Septuagint and Canon: Hengel, part 5

This is the final post in the Hengel series, covering the final chapter of his The Septuagint as Christian Scripture.

Chapter 5: The Origin of the 'Christian Septuagint' and Its Additional Writings (pp. 105–27)

Hengel begins with a survey of Christian terminology for Scripture, showing that usually they were simply called "Scriptures," occasionally "holy Scriptures," less frequently "Law and Prophets" or similar, sometimes just Prophets (referring to all Jewish Scripture) and sometimes just Law. As for texts actually cited, you've got just a few books that predominate, especially Isaiah, Psalms, Deuteronomy, the rest of the Torah (not so much Numbers) and the Twelve. There are some "strange quotations," the source of which is debated, but the source is certainly not the extra books of the LXX codices.

The question of the origin of the larger canon of the early church, which so occupies us today, was apparently not yet in view. On the basis of the New Testament's use of Scripture, one would actually expect a smaller canon. (p. 111)

And here is the answer to the whole question addressed by this book:

The question of why the Old Testament attained in the church precisely the form present--still not completely uniformly--in the great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries is essentially insoluble. (p. 112)

Hengel finds knowledge of the extra writings quite early. "It also seems noteworthy that traces of the documents with which we are concerned occurred primarily in the West, but are scarcely transmitted in the East until Clement of Alexandria" (p. 116). Very helpfully, Hengel takes these documents one-by-one and traces their early reception in the church, focusing on citations and clear allusions. He had previously pointed out that there's not much in the way of explicit quotations in the first two centuries of Christian literature.

So, why did these writings prevail in the church, "immediately in the West, more slowly and half-heartedly in the East?" (p. 122). Because, as Luther said, they were useful and good to read. That's exactly why Athanasius prescribed some of this literature to catechumens. Hengel makes the interesting suggestion that these books may have "already had an analogous function in the instruction of proselytes in a number of synagogues of the Diaspora. This remains mere speculation, however; it is mentioned by neither Philo nor Josephus" (p. 123).

Hengel proposes that it was the library at Rome that served as the gateway for this literature to enter the wider Christian community.

He concludes with some reflections on the suitability of the OT canon, wondering whether a Christian needs a strictly delimited OT canon, since it finds its fulfillment in the NT.