Greek Canon Lists: Melito of Sardis, part 3

The first post on Melito introduced his canon list, provided the text in Greek, and discussed his strange order for the Pentateuch (Numbers-Leviticus). The second post considered whether Melito included the Wisdom of Solomon in his list. 


This post considers the rationale behind Melito's failure to mention certain books included now in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. After brief discussions of the cases of Lamentations and Nehemiah, we will spend more time investigating Melito's omission of Esther.

Lamentations
Lamentations was commonly included as a part of Jeremiah in Christian lists. Melito's list is the first Christian list, so we can't be sure that the same was true for him, but the practice is so common later on that it would be foolish to say Melito must have omitted the book. 

Nehemiah
The absence of any mention of Nehemiah by Melito can probably be explained similarly. In Jewish and Christian tradition, Nehemiah was commonly counted as one book with Ezra, which is included in Melito's list under the title 'Esdras'. That title probably refers to 1Esdras, which includes only a bit of Neh. 8. [On the other hand, Sundberg (p. 133) suggests that "[i]n Melito's list Esdras probably designates Ezra-Nehemiah," but it seems more probable that the bare title 'Esdras' in Greek would refer to 1Esdras.] It is probable that when the Fathers thought of 'Esdras' (whether 1Esdras or 2Esdras or both [see here to sort out the names of these books]), they assumed they were getting a version of the Ezra-Nehemiah story equivalent to those books in circulation among the Jews. After all, the title of the Ezra-Nehemiah book in the famous baraita in b. B. Bathra 14b is "Ezra." The upshot of all this is that when Melito listed "Esdras" as one of the biblical books, he probably assumed this title was comprehensive of whatever material the Jews included under the title "Ezra" (= Ezra-Nehemiah). 

Esther
Melito's list does not include the Book of Esther, which was never included with any other book, as we have seen was the case for Lamentations and Nehemiah. Some scholars (e.g., Ellis, p. 11) suggest that Melito or his source accidentally left Esther out, and that it should really be in the list. I incline to the view that this omission was intentional. The book is omitted also in the lists of Gregory of Nazianzus (Carmen 1.12) and Amphilochius of Iconium (Iambi ad Seleucum 261-89); this latter writer mentions that some include the book of Esther in the canon. Athanasius puts Esther among the outside useful books (Ep. fest. 39). Also, of course, it has not been found at Qumran (see here and here), and some Rabbis had some difficulties with the book (cf. Meg. 7a; on all this see Beckwith, pp. 291-97, 314-15; Leiman, pp. 200-1 n. 634). In view of the questions regarding the book entertained by some ancient Jews and Christians, it seems likely that Melito's source harbored similar doubts and did not include Esther in the list he transmitted to the bishop.

But why was Esther omitted by Melito or his source? Hennings thinks that the Jewish doubts about the book influenced Christians, or, alternatively, that the Christians regarded the book as too 'pro-Jewish' (p. 151 n. 85). On the other hand, Leiman thinks that omission of Esther was due to Christian ambivalence toward books not translated by the Seventy. This is an interesting idea that I'd like to discuss a little further. Leiman's suggestion has a certain plausibility to it, since Christians did commonly regard every OT book in Greek as part of the inspired LXX translation; books that could not claim the authority of the LXX were held in suspicion (this is, in fact, the argument in my book, pp. 92-98). After establishing that the Church Fathers were often more concerned with the number 22 than with the actual books of the canon (for more on this, see my book, pp. 85-92), Leiman writes:

Esther, rather than another biblical book, was excluded from some lists because it was the last title on most of the lists which included it [cf. Origen, Bryennios List, Epiphanius 3x, Jerome, Hilary], and because Melito had established a precedent for omitting Esther. It was last on the lists, and omitted by Melito, not because of Jewish doubts about its canonicity, but because the colophon to the Greek Esther indicated that it was the only Greek translation of a biblical book, included in LXX [sic], and yet not part of the original LXX translation. (p. 160 n. 239)

The colophon in question reads thus (trans. Karen Jobes, NETS):

In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Kleopatra, Dositheos, who said he was a priest and a Leuite, and Ptolemy his son brought the above letter about Phrourai, which they said existed, and Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, one of those in Ierousalem, translated it.

