I appreciated the "lesson." One more ?: aren't portions of some books,
i.e. Esther, which are part of the Christian Bible, not part of the HB?
KW
Larry Swain wrote:
>
> Apologies if this has already been addressed.
>
> > It is my understanding that the Hebrew Bible and
> > what we call the Old
> > Testament are not one and the same. The Hebrew Bible
> > excludes books that
> > were preserved in Greek but not in Hebrew.
>
> This is true, to a point. I would change the word
> "preserved" to describe the LXX however to "included",
> preserved suggests to me that the Hebrew Bible
> purposely excluded some texts, a typical Christian
> charge from Justin Martyr onwards.
>
> Anyway, the scoop is, the Hebrew Bible consists of the
> 66 books that make up the Christian Protestant Old
> Testament, but arranged much differently. Genesis
> through Kings is basically the same, but Ruth in the
> early period was often combined with Judges, as
> Lamentations is with Jeremiah. The twelve "minor"
> prophets are also one book (probably because they all
> fit on a single scroll in the ancient world) and are
> known as the Twelve (an otherwise unexplored use of
> the number as it pertains to the apostles).
> The Hebrew bible is split into 3 sections: The Torah,
> Genesis-Deuteronomy, The Prophets, Joshua-Kings, and
> Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12. and The
> Writings which is everything else: Psalms, Proverbs,
> Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Esther, etc. The LXX, or
> Septuagint, seems early on (or at least by the
> Christian era) to have included the seven books which
> make up the "Apocrypha"-Sirach, Tobit, Judith,
> Maccabbees, etc. But the Hebrew Bible never did, and
> the lack of Maccabbees in spite of Hanukah, has been
> read as some that the canon was closed by the time of
> the Maccabbean revolt. Ok, end of lesson, apologies
> for repetition.
>
> > >
> > > > If I remember correctly, the first "complete"
> > bible was put together in the
> > > > 7th or 8th century in northern England. Still,
> > through most of the Middle
> > > > Ages, a complete set of scriptures was a
> > rarity.
>
> The first complete Vulgate which we have, yes, was
> penned at Jarrow. A complete set? Or a pandect?
> That is, monasteries certainly had the whole Bible to
> hand, but probably in multiple manuscripts--the
> Gospels forming one book, for example.
>
> > > What about Jewish Bibles (the OT)? When Augustine
> > refers to "the books of the
> > > Jews," I get a sense that he has a discrete set of
> > books in mind.
>
> By the time we get to Augustine, the Hebrew Bible
> would have been available as would have the major
> targumim (Aramaic translations of the Hebrew read
> alongside the Hebrew in synagogue), the various Greek
> versions, the Mishnah, and by his time the Palestinian
> Talmud would have been either being put together or
> perhaps disseminated. Further, there would have
> sermons, stories, rabbinic material, and so on
> available. What is the context of the Augustine
> reference?
>
> Larry Swain
>
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