the anchor yale bible reference library
TIMOTHY H. LIM
The Formation of the Jewish Canon
Yale university press
New Haven &
London
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lim, Timothy H.
The formation of the Jewish canon / Timothy H. Lim.
pages cm.—(The Anchor Yale Bible reference library)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-16434-3 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Bible. Old Testament—Canon. 2. Bible. Old Testament—History. 3. Canon (Literature)—History. 4. Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BS1135.L56 2013
221.1′2—dc23
2013014159
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library is a project of international and interfaith scope in which Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars from many countries contribute individual volumes. The project is not sponsored by any ecclesiastical organization and is not intended to reflect any particular theological doctrine.
The series is committed to producing volumes in the tradition established half a century ago by the founders of the Anchor Bible, William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman. It aims to present the best contemporary scholarship in a way that is accessible not only to scholars but also to the educated nonspecialist. It is committed to work of sound philological and historical scholarship, supplemented by insight from modern methods, such as sociological and literary criticism.
John J. Collins
General Editor
Josephine Yu Lim (1926–2004)
IN MEMORIAM
1 Modern and Ancient Views of the Canon
2 The Emergence of the Canon Reconsidered
3 The Earliest Canonical Lists and Notices
4 The Torah in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
5 The Letter of Aristeas and Its Early Interpreters
6 The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira and 2 Maccabees
7 The Dead Sea Scrolls and Authoritative Scriptures
8 The Holy Books of the Essenes and Therapeutae
9 Canon in the Gospels and Pauline Letters
10 The Formation of the Jewish Canon
Appendix 1: Some Modern Canons
Appendix 2: Early Canonical Lists
Appendix 3: Bryennios’ and Epiphanius’ Lists
Appendix 4: Extra-Canonical Jewish Writings and the Pauline Letters
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About The Formation of the Jewish CanonTimothy Lim here presents a complete account of the formation of the canon in Ancient Judaism from the emergence of the Torah in the Persian period to the final acceptance of the list of twenty-two/twenty-four books in the Rabbinic period. Using the Hebrew Bible, the Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the Letter of Aristeas, the writings of Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature as primary evidence he argues that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 AD there was not one official “canon” accepted by all Jews; rather, there existed a plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities. Examining the literary sources and historical circumstances that led to the emergence of authoritative scriptures in ancient Judaism, Lim proposes a theory of the majority canon that posits that the Pharisaic canon became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. |
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