Development of the Old Testament canon


The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.
Martin Luther, holding to Jewish and other ancient precedent, excluded the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament of his translation of the Bible, placing them in a section he labeled "Apocrypha". To counter Luther's "heresy", the fourth session of the Catholic Council of Trent in 1546 confirmed that the deuterocanonical books were equally authoritative as the protocanonical in the Canon of Trent in the year Luther died, reconfirming the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books made almost a century earlier at the Council of Florence. Following Jerome's Veritas Hebraica principle, the Protestant Old Testament consists of the same books as the Hebrew Bible, but the order and division of the books are different. Protestants number the Old Testament books at 39, while the Hebrew Bible numbers the same books as 24. The Hebrew Bible counts Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles as one book each, and the 12 minor prophets are one book, and also Ezra and Nehemiah form a single book.
The differences between the Hebrew Bible and other versions of the Old Testament such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, the Greek Septuagint, the Ethiopian Bible and other canons, are more substantial. Many of these canons include books and sections of books that the others do not. For a more comprehensive discussion of these differences, see Books of the Bible.

Hebrew Bible canon

The Hebrew Bible consists of 24 books of the Masoretic Text recognized by Rabbinic Judaism. There is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed, with some scholars arguing that it was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty, while others arguing that it was not fixed until the 2nd century CE or even later. According to Marc Zvi Brettler, the Jewish scriptures outside the Torah and the Prophets were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books.
Michael Barber says that the earliest and most explicit evidence of a Hebrew canonical list comes from Jewish historian Josephus who wrote about a canon used by Jews in the first century AD. In Against Apion, Josephus in 95 CE divided sacred scriptures into three parts: 5 books of the Torah, 13 books of the prophets, and 4 books of hymns:
Josephus mentions Ezra and Nehemiah in Antiquities of the Jews and Esther in Chapter 6. The canon is until the reign of Artaxerxes as mentioned by Josephus in Against Apion. For a long time, following this date, the divine inspiration of Esther, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes was often under scrutiny. According to Gerald A. Larue, Josephus' listing represents what came to be the Jewish canon, although scholars were still wrestling with problems of the authority of certain writings at the time that he was writing. Barber says that Josephus' 22 books were not universally accepted, since other Jewish communities used more than 22 books.
In 1871, Heinrich Graetz concluded that there had been a Council of Jamnia which had decided Jewish canon sometime in the late 1st century. This became the prevailing scholarly consensus for much of the 20th century. However, the theory of the Council of Jamnia is largely discredited today.

The protocanonical and deuterocanonical books

The Roman Catholic and Eastern Churches canons include books, called the deuterocanonical books, whose authority was disputed by Rabbi Akiva during the first-century development of the Hebrew Canon, though Akiva was not opposed to a private reading of them, as he himself frequently uses Sirach. One early record of the deuterocanonical books is found in the early Koine Greek Septuagint translation of the Jewish scriptures. This translation was widely used by the Early Christians and is the one most often quoted in the New Testament when it quotes the Old Testament. Other, older versions of the texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, have since been discovered among the Dead Sea scrolls and the Cairo Geniza.
The traditional explanation of the development of the Old Testament canon describes two sets of Old Testament books, the protocanonical and the deuterocanonical books. According to this, some Church Fathers accepted the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books based on their inclusion in the Septuagint, while others disputed their status based on their exclusion from the Hebrew Bible. Michael Barber argues that this time-honored reconstruction is grossly inaccurate and that "the case against the apocrypha is overstated". Augustine simply wanted a new version of the Latin Bible based on the Greek text since the Septuagint was widely used throughout the churches and translation process could not rely on a single person who could be fallible; he in fact held that the Hebrew and the Septuagint were both equally inspired, as stated in his City of God 18.43-44. For most Early Christians, the Hebrew Bible was "Holy Scripture" but was to be understood and interpreted in the light of Christian convictions.
While deuterocanonical books were referenced by some fathers as Scripture, men such as Athanasius held that they were for reading only and not to be used for determination of doctrine. Athanasius includes the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah in the list of the Canon of the Old Testament, and excludes the Book of Esther. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "the inferior rank to which the deuteros were relegated by authorities like Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome, was due to too rigid a conception of canonicity, one demanding that a book, to be entitled to this supreme dignity, must be received by all, must have the sanction of Jewish antiquity, and must moreover be adapted not only to edification, but also to the 'confirmation of the doctrine of the Church', to borrow Jerome's phrase."
Following Martin Luther, Protestants regard the deuterocanonical books as apocryphal. According to J. N. D. Kelly, "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church… always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books."

