A TRIPARTITE OR QUADRIPARTITE BIBLICAL
CANON
Early Christians likely accepted most of the books that formed the
Tanak and more, but not Tanak’s tripartite divisions. It would make little
sense for them to accept the Jewish Scriptures as their OT and not its
tripartite divisions had they been known before the Christians’ separation from
the Jews. Jerome’s order of books is close, but no Christian tradition
replicates exactly the Tanak order. The church fathers do not offer a rationale
for the sequence of their OT books. This suggests that the Tanak order was
unknown before the Jewish- Christian separation and that the Christians simply
adopted an order of their OT scriptures from a contemporary Jewish order. It is
not clear that the Christians invented the usual quadripartite divisions
since they say nothing about it. None of those collections have exactly the
same Tanak divisions. The church fathers do not provide a rationale for the
quadripartite divisions of their OT canon or for rejecting the tripartite
order. Even for Christians who adopted divisions similar to the Tanak,
namely Jerome, Rufinus, and copiers of codices Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus,
Daniel is regularly placed among the prophets except in Jerome. All of this
suggests that the divisions in the Christian OT canon were not viewed as
important and that the separation of the Writings from the prophetic corpus
formed after the separation of Christians and Jews. The fluid order of the
Writings reflects the lateness of the order of the tripartite HB canon.
Was the quadripartite Christian OT invented by the Christians or
adopted and
adapted from an older order in the LXX? While the quadripartite OT
order ending with
Mal 4:5– 6 is conducive to the Christian anticipation of a fulfillment
motif pointing to
the coming of Elijah, who is fulfilled by John the Baptist in the NT
(Matt 11:7– 15), it is
not clear why Christians adopted the quadripartite canon. The
quadripartite divisions
are helpful for Christians connecting their First and Second
Testaments, but they are not
necessarily contrary to other first- century CE Palestinian or
diaspora Jews hoping for a
future kingdom of God. In other words, it was not necessary that
Christians invented
these orders instead of simply receiving and adapting them.
The earliest known LXX manuscripts preserved by the Christians reflect
both a modified Tanak order and also quadripartite divisions. But did
the early Christians consciously organize their OT scriptures in a
quadripartite order or simply adopt what was already circulating among them? In
Sinaiticus, there is a gap after Jeremiah and Lamentations where Ezekiel and
Daniel likely were situated. In Codex Alexandrinus Daniel follows Ezekiel and
both are among the Prophets. In Codex Vaticanus Daniel is at the end of the
major three prophets (Isa, Jer, Ezek). Although the quadripartite divisions in the
Christian OT are often considered a Christian invention, it is quite possible
that the Christians inherited rather than invented those divisions in their OT
scriptures. Since Christians eventually adopted all of the HB books in their OT
canon, if the Tanak order existed before their separation from Judaism, why did
they not follow it?
In ancient Christian canon catalogues and manuscripts, the Writings
are generally in different sequences. Isodore, Bishop of Seville (ca. 600), for
example, included the Writings between the Former Prophets and Latter Prophets.
Origen, Jerome, and Codex Sinaiticus have some overlap with the Tanak, but they
are not exactly like it. Although Jerome’s fifth- century list has the closest
parallels with the Tanak, most Christian OT manuscripts and catalogues do not
follow it. If the Tanak order existed, it is strange that the church fathers
offer no rationale either for it or for the quadripartite OT canon
Sanders contends that the divisions in the HB and Christian OT reflect
important theological differences in how each collection came to be
interpreted. He claims that these differences are not accidental and concludes
that they make important statements about the distinctions between Judaism and
early Christianity (Sanders 2003: 225– 253; Sanders 1998: 22– 29 and 44– 45).
However, the quadripartite Christian canon may not be distinctly Christian
since the early church fathers offer no rationale for it. However, the ending
of the Christian OT canon with the Twelve and specifically Malachi may be a
Christian innovation in Catholic and Protestant but not in Orthodox OT canons.
Interestingly, ending the OT canon with the Twelve Minor Prophets is unusual in
patristic catalogues (see Mommsen and Isidore, De ord. libr. s. scr.),
and it appears more frequently after the publication of the thirteenth- century
pandect Paris Bibles that end with the Twelve followed by the Maccabees. The
evidence is imprecise for an early ending of the OT canon with Malachi, but
this may be a reasonable Christian innovation that connects its two Scripture
canons. F. F. Bruce, however, suggests that the quadripartite order in the
Septuagint may not have been created by the Christians but adopted from one of
several arrangements among Jews in the Diaspora. He observes that the current
order in English Bibles is derived from the Latin Vulgate and is closer to the
LXX than the HB (Bruce 1991: 81– 82). Modern publications of the LXX generally
follow the order in Codex Vaticanus but later LXX codices differ suggesting
that the order of sacred books was of little concern in antiquity.
The majority of scriptural citations in the NT are from the LXX.
Whether the current quadripartite order of the OT canon is a Christian
invention continues to be debated (Sanders 1998 vs. Seitz 2007 and 2009). Seitz
contends that the Tanak order is more conducive for interpreting the NT’s
christological focus (Seitz 2009), but since the Tanak divisions are not
obvious in the Sirach Prologue, Philo, 2 Macc 2:13– 15, Qumran literature, the
NT, or Josephus, those divisions were not functional in the first century CE
and we cannot argue that the Tanak order must be followed to support a NT
christological interpretation. (Lee Martin McDonald, “The Reception of the
Writings of their Place in the Biblical Canon,” in The Oxford Handbook of
The Writings of the Hebrew Bible, ed. Donn F. Morgan [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2019], 408-10)
