Jewish scripture since biblical times

[kev67]

Something I've wondered: Christians took Jewish scripture and repackaged it as the Old Testament, and once the canon was selected, nothing more was added to it. However, Jesus's life was a non-event as far as Jewish theology goes (being kicked out of Palestine by the Romans would have been a more significant event), so have Jews added to their holy scriptures since those times? Perhaps only a portion of the Old Testament had any special religious significance in the first place.

[Pompey Bum]

Yes, with the Mishnah, which is a 3rd century written redaction of supposedly earlier oral traditions (and there were other redactions, too); and the Gemara, which is a discussion about various points in the Mishnah and other sacred texts including the Torah. The Mishnah and the Gemara together compose the Talmud, a central text in Rabbinic Judaism. As to your suggestion that "Perhaps only a portion of the Old Testament had any special religious significance in the first place," nothing in traditional Judaism comes before the Torah, but the Prophets and the Writings--the other parts of the Tanakh (or Hebrew Bible)--were also considered holy writings.

Also the Romans did not expel the Jews after either of their wars with them. A great many Jews were dead (and the Second Temple destroyed) after the First Jewish Revolt, and more were dead after the 2nd century Bar Kochba Revolt; Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a Greco-Roman city and would have loved to have converted the Jews to to his program of paganism, but he was not successful, and his successors had other priorities.

Was that helpful?

[Jackson Richardson]

I don't know when the contents of the Hebrew canon were regarded as authoritative. Christians took over the Jewish canon as it was. However there is an issue there. The Hebrew canon existed both in Hebrew and an accepted translation into Greek - called the Septuagint as it was believed to have been translated by seventy scholars.

The Septuagint includes a number of books and parts of books that do not survive in Hebrew. (Tobit, Susanna and Judith are the ones you may have heard about.) These are not used in synagogue worship and do not form part of the Jewish scriptures.

However they certainly formed part of the Christian scriptures - although there were minor variations between what the Orthodox accepted as canonical and the Catholics.

It all went pear shaped in the 1500s when protestants argued that only the Hebrew text was authoritative. Roman Catholic bibles will include the extra books as part of the Old Testament. Other bibles include them in an appendix to the Old Testament, called the Apocrypha.

Since the C19 bibles produced by protestants would completely omit the Apocrypha - but it was certainly included in the King James translation originally. (The Apocrypha includes texts which would support prayer for and to the departed, which would be anathema to strict protestants.)

Stuff about the Jewish canon on wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text

[kev67]

Yes, with the Mishnah, which is a 3rd century written redaction of supposedly earlier oral traditions (and there were other redactions, too); and the Gemara, which is a discussion about various points in the Mishnah and other sacred texts including the Torah. The Mishnah and the Gemara together compose the Talmud, a central text in Rabbinic Judaism. As to your suggestion that "Perhaps only a portion of the Old Testament had any special religious significance in the first place," nothing in traditional Judaism comes before the Torah, but the Prophets and the Writings--the other parts of the Tanakh (or Hebrew Bible)--were also considered holy writings.

Also the Romans did not expel the Jews after either of their wars with them. A great many Jews were dead (and the Second Temple destroyed) after the First Jewish Revolt, and more were dead after the 2nd century Bar Kochba Revolt; Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a Greco-Roman city and would have loved to have converted the Jews to to his program of paganism, but he was not successful, and his successors had other priorities.

Was that helpful?

I just wondered if and when scripture stopped being added to the Jewish bible. If scripture had stopped being added, I wondered why.

[Pompey Bum]

A major Jewish scholar assures me that the Talmud remains a continuing conversation.

[Jackson Richardson]

But does that mean that there are or could be additional texts of canonical scripture, other than commentaries and reaction to it?

[Pompey Bum]

Well, to be honest, I think what we've got here are three Christians trying to compare apples with pomegranates (why always oranges?) Judaism does not work in Christian terms nor should it. Part of the difference (as another Rabbi told me) is that there's no head Jew. And in fact the various forms of modern Judaism disagree on many things. (As a third Rabbi told me, the only thing American Jews can agree on is that they are not Christians :) ). I am quite certain that anyone who tried to add anything to the Tanakh would have a major fight on his hands--a violent one in some quarters. But that is because of the weight of Rabbinic tradition and scholarly opinion--especially in the Talmud. It's not accurate (in my opinion) to regard the Talmud as commentary in the same sense of a commentary on the Gospel of John that a Christian seminarian might read. It is a far more venerated text than that.