Septuagint

The Early Christian Church used the Greek texts since Greek was a lingua franca of the Roman Empire at the time, and the language of the Greco-Roman Church.
The Septuagint seems to have been a major source for the Apostles, but it is not the only one. St. Jerome offered, for example, Matt 2:15 and 2:23, John 19:37, John 7:38, 1 Cor. 2:9. as examples not found in the Septuagint, but in Hebrew texts. The New Testament writers, when citing the Jewish scriptures, or when quoting Jesus doing so, freely used the Greek translation, implying that Jesus, his Apostles, and their followers considered it reliable.
In the Early Christian Church, the presumption that the Septuagint was translated by Jews before the era of Christ, and that the Septuagint at certain places gives itself more to a christological interpretation than 2nd-century Hebrew texts was taken as evidence that "Jews" had changed the Hebrew text in a way that made them less Christological. For example, Irenaeus concerning : The Septuagint clearly writes of a virgin that shall conceive. While the Hebrew text was, according to Irenaeus, at that time interpreted by Theodotion and Aquila as a young woman that shall conceive. According to Irenaeus, the Ebionites used this to claim that Joseph was the father of Jesus. From Irenaeus' point of view that was pure heresy, facilitated by anti-Christian alterations of the scripture in Hebrew, as evident by the older, pre-Christian, Septuagint.
When Jerome undertook the revision of the Old Latin translations of the Septuagint, he checked the Septuagint against the Hebrew texts that were then available. He broke with church tradition and translated most of the Old Testament of his Vulgate from Hebrew rather than Greek. His choice was severely criticized by Augustine, his contemporary; a flood of still less moderate criticism came from those who regarded Jerome as a forger. While on the one hand he argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on both philological and theological grounds, on the other, in the context of accusations of heresy against him, Jerome would acknowledge the Septuagint texts as well.
The Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers to use the LXX as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages. The Eastern Orthodox also use LXX untranslated where Greek is the liturgical language, e.g. in the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, the Church of Greece and the Cypriot Orthodox Church. Critical translations of the Old Testament, while using the Masoretic Text as their basis, consult the Septuagint as well as other versions in an attempt to reconstruct the meaning of the Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear, undeniably corrupt, or ambiguous.

Bryennios List

After Melito's canon, perhaps the earliest reference to a Christian canon is the Bryennios List which was found by Philotheos Bryennios in the Codex Hierosolymitanus in the library of the monastery of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1873. The list is written in Koine Greek letters, transcribing Aramaic and/or Hebrew names, each with a corresponding book title from the Greek Septuagint; and is dated to the first or early second century by Jean-Paul Audet in 1950. Some scholars believe it should be assigned a later date of 1056 AD, as written in the manuscript. Audet notes that it summarizes 27 books, which by traditional grouping forms 22 books of the canon
"Jesus Naue" was an old name for the Book of Joshua. The "Two of Esdras" are linked in the list to Esdras A and Esdras B from the surviving pandect witnesses to Septuagint, but otherwise Audet proposed that the 'further' book of Esdras in the list might have denoted an Aramaic targum. The 22 number of books is common in Jewish lists of antiquity. However, R.T. Beckwith asserts that the Bryennios list "mixes the Prophets and Hagiographa indiscriminately together, it must be of Christian rather than Jewish authorship, and since the use of Aramaic continued in the Palestinian church for centuries, there is no reason to date it so early."

Marcion

was the first Christian leader in recorded history to propose and delineate a uniquely Christian canon. He explicitly rejects the Old Testament and pushes his version of the New Testament to be the Christian canon.
Irenaeus wrote:
With different perspective, Tertullian said:
Everett Ferguson, in chapter 18 of The Canon Debate, makes a note that: " Kinzig suggests that it was Marcion who usually called his Bible testamentum ". In the same chapter, Ferguson also says that Tertullian criticizes Marcion regarding the naming of the books in his list. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Marcionites "were perhaps the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known".
Other scholars propose that it was Melito of Sardis who originally coined the phrase "Old Testament", which is associated with Supersessionism.

