The Council That Wasn't

[Cure of Ars]

This was written By Steve Ray in September’s issue of This Rock. It is only a portion of the article.
[quote]
[b]Did Jabneh have authority?[/b]

According to the [i]Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church[/i], the “council” in Jabneh in 100 was not even an “official” council with binding authority to make such a decision: 

“After the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), an assembly of religious teachers was established at Jabneh; this body was regarded as to some extent replacing the Sanhedrin, [i]though it did not posses the same representative character or national authority[/i].  It appers that one of the subjects discussed among the rabbis was the status of certain biblical books (e.g. Eccl. And Song of Solomon) [i]whose canonicity was still open to question in the 1st century A.D.[/i]  The suggestion That a particular synod of Jabneh, held c. 100 A.D. finally settling the limits of the Old were competing opinions on what books actually belonged in the Jewish Bible.  There were various collections in existence.  Sadduccees and Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch, the the first five books, whereas the Pharisees accepted a fuller canon including Psalms and the prophets.  The Masoretic text did not contain the deuterocanonicals, whereas the widely used Greek Septuagint did.

This uncertainty continued well into the second century.  The discussion over the books of the canon of the Old Testament continued among the Jews long after Jabneh, which demonstrates that the canon was still under discussion in the third century- well beyond the apostolic period.  The challenges to canonicity at Jabnehinvolvrd only Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, but the debate over the canon continued past Jabneh, even into the second and third centuries.  Even the Hebrew canon accepted by Protestants today was disputed by the Jews for the 200 years after Christ.

[b]Some cautionary points should be noted here:[/b]

1.  Although Christians authors seem to think in terms of a formal council at Jabneh, there was no such thing.  There was a school for studying the law at Jabneh, and the rabbis there exercised legal functions in the Jewish community.

2.  Not ony was there no formal council, but there is no evidence that any list of books was drawn up at Jabneh.

3.  A specific discussion of acceptance at Jabneh is attested only for the books of Ecclesiasters and the Songs of Solomon.  Even so, arguments regarding these books persisted in Jadaism centuries after the Jabneh period.  There were also subsequent debates about Esther.

4.  We know of no books that were excluded at Jabneh.  In fact, Sirach, which was read and copied by Jews after the Jabneh period, did not eventually become part of the standard Hebrew Bible (cf. Raymond Edward Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy, The Jerome Biblical Commentary [Prentice-Hall, 1996, vol. 2, 522). 

[/quote]

[MorphRC]

Wow! ive been reading about the first century for a while now, and never came across that! Thanks Cure!

[Cure of Ars]

[quote name='MorphRC' date='Aug 21 2004, 10:54 AM'] Wow! ive been reading about the first century for a while now, and never came across that! Thanks Cure! [/quote]
Ya I did not know this info as well.

[Aloysius]

regardless, Jesus had already taken away the authority of the Jews and given it to the Apostles anyway.

[Cure of Ars]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='Aug 21 2004, 01:41 PM'] regardless, Jesus had already taken away the authority of the Jews and given it to the Apostles anyway. [/quote]
I agree and the article talkes about this.

[phatcatholic]

cool, would this article happen to be online anywhere?

[Cure of Ars]

I hope not, I just typed that out by hand.

[StColette]

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[Crusader_4]

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