The Canon of the Old Testament
The word canon is derived from the Greek word Kanon ( "Kanon"), a rod, ruler, staff, or measuring rod. The biblical canon is the list of books recognized by the church leaders on the basis of objective criteria, to be inspired by God and with authority and express accurately the historical relationship between God and his people.
For the Old Testament, the canon was implicitly and unquestionable. When the Torah was written, it was immediately recognized as inspired by God, handled with great reverence, maintained by the priests and stored in the Ark of the Covenant. Most other books of the Old Testament were handled in the same way. While the Jewish nation was flourishing under judges and kings, and prophets were recognized as men of God, their history and prophecies were written and preserved by the priests and scribes. After the captivities of the two Jewish kingdoms and the dispersion of the population became the problem. Still, work remains manageable as the priests in Jerusalem continued to maintain the Scriptures.
The first serious debate about the canon began with the translation of the Septuagint or LXX (the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek in Alexandria, Egypt around 285 BC). A number of texts included in the LXX were not part of the Scriptures recognized Jerusalem. These are mostly written after 400 BC, whereas Jews in Jerusalem considered Malachi (ca. 450 BC) the last prophet. The Hebrew canon had informally been established before 150 BC, which is corroborated by various rabbinical writings of those days, indicating that the "voice of God had ceased to talk." In other words, the prophetic voice had gone quiet, as without prophets no new scriptural revelation.
The rise of Christianity (which, in its early days, only uses the LXX) caused Jewish leaders to recognize the need for a formal canon. Probably at the end of the first century the canon of the Hebrew Old Testament had been officially closed. Some say this happened in the Council of Jamnia around 100 AD. Most scholars believe that there never was a council, but in the rabbinical school Jamnia became the substitute for the Sanhedrin after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and through the teachings of the school, the fee was set at the period AD 70-135.
Once the canon of the Hebrew Bible contains the same books and texts (in different order) as the modern Protestant Old Testament. However, in 1546 the Roman Catholic clergy accepted the whole of the Septuagint as the canon of the Old Testament. Thus, Roman Catholic Bibles contain additional books of the OT Apocrypha (also known as deuterocanonical - "second canon"). These are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also called Sir Ben Sira), Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), First and Second Maccabees, and additions to the books of Esther and Daniel.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has accepted the Septuagint as the definition of the canon for its Old Testament, adding the First Book of Ezra, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and Third Maccabees, with Fourth Maccabees as an appendix.
