The online program for this Fall's SBL in Atlanta is available here. I thought I'd highlight the sessions in which I'll be participating.
Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
11/20/2010
4:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Theme: Perhaps Outside the Canon, But Not Off the Shelves: Contributions of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to the Formation of Early Judiasm and Christianity
David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary, Presiding
Francis Borchardt, University of Helsinki
Why was 2 Maccabees Read in the Ancient World? (30 min)
D. Jeffrey Bingham, Dallas Theological Seminary
Irenaeus and the Other Books: Non-Canonical Christian Texts in His Polemic (30 min)
Edmon Gallagher, Heritage Christian University
The “Apocrypha” in Jerome’s Canonical Theory (30 min)
Rebecca Rine, University of Virginia
Canon Lists Are Not Just Lists (30 min)
Loren L. Johns, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary
When Pseudepigrapha Become Canonical: Rethinking Canon and Textual Criticism (30 min)
Discussion (30 min)
Early Jewish Christian Relations
11/22/2010
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Theme: Open Session
Andrew Jacobs, Scripps College, Presiding
Edmon Gallagher, Heritage Christian University
The Jews and the Old Testament according to Julius Africanus and Origen (30 min)
James McLaren, Australian Catholic University
Eusebius on the capture of Jerusalem and the flight to Pella story (30 min)
Tracy Thorpe, Harvard University
Anti-Judaism 'In the Round' (30 min)
Ari Finkelstein, Harvard University
Sleeping among tombs for the sake of Dream Visions: A Discourse of Incubation among Jews in Emperor Julian’s works (30 min)
Susan L. Graham, Saint Peter's College
Mount Sion and the Christian Construction of a Sacred Space (30 min)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Alexander on Rabbinic Textual Theory
I've read this article several times and thought it was great each time, but I always seem to forget what it says. I thought maybe blogging about it would help me remember.
Philip S. Alexander, “Why No Textual Criticism in Rabbinic Midrash? Reflections on the Textual Culture of the Rabbis,” in Jewish Ways of Reading the Bible (JSSSup 11; ed. George J. Brook; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 175–90.
In this paper, Alexander first explains that rabbinic literature lacks any discussion of text critical issues related to scripture. This absence of text-critical reflection is not due to their doctrine of the inspiration of the text, because the similar doctrine in Christianity allows for corruption in the text subsequent to the autographs (p. 176).
Neither is it due to rabbinic ignorance of text-critical principles (pp. 176–81). In fact, sophisticated forms of textual criticism were developed in Alexandria, Egypt, beginning in the third century BCE, and these were inherited and applied to the Bible by the likes of Origen and Jerome (pp. 176–77). The Rabbis knew of differences in manuscripts: the reading of Gen. 3:21 in R. Meir’s Torah as reported in Gen. Rab. 20:12; the different readings to be found in Christian and Samaritan copies of the Torah; the changes introduced by the translators of the LXX (cf. b. Meg. 9a–b); the traditions of the tiqqunei soferim; and the development of the ketiv/qerei apparatus; the textual plurality attested by the Dead Sea Scrolls; the lemmata in rabbinic literature which diverge from the MT; the variants to be found in the different MT manuscripts themselves; the rabbinic awareness of superior manuscripts such as the three scrolls in the Temple (pp. 177–78). The Masorah would seem to be a first step toward textual criticism, but actually serves the opposite purpose—the preservation of inconsistencies and oddities of the biblical text. Nevertheless, the Masorah evidences signs of an earlier stage of textual scholarship: ketiv/qerei; the extraordinary points (nequdot); the inverted nuns; the suspended letters; all of which may have indicated textual variants but have now become part of the immutable divine text (pp. 179–80). On the other hand, the Rabbis did practice textual criticism on rabbinic texts, such as the Talmud (pp. 180–81). Thus, the absence of biblical textual criticism in rabbinic literature demands an explanation.
Alexander suggests three possible responses to the obvious textual divergences in the Jewish scriptures. First, the Rabbis may have viewed all textual variants as inspired. This is a problematic position (how can every scribal alteration be the word of God?), but something like it seems to have been held at Qumran and, perhaps, by the Apostle Paul. Alexander compares the al tiqrei passages in rabbinic literature (pp. 181–82).
