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)
