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The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism

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Roger Beckwith has produced a scholarly work which is surely recognized as such in the field of Old Testament study. He has systematically taken the issues, by which the Old Testament Canon must be recognized, and explained them carefully and precisely. The detail in which Beckwith labored is immense. In fact, the only negative thing this reviewer would say is that, to a layman, this work would be very difficult to read without a driving passion to understand the depth of study Beckwith has undergone. Still, the book is not intended to be devotional, but rather, intellectual. Like a dictionary, lexicon, or encyclopedia is not intended to edify, but to clarify, so Beckwith's attention to detail serves as a helpful explanation to a difficult topic. Beckwith divides the book into eight chapters with an introduction and conclusion.

Chapter 1 explains the "witnesses" (the early sources of evidence) to the canon. The way that canon was regarded in history past plays an integral role in the establishment of the canon. Tradition seems to be so lightly regarded these days in evangelical camps (to our detriment), and yet what a significant role it played in determining the extent of the canon! As the title to the book suggests, the canon of the Old Testament for the New Testament church takes very heavily into consideration what Jesus and the New Testament writers said about the Old Testament canon. The witnesses that were early enough to offer valid evidence on the canon are listed and explained so that the reader will be familiar with the witnesses as the following chapters implement their contributions. The schools of thought represented by the witnesses, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes, are also explained.

The second chapter established the fact that the canon did indeed already exist by the beginning of the Christian era. Much of this fact is established in that many of the early witnesses declared references to the Old Testament by using a formula before the quotation such as, "It is written", as well simply quoting the book by name. Beckwith's purpose is to show that a nucleus of books existed (hence, a canon), in archive form, and they were housed in the temple. A book would not have been housed in the temple if it were not considered Scripture by the Jews.

Chapter 3 is short and simple and describes the various titles of the canon. Each of the 28 titles of the Old Testament canon listed has an end-note attached, making the end-notes to chapter 3 as long as the chapter itself! The point of such evidence is that the individual books had become a collection sufficient enough to warrant various titles to the group (i.e. canon) as whole.

The fourth chapter clearly demonstrates that there were three parts to the structure of the canon: The Law, the Prophets and the Hagiographa; this is a method of arranging the various books which is evidenced from many sources outside the canon itself. The earliest evidence is from the prologue to the book "Ecclesiasticus" which specifically mentions three times the three parts of the canon. Jesus Himself, an extremely relevant witness for the Christian, states in Luke 24:44 the three sections of the Old Testament as "the Law of Moses and the Prophets and Psalms . . .". "Psalms" is shown to mean the Hagiographa. Judas Maccabaeus and his associates, in 164 BC, compiled a list of the Prophets and Hagiographa at least 250 years prior to the generally assumed date of the closing of the canon (AD 90, at the Synod of Jamnia). Beckwith defends the date of the recognition of the canon very well in this chapter, and it is one of the best-defended positions he takes in the book.

The fifth chapter defines the order of the Old Testament books as grouped in the canon. The purpose for defending that there was an established order-even though that order was different for different people-implies that the books in that order, however arranged, were recognized as canonical and that the canon was closed at the time of its ordering.

Chapter 6 proves that the number of the canonical books was always assumed to be 22 or 24. The books would be the same in both numberings; they would simply be grouped differently. The number 22 was favored by the Jews because it matched the number of letters in their Hebrew alphabet. Once again, the necessity to show that there was an agreed on number shows that the identity of such numbered books was known, and these books were, therefore, considered Scripture.

Chapter 7 discusses the books in the Old Testament that were considered canonical. There were really only five books included in the canon that were ever disputed with any real fervor. These were: Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Esther. The secular motifs in these books were the leading cause of concern to some scholars as well as the apparent contradictions with other canonical books that were not disputed. The disputes themselves imply that the books in question were considered canonical, because contradictions in un-inspired texts would have been assumed, and therefore, non-existent.

The final chapter includes the reasons the non-canonical books were excluded from the canon. The books in question from the Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha could not be included in the canon, for one reason, because their date is much later than the previously attested date of the closing of the canon recognized by Judas Maccabaeus in 164 BC. The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes all recognized a closed canon and generally saw that prophecy had ceased.

After his conclusion, Beckwith gives several appendixes for further study including charts which summarize visually what would take pages to explain in prose. I would enjoy seeing such a scholarly work such as this made available on layman's level so that what I gained with much labor might be attained for the layman at leisure.

