Jewish and Christian History The Formation of the Bible A Timeline With an Emphasis on the Deuterocanonical Books ~ 1450 B.C. Moses taught the Mosaic Law, including the Ten Commandments. ~ 1000 B.C. The Jews began to collect national sacred stories into a work called the Torah (the Law). Under King Rehoboam, Israel split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah (1 Kings 12:1-20; 1 Chronicles 10:1-19). The latter prophets began to preach. 722 B.C. Assyria conquered the Northern Israelite Kingdom (Israel) and removed its population to the City of Assyria (2 Kings 17:5, 6, 23). ~ 600 B.C. The Book of Deuteronomy was added to the Torah while Josiah reigned as King of Judah (2 Kings 22:3-20; 2 Chronicles 34:8-28). Jewish Bible Officially = Torah (but it is still incomplete by comparison to our modern Torah.) Torah = Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy 586 B.C. Babylonia conquered the Southern Israelite Kingdom (Judah) and removed the aristocracy to the City of Babylon (2 Kings 25:1-21; Jeremiah 52:3-30); the Babylonian Captivity began. Aramaic (the language of Babylonia) becomes the common language of the Jews. Though Hebrew is the predominant language of the Old Testament, the following passages are examples of those that use Aramaic: Genesis 31:47; Ezra 4:8 6:18; 7:12 26; Jeremiah 10:11; and Daniel 2:4 7:28. Exiled Jews completed the Torah and compiled and/or wrote other sacred texts (the Prophets and the Writing) to help preserve their traditions in a foreign land (cf. Psalm 137:4). 536 B.C. Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonians and freed the captive Jews to return to Palestine (Ezra 1:1-2:2; 2 Chronicles 36:22, 23). Those Jews who had remained behind in Palestine accepted the Torah, as completed by the exiled Jews in Babylon, as their own Scripture too (Nehemiah 8:1-12; 10:28, 29). The returning Jews excommunicated many of those who had remained in Palestine. This was because many of those who had remained had intermarried with outsiders. Those excommunicated moved to the northern lands that the Northern Kingdom of Israel had occupied, and were known as Samaritans (Ezra 9:1-10:44; Nehemiah 10:30). Samaritan Bible Officially = Torah (completed and with some specifically Samaritan redactions.) The Jews completed the books that would, today, be considered the components of the Jewish Bible. Jewish Bible Unofficially = Torah (completed) + (various) Prophets + (various) Writings Jewish and Christian History: The Formation of the Bible 1/5
333 B.C. Alexander the Great, a Greek-speaking Macedonian, conquered the Persian Empire; The Empire adopted Greek as its common language, and the Jews followed suit. ~ 200 B.C. According to legend, the Alexandrian library requests a Greek translation of the Jewish Bible; the translation becomes popularly known as the Septuagint. Some Jews wrote more sacred books in Greek; today we call these Deuterocanonicals (Catholic) or Apocrypha (Protestant). The Septuagint became the common Bible, and it included the books in the Hebrew-language Bible (translated into Greek) plus some other Greeklanguage books (Deuterocanonicals). ~ 45 B.C. The Romans, under Julius Caesar overthrew Alexander s Empire and establish the Roman Empire in many lands, including Judea and Samaria. Jewish Bible Unofficially = Torah + (various) Prophets + (various) Writings + (various) Deuterocanonicals ~ A.D. 30 Jesus preached. Christian Jews continued using the then-current Jewish scriptural scheme, considering the Old Testament to be the whole Bible. Many used the Septuagint since its language was also the common language of the day. (Several versions of the Septuagint circulated, and various local Churches used various versions as the foundation of their Old Testament. For this reason, the modern Orthodox Church often claimed more Deuterocanonicals than the modern Catholic Church, and not all modern Orthodox Churches have the same Deuterocanonicals. 1 ) Christian Jewish Bible Unofficially = Torah + (various) Prophets + (various) Writings + (various) Deuterocanonicals A.D. 70 St. Paul wrote letters to various Christian Gentile communities. The Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple. St. Mark wrote his Gospel in Greek, occasionally using Old Testament quotes; these quotes are mainly from the Septuagint, as opposed to independent translations of the Hebrew-language scriptures. Predominantly reacting to the destruction of the Temple, Orthodox Jews excommunicated Christian Jews from Jewish synagogues. The idea of distinctly Christian scriptures began to seem reasonable to Christians. Sts. Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark to write their gospels, and also used the Septuagint as a source for many of their Old Testament quotes. ~ A.D. 100 The Gospel of John, the three letters of John, and the Book of Revelation are completed, completing the New Testament as Catholics know it today. (Since Christianity had not yet officially defined the contents of its Bible, Revelation s admonition not to add to or take away (Rev. 22:18, 19) seems to apply only to the Book of Revelation itself; compare this to Deuteronomy 4:2 and Proverbs 30:5, 6.) 1 Some Eastern Churches, having a different version of the Septuagint, may include Psalm 151 (the last in their Book of Psalms), 3 Maccabees, and/or 4 Maccabees. Jewish and Christian History: The Formation of the Bible 2/5
