6 - CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL

Summary

Difficult as is the task of tracing the growth of Old Testament literature and disentangling the strands of the several traditions which preceded the written records, that of reconstructing the processes by which the Old Testament Canon emerged is still more complex. It is salutary to recall that even within the Christian Church, with its reiterated appeal to canonical scripture as authoritative for faith and practice, either apart from or in conjunction with ecclesiastical tradition, the understanding of the nature of canonical authority and the definition of the contents of the Canon vary in different communions today, and have varied over the centuries. Accordingly, any attempt to discover how the Old Testament Canon was formed must reckon not only with the fact that the evidence available is far from complete, but also with the possibility that different conceptions of canonicity were presupposed at different stages in the process and in different regions and communities. These difficulties are aggravated by the lack, during the period under review, of a clear and consistent conception of canonicity and of unambiguous terminology with which to express it.

In the present survey the subject will be treated under the following main sections: (1) a consideration of the terms used to describe the canonical writings and of the definition of canonisation and canonicity within the relevant period; (2) a discussion of the evidence for acts of canonisation by which the several sections, and finally the collection as a whole, came to be recognised as canonical;