Josephus, The Canon, And Historical Skepticism

An Eastern Orthodox poster by the screen name of Jimmy continues to post a lot of bad arguments and misinformation regarding the Old Testament canon in various threads. Below is a response I just posted in one of the threads that's no longer on the front page of this blog.

Jimmy keeps repeating bad arguments that have already been refuted:

"First century Judaism isn't monolithic!"

How many times have we explained to you that we're arguing for a majority view of the canon, not a "monolithic" Judaism?

You write:

"All you have is a witness to one sect of first century Judaism. The only thing we know about this sect is that it isn't the true people of God."

Josephus doesn't say that he's speaking for "one sect". And we know much more about Josephus than that he "isn't [part of] the true people of God". He was a Jew who lived during the apostolic era and had access to many sources relevant to the first-century canonical beliefs of the Jewish people. The fact that Josephus wasn't a Christian doesn't prevent him from having common human faculties, such as eyesight and memory. You don't have to be a Christian in order to be a credible historical source. That's why Christian historians frequently accept the testimony of Josephus and other non-Christians when reconstructing first-century Judaism or when discussing what historical sources said about Jesus, for example. The idea that Josephus can't be trusted to tell us about the canon of the Judaism he witnessed and that others he consulted had witnessed, because he wasn't a Christian, is absurd.

You write:

"Oh, and scholars recognize that he is speaking in apologetic mode, and can't be taken entirely seriously."

It was common for ancient sources to speak hyperbolically or exaggerate in some contexts, just as some modern sources do so. That's not just true of Josephus, but also of some of the church fathers, for example. Somebody like Basil of Caesarea or Augustine will refer to a belief as if it was universally accepted, even though we know from other sources that it wasn't, but their testimony still has some value in telling us what they believed and in telling us that their belief was popular enough to lead them to think that it was universal or to speak as if it was. We don't dismiss a source like Basil or Augustine just because he sometimes was inaccurate in speaking hyperbolically or exaggerating, for example. Steve Hays and I have already acknowledged that some Jews disagreed with Josephus. We're not arguing that Josephus' canon was universally agreed upon. But it's significant that Josephus thought that his canon was widely accepted, and other sources suggest that Josephus represented the majority of Jews in his rejection of the Apocrypha.

You write:

"How is it not comparable? An heretical sect is an heretical sect."

You're changing the subject. We were discussing whether Josephus' view represents the view of the majority of the Jews of that era. I was saying that you haven't demonstrated that Josephus and Mormonism are comparable in terms of their relative size. You haven't shown that Josephus was to first-century Judaism what Mormonism is to Christianity. I wasn't denying that Josephus and Mormonism are both wrong in their rejection of Christ.

You write:

"I've given you lots and lots of evidences that their canon doesn't line up with yours. Since it is not my position that there was a settled canon at this time, it is hardly something I need to document that there was a particular canon. The fact we can both cite sources shows there wasn't."

Again, since you've failed to make a case for Eastern Orthodoxy's alleged authority to settle the canon for us, you haven't given us any alternative that's as good as or better than following whatever Jewish canon Jesus and the apostles seem to have accepted in the first century. I disagree with your arguments about whether Esther was commonly accepted as part of the Jewish canon, but even if we were to accept your claims about Esther, the exclusion of Esther would do nothing to add the Apocrypha to the canon. In other words, whether you want to argue that all 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament were part of the Jewish canon of the first century or argue that less than 39 were part of it, you've given us no reason to think that the Apocryphal books were part of the mainstream canon, and you've given us no reason to think that Eastern Orthodoxy had the authority to add those books later.

And your claim that "The fact we can both cite sources shows there wasn't [a canon]" is ridiculous. If most Jews followed canon X, the fact that you can cite some sources disagreeing with that canon doesn't prove that there was no majority canon. As we've explained to you many times, we're not arguing that our canon was universally agreed upon. That's not the issue, and the fact that you keep trying to make it the issue, even after being corrected so many times, doesn't reflect well on you.

You write:

"Philo was found to quote the apocrypha. Josephus quotes it. Neither says that the canon excludes these books. In short you've got nothing."

