alternative, namely, that the matter was not settled either in Judaism or in the early

Church until considerably later, probably not before the end of the second century at the
earliest and then only for some Jews and Christians? There is evidence to show that
there was some progression even among the Jews in the second century CE and
following on the scope of their biblical canon (see y. Ber. 11b; y. Nazir 54b; Gen. Rab.
91:3; Qoh. Rab. 7:11; and Ber. 48a). The lack of uniformity in this matter in both the
Church and rabbinic Judaism, the disputes among the Amoraim over the scope of their
sacred writings that “defile the hands,” and the frequent references to noncanonical
apocryphal literature in the rabbinical writings and in the early church fathers who often
refer to it as scripture support this conclusion.
[p.113]
C. Freedman’s Alternative: An Early Twenty-Three Book Canon
David Noel Freedman, on the basis of his discovery of the symmetry of the Hebrew
Bible,42 contends that, except for the Book of Daniel, the whole of the OT biblical canon
was closed for all intents and purposes no later than the fifth century BCE and that the
Law and Former Prophets (Joshua through Kings) were recognized as canonical
scripture in Babylon before the Jews returned to the Land of Israel in 538 BCE43 He says
that the original fixed Hebrew biblical canon was a twenty-three book collection
without the Book of Daniel and that the biblical canon was consciously determined
along symmetrical lines roughly between 400 and 350 BCE, though he is not dogmatic
about the date.44 Because there appears to be a well-balanced symmetry of the two major
parts of the Hebrew Bible, he concludes that the editor(s)/collector(s) put these parts
together with such a balance in mind.45 Freedman shows that the five books of the Torah
are balanced with the five major Ketubim (Chronicles, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ezra-
Nehemiah) which is also balanced with the five megillot (Ruth, Song of Songs,
Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther).46 The Former Prophets containing four major
books (Joshua, Judges, the Samuels and the Kings, the latter being two books, not four) are
also, and obviously, balanced with the four
Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets―the latter
Twelve
were always combined into one book). He claims that collection of twenty-three books was
possible only during one period in Israel’s history, namely, in the post-exilic Persian period
when
the Hebrew alphabet included twenty-three characters. He contends that this augmentation
came
when v and c were two distinct forms in the Hebrew alphabet.47 He even argues that the
final
editors of the Hebrew biblical canon, without the addition of Daniel, were Ezra and
Nehemiah.48
Although Freedman offers a unique suggestion supplying us with impressive data and
helpful
information on the development of the Hebrew alphabet, as well as adding clarity to our
understanding of Psalms 25 and 34, there are difficulties with his proposals, some of which
are
quite obvious. First, it is interesting that with the amazing parallels that he has found with
the use
of the computer that this symmetry was not noticed or observed earlier in the rabbinic
tradition.
Second, why is it that this twenty-three book canon is never mentioned in antiquity? The
virtual
silence about the matter is puzzling if a balanced symmetry was intended by the ancient
scribes
and
[p.115]
understood by its readers. Third, why did it take some 2400 years to discover this
symmetry? It
appears that we alone are aware of it and are indebted to Professor Freedman for its
discovery.
Fourth, where is the evidence for the addition of the book of Daniel to an already fixed
form of
the Hebrew Bible in the second century BCE? We agree that Daniel in its current form
could not
have been a part of the sacred collections before the middle of the second century BCE, but
where is the evidence that the book was added to to the Hebrew biblical canon at that time?
Fifth, and more importantly, how could the Judaism of the first century CE lose sight of its
already
firmly fixed biblical canon if the matter was settled earlier in the intertestamental period?
What
are the Essenes doing adding books like the Temple Scroll and the Damascus Document, as
well
as some psalms, to a widely recognized closed biblical canon? This is the same assumption
we
must suppose of the leaders of early Christianity if they were presented with a biblical
canon that
was already fixed. Although there is no doubt about the Torah being the central and most
important part of the Hebrew biblical canon, there is plenty of evidence that some of the
books of
the Writings were contested well into the fourth century CE, as was shown above. How
could
this be if the matter was as settled as Josephus would have us believe (Ag. Ap. 1.37-43) or
Freedman suggests? Sixth, why is it that if the Hebrew biblical canon was settled, except
for
Daniel, in the fifth or fourth century BCE, only the Torah was translated into Greek when
the
LXX was begun in the third century BCE in Egypt? Why does it take at least another
hundred
years (probably longer) to have a more complete LXX that included the Prophets and
Writings
(and more?)? Seventh, and finally, why, if the canon was finalized earlier along the lines of
the
alphabet, is there no obvious attempt to correlate the Hebrew biblical canon with the
alphabet
until the first century CE? Josephus is the first clear example of this practice with the one
possibility that it might have been found in an earlier text of Jubilees. Does the adoption of
a
biblical canon boil down to, “we would like to use Wisdom, but there is only enough room
for
Song of Songs”?
Even though Professor Freedman’s work is refreshingly new and intricately detailed, we
cannot
yet agree that his proposal is the correct one. Freedman, however, may well have provoked
our
thinking about the origins of the Hebrew biblical canon in a way that will stimulate some
further
advance in canon research. If his dating of the emergence of such a collection were not so
early,
we might readily see his point that someone clearly formed the Hebrew Scriptures in a
finely
tuned symmetrical pattern, but the date―at least no later than the early Greek period of 350
BCE―is a major part of his proposal and consequently problematical. We agree, however,
that
by the time of Ezra the Former Prophets probably already functioned in an authoritative
manner
(canon 1) in Israel and also in Babylon, but we do not
[p.116]
yet see them in a canon 2 category as he suggests. For these reasons, Freedman’s
proposal seems unlikely.49
We agree that the focus on the Hebrew alphabet is an important stage in the
development of the Hebrew Bible, but the correspondence of the alphabet to the Hebrew
Scripture canon itself is difficult to date with any certainty before the end of the first
century CE (Josephus). There are, of course, portions of the Psalms that are delineated
by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (Psalms 25, 34, 119, etc.), but the application of
this to the number of books in the Hebrew Bible is a late development. Some church fathers
in the East were aware of this association of Scripture with the Hebrew alphabet,
as we have noted above, but it is not clear how long it continued, let alone prevailed
either in Judaism of later antiquity, or in the patristic era among the Church Fathers.
Some scholars have tried to show that the Hebrew Scriptures were completed no later
than the second century BCE and were endorsed by Jesus and accepted by the earliest
Christian communities,50 but this does not seem to square with the attitude of the earliest
followers of Jesus. They were also informed in their theologies by the apocryphal
writings and, in the case of Jude, a pseudepigraphal writing that he acknowledged (Jude
14 citing 1 Enoch) as a sacred prophecy (or Scripture) in the fir