With Josephus we come
to the first explicit effort to describe a canonical ‘order’ (Against Apion, I:37-43),
made at the end of the first century A.D. In his account of the sacred books,
we are told of ‘only’ (1) twenty-two books, set within a heilsgeschichtlich frame:
the five books of Moses, the prophetic history from Moses to Artaxerxes (in
thirteen books), and four books of hymns and precepts. Moreover, Josephus
characterizes the collection as an ancient, fixed text accepted by the entire
Jewish people: for “long ages . . . now
passed . . . no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a
syllable . . . it is an instinct with every Jew” (my emphasis).
Although some
scholars have played up the possibility of Josephus’ having a political agenda
in this passage and the differences between his description here and others
from later periods, it goes beyond the evidence to imagine that here Josephus
speaks only as a spokesman for a ‘pharisaical canon,’ especially as this is to
read very much against the grain of what Josephus writes. He portrays the
unity, not just of the Pharisees, but all of Judaism . . . regarding Josephs’ general
reliability, if his strong characterization of a unified canon was so at
variance with the reality of the situation in Palestine, would he (or anyone
else) have considered it a convincing apologia? Or, on the other hand,
if Josephus had so little regard for truth as to misrepresent his religion,
could he not easily have made an even stronger case? Why, for example, did he
feel it necessary to mention that the ‘complete history . . . from Artaxerxes
to our own time . . . has been written . . . but . . . not been deemed worthy
of equal credit with the earlier records . . . “? Certainly not only because he
wishes to confer supreme status on the twenty-two books (note: not just the
Torah!), but also because it was no doubt true. Books outside of the twenty-two
book canon were not ‘deemed worthy of equal credit,’ perhaps more explicitly in
pharisaic circles, but certainly outside pharisaic circles as well.
Here again we
encounter the emergent tripartite canonical conception of ‘Law and Prophets’
and ‘others.’ Josephus, however, has taken the further step of merging Israel’s
Heilsgeschichte together with the history of its scriptural canon, an
understanding perhaps shared by Philo—but only implicitly (i.e., ‘Moses’ and
the ‘disciples of Moses’). It should also be noted that Josephus includes the ‘remaining
four books’ in his twenty-two book court, even though they seem to exist
somewhat independently of the overarching Heilsgeschichte.
Josephus explains his
tripartite conception of the canon, and perhaps even arranges it, so as to be “comprehensible
. . . to Gentile readers,” but it is difficult to imagine that the art of his
description is intended to conceal a lack of canonicity. Josephus’ own strong
statement of canonicity bases itself upon the syllabic text, not upon his
grouping of the books. Whatever the precise nature of his canonical order, he
gives a strong statement of canonicity from within the basic tradition of a
bipartite scripture. He does not grant an explicitly higher status to the Torah
as opposed to other portions of the canon, but to the twenty-two books of the
canon as opposed to any other books. (Stephen B. Chapman, The Law and the Prophets:
A Study in Old Testament Canon Formation [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic, 2020], 273-74)