although, unlike him, I avoid using the term “canon.” He argues that from the traditional Jewish perspective, a canonical book is “a book accepted by Jews as authoritative for religious practice and/or doctrine, and whose authority is binding upon the Jewish people for all generations. Furthermore, such books are to be studied and expounded in private and in public.”9 In the tannaitic period, moreover, the rabbis drew a distinction between the categories of “canonical” and “inspired,” the latter