The Jews did not want Christians using Jewish scripture to refute traditional Jewish ideals and interpretations. This was especially problematic for them when the Septuagint rendered a phrase differently than the Hebrewlanguage original. As a result, the Jews officially defined the content of their Bible at the Council of Jamnia; they ceased using the Septuagint and returned solely to the Hebrew-language Bible most Christians at that time could understand Greek but not Hebrew. In rejecting the Septuagint, the Jews also overtly rejected the Greek-language Deuterocanonicals. Jewish Bible Officially = Torah + Prophets + Writings (any various) Deuterocanonicals Prophets = Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi Writings = Ruth, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Lamentations, and Daniel ~ A.D. 200 The Latin-speaking Church translated the Septuagint into Latin. The version of the Septuagint that was used in the predominant translation included: Tobit, Judith, Esther (Greek), Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch ch. 6), Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel 3:24-90), Susanna (Daniel ch. 13), Bel and the Dragon (Daniel ch. 14), 1 and 2 Maccabees, and 1 Esdras. This Latin version is known as the Old Latin Bible. There was no one, uniform Old Latin Bible. Different translations and traditions preserved different books: A) The Prayer of Manasseh 2 was present in some late versions of the Old Latin Bible. B) It appears that, due to its Christian character, 2 Esdras also became popular in the Latinspeaking Church and was, by popular usage, eventually added to many manuscripts of the Old Latin Bible s Old Testament. ~ A.D. 400 The Christian Church worked toward defining the contents of its New Testament. At Pope Damascus I s request, St. Jerome translated the traditional Roman Bible anew into Latin; the translation was called the Vulgate and was meant to replace the Old Latin Bible. The meaning of vulgar, as the root of Vulgate, is not obscene but common, commonly spoken Latin as opposed to formal Latin. Jerome began translating the Old Testament from the Septuagint but switched over to translating from Hebrew, and, where necessary, Aramaic, because he did not believe that the Septuagint was a good translation from which to work. In like manner, he did not favor the ideal that the Deuterocanonicals, those book outside the Hebrew-language Bible of his day, were scriptural. Though Jerome relented to Pope Damascus insistence and translated some of the Deuterocanonicals (Judith, Tobit, Daniel, Esther, and maybe 1 and 2 Maccabees) into Latin, he did so under protest. He, as well as some other reputable scholars of the age, questioned the logic of including these particular pre-christian works in the Christian Bible. Other scholars of the day, St. Augustine, for example, supported their inclusion. The Christian scholarship of the period had not yet settled the issue their inclusion. 2 The Prayer of Manasseh was originally part of the Septuagint s Odes of Solomon but in some versions of the Septuagint the Prayer of Manasseh was a stand-alone work, present without the other Odes. Jewish and Christian History: The Formation of the Bible 3/5
A.D. 431 The Latin Church had traditionally used a wider list of Old Testament books than Jerome was willing to accept. For those Deuterocanonicals that Jerome did not translate, the Church simply used the familiar and traditional Old Latin Version, which predated Jerome. Thus, the rest of the modern Catholic Deuterocanonicals (Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch (inc. the Letter of Jeremiah), and maybe 1 and 2 Maccabees) were included. Like the Deuterocanonicals that Jerome did translate, these texts found their place in the Vulgate in the same specific order that they did in the Septuagint, incorporated amid the other Old Testament books. Conversely, it seems that the uncertain place of 1 and 2 Esdras, 3 and the Prayer of Manasseh in the Old Latin Bible won them only a secondary place in the Vulgate; the Roman Church placed these texts only in the Vulgate s appendix, after the New Testament. The Council of Ephesus: The Assyrian (East Syrian) Church split from the main body of Christians (making it the only Non-Ephesian Church). (Witnessing to the still-undefined nature of the Christian New Testament, the Assyrian Church did not recognize Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation as scripture.) 