Eusebius on Melito and Origen

The first list of Old Testament books compiled by a Christian source is recorded by the 4th century historian Eusebius. Eusebius describes the collection of a 2nd century bishop, Melito of Sardis. Melito's list, dated to circa 170, the result of a trip to the Holy Land to determine both the order and number of books in the Hebrew Bible, instead seems to follow the order of the books presented in the Septuagint. Melito's list, as cited by Eusebius, as follows:
According to Archibald Alexander, "Wisdom" in Melito's list is thought by many to be referring to the Book of Wisdom, which is part of the Deuterocanon, but which others dispute. Book of Esther does not appear in the list.
Eusebius also records 22 canonical books of the Hebrews given by Origen of Alexandria:
Origen's list excludes the Twelve Minor Prophets, apparently by accident; but includes the Epistle of Jeremiah and the Maccabees, which disputation exists whether the Hebrews of his day regarded the Maccabees as canonical or not. For Origen himself quotes Maccabees and the rest of the related apocryphal books continuously throughout his writings as scripture and testifies that the churches use books which the Hebrews do not.

Constantine the Great

In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople. Athanasius recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans. Little else is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus may be examples of these Bibles. Those codices contain almost a full version of the Septuagint; Vaticanus is only lacking 1–3 Maccabees and Sinaiticus is lacking 2–3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah.
Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on the canon, however, Jerome, in his Prologue to Judith, makes the claim that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures".

Jerome and the Vulgate

's Council of Rome in 382, if the Decretum Gelasianum is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical with the list given at Trent, or if not the list is at least a 6th-century compilation claiming a 4th-century imprimatur. He was encouraged his personal secretary, Jerome, in the Vulgate translation of the Bible. Damasus's commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West. This list, given below, was purportedly endorsed by Pope Damasus I:
The two books of Esdras refer to the books of 1 Esdras and Ezra–Nehemiah; 1 Esdras is entitled 'First Esdras', and Ezra–Nehemiah is entitled 'Second Esdras' in the Old Latin bible; in the Septuagint version 1 Esdras is 'Esdras A' and Ezra–Nehemiah is 'Esdras B'. In the prologue to Ezra Jerome criticises the first and second books of Esdras in the Septuagint and Old Latin as presenting a "variety of versions" of the same Hebrew text; while rejecting the third and fourth books of Esdras as apocryphal. Pierre-Maurice Bogaert asserts that Jerome's third and fourth Esdras should be understood as the works currently referred to in scholarship respectively as Fourth Esdras, and Fifth/Sixth Esdras combined. In the same way Jerome, in his Preface of the Books of Samuel and Kings, explains the following: "To the third class belong the Hagiographa, of which the first book begins with Job,... the eighth, Ezra, which itself is likewise divided amongst Greeks and Latins into two books; the ninth is Esther."
In his Vulgate's prologues, Jerome argued for Veritas Hebraica, meaning the truth of the Hebrew text over the Septuagint and Old Latin translations. Vulgate Old Testament included books outside of the Hebrew Bible, translated from the Greek and Aramaic, or derived from the Old Latin. His Preface to The Books of Samuel and Kings includes the following statement, commonly called the Helmeted Preface:
At the request of two bishops, however, he made translations of Tobit and Judith from Hebrew texts, which he made clear in his prologues he considered apocryphal. But in his prologue to Judith, without using the word canon, he mentioned that Judith was held to be scriptural by the First Council of Nicaea. In his reply to Rufinus, he affirmed that he was consistent with the choice of the church regarding which version of the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel to use, which the Jews of his day did not include:
Michael Barber asserts that, although Jerome was once suspicious of the apocrypha, he later viewed them as Scripture. Barber argues that this is clear from Jerome's epistles. As an example, he cites Jerome's letter to Eustochium, in which Jerome quotes Sirach 13:2., elsewhere Jerome also refers to Baruch, the Story of Susannah and Wisdom as scripture.

