>
> "Of the Song of Solomon [...] he printed only the title, together
> with a note
> explaining that adolescents should not encounter the book at all,
> 'lest in
> the fervour of youth they give too wide a scope to fancy, and
> interpret to a
> bad sense the spiritual ideas of Solomon'".
>
> Watson does not mention any earlier complete excisions.
The terms 'excision' and 'delete' presuppose that there is such a thing
as the 'Bible' from which the Song of Songs, or some other book or
books, may be removed, either by rendering them illegible (deletion) or
physically cutting them out with a knife (excision). I realise that
these words are metaphors, but them do indicate an attitude to the
Bible which is in fact quite modern.
In fact, I have never seen a Bible from which any book has been deleted
or excised. I have seen plenty of Bibles which, from the standpoint of
the canon, are incomplete. For example, most protestant Bibles do not
contain the 'deuterocanonical' books. Very few early manuscripts
contain the entire Bible. Omissions may due to all sorts of reasons,
such as a book not being known in a particular locality, or its
canonicity not being accepted at a particular place and time. There
are likewise books not now accepted as canonical, such as the two
letters of Clement or 3 and 4 Maccabees, which are found in some early
biblical MSS.
I speak under correction of Dr Bob, who may be persuaded to favour us
with a more comprehensive and scholarly account of the formation of the
canon; but the question to ask is always, "Why has book X not been
included" rather than "Why has it been deleted."
Oriens.
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