Monday, May 30, 2022

Lee Martin McDonald vs. Matthew 23:35/Luke 11:51 as Evidence Chronicles was the Last Book of the Old Testament in the time of Jesus

  

Much has been made over the completion and order of the HB canon, based on Luke’s and Matthew’s reference to the blood of Zechariah (Matt 23:35; Luke 11:51), but that argument has not been convincing. The argument goes thus: since Abel represents the first book of the HB canon (Genesis) and Zachariah the last (2 Chronicles), Jesus had the whole scriptural collection in view. They argue that Chronicles was the last book of the OT canon seen both by internal and external evidence, but this has been significantly challenged in both areas. While Chronicles is in the last place only in b. Baba Bathra 14b, it does not reappear in the last place in the HB canon until its place-place position in the tenth-century Aleppo and Leningrad codices. Other Jewish catalogs or manuscripts of the HB books generally conclude with Esther; none of the known Christian canon catalogs conclude the OT canon with Chronicles. The argument that the HB scriptures concluded with Chronicles, based on the Matthew and Luke references to Zachariah, is therefore unconvincing. While ending the HB with Chronicles conveniently ties the two collections of the church’s scriptures together, it is not found in the earliest canonical catalogs up through the medieval period, and concluding the OT canon with Malachi is rarely found in any Christian OT canon. Similarly, the identity of the Zachariah in Matthew and Luke is not easily made the same as the Zachariah in Chronicles, including the way that he died. Ancient interpretations of Luke 11:48-51 and Matt 23:35 never conclude that Jesus referred to the beginning and end of the OT. (Lee Martin McDonald, “Recognizing Jewish Religious Texts as Scripture,” in Ancient Jewish and Christian Scriptures: New Developments in Canon Controversy, ed. John J. Collins, Craig A. Evans, and Lee Martin McDonald [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020], 75-76)