Saturday, February 24, 2024

Lee Martin McDonald on Luke 24:44

  

Luke 24:44 is the only NT reference to three parts in the Jewish Scriptures, but there is nothing in the text to suggest that it included other books that were later included in the collection of Writings in the Tanak. However, some of those later designated Writings are cited in the NT as “prophetic” scriptures, e.g., Matt 24:15 citing Dan 9:27 and Jesus’ citation of Dan 7:13 in Mark 14:62. However, Leiman, Beckwith, and Bruce contend that “psalms” in this passage refers to the first book of the Writings that is not representative of that whole collection of the Writings. There is, however, no NT evidence that supports that assertion and there is no evidence that a three-part canon existed in the NT era or that the later third part began with the Psalms. These scholars impose a later notion that emerges only in the rabbinic era, but it cannot be demonstrated earlier. The Psalms were important in their own right and could easily have been given their own place of prominence in any collection of Scriptures. After all, the Psalms were among the three most frequently cited Scriptures in the NT (Isaiah, Psalms, and Deuteronomy), as well as at Qumran, and in the early churches. Also, there were more copies of the Psalms scrolls (thirty-six or thirty-seven) discovered at Qumran than any other book of the HB. . . . had all of the books of the HB had been formed as a fixed collection of scriptures before the first century CE, it is remarkable that the Christians, who adopted the scriptures of their first-century CE Jewish siblings in the first century, also welcomed other books than those that were later included in the HB, as in the cases of the Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Enoch, Sirach, and others. (Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, 2 vols. [London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017], 1:277, 285)