Lysimachus of Jerusalem is credited with translating "the above letter about Phrourai," where Phrourai is a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic form of the word Purim, and so the whole phrase--the letter about Phrourai--is equivalent to our "the Book of Esther" (see Bickerman, pp. 349-51).

Leiman's argument makes some sense. Presumably, in ca. 180 CE, if Melito had asked a Palestinian Jew for a list of canonical books, Esther would have been included. Possibly not, but probably. [Note Talmon, p. 266: "in the third century CE, the Book of Esther had definitely been accepted as part of the Hebrew Bible."] Leiman does point out (earlier in the same note) that the Church Fathers who stress that their list of OT books derives from Jews (e.g., Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome) do include Esther. Earlier, Josephus seems to have included Esther among his 22 books (cf. Beckwith, p. 322). Apparently 4Ezra 14:45 also regarded the inclusion of Esther in the canon a foregone conclusion (assuming Esther was among the 24 books). If it was doubted earlier by some Jewish groups (e.g., Qumran) and would continue to be questioned by certain Rabbis, that apparently had little effect on its position within the scriptural canon of the post-70 Palestinian Jews.

Christians were another matter. If they did pay much attention to the colophon, that would show that the Greek Esther had not originated with the original LXX and would raise some doubts. But, there are still some questions I have about this: (1) I'd like a Church Father explicitly to attribute his doubts about Esther to the colophon; (2) a doubtful Greek translation does not necessarily lead to doubts about the book itself.

In other words, I argue in my book (pp. 92-98) that the desire to include certain 'extra' books ('extra' in the sense of 'beyond the Jewish canon,' e.g. Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, etc.) led to the placement of these books in the 'LXX' (both physically--in a codex--and conceptually, thinking that these books were translated also by the Seventy). This was true even for some books (e.g. Wisdom of Solomon) that were originally written in Greek.The point is, the Fathers (I argue) worked with a theory such that OT books should have been originally delivered to the ancient Hebrews, and thus should have originally been written in Hebrew. If a book was originally written in Greek, this criterion would tell against its canonicity. And so if a Father wanted to include in his canon a work originally written in Greek (like 2 Maccabees or Wisdom of Solomon), he might include it in the 'LXX' translation, and this would imply that it had a Hebrew original, whether it really did or not. (For more on this, see here.)

But this is not what's going on with the Esther colophon. The colophon makes clear that the Book of Esther did have a Hebrew original and that it was not translated by the Seventy. Of course, just because it had a Hebrew original did not necessarily make it canonical. That was a necessary criterion but not a sufficient criterion. If Leiman is correct, and it was the colophon that caused doubts among Christians, perhaps it worked this way. Maybe the very early Fathers assumed that if Esther was not translated by the Seventy, that means that it did not form a part of the scriptures at the time of the translation, and thus should be rejected by the Church. If it was added subsequently to the canon by the Jews, Christians also knew the Jews to have altered other features of the received biblical canon (cf. Origen's Epistle to Africanus).

If this reasoning lies behind the omission of Esther in Melito's list, we can draw two further implications. (1) Apparently Melito consulted Christians in Palestine rather than Jews. This issue will be discussed further in a subsequent post, but for now, see my book, pp. 22-24, for an overview. (2) The Esther colophon does not seem to have caused such concerns for many Christians, because many OT canon lists do include the book.

Esther at Qumran, part 2

In the previous post, I briefly laid out the case made by some scholars for positing a knowledge--even an intimate knowledge--of the text of Esther at Qumran despite the absence of any Esther manuscript among the discoveries there. In this post I reflect on the implications of this for the status of Esther at Qumran.

We have opposing indications for the reception of Esther at Qumran. One line of evidence--close linguistic parallels--suggests that the Qumran group did read Esther, and even this is putting the matter too mildly for some scholars, who would prefer to say that some scribes at Qumran knew the text of Esther very well. On the other hand, not only did the Qumran library yield no Esther scroll, but the community omitted Purim from their celebrations.What does this mean?

In the article by Shemaryahu Talmon mentioned last time, Talmon deals with this question in the following way (pp. 265-67). He rejects three commonly proposed reasons for Esther's absence at Qumran:

• the brevity of the book makes it more likely to have perished; Talmon responds that fragments of shorter books were found (e.g. Song of Songs, Lamentations); 
• the Community rejected the book for theological/ideological reasons; "If this were indeed the case, Yaḥad authors and scribes undoubtedly would have refrained from incorporating explicit quotations from the book in their works"; 
• though a manuscript has not turned up yet, one might be found among the unidentified fragments. Certainly this last proposal is even more unlikely in 2012 than it was when Talmon wrote in 1995. 