A second response would be to produce an eclectic text (pp. 182–83). This is apparently how the proto-Masoretic Text came to be, during the Maccabean Age (says Alexander)—the creation of an authoritative text based on “heavy editorial intervention”.
But, Alexander says the Rabbis largely followed a third path: they merely chose a single textual tradition and deemed it alone authoritative and inspired. “Textual variants could and did arise in the copying of the Masoretic text, and these had, of course, to be corrected, but once the ‘original’ Masoretic text had been recovered the process of correction abruptly stopped. That Masoretic text, itself, with all its inherent textual problems which were carefully noted in Midrash and Masorah, was regarded as absolutely fixed and inviolable” (p. 183).
[Alexander does not here address how this choosing of one textual tradition would actually have taken place. Why did they choose this particular text? Was this text a unit even before the Rabbis chose it? In other words, we think of the MT of Genesis as textually similar to the MT of Daniel because they are both found in the MT. But, would a prerabbinic sage have had any reason to relate these two scrolls (a particular textual form of Genesis and a particular textual form of Daniel) together as of similar textual type? Perhaps they were both housed in the Temple? Or were they of distinct textual types, so that the Rabbis had to choose a textual type for the Torah, another for Proverbs, another for Psalms, another for…every biblical book? Would this choosing have practically amounted to the election of one particular manuscript of each biblical book from which all subsequent rabbinic biblical texts should be copied?]
Alexander discusses three reasons for choosing one textual type (pp. 184–187). (1) Tradition—the [proto-] Masoretic text [of most biblical books] was already widely accepted as authoritative prior to the rabbinic movement. (2) Apologetic—it is easier to “sell” an ancient text than to win approval for a newly edited text. (3) Theology—the rabbinic doctrine of scripture rested on an understanding of the biblical text as immutable and divine. “Was it the rabbinic doctrine of Scripture that led the rabbis to declare the Masoretic text as authoritative and unchangeable? Or was the doctrine, at least in part, a working out of the implications of that declaration? Or was there some sort of mutually reinforcing dialectic between the doctrine and the declaration? As it developed the rabbinic doctrine of Scripture located inspiration ever more precisely in the graphic form of the consonantal text as it is found in the Synagogue Sifrei Torah” (p. 186). This textual position became extreme in the later rabbinic period with an emphasis on the cosmic significance of the Torah.
“It is no accident that textual criticism is absent from Midrash. Its absence was one of a range of strategies which together constitute the textual culture of the rabbis. Its absence is inextricably linked to the very essence of the midrashic enterprise” (p. 187).
Alexander closes (pp. 187–90) with a series of observations that summarize the main points of the paper. (1) The Rabbis picked one form of the “Torah of Moses” as true and correct. (2) Theological and apologetic reasons and especially tradition contributed to this decision. (3) The divine status of the Torah came to be attributed to every facet of the written text, including the script, orthography, scribal notations (e.g., inverted nuns), etc. (4) The Masorah developed in order to ensure the preservation (not the elimination) of anomalies in the manuscripts. (5) Although the MT in theory represented the authentic Torah of Moses, in practice it was still impossible to make exact copies of this ideal MT, so textual criticism to a limited extent was still necessary for the elimination of errors in the MT manuscripts. [Alexander (p. 189 n. 22) identifies Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865) as the first Jew to practice true textual criticism on the MT.] (6) Textual anomalies were theologized midrashically rather than correct text-critically. (7) The signs within the MT of previous textual criticism (e.g., ketiv/qerei, nequdot, etc.) were explained away or theologized so that the inviolability of the MT was preserved.
Philip S. Alexander, “Why No Textual Criticism in Rabbinic Midrash? Reflections on the Textual Culture of the Rabbis,” in Jewish Ways of Reading the Bible (JSSSup 11; ed. George J. Brook; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 175–90.
In this paper, Alexander first explains that rabbinic literature lacks any discussion of text critical issues related to scripture. This absence of text-critical reflection is not due to their doctrine of the inspiration of the text, because the similar doctrine in Christianity allows for corruption in the text subsequent to the autographs (p. 176).