Again, the issue isn't whether Apocryphal books are quoted. A source can quote a book without considering it canonical.

And your claim that Josephus doesn't exclude the Apocrypha is absurd. It's reminiscent of your ridiculous claim that Jerome and Rufinus excluded Esther, even though both men include Esther. Do you consult these sources before you make claims about them? Josephus refers to twenty-two books, which wouldn't include your Apocrypha, and he comments that the canon was closed prior to the time when the Apocryphal books were written (Against Apion, 1:8). He comments, in the passage I just cited, "It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time". Other Jewish sources also refer to such a cessation of prophecy and refer to the canon's closure prior to the time of the Apocryphal books.

You write:

"You haven't shown your position is a majority position either in reality or in the evidence."

We've cited far more Jewish support for the exclusion of the Apocryphal books than you've cited for the inclusion of them. If Josephus and the other sources we've cited from Roger Beckwith's book and elsewhere don't represent a majority, then how did the Jewish people get to the point of accepting their present canon that excludes the Apocrypha? Are you suggesting that they previously accepted some or all of the Apocrypha, then stopped doing so? If so, why are we supposed to believe that? If not, then what's your point? Are you suggesting that the evidence doesn't favor either conclusion? If so, that's a ridiculous position to take. If so many Jewish sources refer to the canon as closing prior to the time of the Apocrypha, whereas not nearly as many include one or more of the Apocryphal books, and the large majority of Jews from antiquity until today have excluded the Apocrypha from their canon in practice, the simpler and preferable explanation of the data is that most Jews excluded the Apocrypha during the timeframe in question. It would be much less likely that some shift took place in which a majority in support of the Apocrypha changed into a majority in opposition to it.

You write:

"Transmission of 2000 year old information is not even nearly uniform. That's why they can dig up tons of previously unknown information at Qumran. This is especially so for Judaism which has suffered a number of continuity breaks since 20 centuries ago with limited means and desire to copy obscure sources."

Speculating that the historical record might be distorted doesn't prove that it is. If the record is distorted, we still have to rely on it when researching historical issues like the ones we're discussing. You want to cast doubt on the credibility of the historical record, since the record doesn't support your position on the issue under discussion. But anybody with a losing position in a historical argument could take the approach you're taking. A Gnostic, Mormon, or Roman Catholic could claim that any evidence you cite for Eastern Orthodoxy or against his belief system comes from a distorted historical record. Would you accept that sort of argumentation if it was turned against Eastern Orthodoxy?

You write:

"If you ask Mormons in centuries from now, yep you'll probably turn up things that agree with Mormonism! So if you quote Jewish sources, you'll find things that agree with later Judaism, because that is the material that interests later Judaism."

First of all, Jews weren't the only people who preserved Jewish documents.

Second, Jewish sources aren't the only ones who commented on issues related to Judaism. Many patristic sources, for example, confirm that the Jews of their day excluded the Apocrypha from their canon.

Third, even if we only had Jewish documents that the Jewish people had selectively preserved in some distorting manner, the fact would remain that those would be the documents we have access to. Speculating that there might have been other documents that would support your position, but that the Jewish people didn't preserve those other documents, doesn't give us any reason to think that such documents actually existed. If they did exist, then why didn't the more honest Jews or non-Jewish sources refer to those documents? Or were all Jews dishonest? Were all non-Jews who knew of such documents too apathetic or incompetent to preserve references to those documents?

Fourth, I want to note, once again, that your comparison to Mormonism assumes what needs to be proven. You keep describing scenarios in which a source like Josephus might have been comparable to Mormonism, yet you never give us evidence leading to the conclusion that such sources were comparable to Mormonism. You just speculate that they might have been.

You write:

"Judaism was being turned upside down in this period, by Christianity and by the destruction of the temple. There is no need for more information than this."

If we have so little information about ancient Judaism, then how do you know that ancient Judaism "was being turned upside down in this period, by Christianity and by the destruction of the temple"? How can you trust the ancient sources who provided you with such information if the historical record is as unreliable as you've been suggesting?