This is a book that anyone engaged in rigorous analysis of what the ancient church and synagogue held to be canonical simply must have.

Rarely has an author invested twenty five years in a book.

Rarely has an author so masterfully controlled the facts of his subject.

Rarely have assembled facts been sifted with such careful, clear, logical examination.

Rarely does one read such a book as this.

Roger Beckwith's "The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church" is a magisterial work on the issue he pursues. He has a masterful command of the material at hand and along the way provides the reader with an education in the fallacies of other works dealing with this issue; witnesses to the Canon; the facts of the Canon; the structure of the Canon; and the identity of the Canon. It's not an easy read, but if you're interested in issues related to how we got the Bible, the Canon, the Apocrypha, and the early Church's use of the Old Testament, then this is an important work that should be consulted. Canonical studies are making a comeback, and so revisiting Beckwith's work is a very worthwhile pursuit

As a matter of fairness, I should state that Roman Catholic readers will not agree with all of his conclusions, especially regarding the Apocrypha (even though I find his arguments persuasive on this point). Both Protestants and Catholics, however, should welcome Beckwith's work on account of its careful scholarship, even if one doesn't agree with all of his conclusions.

Other reviewers have covered some of Beckwith's material in detail, so I'll conclude with a list of his major conclusions:

1. Standard titles in the canon, a standard structure, a standard order and two standard counts (these are all interrelated) can probably be traced back to the second century B.C.
2. Disputes about 5 of the Old Testament books were only of limited scale and significance and probably arose out of exegetical work on books already ranked as canonical.
3. There was no wider Alexandrian (Greek) canon which accepted the Apocrypha, and even if there had been a distinct Alexandrian canon, it is the Palestinian one the first Christians would have taken over and used.
4. Pseudepigrapha were placed in a separate category from canon.
5. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha were only included later, and not in an agreed way, by Christian Gentiles after the church's breach with the synagogue, among those whose knowledge of the primitive Christian canon was becoming blurred.
6. The three Jewish schools of interpretation all essentially agreed about the canon.
7. There is a general correspondence between the Christian canon and the Jewish. Christian evidence from New Testament endorses the Jewish titles for canon, their 3-fold structure, the traditional Jewish order, and possibly one or two standard Jewish numerations of the books.
8. On the question of the canonicity of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha the truly primitive Christian evidence is negative.

While Beckwith's word on the Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church may not be the last word, it is a very weighty one that any serious scholarship will have to contend with.

A major pillar of Protestant theology is that the Bible is sufficient in itself with no need for tradition. This was a reaction to the Roman Catholic doctrine that the teachings of the Church are as important as the Bible. Catholics point out an obvious problem with the Protestant position: the list of books, or canon, is itself a tradition, and indeed for the Old Testament the Protestant and Catholic canons differ. Beckwith seeks to obviate that problem by arguing that the Old Testament canon was firmly fixed before the time of Jesus in a form identical to the current Protestant one, that Jesus endorsed this canon and therefore it has divine sanction. This book is thus polemical. Beckwith marshals a vast amount of evidence, and this gives the book some value, but he is biased and selective. Further, whenever he comes to a difficulty that he cannot overcome, he blithely dismisses it. For example, faced with the substantial additional material in the Catholic versions of Esther and Daniel compared with the Protestant ones, he does not attempt to show that the canon consisted of the Protestant versions of these books. Instead, he calls this a problem of textual criticism rather than canon. Textual criticism deals with odd differences of words, maybe the occasional whole verse added or omitted, but never with the addition of several extra chapters! Beckwith's other fault is that he has long digressions on matters of at best marginal relevance. In summary, you can admire the erudition in this book, but treat everything it says with great caution unless you can check it.

Roger Beckwith is clearly a man with a vast knowledge of his subject. I cannot pretend to match him or work out where he has gone wrong. However, he has clearly gone wrong somewhere. The purpose of this book is to prove that the contents of the Old Testament were definitively decided by the Maccabees in about 164BC, and he does this to his own satisfaction. However, there is abundant evidence that there were still disputes about some books of the Old Testament 250 years later. That is not to say that the status of most books (whether they were to be included or excluded) was unclear in 164BC; that has been accepted by Bible scholars for decades, and Beckwith did not need to spend hundreds of densely argued pages to prove it again. However, there was still a grey area, for example regarding the Song of Songs, that would take centuries to resolve. As a result, it is difficult to place much trust in anything that Beckwith says that I cannot confirm from my own knowledge. This is a great pity, because there is some valuable information here.