Luke 24:44, the canon and its distortion

by kepler 3 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  kepler

  Elsewhere on this forum in some wide ranging discussion there was the question of who had originally written the Pentateuch and Job. There are some who would say that the first five books of the Bible ( and even Job) were written by Moses; and then over the passage of centuries, more and more arguments were cited for other origins for these books.

  Perhaps coincidentally I ran across book about MidEast archeology ( the ancient city of Ebla) which in the course of providing background gave an overview of this and similar Biblical controversies.

  The authors examined the arguments (Pro) for Moses having written the Penteteuch citing versus in the the OT and NT:
  Malachi 3:22, Nehemiah 8:1 and Luke quoting Christ himself 24:44.

  Malachi 3:22 - Remember the Law of my servant Moses to whom I at Horab I prescribed decrees and rulings for all Israel. Nehemiah 8:1 - Now when the 7th month came round - the Israelites being in their towns - all the people gathered and asked the scribe Ezra to bring the Book of the Law of Moses which Yahweh had prescribed for Israel. Luke 24:44 "This is what I meant when I said, while was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, was destined to be fulfilled." Each of these cases they simply cite "the Law of Moses". Whether Moses wrote the book or it was handed down, I'd say that is left unclear. Now pay close attention to the phrase "the Law of Moses, the Prophets and Psalms".... What is meant here by the Psalms? The title of this book in Hebrew is Mizmor. And in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is the first book of Writings.
  Psalms come from the Greek psalmas. What's my point? Josephus and Jesus were speaking of scriptures in the same manner! Aside from what Luke conveys here about Christ fulfilling the Scriptures, Christ in this text from Luke also reveals how scriptures are supposed to be structured. And Daniel was part of Writings, not Prophets. An early, clear conception of the Canon meets us in the pages of the Jewish historian Josephus. In his Contra Apionem (I. 38-43), written to establish the antiquity of the Jews and the trustworthiness of their history, he wrote,

  ‘We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another; but only 22 books, which contain the records of all past times and which are rightly believed in. And of these, five belong to Moses, which contain the laws and the tradition of the origin of mankind till his death for a period of 3,000 years. From the death of Moses until the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes ( or Ahasuerus), the prophets who came after Moses wrote down the things that were done in their times in 13 books.

  "The remaining books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.’ …

  That would be Psalms, Proverbs and other books which are indicated in Hebrew Scriptures to this day. In other words:

  In the Hebrew Bible these books are divided into three divisions: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.

  The Law comprises the five books of Moses. In the ‘Prophets’ are included the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (the ‘Former Prophets’) as well as the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah. Ezekiel and the ‘Minor’ Prophets (the ‘Latter Prophets’).

  The ‘Writings’contain under three subdivisions:

  1. Psalms, Proverbs and Job;

  2. a group of five books called the ‘Five Scrolls’, Canticles, Ruth. Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther;

  3. the books of Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.

  There are two issues to be addressed here about scriptures: when they were written and when they became part of the canon of which Josephus and others speak. One trial balloon for the canonization is provided by Professor Gary Rendsburg as follows:

  Formation of the Canon

  c. 450 B.C.E. .................................................Books of the Torah become Jewish canon.

  c. 250 B.C.E...................................................Books of the Prophets enter Jewish canon.

  c. 100-150 C.E................................................Books of the Writings (e.g., Psalms, Proverbs) enter Jewish canon.

  c. 200-700 C.E................................................Christian canon formed, by different churches in the Near East and the Mediterranean, by accepting the books of the Jewish Bible, the books of the Apocrypha, and the New Testament as Scripture.

  Of course, Rendsburg’s schedule does not take into account Christ’s New Testament input into the discussion, which would give Writings an earlier date, but Rendsburg gives a significant distinction between the older segments of the OT and the newer ones: words borrowed by the Hebrew writers.