So, what explanation does Talmon put forward? 

It would appear that the above discrepancy is best explained by the assumptions that while the Book of Esther was well known in the late Second Temple period, when most if not all Qumran manuscripts were penned, it had not yet achieved "canonical" status, viz. was not yet recognized as part of Hebrew Scriptures. (p. 266)

I don't think this quite settles the matter. Let me offer some reflections on the evidence to hand.

The Absence of an Esther Manuscript

Recent scholarship on the biblical canon and the evidence to be gleaned for it from Qumran has emphasized that the presence of manuscripts are not necessarily decisive for the acceptance of a book as canonical. Actually, recent scholarship has argued for the complete anachronism of the concept of canonicity at Qumran, so let's say the presence of a manuscript does not necessarily mean a work is received as scripture. (VanderKam and Flint (pp. 178-79), along with many other scholars, do think that the presence of a work in many manuscripts indicates its reception as scripture.)

On the other hand, the absence of a manuscript in a community's archives--in a synagogue, for example, or a church building--would not necessarily indicate that the community did not regard that particular work as scripture. Indeed, it seems unlikely that many synagogues and church buildings around the turn of the era did possess copies of all the books they deemed as scripture. Still, Qumran is a bit different, for they obviously possessed more scrolls than an average community their size. The absence of a copy of Esther would seem to indicate that the community did not regard it as scripture, but not necessarily, especially if we posit (against Talmon but with some other scholars, noted in the previous post) that hungry worm or mouse may have served a fatal blow to Esther.

The presence or absence of a manuscript actually relates to reading habits. The 36 copies of Psalms at Qumran shows that Psalms was a popular book--many copies were required because people wanted to read/study it. Same for Isaiah, Deuteronomy, etc. Chronicles was not so popular. The one manuscript recovered of Chronicles does not mean that it was or was not deemed scriptural by the community; it means not many people cared to read it. The absence of Esther in the recovered manuscripts indicates that the community did not spend much time reading/studying the scroll of Esther. Even if there was a scroll there that succumbed to a hungry mouse, still the relative paucity of manuscript evidence for Esther confirms that Esther was not on the best-sellers list at Qumran.

All of this is, of course, related in some ways to 'scripturalness', but there is not so close a relationship as is often supposed. The Qumran community certainly housed scrolls that they would not have considered scripture, so even if they did not consider Esther to be scripture, that is really no reason to lack a copy of the scroll. Rather, they did not have a copy--or they had very few copies, all of which have perished--because not many people cared to read it.

The Linguistic Parallels

The linguistic parallels (see previous post) show that some people had read the book, or, actually, they had spent quite a bit of time with Esther and gotten some of the wording stuck in their heads. Whether this reading/studying of Esther took place at Qumran or elsewhere is a moot point. It does show that some members of the Qumran community were well aware of the existence of the scroll of Esther, so its absence from Qumran cannot be attributed to ignorance.

The Absence of Purim

Purim is not included among the festivals mentioned in the Qumran calendrical texts. The linguistic parallels between Esther and some scrolls show that some of the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls did know about Purim, including its date. Apparently they did not celebrate it. To my mind, this is the strongest argument against the idea that Esther could have enjoyed any sort of 'authority' at Qumran. The celebration of Purim is a command in the Book of Esther, some members of the Qumran community read the Book of Esther, the Qumran community did not celebrate Purim. Esther could not have been seen as scriptural.

Implications and Conclusions

What does all this mean for the status of Esther at Qumran? Talmon mentioned four scenarios that might explain the absence of an Esther manuscript, only the last of which did he support: (a) an Esther scroll housed at Qumran perished; (b) the Qumran community rejected Esther for ideological/theological reasons; (c) an Esther scroll still might turn up; and (d) the Book of Esther was not considered scriptural in Judaism at the time.

The third option must be judged as extremely unlikely now (though the recent discovery of a Nehemiah scroll, in private hands for decades, cautions us against judging this scenario impossible).

