the Samaritans, the "Hebrew" Bible, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Syriac, Ethiopian and Protestant. The Ethiopians have the longest canon of scripture. The Syriac canon of scripture is the second to the longest. The Syriac "extra books" include 4 Maccabees, Odes of Solomon, 4 Baruch, Josephus's Jewish War, the Acts of Paul and Tekla and 3rd Epistle to the Corinthians. (The "Nestorian" (Assyrian Church of the East) canon of scripture is mentioned in The Marganitha, or "The Pearl," a concise explanation of "Nestorian" dogma.) The Ethiopian canon of Scripture includes the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, both of which were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Epistle of Jude quotes from the Book of Enoch as Scripture (Jude 14).
St. Jerome translated the Holy Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into Latin. This Latin Bible is called the Latin Vulgate and it was received by the Roman Catholic Church as its official Bible version. It belongs to the same ancient manuscript family that the texts used to translate the King James Version are from. The Latin Vulgate and the King James Version of the Bible are very similar. St Jerome said that "the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures." He says further that they are read "for the edification of the people, not to give authority to the doctrines of the Church." The translators of the King James Version included the Apocrypha in their translation of the Bible. Following St. Jerome's opinions, they decided to place the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments. Jerome maintained a distinction should be made between those books he considered canonical and the non-canonical books. This list of books is sometimes called the Apocrypha. (Saint Jerome translated the Latin Vulgate directly from ancient Hebrew texts. Like the Septuagint, the Vulgate is an important witness to the ancient text of the Old Testament. Jerome learned Hebrew and Aramaic from rabbis in the Holy Land and could speak all three languages of the Bible, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.)
Other features of our Bibles, such as the numbering of chapters and verses, were a much later development. In 1226 University of Paris professor Stephen Langton divided the text of the Bible into chapters. In 1551 the printer Robert Stephen (also known as Estienne or Stephanus) inserted the numbering of verses that had been formulated in 1528 by Santes Pagnini into printed Bibles. I feel many Evangelicals would do well to learn about the process of canonization and read ancient texts that help us to understand the word of the Bible, books like 1 and 2 Maccabees, instead of condemning them as "evil and demonic" without having read them.
For More Information:
Get my book "The Hammer of God: The Stories of Judah Maccabee and Charles Martel."
Stephen Andrew Missick
About the Author
Reverend Stephen Andrew Missick is the author of The Assyrian Church in the Mongol Empire, Mar Thoma: The Apostolic Foundation of the Assyrian Church in India, and Socotra: The Mysterious Island of the Church of the East which were published in the Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies (Volume XIII, No. 2, 1999, Volume XIV, No. 2, 2000 and Volume XVI No. 1, 2002). (See www.jaas.org.) He is the author of The Words of Jesus in the Original Aramaic: Discovering the Semitic Roots of Christianity, The Secret of Jabez, Saint Thaddeus and the King of Assyria, The Ascents of James: A Lost Acts of the Apostles, The Hammer of God: The Stories of Judah Maccabee and Charles Martel. He is an ordained minister of the gospel. He graduated from Sam Houston State University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Rev. Missick has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and has lived among the Coptic Christians in Egypt and Aramaic Christians in Syria. He also served as a soldier in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and 2004. While serving as a soldier in Iraq he learned Aramaic from native Aramaic-speaking Iraqi Assyrian Christians. Rev. Missick is the writer and illustrator of the comic book "The Assyrians: The Oldest Christian People," the comic strip Chronicles: Facts from the Bible and the comic book series The Hammer of God which are available from www.comixpress.com. The Hammer of God comic book series dramatizes the stories of Judah Maccabee and Charles Martel. He has also served as a chaplain in the Army National Guard in Iraq during his second deployment in 2009 and 2010. He participated in an archeological excavation of Bethsaida in Galilee in 2011 and went on a missionary trip to Uganda in 2012.
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