Neither is it due to rabbinic ignorance of text-critical principles (pp. 176–81). In fact, sophisticated forms of textual criticism were developed in Alexandria, Egypt, beginning in the third century BCE, and these were inherited and applied to the Bible by the likes of Origen and Jerome (pp. 176–77). The Rabbis knew of differences in manuscripts: the reading of Gen. 3:21 in R. Meir’s Torah as reported in Gen. Rab. 20:12; the different readings to be found in Christian and Samaritan copies of the Torah; the changes introduced by the translators of the LXX (cf. b. Meg. 9a–b); the traditions of the tiqqunei soferim; and the development of the ketiv/qerei apparatus; the textual plurality attested by the Dead Sea Scrolls; the lemmata in rabbinic literature which diverge from the MT; the variants to be found in the different MT manuscripts themselves; the rabbinic awareness of superior manuscripts such as the three scrolls in the Temple (pp. 177–78). The Masorah would seem to be a first step toward textual criticism, but actually serves the opposite purpose—the preservation of inconsistencies and oddities of the biblical text. Nevertheless, the Masorah evidences signs of an earlier stage of textual scholarship: ketiv/qerei; the extraordinary points (nequdot); the inverted nuns; the suspended letters; all of which may have indicated textual variants but have now become part of the immutable divine text (pp. 179–80). On the other hand, the Rabbis did practice textual criticism on rabbinic texts, such as the Talmud (pp. 180–81). Thus, the absence of biblical textual criticism in rabbinic literature demands an explanation.
Alexander suggests three possible responses to the obvious textual divergences in the Jewish scriptures. First, the Rabbis may have viewed all textual variants as inspired. This is a problematic position (how can every scribal alteration be the word of God?), but something like it seems to have been held at Qumran and, perhaps, by the Apostle Paul. Alexander compares the al tiqrei passages in rabbinic literature (pp. 181–82).
A second response would be to produce an eclectic text (pp. 182–83). This is apparently how the proto-Masoretic Text came to be, during the Maccabean Age (says Alexander)—the creation of an authoritative text based on “heavy editorial intervention”.
But, Alexander says the Rabbis largely followed a third path: they merely chose a single textual tradition and deemed it alone authoritative and inspired. “Textual variants could and did arise in the copying of the Masoretic text, and these had, of course, to be corrected, but once the ‘original’ Masoretic text had been recovered the process of correction abruptly stopped. That Masoretic text, itself, with all its inherent textual problems which were carefully noted in Midrash and Masorah, was regarded as absolutely fixed and inviolable” (p. 183).
[Alexander does not here address how this choosing of one textual tradition would actually have taken place. Why did they choose this particular text? Was this text a unit even before the Rabbis chose it? In other words, we think of the MT of Genesis as textually similar to the MT of Daniel because they are both found in the MT. But, would a prerabbinic sage have had any reason to relate these two scrolls (a particular textual form of Genesis and a particular textual form of Daniel) together as of similar textual type? Perhaps they were both housed in the Temple? Or were they of distinct textual types, so that the Rabbis had to choose a textual type for the Torah, another for Proverbs, another for Psalms, another for…every biblical book? Would this choosing have practically amounted to the election of one particular manuscript of each biblical book from which all subsequent rabbinic biblical texts should be copied?]
Alexander discusses three reasons for choosing one textual type (pp. 184–187). (1) Tradition—the [proto-] Masoretic text [of most biblical books] was already widely accepted as authoritative prior to the rabbinic movement. (2) Apologetic—it is easier to “sell” an ancient text than to win approval for a newly edited text. (3) Theology—the rabbinic doctrine of scripture rested on an understanding of the biblical text as immutable and divine. “Was it the rabbinic doctrine of Scripture that led the rabbis to declare the Masoretic text as authoritative and unchangeable? Or was the doctrine, at least in part, a working out of the implications of that declaration? Or was there some sort of mutually reinforcing dialectic between the doctrine and the declaration? As it developed the rabbinic doctrine of Scripture located inspiration ever more precisely in the graphic form of the consonantal text as it is found in the Synagogue Sifrei Torah” (p. 186). This textual position became extreme in the later rabbinic period with an emphasis on the cosmic significance of the Torah.