Although Talmon thinks the first option to be wrong, the evidence he himself provides shows that some members of the Qumran community did read Esther, so they must have encountered a scroll, at Qumran or elsewhere. Possession of a scroll does not imply attribution to the scroll of religious authority. I don't see anything that would indicate that this option is not possible. But, in any case, that doesn't really answer our question as to what the Qumran community thought about the scroll of Esther.

To understand the status of Esther at Qumran, the options--it seems to me--are really between Talmon's second and fourth scenarios. Either the Qumran community consciously rejected Esther as scripture (as VanderKam and Flint think, discussed in the previous post), or the book of Esther had not achieved scriptural status in Judaism yet, either at Qumran or elsewhere. Talmon dismisses the second option because he does not believe that a community that rejected Esther as scripture would incorporate into their own writings phrasing from Esther. Is this reasoning valid? Might a Protestant incorporate into his writing some phrasing derived from a deuterocanonical book? Might a Jew incorporate into his writing some phrasing derived from the New Testament? Might a Christian or Jew incorporate into their writing phrasing derived from the Quran? This does not strike me as impossible or even improbable. Rejecting a document as scripture does not imply anger at the document, refusal to read the document, or any such thing. Some early Christians were quite explicit on the point that certain 'rejected' documents could be quite helpful. (For more, see this fantastic article.)

So, both Talmon's second option and his fourth option seem possible. How to decide? One would have to determine whether Esther was seen as scriptural in Judaism outside Qumran. This would help determine whether the Qumran stance on Esther as non-canonical was a conscious rejection or not.

Evidence for the scriptural status of Esther in Judaism before the turn of the era is difficult to come by, and what is available is difficult of interpretation, but I'll briefly mention some things. The celebration of Purim seems to have been widely established by the end of the second century BCE. The "Day of Mordecai" (ἡ Μαρδοχαϊκὴ ἡμέρα) is mentioned in 2Mac 15:36 (ca. 100 BCE or earlier; see new Schürer, 3.1.532-33) as a recognized festival, and this is apparently an early name for Purim. The colophon of LXX Esther (which will receive treatment in a future post on Melito's canon) also mentions the feast of Purim, and this would date to around the same time as 2Mac. Josephus speaks of Purim as if every Jew in the world celebrated it annually (Ant. 11.292-95). This indicates that the directive in Esther to celebrate this feast was taken very seriously at this time. As for evidence for the book of Esther itself, it was translated into Greek fairly early, as I mentioned, and Josephus (note especially his terminus for the end of "the exact succession of the prophets," C.Ap. 1.40-41) and 4Ezra both seem to assume that it is canonical. That's admittedly not very early.

Does this mean that Esther was viewed as scripture in wider Judaism and consciously rejected by the Qumran community? That still seems most likely to me. Indeed, the scriptural status in wider Judaism would help to explain why some scribes at Qumran were so familiar with the text. Nevertheless, they rejected it because it prescribed a festival unknown to the Torah, a festival which would have fallen on a Sabbath according to their calendar, and thus a festival in conflict with the way they perceived the cosmos as ordained by God. In other words, surely the covenanters knew about Purim (the celebration of which has to be based on the authority of the Esther scroll) and consciously chose not to celebrate it and thus consciously declined to cede religious authority to the Book of Esther.

Esther at Qumran, part 1

No scroll of Esther was discovered among the 220 or so biblical scrolls recovered in the eleven caves around Qumran, making it the only book of the current Hebrew Bible omitted from the discoveries. A good case can be made that the Qumran community consciously rejected Esther as a scriptural book. Indeed, VanderKam and Flint assert: "Research and evidence from certain nonbiblical scrolls, however, show that Esther was rejected by the Qumran community for theological reasons" (Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 119). They mention as possible reasons for this rejection (a) the lack of any mention of God, (b) the marriage of Esther to a pagan, and (c) the book's emphasis on retaliation as contrasted with the Community's own teaching (c.f 1QS 10.17-18). But the real reason, "almost certainly," is the innovation in Esther of the Purim festival, not mentioned in the Torah. Confirmation that the Community did not celebrate Purim comes from the calendrical texts, which lack this festival.

