Talk:Development of the Hebrew Bible canon

Discussion at WT:JUDAISM

This article has been the subject of discussions at WT:JUDAISM#Jewish_canon_or_Bible_Canon. Discussions are currently ongoing. Jheald 15:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge of Development of the Jewish Bible canon into Tanakh

Proposing a merger of these articles. Development of the Jewish Bible canon appears to be an orphaned copy from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia with limited updates. Suggest combining articles to facilitate development. Best, --Shirahadasha 04:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose, for the following reasons:

• Development of the Jewish Bible canon is currently 26k long. Inclusion of all that in Tanakh would totally unbalance that article. IMO, this is a perfect situation for WP:SUMMARY. The Tanakh article is here to cover many other aspects of the Tanakh too. I've recently (9 November) edited it to include (I hope) a decent summary of key points from here. IMO that is now about the appropriate amount of material to have on the subject there, for the good balance of that article. On the other hand, the article here can explore the material in much more detail, which it does as a parallel article to Development of the Old Testament canon and Development of the New Testament canon.
• Also, (1) this article is not "orphaned". As well as the link from Tanakh, it is also linked from Canon, Hebrew Bible, Early Christianity, Biblical canon, Development of the Old Testament canon. The link from Biblical canon is especially relevant, because it was from there that this article was first spun out per WP:SUMMARY.
• (2) The words "Copy from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia with limited updates" appears to be almost wholly incorrect. In actual fact, the overwhelming majority of the article is not from the 1906 JE, but was developed at Biblical canon, and represents contemporary scholarship, not 1906 scholarship.

Shira, I'd ask you to withdraw your proposal. But if further discussion is necessary, can I suggest the most appropriate venue for it would appear to be here, rather than at Talk:Tanakh. Jheald 09:39, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Other people have responded at Talk:Tanakh, suggest commenting there. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 06:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Influential scholars

I've added an {{expand}} tag. The 1st (1934) edition of Eissfeldt's book does seem to be seen as having made a major intellectual contribution; and the 3rd (1964) edition is still written of as a standard secular/liberal scholarly introduction.

But if this section is meant to briefly survey how intellectual discussion has developed, before the article enters into a more detailed survey of the evidence, then rather more is needed here. It needs to

• Identify where the question is discussed in the rabbinical tradition
• Namecheck who else wrote on the subject before Eissfeldt
• Identify what the nature of Eissfeldt's contribution was
• Discuss who has written/published since, and what questions they have been asking.

It shouldn't expand to much more than a couple of new paragraphs, but what's there at the moment needs to be placed in a rather braoder context. Jheald 14:58, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Canonicity of various books

I'm not a scholar of this by any means. But a few years ago I read "The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church" by Roger Beckwith. I recall that he spent considerable time discussing how various books (I think he said six, including Esther, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes) hovered perilously on the the edge of canonicity until the (hypothetical) Council of Jamnia which formalised their inclusion. But there doesn't appear to be any mention of anything like this in the article, nor in the Council of Jamnia article. Unfortunately I don't have that book (which I think is out of print, and whose second-hand copies are fearsomely expensive). Does anyone here know this topic, and can they add something about it to the article? Feline Hymnic (talk) 20:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I assume he was just drawing on Heinrich Graetz, but his theories about a "Council of Jamnia" making a determination on the canon have been largely discredited. There is the topic of the Antilegomena in the Hebrew Bible. 75.0.10.234 (talk) 05:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Curse on Minim

I don't get what the Curse on the Minim has to do with this subject. The curse is not in the Tanakh, so what does it have to do with the "Development of the Jewish Bible canon." If the matter is relevant, its relationship to the central subject should be better clarified. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:20, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not really relevant. It's just another of the things that the hypothetical Council of Jamnia was alleged to have set. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Barber

Barber, Barber, Barber.. 14 times this Roman Catholic Phd is referenced in this article. Not to take away the weight of his scholarship, but to so heavily reference him is not encyclopedic to say the least. Not that i am ready to fix that. Just saying... Grace and peace thru the Lord Jesus (talk) 22:39, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Pharisees

I added "They also debated the status of Ecclesiastes and Song of songs concluding like the tradition of Rabbi Simeon ben Azzai that they are Holy (Yadayim 3:5)." but then I realized it is in the next paragraph in Council of Jamnia!! so I suggest they be combined, it makes more sense that way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sadya goan (talk • contribs) 21:21, 3 October 2015 (UTC) again I suggest something like "Pharisees of Jamnia" Sadya goan (talk) 21:28, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion

This article may have started from a crib of the EB 11 article, which was a gutting of the much more thorough EB 9 article:

• "Canon" , Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. V, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1878, p. 1–15.
• "Canon" , Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. V, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911, pp. 190–191.

There's obviously more modern scholarship, but there might be lines that were simply copied that should be attributed and the EB 9 article is a good source for the traditional views in the 19th century, based on the surviving textual resources. See also the EB 11's article on the Bible, which has detailed sections on the canon:

• "Bible" , Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911, pp. 849–894.

 — LlywelynII 14:53, 21 June 2016 (UTC)