Writing a book is one thing. Recognising a collection of books as scripture, a fixed list with a beginning and an end, is another. The word for such a list is canon, from a Greek word for a measuring rod or rule. This article looks at how the books of the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, came to be gathered into a canon, and why Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Bibles still do not have quite the same list.

Three parts

The Hebrew Bible is traditionally arranged in three parts:

  • the Torah (“Law” or “Instruction”): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy;
  • the Nevi’im (“Prophets”): the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve);
  • the Ketuvim (“Writings”): Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the five scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther), Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah and Chronicles.

From the initial letters of these three names comes the Jewish name for the Bible, Tanakh. Counted as Jewish tradition counts them, with Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra–Nehemiah and the Twelve Prophets each one book, there are twenty-four. Christian Bibles divide the same contents into thirty-nine books, in a different order that ends with the prophets, looking forward to the New Testament.

Most scholars think the three parts reflect, roughly, the order in which the collections were recognised: first the Torah, then the Prophets, and last the Writings.

The Torah first

The Torah was clearly authoritative by the time of Ezra in the fifth century BCE, when it is read publicly as “the book of the law of Moses” (Nehemiah 8:1). The Samaritans, who separated from the Jews of Jerusalem in the Persian or Hellenistic period, accept only the five books of Moses as scripture, which suggests that these books had special standing before the split. The Torah was the first part translated into Greek, in the third century BCE.

The Law, the Prophets and the others

By the second century BCE, sources speak of a collection with more than one part.

  • The prologue to Ben Sira, written in Egypt around 132 BCE by the author’s grandson, mentions three times “the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them,” or similar phrases. The third group is not yet given a fixed name.
  • 2 Maccabees 2:13–14 says that Nehemiah founded a library and “collected the books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David,” and that Judas Maccabeus likewise gathered books that had been scattered by war.
  • A text from Qumran known as 4QMMT (a letter on matters of the law) refers to “the book of Moses and the books of the prophets and of David,” though the reading of the fragment is debated.
  • In Luke 24:44, the risen Jesus speaks of what is written “in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms.” Elsewhere the New Testament speaks simply of “the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 5:17; 7:12; Romans 3:21).

These references show that the Law and the Prophets were well-defined collections in the time of Jesus, and that the third group was headed by the Psalms. They do not tell us exactly which books belonged to the third group.

Josephus and 4 Ezra

Two Jewish writings from the end of the first century CE give numbers.

The historian Josephus, writing around 95 CE, says that the Jews do not have countless books that disagree with each other, but only twenty-two books, which are rightly trusted: five books of Moses, thirteen books of the prophets covering history from Moses to the Persian king Artaxerxes, and four books of hymns and instructions for life (Against Apion 1.37–43). He adds that books written after Artaxerxes are not trusted in the same way, “because the exact succession of the prophets” had ceased. Twenty-two probably matches the twenty-four of later Jewish counting, with Ruth joined to Judges and Lamentations to Jeremiah.

The apocalypse known as 4 Ezra (2 Esdras 14:44–47), written around 100 CE, tells how Ezra, by divine inspiration, dictated ninety-four books: twenty-four to be published openly for all, and seventy to be kept for the wise. The twenty-four are almost certainly the books of the Hebrew Bible.

The Babylonian Talmud later gives the order of the Prophets and Writings and names the traditional authors (Bava Batra 14b–15a).

The myth of the Council of Jamnia

You may read that the Jewish canon was “closed” at a council held at Jamnia (Yavneh) around 90 CE. This idea, popular in the twentieth century, is now widely rejected. Jack P. Lewis showed in 1964 that the rabbinic sources say nothing of a council deciding a canon. They record discussions among rabbis at Yavneh about whether certain books, such as Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, “defile the hands” (a technical way of saying they are holy scripture). These were debates about books already widely accepted, not the creation of a list. The Mishnah records the conclusion that both books are holy (Yadayim 3:5).

Most scholars now think that the Jewish canon became settled gradually, by consensus rather than decree, and that by the end of the first century CE most Jews recognised the twenty-four books. Some, such as Roger Beckwith, argue that the list was settled much earlier, in the second century BCE; others, such as Lee Martin McDonald, see more fluidity into the second century CE. Timothy Lim proposes that several canons existed side by side among different Jewish groups, and that the majority canon of the Pharisees eventually prevailed.

What did Qumran read?

The Dead Sea Scrolls include copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. They also include many copies of books outside it, such as Jubilees and 1 Enoch, which the community seems to have valued highly. It is difficult to tell from a library which books its owners regarded as scripture in the full sense. The scrolls show, at least, that the core of the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms was firmly established, and that the edges of the collection were still a matter of discussion in some circles.

Why Christian Bibles differ

The early church inherited the Jewish scriptures, mostly in Greek. Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament, such as the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, include books not in the Hebrew Bible: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel. Christian writers quoted these books, and the churches read them.

But some early Christian scholars knew that the Jewish canon was shorter. Melito of Sardis, around 170 CE, travelled to the East to learn the exact list of Old Testament books, and his list follows the Hebrew canon (except that it lacks Esther), as quoted by Eusebius (Church History 4.26.13–14). Origen and Athanasius also gave lists close to the Hebrew canon, while recommending other books for reading. Jerome, translating the Latin Vulgate from Hebrew around 400 CE, distinguished the books of the Hebrew canon from the others, which he said the church reads for edification but not to establish doctrine.

Others, including Augustine, accepted the wider collection, and the regional councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) listed it. In the West, the wider canon remained the norm through the Middle Ages.

At the Reformation, Protestants returned to the Hebrew canon. Luther’s German Bible of 1534 placed the additional books in a separate section titled “Apocrypha: books which are not held equal to Holy Scripture, but are useful and good to read.” The Church of England’s Articles of Religion take a similar position. In response, the Council of Trent (1546) defined the wider canon for the Catholic Church. The Orthodox churches accept the wider canon as well, with some further books, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a larger canon still, including 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

What all agree on

These differences are real, but they concern the edges. The thirty-nine books of the Protestant Old Testament, which are the twenty-four of the Hebrew Bible, are accepted as scripture by Jews and by all Christian traditions. Open Word Bible translates these books from the Hebrew of the Westminster Leningrad Codex. The deuterocanonical books, many of which survive complete only in Greek, are not part of the current translation programme.

Sources

  • Beckwith, Roger T. The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.
  • Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Josephus. Against Apion 1.37–43.
  • Lewis, Jack P. “What Do We Mean by Jabneh?” Journal of Bible and Religion 32 (1964): 125–132.
  • Lim, Timothy H. The Formation of the Jewish Canon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
  • McDonald, Lee Martin. The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007.
  • Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5; Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b–15a.
  • Eusebius. Church History 4.26.13–14.
  • 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 14:44–47; Sirach, Prologue.
  • Bible quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain), except where the article gives its own literal rendering.