I have already said some things addressing those who limit Canon to the Torah, or to the words of Jesus. In particularly where that involves a desire to reject Paul. And will likely be returning to those subjects in the future.
But this post is more addressing those who may want to use NT quotes to determine what is or isn't valid in the OT Canon.
This article says there are ten books of the Old Testament never directly quoted in The New Testament.
They explain this is limited to direct quotes, where the context defines it as a quote. And doesn't include allusions or parallel wording. As such Revelation, which is built entirely on Old Testament allusions but has no direct quotes by this standard. This author does not argue these books aren't Canon for this reason, it's simply a fact they are pointing out.
Judges
Ruth
Ezra
Esther
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Lamentations
Obadiah
Jonah
Zephaniah
I used to follow Alan Krushner who did a whole thing on Ecclesiastes including New Testament allusions to it. I agree that Romans 8 could maybe be viewed as thematically a summery. But I feel a possibly overlooked direct reference is in Ecclesiastes 12:11.
"The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd."Most people think when Jesus says "it is hard for thee to kick against the goads/pricks" when he called Saul latter known as Paul, he was quoting Euripides play Bacchants. (Or skeptics would say Luke was quoting it) but this is actually a common expression, the only think that references from Acts has in common with that Greek play is it being in Plural when it's usually said singularly. But still, if the intent was to quote that play I'd expect more of it's context to be included. I feel like this verse from Ecclesiastes provides a decent Biblical precedent for using this expression. The full quote from Euripides is "Why dost thou continue tor age and kick against the goads, a man against a god?".
Ruth is mentioned by name in the genealogy of Jesus given in Matthew 1. Ruth's name is only in the Hebrew Bible in the book of Ruth, the genealogical information given about David in places like 1 Chronicles mention her husband, son and grandson, Boaz, Obed and Jesse, but not her. So clearly the book of Ruth was a source of information Matthew was using. Also the spelling Matthew and Luke used for Salmon comes from Ruth, Chronicles spells it Salma.
Jonah is referenced in some of the most famous of Jesus' references to the Old Testament. Referring to three days and nights in the belly of the Whale, and referring to the men of Nineveh as gentiles who believed.
It is Lamentations 1:9&16 that provides the Old Testament basis for Comforter as a title of God or the Messiah, (The Talmuds quotes it as a justification for Menahem being a name for the Messiah). John's Gospel and first Epistle use this title of both Jesus and The Holy Spirit, though it being of the Holy Spirit is the most well known reference.
This page on a different site confuses me a bit. It is clearly using a different standard then the above article, yet I still can't make sense of it. It says there are only five books the NT doesn't quote Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. They say they aren't less Canon because of that. The thing is, the chart of quotations it then provides, fails to list any from Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Obadiah, Zephaniah or Nahum.
References to the person of Joshua son of Nun are not quite proof of that book being considered canon or even a source the person referencing him knew, since Joshua son of Nun appears in The Torah (and is referenced at the beginning of Judges). It is Hebrews and James mentioning the story of Rahab the Harlot that I find to be the blatant evidence that New Testament authors used Joshua as a source of information. The narrative surrounding the fall of Ai I think is thematically echoed in the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus as well as the Sixth Seal in Revelation 6.
However the only basis for a direct quote of the book of Joshua in Scripture is Hebrews 13:5 referencing Joshua 1:5. But that itself was of Joshua referencing back to Deuteronomy.
People from the book of Judges are also mentioned in Hebrews.
Ya know what should really shock all these "The Torah is The Bible of The Bible" types? Numbers is never quoted by Jesus and barely in the New Testament at all. By the standards of the author of the first article for a clear quotation, only Numbers 9:12 is quotes in John 19:36, but that is only Numbers repeating something from Exodus 12. According to the second link provided, the only reference to Numbers in the Gospels is 27:17 which is paraphrased by the narrative voice in Matthew 9:36, and then Numbers 16 is referenced in 2 Timothy 2:19.
When Jesus references the Brazen Serpent is a pretty solid reference to Numbers. Balaam also comes up in Jude and the letters to the 7 Churches. Korah's rebellion is mentioned as well in Jude. And I think Paul had Numbers 13 and 14 in mind in Hebrews 6.
Still, if you want to use the New Testament to decide what you consider Canon, referencing events isn't the same as quoting it as Scripture. The New Testament arguably references many events not recorded in any canonical book of Scripture.
However I definitely think any Prophecy the book of Revelation clearly references is meant to be viewed as a Canonical Prophecy, since Revelation exists to tie all of Prophecy together. That includes material from Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel and more.
Now, "that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet" in Matthew 27:9 is not a contradiction, first off there is a connection to Jeremiah 32:6-9. Second, chapters 9-14 of Zachariah unlike the earlier chapters do not begin with Zachariah identifying himself, it's possible he was recording additional prophecies of Jeremiah that he gave after his own Book was finished, and that weren't scribed by Baruch accounting for a different literary style.
If you choose to divide Daniel between it's Hebrew and Aramaic portions. It's interesting that only Hebrew Daniel is directly quoted, but Aramaic Daniel is more so what Revelation draws on.
The author of the first link also calculates Psalms to be the most quoted book, and Isaiah second. But most curious is in 3rd place is Deuteronomy as the most quoted of The Torah. But since Deuteronomy mostly repeats and revisits stuff from earlier, much of that could be iffy. However what Jesus calls the greatest commandment is definitely a quote of Deuteronomy 6. And the Prophet like Unto Moses prophecy and the Song of Moses are two subjects unique to Deuteronomy that come up in the New Testament, the later in Revelation.
