Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

> As Paul wrote, a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles. When 
> writing or speaking to Gentile Greeks, he quoted Greek poets. When his 
> colleague Jude wrote to Jews (?), he quoted a popular Jewish work. 
> That doesn't imply that either treated these works as Holy Scripture. 
> Indeed, it seems that our Jewish friends have confirmed my 
> understanding that the book of Enoch was never considered by Jews, at 
> least in the mainstream, as on the same level as the Torah, the books 
> of the Prophets etc. Yes, they read it and commented on it, as with 
> Sirach, Jubilees etc, but it was never included in the same category.
> 
> Peter Kirk
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  As you see it but have you any evidence apart
from that? Would the canon tradition  that  among th Syrian Christian
included Ps 151 and a few more (some of them known from the DSS) tell you
that you have an uniform process of canonization? Will the different
editions of, say Isaiah at Qumran tell you that the tradition is uniform and
'rabbinic' in outlook (I know the predominance of the proto-massoretic
tradition among the DSS biblical scrolls). Will the differences between LXX
Jeremiah and the HB Jeremiah (and what we know about jeremiah from Qumran)
or the differences between various versions of Samuel in the LXX tell you
that you have an uniform tradition that can tell you what was canonical and
what not in, say the year 1 BCE-1 CE?

        NPL