SCRI 500-Introduction to the Old Testament Jul-17-2009

Discussed paper...have topic on Monday.

Have said bible has 3 fundamental dimensions, we all know this via common sense.
-Text is written by a human author/Word of Man.
-Believe that bible is also divine, via inspiration/Word of God.
Not only in production of the text.
Long discussion on inspiration of the LXX

Inerrance--> Always connected with study of scriptures. But Bible is full of errors
or various sorts; Scientific, historic (Names given incorrectly ect...), etc...
Quote from Vatican 2-Truth of Bible is salvation truth, not necessarily in scientific
things, for example.
-Living in the people of God/Word of the Community

4 Things to reflect upon now:

1-The Canon
A Greek word meaning “list” and “rule”.
Means the list of books that have authority of the scriptures and our rule of life.
Recall liturgical canon and canon law.
People of God had to find those books and compile the canon.
We have 4 gospels, but why did the people of God reject books like the gospel of
Thomas, Jude, etc...
Deut. 34 --> Moses buried and grave unkown, but there was a book in regards to
Moses’ tomb.

2-Principles (That have guided the people of God);

a) Guided by the Spirit. --->A faith statement.
Examples where Spirit not needed. What about the 30 yrs in Nazareth
about the life of Christ...we don’t know much about that period of Christ’s life. The story
of Christ making birds out of mud and then @ his friends prompting he makes the birds
fly away as a real bird.
b)Guided by the Liturgy
Works of art, texts that have great impact --->They enter into the liturgy
and then easy to see as canonical -but this is extremely mysterious and difficult to
explain.
History of the Canon:

2 Kings 22 & 23 <---Very important for Biblical tradition.

Josiah becomes king, v3=in 18th year, 622 bc, they discover a scroll when
cleaning the temple and then begin to read the scroll. They find a law that they
never observed and they go to the High Priest who’s embarrassed as well and so
SCRI 500-Introduction to the Old Testament Jul-17-2009

they go to the King. No one knows what to do with it. And then the female
prophetess is invited and she states that they better start observing that law and
then came a great religious reform. People generally agree that this refers to
certain sections of the book of Deutoronomy. Until that time people brought
sacrifices wherever they wanted and now they realize that they must bring it to
the temple in Jerusalem. This is a normative text re:a rule.

Nehemiah 8:1-13 &18

Corresponds to the return from exile. So priest concentrated energy on

traditions/writings since there were no sacrifices, etc...around 450bc.
“bring us the book that God considered our rule...”<---Very roughly...Text of the
law was in Hebrew, however people in exile were using Aramaic and did not
understand Hebrew...Ezra had to translate the book and explain it.

The Torah, (means law), was read here. It is the 5 books of Moses. Read,
treasured and then became rule for the community.

Go to Ecclisiacecles (Not Ecclesiastes)??? or Wisdom of Sirach

ch 44:
ch 48:22 verse on Hezekiah
49:7 - Jeremiah
verse 8 - Ezekial
10 - The 12 prophets.
^----- Here we have the 3 major prophets, the Torah and the 12 Minor prophets...

Now go to the beginning of Sirach, the prologue; Sirach had written the book in Hebrew
and his grandson decided to translate the book into Greek, Wisdom of Jesus Ben
Sirach. When translated into Latin it was translated Ecclesiasti...???...because it was
read by the Church and not the Jews. Introduction by grandson and he translated the
book in the year 130bc. “Many and wonderful are the gifts we have been granted by
means of the law, the prophets and others...” But there is a third category because he
has other books besides the prophets and the Torah. Cont. reading the
introduction...Here we have a book with the first clear reference to the law, the prophets
and the others (Others not having a name yet.). Now have a Bible of 3
categories...Jesus often says, as it is written in the law and prophets and sometimes
adds the psalms as well.
-Certain # of books become normative gradually over time.

Now come to the destruction of Jerusalem in the yr 70ad. Romans destroyed the 2nd
temple. Priest and Rabbis went to Jamnia (A little village in Israel) and they started a
school there. They had a gathering there and they had a discussion on the Hebrew
SCRI 500-Introduction to the Old Testament Jul-17-2009

Canon and the discussion went on for a number of years. Here they began to consider
a canonical list of books.
Speaking of Jews living in palestine here, but many lived in the diaspora. But
diasporan Jews started to speak Greek, Hebrew Bible translated into Greek in
Alexandria.

God had abandoned the Palestinian Jews, they felt, and they felt that the
destruction of Jerusalem was the end of an era for them. However Jews in the
dispora they believed that the spirit continued to work in them and the Greek
speaking Jews considered certain books canonical that the Palestinian Jews did
not consider because they were already free of the Temple, etc...

Tobit, Judit, Esther (Some sections only), 1 & 2nd Macabees, Book of wisdom, Sirach,
Baruch, Sections of Daniel <---books included in the Septuagint, the Greek canon, but
not in the Hebrew canon.

Spoke of the history, but now we will speak about:

The closure of the Canon

BOoks may be seen as normative, but when did they fix the list? Who decided first on
that list? Fr. Vogels believes it was the Christians who first fixed the canon...Jews
already followed the books, but Christians had to decide what books to follow and there
was a period of seperation and friction. So Jewish canon was in reaction to the
Christian canon.

Hebr= Torah, Nebi’im (Means ‘The Prophets’, divided into the earlier and the later
prophets.), Ketuvim (The writings)

So Hebrew canon divided into 3 major sections, such as is listed in Sirach.

Jewish people when speaking of Bible speak of the Tanak.

O.T.= Pentateuch (Same as Torah),Historical books (Corresponds to the earlier

prophets), Wisdom books (Writings), Prophets (Later prophets)

Why did they put the prophets at the end of the OT? Because we see them as
foreshadowing Christ.

