Friday, March 29, 2024

Lee Martin McDonald on the Canon and the 22 Letters of the Hebrew and 24 of the Greek Alphabets

  

Some Christians, who acknowledged the sacredness of the twenty-two book Hebrew canon of scriptures, also found a way to accommodate the rabbinic acceptance of the twenty-four-book canon adopted by the Jews. For example, the author of the Gospel of Thomas (ca. 100-140 CE, and perhaps later) says that “Twenty-four prophets spoke in Israel, and they have all spoken to you [Jesus]” (Gospel of Thomas 52). This passage may also refer to the OT books acknowledged as Scripture among early Christians, which if so would make it the earliest known Christian document to identify a specific number of books in the Christian OT. Interestingly, Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367 CE) mentions the twenty-two books of the OT in accordance with the Hebrew alphabet, but then added Judith and Tobit because the Greek alphabet has twenty-four letters! (Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, 2 vols. [London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017], 1:84)