But I tell you what I will do: I will stop talking about someone else's religion as if it is my own (it's not) and I will invite any Jew who may read this to offer a more informed opinion. If it disagrees with mine, I will be very happy to learn. And as fate would have it, I have a dinner engagement with yet a fourth authority on Judaism this weekend; if I remember this thread, I will ask him JR's question. That's the best I can do for you.

[Pompey Bum]

Okay, so the weekend event turned into more of a party than a meal, and I wasn't able to talk one-on-one with the Judaic scholar I mentioned. I just had lunch with him, though, and I asked him your questions as best I remembered them. As I suspected, he told me that we were mixing up the idea of Scripture in Judaism and Christianity. In Christianity, Scripture is the Old and New Testament. In Judaism, Scripture is Torah. The Prophets and the Writings are sacred works (and with the Torah constitute the closed canon of the Tanakh), but the Torah holds primacy. The Talmud is also sacred writing. Torah is Law, and the Talmud is best thought of as its application. The Mishnah interprets the Torah and the Gemara interprets the Mishnah.

That much I said or tried to say before. But the new insight he gave me goes further toward answering Kev's original question. First of all there is a tradition--just a tradition although traditions are important in Judaism--that Prophecy ceased with the Return from Babylon. But God will send another prophet (and of course He could potentially send as many as He wanted). So for Jews, the Tanakh is closed and Prophecy is believed to have been silent for some time.

When I asked him whether the Talmud could be added to and he said yes, in principle, though the process moves at a glacial pace (the Talmud has not been redacted for more than 1000 years). But the process must go forward if the Torah is to be applied to modern lives. For example, the question of whether a Jewish woman can use birth control pills requires an interpretation because the technology did not exist when the Mishnah and the Gamara were being redacted. These new opinions are given by Rabbinical courts and called Responsa. Responsa are debated (sometimes hotly) among various Jewish groups and are not found in the Talmud (yet), but they do constitute the cutting edge of the growing Talmudic process of applying to Torah to individual lives.

So, Kev, I wouldn't look for any new Bible books, but neither is it correct to say that Jewish holy writing is inert. And I hope at least that helped.

[kev67]

Thanks, it did help, although I think I need a Venn diagram to differentiate the Torah from the Tanakh from the Talmud and the Mishnah and the Gemera. Additions to canonical holy writings should be made at glacial pace, but you might think someone like Maimonides might get in there (not that I've read any of his stuff, but he is famous enough).

It is odd that the Torah is accorded so much respect, when in reality so much of it is ignored. The Torah is books 2 to 6 of the Old Testament, starting with Exodus iirc. From memory, except for the first part of Exodus, most of it was about how many birds or animals need to be sacrificed for the numerous infringements it is possible to make in Judaism. Jews aren't going to start sacrificing animals again, even if the temple is re-built. So in reality Judaism has evolved a lot.

It is odd if the canon was closed after the return from Babylon, because the returnees from Babylon seem to have brought new ideas with them. For example, the Devil, angels and heaven and hell. From the bible, the Sadducees were the traditional Jews who did not believe in an afterlife (or at least not much of one). There was a multiplicity of other sects. Even the Samaritans were basically Jewish. After the mass-murder and expulsion of Jews from what is now Israel, there was a winnowing of the number of Jewish sects, and that modern Judaism is derived from Pharisaical Judaism. So I have read, but it was a long time ago.

[Pompey Bum]

It is odd that the Torah is accorded so much respect, when in reality so much of it is ignored. The Torah is books 2 to 6 of the Old Testament, starting with Exodus iirc. From memory, except for the first part of Exodus, most of it was about how many birds or animals need to be sacrificed for the numerous infringements it is possible to make in Judaism. Jews aren't going to start sacrificing animals again, even if the temple is re-built. So in reality Judaism has evolved a lot.

Well, the purpose of the Talmud is to see that the Torah is applied rather than ignored. The world may change but God's Law doesn't (in principle anyway--it ain't my religion! :) ) And sorry to further complicate the Venn diagram, but the Torah is usually equated with the Pentateuch, which means that Genesis is in there, too.




It is odd if the canon was closed after the return from Babylon, because the returnees from Babylon seem to have brought new ideas with them.

It is a good point, although for the record it was Prophecy (that is the validity of prophets) that was supposed to have ceased after the Return. And this was a Rabbinic tradition rather than a dogmatic belief (nor was the situation supposed to be permanent). But I had my suspicions, too, so I asked when the idea was first promulgated. It was in the 2nd century following the so-called Parting of Ways with Christianity. So--as my friend conceded--it was likely meant to cut John and Jesus out of the story. In fact there were plenty of Eschatological prophets in the run up to the war with Rome.

[Jackson Richardson]

Genesis is part of the Torah.