Augustine and the North African councils

The Synod of Hippo, followed by the Council of Carthage and the Council of Carthage, may be the first council that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes the books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible; the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo, who regarded the canon as already closed.
Canon xxxvi from the Synod of Hippo records the Scriptures which is considered canonical; the Old Testament books as follows:
On 28 August 397, the Council of Carthage confirmed the canon issued at Hippo; the recurrence of the Old Testament part as stated:
The 'two books of Esdras' referred to in the canon lists of both North African councils are now commonly recognised as corresponding to the books entitled Esdras A and Esdras B in manuscripts of the Septuagint and Vetus Latina; which in modern scholarship are known as 'Greek Esdras' and 'Ezra–Nehemiah' respectively. Augustine of Hippo is referring to both these texts when says: "and the two of Ezra, which last look more like a sequel to the continuous regular history which terminates with the books of Kings and Chronicles." The five books of Solomon refer to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus. The four books of Kings refer to the two books of Samuel and the two books of Kings
Successively the Council of Carthage in its Canon 24 listed exactly the same Old Testament Canon of the previous councils.
Consequently the Roman Catholic canon established by the Council of Trent in 1546 differs from that of Augustine of Hippo wrote in his book On Christian Doctrine only in respect of the two books of Ezra. Augustine counted both Greek Esdras and Ezra–Nehemiah as canonical; whereas the Council of Trent split Ezra–Nehemiah into the separate books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and relegated Greek Esdras to the Apocrypha.

The Synod of Laodicea

The Synod of Laodicea was a regional synod of approximately thirty clerics from Asia Minor that assembled about 363–364 AD in Laodicea, Phrygia Pacatiana.
The 59th canon forbade the readings in church of uncanonical books. The 60th canon listed as Canonical books the 22 books of the Hebrew Bible plus the Book of Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy.
The authenticity of the 60th canon is doubtful as it is missing from various manuscripts and may have been added later to specify the extent of the preceding 59th canon. Nevertheless, given that the Book of Revelation is excluded from the New Testament in this list, it is taken by scholars such as Gallagher and Meade to transmit a genuine canon list of 4th century date.

Other early authors

, Cyril of Jerusalem and Epiphanius of Salamis listed as Canonical books the 22 books of the Hebrew Bible plus the Book of Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy.
Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion writes that along with the Hebrew bible books Jews had in their books the deuterocanonical Epistle of Jeremiah and Baruch, both combined with Jeremiah and Lamentations in only one book.
The monk Rufinus of Aquileia named as Canonical books the books of the Hebrew Bible and the deuterocanonical books named as "Ecclesiastical" books.
Pope Innocent I in a letter sent to the bishop of Toulouse cited as Canonical books the books of the Hebrew Bible plus the deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament Canon.
The Decretum Gelasianum which is a work written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553 contains a list of books of Scripture presented as having been made Canonical by the Council of Rome. This list mentions the Hebrew Bible plus the deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament Canon.

Quinisext Council and Canons of the Apostles

The Quinisext Council in 691–692, which was rejected by Pope Sergius I and is not recognized by the
Catholic Church, endorsed the following lists of canonical writings: the Apostolic Canons, the Synod of Laodicea, the Third Synod of Carthage, and the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius. The Apostolic Canons is a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, first found as last chapter of the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions.
Canon n. 85 of the Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles is a list of canonical books, includes 46 books of Old Testament canon which essentially corresponds to that of the Septuagint. The Old Testament part of the Canon n. 85 stated as follows:
Karl Josef von Hefele argues that "This is probably the least ancient canon in the whole collection"; even he and William Beveridge believe that the writings of the Apostolic Canons dating from end of the second or early of the third century, though others agree that they could not have been composed before the Synods of Antioch of 341 nor even before the latter end of the 4th century.

Council of Florence

In the Council of Florence, a list was promulgated of the books of the Bible, including the books of Judith, Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and two books of the Maccabees as Canonical books.

Reformation era

One of the tenets of the Protestant Reformation was that translations of scriptures should be based on the original texts rather than upon Jerome's translation into Latin, which at the time was the Bible of the Catholic Church.
The reformers saw the Apocrypha at variance with the rest of Scripture. The Roman Catholic Church uses them to support the doctrine of Purgatory, for prayers and Masses for the dead, and for the efficacy of good works in attaining salvation, things that Protestants then and today deem to be blatantly contradicting other parts of the Bible.