I've always been of the opinion that Esther is just as important as Exodus 12 to understanding how the Passion week fulfilled the Old Testament, particularly my belief that the Resurrection/First Fruits of 30 AD was on the 17th of Nisan. But I can hardly indisputably prove the New Testament authors intended that.
The apparent lack of New Testament verification for the Song of Solomon is rather disappointing to me, given one of the agendas I have on this blog.
Some people might argue certain books being kept in the same Scroll in the old Hebrew Canon means Jesus probably endorsed the entire scroll if he quoted any. For the most part that is pretty arbitrary, considering we don't even know when the arrangement we're familiar with started, (Josephus seems to refer to a different number of scrolls, and said the Torah was 7 books not 5). Lamentations was also written by Jeremiah, so it being in Jeremiah's scroll isn't a coincidence. The Minor Prophets being in the same scroll is a pretty arbitrary thing to make a point out of however.
If you're a Jesus words only person, you potentially have to throw out even more. The second link I've provided in this post says Jesus only quoted 24 books.
Jesus makes references historically to David and Solomon and Elijah, and debate-ably to the Zechariah killed in the Temple in 2 Chronicles. But nothing that fits the first link's standards of a direct quote of any of the dual books of Samuel, Kings or Chronicles (which were all 1 book originally). In fact they are only quoted directly in the New Testament because of Paul, in his epistles and in what he says in Acts 13. So all these people rejecting Paul because they love the Hebrew Bible so much, are unwittingly opening the door to reject much of the Hebrew Bible. This is interesting because there are a lot of people out there who want to reinterpret David as a villain, some while still seeing themselves as consistent with New Testament Christianity.
Fortunately, Jesus quotes both so called First Isaiah and the so called Second Isaiah and attributes them to Isaiah.
Ezra and Nehemiah are interesting. They shared the same scroll, and for good reason, Nehemiah is clearly a sequel to Ezra's narrative, so it's difficult to consider Nehemiah canon without considering Ezra Canon. Both links agree the New Testament never quotes Ezra, but the first says Jesus quotes Nehemiah 9:15 in John 6:31. However that same verse of John is also cited as quoting Psalm 78:24. My reading of the three verses in question leads me to conclude Jesus was not exactly quoting either, but the source material could easily have been just the Psalm.
Jesus says in John 4 that the second Temple had some form of Divine presence at that time (that ended at Pentecost when The Church become God's Temple). But the books themselves admit the Second Temple never had the full Shekinah Glory that the Desert Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple had. So perhaps even if these book are canonical as an account of history, we should perhaps second guess the authority of decisions made by felible men in this period.
Which is important considering that a website I know of arguing against interracial marriage says "The Messiah upheld the rulings of Ezra and Nehemiah", which is not the case, even if the verse from John 6 did have Nehemiah in mind, it's just Jesus drawing on Nehemiah's wording to describe an event of the wilderness wandering. It cannot count as an endorsement of Nehemiah or Ezra's opinions on how to interpret the Torah. In The Torah God being fine with Moses marrying a Cushite woman proves he was fine with Hamites marrying Semites.
On my Prophecy blog I did a post on Nehemiah's quotation of Deuteronomy 30. Where I showed the view of that held by Anti-Zionist Christians can't allow them to agree with Nehemiah's. And I also expressed that I think the Second Temple was built both on the wrong location and had the wrong shape.
The problem with wanting to limit one's Canon to what Jesus or the New Testament quoted is that when Jesus quoted something as Scripture calling it Scripture he was referring to something the Jews at the time already considered canon. Second Timothy 3:16 also infers a Canon that was already agreed upon.
The thing is it's alleged the Hebrew Canon didn't become what we know it as now till the Council of Jamnia in the 90s AD. However that conclusion is debatable. The Mishna and Talmud refers to this council as some people wanting to question what was already considered canon. With the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes being two that were called into question. That context implies they were considered Canon in Jesus time, and so if Jesus was upholding the then upheld Canon, it can be inferred to include them.
Also the Kariates seem to have agreed to the same Hebrew Canon even thought they reject the Rabbis. In fact it is primarily Karaites who preserved the Masoretic text that most today base their Hebrew Bible on, including the KJV.
However one could also argue that Jesus summarized the Hebrew Bible as just "The Law and The Prophets", and so see the lack of quoting the other Historical books as noteworthy. However Jesus clearly quoted the Psalms as Scripture, with Psalm 110 being the most quoted chapter of the Old Testament in the New Testament, and Jesus attributes it to David. But Acts 2 calls David a Prophet.
You confuse scripture with canon, the second is an acknowledgment of the first in a closed list, such a think didn't existed for the jews until jamnia, neither for the church until the 4th century. When jesus walked earth jews has different recollections of books considered scripture: samaritans and saduceos only receive the torah, Pharisees the torah, prophets and a variable set of writings, (by the 1th century they have records of arguing the canonical status of ruth, song of song, provers, Ecclesiastes and Sirach) escenes has a much divers set of prophet and writings, diaspora greek jews same thing. Jesus clearly state that "the law and prophet" ends with john the baptist so in theory any jews religious work written until the dead of john can be eligible to be counted as prophetic inspirited scripture.
ReplyDeleteThe list you have recapitulate is good, but is equal important to determinate how much of this quotes came from the masoretic tradition and how much from the lxx greek tradition of scriptures because the septuagint IS NOT a translation of the masoretic text) , but its own witness of the unpreserved proto masoretic (previus 3BC) text now lost, from which the masoretic (codified beetwen the 1Ad to 3DC) the samaritan pentateuch, and Aramaic Targums are witnesses also.
Did you know that the gospels make references of thing that are only specify in the OT Aramaic Targums and that paul use them also?
I have another post on this Blog all about the Septuagint issue.
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