Replying to arguments from Protestant apologists to defend Sola Scriptura (in this instance, Eric D. Svendsen, Protestant Answers [later published as Evangelical Answers]), Robert Sungenis wrote the following:
Objection #54:
[After quoting Luke 11:50-51, the apologist states the following]: Jesus is
here referring to the generally accepted Hebrew Canon which began with the book
of Genesis and ended with the book of 2 Chronicles. He cites the first murder
(Abel) and the last murder (Zechariah) recorded in the Hebrew Canon. This
Canon, although arranged differently, is otherwise identical to the Protestant
Old Testament Canon. Jesus is, in essence, defining the limits of the Old
Testament Canon for us—a Canon with which Catholics differ.”
Answer: This is another case of
“reading into” the passage what one wants to see. Since Jesus is making no
formal statement on the canon, it is highly inappropriate to say that he is
“defining the limits of the Old Testament Canon for us.” Jesus is talking about
the murders that occurred in Jewish history, not about the canon. One reason he
may be limiting his historical marker to Abel and Zechariah is that this
encompasses the time period up until the Babylonian captivity, when Israel
ceased to be a nation. This was the most cataclysmic event in Israel’s history
and therefore serves as the most appropriate time-marker. During the Babylonian
captivity, Jews did not murder their own Jewish prophets, nor does the Bible
record that Jews murdered prominent Jews at the regathering of Israel under
Ezra and Nehemiah. (Even if there were such murders in Ezra/Nehemiah, would
this apologist conclude, based on his own theory, that Jesus is eliminating
Ezra and Nehemiah from the canon because he did not include them in Luke 11:50-51?
This is especially significant since scholars agree that there was no
established order of books in the Hebrew canon at the time of the Babylonian
captivity). In the time of the Maccabees, Romans were murdering the Jews but
the Bible does not record that the Jews murdered Jews, at least Jews of any
redemptive significance. Hence, it is obvious that none of these more remote
time periods would have fit in to Jesus’ statement in Luke 11:50-51. (Robert A.
Sungenis, “Does the Bible Teach Sola Scriptura?,” in Not By Scripture Alone: A
Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, ed. Robert A.
Sungenis [2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International
Publishing, Inc., 2013], 256-57)
Quoting, and then later
critiquing, Roger Beckwith’s 1985 The Old Testament Canon of the New
Testament Church, Peels wrote:
Now one could say that mention of Zechariah’s death does
not so much contain a reference to the last Bible book as to the last canonical
narrative of a prophet’s murder, provided of course that in Jesus’ canon the
book of Chronicles came after the book of Jeremiah (in which the story of the
murder of the prophet Uriah is told). The objection to this argument is that
the point of the phrase »from Abel to Zechariah« would not become any clearer:
»It is mistake to reject an obvious explanation of Jesus’ words if one offers
itself« (R. T. Beckwith, op. cit., 220). This objection would become less
serious if the canon ended with the triad Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah, or if
Chronicles was located, not at the end but at the beginning of the Hagiographa
– for in these two cases Zechariah would also be the last of the martyred
prophets mentioned in the Old Testament. Another idea is that Jesus is
referring here to the beginning and end of Israel’s great history book as it
took shape in the septuagint (where Chronicles is the last book of the first
part of the canon). P. Katz, art. cit., 75 n. 6, comments: »Jesus may very well
have drawn on a Bible which had Chronicles immediately after Kings«; cf. J. L.
Koole, Het Oude Testament als Heilige Schrift, in: A. S. van der Woude a.o.
(ed.), Bijbels Handboek 2B: Tussen Oude Testament en Nieuwe Testament, 1983,
245, and A. van der Kooij, art. cit., 150. It does not seem very likely,
however, that in his dispute with Pharisees and Scribes Jesus would presuppose
the order of the Greek Old Testament. Cf. too D. M. Carr, Canonization in the
Context of Community: An Outline of the Formation of the Tanakh and the
Christian Bible, in: R. D. Weis/D. M. Carr, A Gift of God in Due Season, 225,
1996, 45. (H. G. L. Peels, “The Blood from Abel to Zechariah (Matthew 23,35;
Luke 11,50f.) and the Canon of the Old Testament,” Zeitschrift für die
alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 113, no. 4 [2001], 595-96 n. 40)
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