“It is no accident that textual criticism is absent from Midrash. Its absence was one of a range of strategies which together constitute the textual culture of the rabbis. Its absence is inextricably linked to the very essence of the midrashic enterprise” (p. 187).
Alexander closes (pp. 187–90) with a series of observations that summarize the main points of the paper. (1) The Rabbis picked one form of the “Torah of Moses” as true and correct. (2) Theological and apologetic reasons and especially tradition contributed to this decision. (3) The divine status of the Torah came to be attributed to every facet of the written text, including the script, orthography, scribal notations (e.g., inverted nuns), etc. (4) The Masorah developed in order to ensure the preservation (not the elimination) of anomalies in the manuscripts. (5) Although the MT in theory represented the authentic Torah of Moses, in practice it was still impossible to make exact copies of this ideal MT, so textual criticism to a limited extent was still necessary for the elimination of errors in the MT manuscripts. [Alexander (p. 189 n. 22) identifies Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865) as the first Jew to practice true textual criticism on the MT.] (6) Textual anomalies were theologized midrashically rather than correct text-critically. (7) The signs within the MT of previous textual criticism (e.g., ketiv/qerei, nequdot, etc.) were explained away or theologized so that the inviolability of the MT was preserved.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Septuagint and Reception
A new book on the LXX:
Johann Cook, ed. Septuagint and Reception: essays prepared for the Association for the Study of the Septuagint in South Africa.
Apparently, it was published in July, but I’ve only just now learned of it. Here’s the description of the book:
A new association for the study of the Septuagint was formed in
It’s published by Brill, so naturally its expensive ($200). I haven’t seen a copy yet, but I was able to see the table of contents through Harvard’s library catalogue, and there are certainly some interesting titles. Here it is in a cleaned-up version.
Jan Joosten, “The prayer of Azariah (DanLXX 3) : sources and origin”
Johann Cook, “On the role of external traditions in the Septuagint”
Peter Arzt-Grabner, “Psalms as magic? : P. Vindob. G 39205 revisited”
Randall X. Gauthier, “Examining the ’pluses’ in the Greek Psalter : a study of the Septuagint translation qua communication”
Gideon Kotzé, “The Greek translation of Lamentations : towards a more nuanced view of its ’literal’ character”
Wolfgang Kraus, “Hab 2:3-4 in the Hebrew tradition and in the Septuagint, with its reception in the New Testament”
Gert J. Steyn, “Quotations from the Minor Prophets in Hebrews”
Annette Evans, “Ancient Egyptian elements in Hebrews 1?”
Ronald H. van der Bergh, “Differences between the MT and LXX contexts of Old Testament quotations in the New Testament : Isaiah 45:18-25 as a case study”
Lawrence Ronald Lincoln, “The use of names as evidence of the Septuagint as a source for Josephus’ Antiquities in books 1 to 5”
Johan C. Thom, “Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon and Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus”
William Loader, “The strange woman in Proverbs, LXX Proverbs and Aseneth”
Chris L. de Wet, “The reception of the Susanna narrative (Dan. XIII) in early Christianity”
Annemaré Kotzé, “Augustine, Jerome and the Septuagint”
Harry F. van Rooy, “The treatment of Hapax Legomena in MT Ezekiel, in the LXX Ezekiel and Peshitta : a comparative study”
Jacobus A. Naudé, “The role of metatexts in the translations of sacred texts : the case of the Book of Aristeas and the Septuagint”
Jonathan More, “Kingship ideology : a neglected element in Aristeas’ charter myth for Alexandrian Judaism”
Sakkie Cornelius, “‘Eunuchs?’ : the ancient background of Eunouchos in the Septuagint”
Pierre Johan Jordaan, “Reading Judith as therapeutic narrative”
Eugene Coetzer, “Performing Susanna : speech acts and other performative elements in Susanna”
Dichk M. Kanonge, “Reading narratives in the Septuagint : a discourse on method”
I’ll be very interested to see the papers by de Wet on the reception of Susanna among the Fathers and by Kotzé on “Augusitne, Jerome and the Septuagint”. Those two topics feature prominently in my dissertation, which I am now concluding. Perhaps I’ll post some reflections on these articles when I’ve had a chance to read them.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Did Late Antique Jews Use Aquila's Translation?