Take last text of OT, Malachi 3:22 ---> Pointing to Christ, St. John the Baptist, etc...See
how the ordering here is important. All of the Jewish people now have adopted the
Hebrew canon and rejected the Diasporan Jewish canon.
SCRI 500-Introduction to the Old Testament Jul-17-2009

The Christian Bible as a whole:

Pentat.
Hist. book
Writings
Prophets
Gospels
Acts
Epistles/Letters
Revelation/Apocalypse of John

There is a parallel between the old and the new

Pent. and hist books with Gospels and Act
Writings with letters
Prophets with Revelations

So there is a parallel structure and a chiastic structure.

When Israel speaks in the OT the Church speaks in the NT. God speaks in the
Prophets and acts in the Gospels. When He acts in the Pent He speaks in the
Apocalypse. The Genesis stories/images/ect are present in the apocalypse.

Parallel structure is like abc/abc

Chiastic structure is like abc/cba

This is how the Christian tradition classified/divided the Bible.

Where was Christianity successful?

-St. Paul doesn’t go to the Jewish community in palestine, but to the Greek
speaking Jews in the diaspora where they used the LXX. So Christians had
more books than the Jewish communities.

What happened with the reformation?

-Luther etc...authorities is not with the Pope but “sola scriptura” (Only the
scriptures.) & then since this is the case, so we better make sure that we have
the real books and Luther went back to the Hebrew canon and consequently the
Protestant/Reformation Bibles are minus certain books, but the structure is kept.

-Coptic Church has more books, such as Enoch, and the Orthodox Church has
different numbering. MANY PROtestant scholars state that this was a MISTAKE
by Luther!!!!!!!!!! So now we have some ecumenical Bibles where they include the
apocrypha but they place the books between the OT & NT or at the end of the
Bible (The placing is a political thing to have some sort of compromise.)
SCRI 500-Introduction to the Old Testament Jul-17-2009

Canonical
“ Book that belongs to the canon is a canonical book.”

Sometimes we call the disputed books deutero-canonical or proto-canonical (Almost

never used protestant term), but for Catholics there is no differences in value, they are
all Canonical. Protestants refer to the books we have in common canonical, we also call
the disputed books Deutero-canonical and they call them the apocrypha.

Apocrypha (Catholic term for unrecognized books) - pseudepigrapha (Protestant term

for the same books) - Gospel of Judah, Thomas, Assumption of Moses etc...we don’t
accept them. Never mind the Gnostics/ebionites for now so as not to get too
complicated (Later on). Like the Samaritans only accepting the Torah, etc...

Hard to exactly pin point when the Jews completely rejected the LXX on mass.

We will address translations on Monday.

2-Transmission of the Text

We all know that when the books were written there were no printers, so how did it
work? Via hand copies, copy of copies, of copies and we get together and compare
texts, etc...

Talking now from the origins to the 1st century after Christ, why? Because books
gradually become normative and until then they felt that they weren’t forced to copy
word for word. etc...Nehemiah, or if city changed name, why keep old name or they felt
they knew better than the original author. This ended afterwards, and then came the
Jamnia, the Jerusalem group after the destruction of Jerusalem.

From 1st to 6th century they preserved consonents as much as possible they felt
obliged strictly adhere to the exact text. From the 6th to the 10th century they invented 2
systems, one in Babylonia/Eastern (Little marks above the letters), and one in Tiberius
(Little marks below the letters.), to help the reader to ensure that we read it correctly.
TIberius school is the classic interpretation and the one used by Jews today. ‘Massorah’
means ‘tradition’, and we have now the MT or Masoretic text, the one that follows
tradition. Now printers came in the 10th century, and now using printers...

Then in the 13th century a certain Bishop, Langton, introduced chapters into the Bible.
Until then the Bible did not have any chapters.
SCRI 500-Introduction to the Old Testament Jul-17-2009

Gen 1:31 and then keep reading on in chapter 2, story ends in verse 4. Chapter division
was unnatural to the text. (Creation narative) Now the Jews follow this as well.

15th Century there was Robert Etienne and thought it would be even more exciting if we
divided the chapters into verses as well. Now we can easily teach the Bible, notice,
however, how long it took. Bible had a long history. We have a great number of
manuscripts, and when we compare the manuscripts sometimes we find very important
changes. May come as a surprise to us, but the only complete Hebrew Bible we had,
until very recently, was a copy from the 11th century after Christ. HOwever we had
fragments & sermon notes, etc...

& now we have Qumran. Not too far from dead sea and a shepherd boy was running
after his sheep and one of his sheep ran into a cave and he through stone and heard
something. Went into the cave and inside the cave were jars with scrolls in them...this
was a HUGE DISCOVERY. Huge caves that were very dry to preserve

What was the importance of the discover? Proably Essenes lived there from 2nd bc to 1
century after Christ. Now we have manuscripts that are 10 centuries older. All of the
Biblical books are represented there, some in pieces and some complete. Beautiful
museum in Israel.

There has been some criticism...that the Church does not want everything published
because they fear what could possibly be there. Fr. Vogels had known the first
excavator, and the Jordanians (Who had control at the time) there was a room with a
long table with all the pieces laid out. There is no real controversy now.

Now we can compare the Qumran texts and surprise, surprise, the texts were very
faithful. This is beautiful and an amazing comparison and testament to the reverence
and diligence of the copiers. However we have found 2 versions of Jeremiah in
Qumran.

Now when we look now at all of those documents, for the NT, we have between 200 to
300 variables when we compare all of the manuscripts. We will keep the secret on
Monday, it’s not that tragic at all!