brews from the Babylonian exile, a collection was made of all the extant writings of the nation, which were rendered sacred, in the eyes of the new people, by their age, their character, or their authors. This sacred library, thus formed, was deposited in the temple; and for a considerable time before Christ, no further addition was made to it. After the time when the collection was made, there arose among the Jews writers of various classes, historians, philosophers, poets, and writers of theological romances. Here, then, were books on very various subjects, and of different ages. The old were reckoned the works of the prophets; but the new were not so considered, because they were written in times when there was not an uninterrupted succession of prophets. They preserved the old, but not the new, in the temple. The former were used in a public collection; the latter, according to my judgment, in none, certainly in no public collection; and if the Alexandrian Christians had not been such great admirers of them, if they had not appended them to the manuscripts of the Septuagint, who knows that we should have a leaf remaining of all the modern Jewish writers? Subsequently, some time after the birth of Christ, these two kinds of writings were named according to the use made of them. The ancient were called the "canonical," the modern the "apocryphal" books, and the whole collection was designated by the title Canon of the Old Testament.]"

§ 17, a.

SAMARITAN CANON.

Of all the books of the Old Testament, the Samaritans receive only the Pentateuch. They have not the

a Einleit. § 15.

original, but only a very recent recasting [Ueberarbei- Bearbeitung tung] of the book of Joshua, which therefore does not the other word, however, proba - belong to their canon. (§ 171.) The reason of their is used $171. disparaging the other books was, partly, their hostile position in respect to the Jews, and, in part, their distinguishing reverence for Moses, whom they exalted so far above the other writers of the Old Testament, that they despised all the rest.

Philo's classification of the books of the Old Testament may be compared with this. According to him, Moses is the only teacher of religious mysteries; only a general inspiration belongs to the other writers, and he even ascribes this to himself." [In the same manner, Josephus (Antiq. xiii. 10, 7) claims this inspiration for others, and says Hyrcanus possessed the three greatest privileges; viz., government of the nation, the priesthood, and prophecy; for God was with him, and enabled him to know futurities, to foretell, &c. Josephus ascribes this gift to himself. (Wars, iii. 8, 3.) "He called to mind the dreams which he had dreamed in the night time, whereby God had signified to him, beforehand, both the future calamities of the Jews, &c. Now, Josephus was able to give shrewd conjectures about the interpretation of such dreams as have been ambiguously delivered by God," &c. &c.]'

§ 17, aa.

[CANON OF THE SADDUCEES.

"In the time of Christ, there seems to have been no disagreement among the various sects and parties, into

• De Cherubino, p. 112.

[See Joseph. iv. 10, 7, and Whiston's note thereon.] The Samaritan #ars, / I

Λ

canon has been erroneously ascribed to the Sadducees. See Güldenapfel,

Josephi Archæol. de Sad. Canone Sententia; Jen. 1804, 4to.

and allowed them no

weight

in the decision

sy.

casily

TP

which the Palestine Jews were divided, in respect to the number of their sacred books. The Fathers have sometimes stated that the Sadducees rejected all the writings of the Old Testament, except the five books of Moses. Some modern critics have thought the conjecture probable, because, on one occasion, Jesus attempted to confute the Sadducees, who doubted the resurrection from the dead, not out of the Prophets or the Hagiographa, where passages to the point could easily be found, but merely from the books of Moses, as if they had no regard for the former, or thought they had not sufficient weight to deterHad mine the question at issue." But if the school of the Sadof a controver.ducees had arisen in such remote times that only one part of the writings of the Old Testament was then in existence, the origin of a difference of opinion, in regard to the number of books belonging to it, could be explained. The Sadducees would admit the writings which were acknowledged as sacred before the separation from the other party, and would reject all the rest, because they were written by Jews who did not belong to their school. But, since they first separated from the great mass of their nation at a time when the limits of this sacred collection of books had long been determined, and the canon was closed, it would not be difficult for them to connect their doctrines with all the books of the Old Testament, as far as they agreed with the contents of the Mosaic books. So their departure from the other Jews, in this point, would be inexpedient, and its origin difficult to explain. Josephus, who was well versed in the principles of the Pharisees, knew of no doctrine on this point which was peculiar to them. He merely says that the Sadducees, rejecting all tradition, adhered only to the written Law, without determining how many books they reckoned in their sacred national writings. And when Entscheidung einer Streit_

und kein Gewicht frage zugestanden hatten.

zur

he mentions the principles on which the Sadducees differ from the Pharisees, he never drops a single word from which it can be inferred that these two sects differed in regard to the number of their sacred books. How could the Sadducees fill the office of high priest if they differed on so important a point from the faith of the whole nation? And since, before and at the time of Christ, a Sadducean family had for a long time appropriated the office, how could they favor the reading of the Haphtara with the Parasha, if they did not consider the Prophets worthy of equal respect with Moses? And, if we may build any thing on the dialogues between Pharisees and Sadducees in the Talmud, R. Gedaliah proves the resurrection of the dead not only from Moses, but also from the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, while his opponents, the Sadducees, make no objection to the authority and value of the latter in theological controversies. Still further, on the supposition of their authority, they attempted by other arguments to weaken the force of the passages cited. Under such circumstances, the conjecture of the Fathers cannot destroy the opinion that the Sadducees and Pharisees were unanimous in respect to the number of the sacred national books; and if Christ, in a discussion with the Sadducees, proves the resurrection of the dead solely from the writings of Moses, the circumstance may be accidental."]"

§ 17, b.

THE PRETENDED ALEXANDRIAN CANON.

The Alexandrian version, which was considered as inspired, was very early enlarged by the productions of

[Eichhorn, § 35. Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 325, sqq., and Brucker, Hist. crit. Phil. vol. ii. p. 721.]

the later Jewish literature, both in translations and in the original writings. The Palestine Jews made a careful separation between some of them and the Old Testament; and part of them they did not read. Thus Josephus says, "But these books are not accounted of equal value with those before them, because there was no exact succession of prophets." They had a decided aversion to Greek literature: thus Josephus says, "For our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods, because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them."

But there are no facts from which it can be inferred that the Egyptian Jews themselves ever formally acknowledged a peculiar canon of the Old Testament. Notwithstanding their jealousy, in a matter of such importance, they could not disagree with their Palestine brethren. Philo sufficiently proves that they did not; for he makes no use of the Apocrypha; and his authority is sufficient to balance that of the writers of the church who were not

a

Josephus had probably read them in this version. But scarce any thing with respect to this subject can be learned from the New Testament. See Bertholdt, vol. i. p. 90.

. Antiq. xx. 11, 2. The decision of the modern Jews in respect to the Apocrypha may be seen in Hottinger, Thes. Phil. p. 516. See Baba Kama, fol. 82, col. 2. Compare Bertholdt, p. 92. [The Palestine Jews, says this writer, never admitted a Greek book into their canon; they even denounced a curse upon the use of the Greek language for sacred purposes.]

C

In favor of this opinion, see Semler, Untersuch. d. Kanons, vol. i. p. 5. Apparatus ad Lib. V. T. interpret. § 9. Corrodi, Beiträge, vol. v. p. 52. Beleucht. d. Gesch. d. Kanons, vol. i. p. 155. Jahn, Einleit. vol. i. p. 261. Münscher, Dogmengeschichte, vol. i. p. 257. Augusti, § 57. On the other side, Eichhorn, § 23. Bauer, Einleit. p. 56. Bertholdt (vol. i. p. 94) takes the middle course. According to Hävernik, the Essenes had a collection of sacred books containing some of their own works; 1. c. p. 75,