But perhaps the lack of an Esther manuscript at Qumran is a mere accident. Frank Moore Cross has written:

The library [of Qumran] contains specimens of all the works of the Hebrew canon with the exception of the book of Esther. Its absence, however, may be owing only to chance. The Book of Chronicles has survived at Qumran only in a single small fragment despite its larger size; an additional hungry worm, and Chronicles, too, would have been missing. (From Epic to Canon, p. 225)

Similarly, Armin Lange says that Esther's absence from Qumran's library could result from "the appetite of the Mouse in Qumran" (Handbuch, p. 502).

In fact, some scholars have found what they deem to be evidence that the Qumran community, or at least some of its scribes, knew the Book of Esther. While he had his predecessors in asserting that the Qumran community did know and use Esther, Josef Milik created a bit of a stir in 1992 when he proposed that 4Q550 was an Aramaic 'proto-Esther'. This seems not to have been well-received by scholars; Shemaryahu Talmon (here, pp. 252-56), Sidnie White Crawford (here), Kristin De Troyer (here, pp. 405-11), and Lange (Handbuch, pp. 497-98) all think that the common themes and language shared by Esther and 4Q550 might demonstrate a common literary tradition but fail to demonstrate that the MT Esther descends directly from the Qumran document.

But, three of those scholars--Talmon, De Troyer, and Lange--try to make the case that linguistic similarities between Qumran sectarian literature and the Hebrew text of Esther show that Esther was known at Qumran. Talmon bases his case mostly on eight biblical hapax legomena occurring only in Esther but recurring also in certain Qumran sectarian literature. Lange makes a similar move, and since his contribution is more recent and briefer, I'll mention his evidence.

Lange first states that case that he seeks to make: "At least for the author of some texts found in the Qumran library, allusions to the Book of Esther and recordings [Aufnahmen] of the same prove knowledge of the text" (Handbuch, p. 498). He gives five examples of such allusions and recordings. Lange gives the Greek text for the biblical examples along with the Hebrew text; I'll just give the Hebrew text.

1. Esther 2:9: וַתִּשָּׂא חֶסֶד לְפָנָיו and Esther 2:17: וַתִּשָּׂא־חֵן וָחֶסֶד לְפָנָיו compared with 1QS 2:4: וישא פני חסדיו לכה. 
2. Esther 3:7: מִיּוֹם לְיוֹם וּמֵחֹדֶשׁ לְחֹדֶשׁ compared with 4QD-b 9 1:1: מיום ליום ו]מחודש לחודש
3. Esther 3:14: לִהְיוֹת עְַתִדִים and Esther 8:13: וְלִהְיוֹת הַיְּהוּדִיים עְַתדִים compared with 1QSa 1:26-27: להיות כול הב עת[יד. 
4. Esther 8:15: וְתַכְרִיך בּוּץ וְאַרְגָּמָן compared with 1QapGen 20:31: ולבוש שגי בוץ וארגואן. 
5. Esther 9:22: וְהַחֹדֶשׁ אְַשֶׁר נֶהְפַּךְ לָהֶם מִיָּגוֹן לְשִׂמְחָה וּמֵאֵבֶל לְיוֹם טוֹב compared with 4QpHos-a 2.16-17: ו[כול שמחה  ]נהפכה להם לאבל. 

According to Lange, two conclusions result from the above linguistic parallels (p. 501). (1) "There can be no doubt that the Book of Esther was known and read in the Essene movement." (2) The text of Esther read could not have been the Alpha-text, and in most cases could only have been the Hebrew text (not the LXX).

With regard to the second example mentioned above, Jonathan Ben Dov published a brief article in which he argued (persuasively, I think) that the phrase in 4QD-b מחודש לחודש was actually a scribal mistake arising from a remembrance of Esther 3:7 and inserted in a context in the Qumran scroll where it actually does not make good sense. Ben Dov says about the scribe of this manuscript: "His acquaintance with the Book of Esther must have been so profound that characteristic words from its text occurred in his mind while copying other compositions, and found their way into the copied text."

So, quite a bit of evidence--some of it rather strong--indicates that some of the Qumran sectarians did read Esther. Lange does not think this indicates that Esther "enjoyed religious authority," and he even suggests that the "reverse quotation" of Esther 9:22 in 4QpHos-a 2.16-17 may "point to a distancing from the Purim festival." Nevertheless, they did read the scroll, and so they probably possessed a copy, Lange thinks (pp. 501-502), and so our failure to discover their copy of Esther may be due to the mouse, as I mentioned earlier.

In the next post, I'll offer some reflections on the place of Esther at Qumran.