There is a new article about Aquila ’s translation.
Jenny R. Labendz, “Aquila ’s Bible Translation in Late Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Perspectives,” Harvard Theological Review 102.3 (2009): 353–388.
Labendz, of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York , makes it her goal “to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Aquila ’s Bible translation in Late Antiquity” (p. 353). If you are not immediately familiar with who Aquila is, learn more here.
Labendz first discusses the rabbinic sources for Aquila (pp. 355–370) before moving to the patristic sources (pp. 370–386). Labendz is obviously (and by her own admission) more comfortable in the Jewish sources than among the Fathers, and it is in her analysis of the rabbinic tradition of Aquila that I found her most helpful. (Her comments on the Church Fathers are not innovative, as far as I could tell.) I will let you read for yourself what she has to say. I suppose the take-away point for me is that rabbinic literature may indicate only that the Rabbis encountered Aquila ’s translations as something like “oral targums” (which word, תרגם, they do use in connection with him). Still, I’m not sure how this would be the easiest way to explain all of the evidence.
Anyway, the purpose of this post is to point out that, strangely, Labendz repeatedly makes the erroneous assertion that the rabbinic evidence is the only extant Jewish evidence related to Aquila .
“The only ancient Jewish sources that mention Aquila or use his translation are rabbinic […]” (p. 353).
Speaking of Origen in his Letter to Africanus, when he says that Jews use Aquila : “If Origen is referring to the rabbis, then the evidence of rabbinic literature confirms this, as we have seen. But if he is referring rather, or in addition, to a wider Greek-speaking Jewish community, then we lack corroborating evidence of this claim” (p. 373).
After summarizing the evidence from rabbinic sources: “Other Jewish sources are silent” (p. 388).
In fact, we do have (admittedly, very limited) Jewish evidence outside rabbinic literature for the Jewish use of Aquila ’s translation. First, there is an inscription in third century Rome that follows Aquila ’s translation of Prov. 10:7. It has most recently been published as inscription 112 in vol. 2 of David Noy, ed. Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993–1995).
Second, the Cairo Genizah yielded some fragments of Aquila . To be sure, these fragments post-date the chronological limit Labendz set on herself (p. 354), but they must have been copied from earlier manuscripts, and these later fragments attest a continuing use of Aquila among some Jews.
The whole question of which Greek Bible text Greek-speaking Jews might have used is quite vexed. We can see now the collection of studies edited by Nicholas de Lange, Julia Krivoruchko, and Cameron Boyd-Taylor, Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions (Mohr Siebeck, 2009). In the introduction (p. 6), de Lange highlights the continuing importance of Aquila among Byzantine Jews as one of the major conclusions arising from the papers presented in the volume.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Jerome's View of Double Inspiration
A student asked me a question about the LXX addition to Gen. 46:20, which has led to a day’s worth of research on the number of Israelites who descended into Egypt
Just a quick survey: the MT of Gen. 46:27 says that 70 individuals went, as also Exod. 1:5 and Deut. 10:22. The LXX has the number 75 in the first two passages, though it maintains the 70 in the Deut. passage. The number 75 is also found in 2 fragments of Exod. 1:5 found at Qumran : 4QGen-Exoda (fr. 17 line 2) and 4QExodb (fr. 1 line 5), for which see DJD 12. The extra 5 people in the LXX are presented in an expansion of Gen. 46:20, which reads in The New English Translation of the Septuagint,
And to Ioseph in the land of Egypt were born sons, Manasse and Ephraim, whom Asenneth daughter of Petephres, priest of Heliopolis
Naturally, Jerome prefers the MT reading 70, and he argues that the extra 5 people included in the LXX addition to Gen. 46:20 are obviously secondary additions because Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh would not have been old enough at the time to have children, much less grandchildren. “Therefore it is clear that all of Jacob’s descendents who entered Egypt totaled 70, though 66 of these came later and found 3 already in Egypt
A problem arises in that Stephen cites the number 75 in his speech in Acts 7:14. To this Jerome responds: “the answer is easy. Saint Luke, who is the author of that history, in publishing a book of the Acts of the Apostles for the gentiles, ought not to have written anything contrary to the Bible (scriptura) commonly accepted by the gentiles.”