4 Ephesian Christian Bible Semi-officially = Torah + (various) Prophets + (various) Writings + (various) Deuterocanonicals + New Testament New Testament = Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation A.D. 451 The Council of Chalcedon: The Coptic (and Ethiopic), Armenian, and West Syrian Churches collectively, the Non-Chalcedon Churches separated from the main body of Christians. (The Ethiopian Church uniquely had some books in its undefined Old Testament that were never in the Septuagint: i.e. 1 Enoch.) ~ A.D. 900 The Masoretes added pronunciation guides to the Hebrew-language Bible; their arrangement established the modern standard for Jewish scripture, the Masoretic Text. This same system clearly distinguished the Old Testament s verses, though not yet indicated by numbers. A.D. 1054 The Catholic and Orthodox Churches officially split from one another. ~ A.D. 1200 Cardinal Stephen Langton divided the Bible into the current system of chapters. This system, with a few minor exceptions, is today the universal standard among both Christians and Jews. ~ A.D. 1440 The Council of Florence listed the Bible s books the same as they are in the Catholic Bible today. A.D. 1517 The Protestant Reformation began. Martin Luther rejected the Deuterocanoncials, adopting instead the current Jewish scriptural scheme for the Old Testament. He did this in part because the Jews of his time did not recognize these books as Biblical, and also because he did not see any reason why Catholics had added them. 3 Though 1 Esdras seems to have had a solid place in both the Septuagint and in the Old Latin Bible, it was placed only in the appendix of the completed Vulgate. Perhaps this is because of its confusing nature, being mostly quotes from other scriptural works aligned in a non-historical order. 4 Otherwise, the only Church that does not accept the New Testament as the modern Catholic Church does is the Russian Orthodox Church: the Russian Orthodox Church does not use the Book of Revelation in its liturgies while not officially rejecting the Book of Revelation, the Russian Church has not officially accepted it either. Jewish and Christian History: The Formation of the Bible 4/5
Protestant Bible Officially = Torah + Prophets + Writings + New Testament (any various) Deuterocanonicals Deutercanonicals = Tobit, Judith, Esther (Greek), Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch ch. 6), Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel 3:24-90), Susanna (Daniel ch. 13), Bel and the Dragon (Daniel ch. 14), 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees, 1 and 2 Esdras, Psalm 151, and the Prayer of Manasseh A.D. 1545-63 The Council of Trent: The Catholic Church officially determined the content of the Catholic Old Testament. 5 Catholic Bible Officially = Torah + Prophets + Writings + Deuterocanonicals + New Testament Deutercanonicals = Tobit, Judith, Esther (Greek), Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch ch. 6), Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel 3:24-90), Susanna (Daniel ch. 13), Bel and the Dragon (Daniel ch. 14), and 1 and 2 Maccabees ~ A.D. 1550 The Douay-Rheims Version: Douai College s translation of the Vulgate into English would become the standard English version in the U.S. until after the Second Vatican Council (A.D. 1962-1965). A.D. 1943 A.D. 1970 Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Divino afflante spiritu, encouraged Catholic scripture scholars to use modern methods of historical and literary analysis to study the texts of the Bible. The New American Bible: A modern, American, English-language version of the Bible, partially based on the Douay-Rheims Version. The Catholic Bible Association of America translated the New American Bible, when possible, from the original languages; for the Old Testament, the Catholic Bible Association used the Masoretic Text as well as others, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. 6 Apocrypha, Deuterocanonicals, and Pseudepigrapha Apocrypha, literally translates as hidden books, and pejoratively indicating books that are not considered scripture. Protestants use the word apocrypha to refer to those books that Catholics and/or Orthodox consider scripture but that they themselves do not. These are the works present in the Vulgate and/or in some versions of the Septuagint. For many of the books that Protestants deem apocrypha, Catholics use the term Deuterocanonical Books. Deuterocanonical translates as second list of books, meaning second grouping of books in the Bible. Catholics reserve the word apocrypha for those religious works that are similar to scripture but that were never part of the Vulgate s scripture. Thus, Catholics would also consider the Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Esdras as apocrypha since they were not in the main sections of the Vulgate but relegated to the appendix in the back. The Protestant term for religious works that are similar to scripture but were never part of the Vulgate and/or Septuagint is pseudepigrapha. Catholic Term Protestant Term Deuteronanonical Apocrypha Apocrypha Pseudepigrapha The Psalms of Solomon found a place in some versions of the Septuagint but not others. Such versions containing these Psalms did not influence the scheme of any modern Christian or Jewish Bible. So the Psalms of Solomon would be apocrypha for Catholics and pseudepigrapha for Protestants. 5 Since the Vulgate placed 1 and 2 Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh only in its appendix, as apocrypha, the Council of Trent likewise did not recognize these works as scriptural. 6 Catholic Bible Association of America, The New American Bible, (Iowa Falls, Iowa: World Bible Publishers, Inc., 1991), 3, 4. Jewish and Christian History: The Formation of the Bible 5/5