I try to sort through the journal section of the library about once a quarter in order to keep up with steady flow of articles in my areas of interest. Last week I made my regular visit and I warmed up the photocopier and came home with a load of good articles. So, I thought I’d blog about some of these over the next few days.
First up: Karel van der Toorn, “From Catalogue to Canon? An Assessment of the Library Hypothesis as a Contribution to the Debate about the Biblical Canon,” in Bibliotheca Orientalis 63.1-2 (Jan-Apr 2006): 5-15.
In this article van der Toorn surveys some of the popular theories that attempt to explain the mechanism behind the canonization of the Hebrew Bible. He provides a corrective remark that on one hand should be obvious, but is often overlooked:
It is important to acknowledge that the canon is originally a list and not a volume. We think of the Bible as a book but the physical shape of a book goes back to the codex, and the earliest codex of the Hebrew Bible that we have is the Aleppo codex from the 9th century C.E. Earlier evidence of the Bible in the form of a codex concerns the Greek version only. The Hebrew Bible was a list before it was a book (6).
Van der Toorn then critiques the common “three-stage theory” which outlines subsequent stages to the canonization process: first the Torah, then the Prophets, and then the Writings. The typical view is that the process was brought to a close around 100 C.E. by a Rabbinical meeting in Jamnia, however, most scholars conclude that there never was a Council of Jamnia. Therefore, others put forward a “library hypothesis” inspired by Jerome’s statement that the Bible is a “sacred library” (sacra bibliotheca in Epistula 5 and bibliotheca divina in De viribus illustribus 75).
Exactly which library are we talking about though? Usually, scholars put forward the library housed within the Second Temple. However, it is doubtful whether the books in the canon of the Hebrew Bible are an exhaustive list of the Second Temple library. While this library was probably relatively small, likely it contained more works than are included in the Bible as did the collection at Qumran.
So, how did the list of books get pared down from the entire universe of the Second Temple collection to the canon that we now have? Van der Toorn hypothesizes that the precursor to the canon was a catalog. There are many lists or catalogues of texts throughout the ancient Near East. Some lists comprised educational curricula, recent library aquisitions (from Assurbanipal’s library), texts grouped by genre, and inventory lists.
However, van der Toorn thinks that the list that was the precursor to the canon of the Hebrew Bible resembled the pinakes within the Hellenistic world that provided lists of works selected as the best representatives of literary genres and writers. He extends this to Hebrew Bible thusly:
The canon resembles the pinakes in that it can be viewed as a list of works ideally present in every synagogue library. If the library hypothesis fails to account for the formation of the Hebrew canon, then, the selective catalogues for a model library may illuminate the way in which the canon functioned in the centuries before the printing press (15).
What do you think about van der Toorn’s proposal?
Charles,
Interesting post! I think this proposal would be supported by this reference:
2 Macc 2:13, Nehemiah “founded a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David, and the letters of kings about votive offerings.â€
Blessings!
Jim
Jim, thanks for the reference, and I agree with you. The really intriguing thing about this statement is that it doesn’t include the Torah!
Sounds like an early draft of van der Toorn’s Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Harvard, 2007). Have you read the book?
I have read it. I think it is one of his very best works and certainly required reading for these issues. However, I found his discussion of Deuteronomy a bit quirky.
So, Charles, if van der Toorn has the right idea about comparing the canon to the pinakes (a word which, by the way, occurs as a loan into Rabbinic Hebrew as pinqas!), how do we understand not only what was included, but also what was excluded? Certainly Ben Sira is a banner work for its day – why would this not have been included if the goal was the accumulation of the best representatives of literature (it was, after all, quite popular)?
I had similar thoughts. I really think his argument for canon as a scribal-insider collection could radically change the way folks do biblical studies.
Charles,
How are we to understand those who find meaning in the major themes that progress through the canon if it was composed from a precursor catalog or list? Is it argued that these list compilers intended on presenting the list with meaning also embedded in the sequence. I think of Biblical theology studies like Dempster’s Dominion and Dynasty for example. How do you think we are to weigh the value of the sequences of the major traditions?
Thanks also for the daily hebrew plug, very helpful to stay up with it.
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Surely “the precursor to the canon was a catalog” does not answer “how did the list of books get pared down … to the canon that we now have”; it merely displaces it.
Let’s stipulate that at some point there would be broad agreement on either “the canonical list” or “the list of the canon”. How did that list come into being? Surely it would have been because the documents enumerated in it were already circulating, and some won favor and some did not. You don’t need to invoke the existence of a list; librarians and book collectors know very well when their collection is missing something important. The same characteristics that would make a document “list-worthy” are enough to make librarians seek copies of it.
Under my hypothesis there is no general attempt to exclude non-canonical works; the filtering is a natural consequence of the costs of duplicating scrolls. Copying a scroll is a significant investment: scribes (and their employers) must prioritise. Favored documents are copied and distributed; unfavored ones aren’t replaced when they wear out. A few unfavored documents have a special significance to sectarians and enjoy a twilight existence within those communities, but most survive only in rubbish heaps or as palimpsests.
This filtering process would not have worked identically in all places: it depended on the choices made by individual scribes and librarians. A scribe who was fond of, e.g., Enoch could have helped it linger on among his successors, but individual variation would be evened out within any particular group.(*) The reason why the arguments about canonisation were a late historical development is that it was only after this process that it made sense for people to ask whether the texts form a coherent body.
I submit that this theory explains the state of the canon today. Each group canonised the potential scripture circulating within it. Any similar documents preserved by outsiders (seforim chitzoniyyim) were extra-canonical by definition, although there was still room to fight over, say, Canticles or Ezekiel. The natural tendency was to resolve that these ancient works were in fact canonical: after all, why would they have been preserved if they weren’t privileged? Of course, part of the answer is that they were privileged because they were preserved. The choices imposed by the difficulty and expense of copying resulted in the elimination of less-popular texts and a consequential increase in the perceived importance of texts that were seen as being in the “popular” group.
(*) A document that survived in an isolated group might be adopted as a badge of difference; I’m thinking of the Book of Jubilees among the people who left us the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Joe in Australia, I think you have a very important point and the cost of scrolls & scribes certainly played a very important role in the filtering process of canons. Furthermore, I think your observation of the displacement of the question with the catalog hypothesis is very perceptive.
However, I don’t think that cost was the only factor for the canons of the Bible, similarly, it was not the only factor within Mesopotamian streams of tradition. Mesopotamian scribes even had labels for “canonical” writings–ishtu/sha pi ummani and “non-canonical” texts–ahu. So, within Mesopotamia, and presumably Qumran, both “canonical” and “non-canonical” texts were copied and preserved concurrently.