  Despite disputes about Pentateuch authorship addressed by J, E, P, D and other source writers, the text is in a classical Hebrew. Even up to destruction of the Temple, no borrowed words or other languages. Daniel alternates between Aramaic, Hebrew as well as 3rd and 1st tense with plenty of borrowed words (e.g. satrapies from the Persians applied to Babylonian government) and the actual monarcs that he supposedly served seem to come to him in a vague fog or are just plain false.

  But for purposes that are largely a matter of conjecture, Daniel is elevated to the level of a prophet. Written evidence to the contrary is buried or obscured. To cover the traces of this with translations such as Psalms for "Writings" in Luke and "Psalms" for Mizmor at Psalms, the structure of the Old Testament as seen by those living in Christ's time is obscured in behalf of apocalyptic proponents' beliefs.

  So, about those 2500 years or days...
• 

  Phizzy

  Thanks kepler, you have helped me get that clear in my mind.

  It could well be though that in the 1st Century there was not a rigid list of books that were alone considered "Scripture" by "Paul" and other Jews could it not ?

  The 22 mentioned by Josephus may have been in his mind all that was needed, but is there any proof that other writings were considered as not valid in some way because they were not of the 22 ?

  As to Daniel, I guess people knew what the genre was in which "Daniel" wrote, seemingly written centuries before, but really written at, and about, the time leading up to the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, hence they class it amongst the writings, recognising it not to be prophetic, but a polemic.

  As you say "about those 2500 years or days............"
• 

  mP

  What if Malachi and others that speak of the law of Moses are wrong ?

  Interestingly Deuteronomy means "Second Law", eg somebody wrote a revision to some older version. How could Moses have drafted so many changes to the law in such a short period of time. Most scholars today accept that Josiahs finding of D was a fraud and his scribes wrote the thing themselves and then "found" it.
• 

  kepler

  Phizzy, mP, Over the years I have picked up several books that discuss Biblical criticism, which is to say that the text is analyzed similar to other ancient writings. The result is that the "literary" theories such as authors J for Yahweh, E for Elohim, D for Deuteronomy, P for priestly and so forth are described and examined. The discussions come from various religious groups ( e.g., Protestant, Jewish, Catholic and not-committed) and the level of support for this theory or others varies. Rendsburg, for example, is sceptical about it himself, but uses it to illustrate very significant features of the Pentateuch. He also ignores others, such as repeted and alternate versions of the same story. But with regard to Josephus and the canon, his 22 books are essentially the books that are accepted in the King James Bible. Some are combined such as Kings, Samuel, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah. And they appear much in the same manner in Hebrew bibles used in Judaism today. It is the so-called Deutero-canonical that appeared in the Septuagint, that are not accounted for by Josephus. These were included for some time in King James publications. And they remain in Catholic bibles to this day, if not in others. An interesting exception is the Book of Enoch. Hardly readable in its full extent and it seems to pass into I, II and III segments like a skipping rock. Where would someone draw the line on something like this that seems to have less and less provenance the more it goes on? But what is significant about the Deutero-canonical is that these books ( and chapters) are ones that shed great light on what is contained in the main text. The devil and eternal life are discussed in the same breath in Wisdom of Solomon. That's the ONLY place in the OT I've seen for sure either or both. It's written in Greek maybe in the 1st century BC in Alexandria by an evidently Hellenic but anonymous Jew and seems to have the qualities that Josephus attributes to the Essenes. He accuses them of importing Greek ideas in Contra Apionem. Yet as far as I know there has been no copy of Wisdom of Solomon recovered from Qumran. Maccabees is the only reference to Daniel in the Old Testament. And as I see it, Daniel is the root of a lot of the difficulties with Christian thought today. A whole lot of people are aware of the misinterpretation of Daniel, but I don't think many are aware of how much has been done to cover it up. Since we don't know who wrote the other four books, it is hard to say that Deuteronomy is actually a fraud. The title just might mean what it says. It could very well have been written by the same group of scribes decades after the original four, assuming these did not have second editions. But I am fairly confident it was discovered in Josiah's reign and influenced his policies toward a purge. He died a zealot facing Egyptian chariots. Yet to the minds of the prophets,the kingdom of Judah had erred and needed to pay for its ways. Go figure?