Martin Luther

Luther did remove the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament of his translation of the Bible, placing them in the "Apocrypha, that are books which are not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read". He also did many other canon-related things. Luther argued unsuccessfully for the relocation of Esther from the Canon to the Apocrypha, since without the deuterocanonical sections, it never mentions God. Then he said: "Does it urge Christ? Yes, because it tells the story of the survival of the people from whom Christ came." As a result, Catholics and Protestants continue to use different canons, which differ in respect to the Old Testament.
There is some evidence that the first decision to omit these books entirely from the Bible was made by Protestant laity rather than clergy. Bibles dating from shortly after the Reformation have been found whose tables of contents included the entire Roman Catholic canon, but which did not actually contain the disputed books, leading some historians to think that the workers at the printing presses took it upon themselves to omit them. However, Anglican and Lutheran Bibles usually still contained these books until the 20th century, while Calvinist Bibles did not. Several reasons are proposed for the omission of these books from the canon. One is the support for Catholic doctrines such as Purgatory and Prayer for the dead found in 2 Maccabees. Luther himself said he was following Jerome's teaching about the Veritas Hebraica.

Council of Trent

The Council of Trent on April 8, 1546, approved the enforcement of the present Roman Catholic Bible Canon including the Deuterocanonical Books as an article of faith, and the decision was confirmed by an anathema by vote.
The canonical books list is the same as produced following the Council of Florence,
On 2 June 1927, Pope Pius XI decreed that the Comma Johanneum of the New Testament was open to dispute; on 3 September 1943, Pope Pius XII reiterated the teaching of the Church in Divino afflante Spiritu, reaffirming that Catholic translations of the Bible in vernacular languages, based on Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew texts, had been allowed by the Church since the time of the Council of Trent.

Church of England

The Church of England separated from Rome in 1534, and published its Thirty-Nine Articles in Latin in 1563 and in Elizabethan English in 1571. is titled: "Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation":
The original King James Bible of 1611 included King James Version Apocrypha which is frequently omitted in modern printings. These texts are: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Rest of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy, Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, The Idol Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasses, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees.
The English Civil War broke out in 1642 and lasted till 1649. The Long Parliament of 1644 decreed that only the Hebrew Canon would be read in the Church of England, and in 1647 the Westminster Confession of Faith was issued which decreed a 39-book OT and 27-book NT, the others commonly labelled as "Apocrypha" were excluded. Today this decree is a Protestant distinctive, a consensus of Protestant churches, not limited to the Church of Scotland, Presbyterianism, and Calvinism, but shared with Baptist and Anabaptist confessions of faith also.
With the Restoration of the Monarchy to Charles II of England, the Church of England was once again governed by the Thirty-Nine Articles, as printed in the Book of Common Prayer, which explicitly excludes the Apocrypha from the inspired writings as unsuitable for forming doctrine, while eirenically conceding them value for education so permitting public reading and study. According to The Apocrypha, Bridge of the Testaments:

Eastern Orthodox Canon

The Eastern Orthodox receive as their canon the books found in their Septuagintal, Patristic, Byzantine, and liturgical tradition. As of the Synod of Jerusalem, convened in 1672, the Orthodox Church considers as canonical the following:
specifically, "The Wisdom of Solomon," "Judith," "Tobit," "The History of the Dragon" , "The History of Susanna," "The Maccabees," and "The Wisdom of Sirach." For we judge these also to be with the other genuine Books of Divine Scripture genuine parts of Scripture. For ancient custom, or rather the Catholic Church, which has delivered to us as genuine the Sacred Gospels and the other Books of Scripture, has undoubtedly delivered these also as parts of Scripture, and the denial of these is the rejection of those. And if, perhaps, it seems that not always have all of these been considered on the same level as the others, yet nevertheless these also have been counted and reckoned with the rest of Scripture, both by Synods and by many of the most ancient and eminent Theologians of the Universal Church. All of these we also judge to be Canonical Books, and confess them to be Sacred Scripture.

Not all books of the Old Testament are covered in the Prophetologion, the official Old Testament lectionary: "Because the only exposure most Eastern Christians had to the Old Testament was from the readings during services, the Prophetologion can be called the Old Testament of the Byzantine Church."