This last comment is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Jerome here imagines that Luke did not give a literal presentation of Stephen’s words. Jerome probably envisioned Stephen speaking to the Jewish leadership in Hebrew or Aramaic (“Syriac”), and so of course Luke would have had to translate this into Greek. However, Luke’s editorial activity included even conforming Stephen’s speech to the expectations of a Gentile audience. Jerome seems to be saying that Stephen would have cited the number 70 in his actual speech, because it is the correct number in the Hebrew tradition. Luke changed this number to 75 in order to match the expectations of his readers. Both Stephen and Luke were inspired, in Jerome’s mind. This implies that the same Holy Spirit can inspire two inharmonious accounts of one incident. This is very reminiscent of Augustine’s discussion of Jonah’s prophecy within his defense of the LXX (City of God, book 18, chapter 44).
I’m not sure what to think of Jerome’s comment here. He seems close to conceding the position he elsewhere attacks so vigorously, and thereby he slackens somewhat on his commitment to the original (veritas). I’m sure that he didn’t think about the implications of his statement here as I have done, but I wonder whether he would have been better off, and more consistent, by allowing Stephen himself to cite the number 75. Yet, that option comes with its own problems.
Jerome’s discussion is found in his Hebrew Questions in Genesis at 46:26. I have used the Migne edition (PL 23.2, cols. 1051−1053).
Friday, August 29, 2008
Chaldean Truth
This post is designed merely to help people locate Jerome’s phrase “Chaldean truth”. I spent about twenty minutes Googling it in every variation I could think of (e.g. “Chaldee verity” etc.), all in vain. Finally, I noticed that I had already cited it in a paper I wrote several months ago.
As readers of Jerome will know, he speaks constantly of the Hebrew truth (Hebraica veritas) as his rallying cry to return to the original language of the OT. He does the same for the NT, speaking of the “Greek truth” in his preface to the Gospels (cf. Stuttgart Vulgate, ed. Weber, p. 1515, line 4), but Greek is not so often associated with Jerome because he did so little work on the NT compared with the OT. Scholars have, in fact, failed to find traces of his revision activity in the NT outside of the Gospels; the rest of the NT was revised, but by an anonymous editor, whom some modern scholars identify as Rufinus the Syrian (not Rufinus of Aquileia).
Since part of the Bible is written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew, Jerome naturally does not apply the phrase Hebraica veritas to this portion. Here is his Commentary on Daniel 5:11; the lemma is underlined.
Est vir in regno tuo qui spiritum deorum sanctorum habet in se. Praeter Symmachum, qui chaldaicam veritatem secutus est, ceteri ‘spiritum Dei’ interpretati sunt.
Jerome says that Symmachus alone among Greek translators follows the “Chaldean truth” by using the plural “gods” rather than the singular “God.”
At any rate, my interest in this comment is in the phrase chaldaica veritas. I hope that if anyone wants to find Jerome’s statement about it, this post will make it easier to locate.
Friday, July 4, 2008
The Jews, the Canon, and the Hebrew Alphabet
There are several items I could clarify from my previous post. Maybe I’ll turn such clarifications into a series, though if you’ve read enough of this blog, you know that I’m very bad about finishing series. (I do plan to return to Zechariah, though I doubt I’ll get back to Calvin).
For now, I’ll just note that, as I previously wrote, Origen does not say that he derived the connection between the Hebrew alphabet and the Jewish canon from the Jews. Or, at least, he does not say so in the fragment of his commentary on the first psalm as preserved in Eusebius (HE 6.25). This is correctly perceived by Martin Hengel (Septuagint as Christian Scripture (2002), 62 n. 12).
However, in Fragment 3 of his Homilies on Lamentations, Origen does report that this tradition derives from the Jews. (See here for the 1901 GCS edition by Erich Klostermann, Origenes Werke 3, p. 236. And you better download it while you can. Next time you might not be able to find it.) Only the first paragraph is relevant. This is my translation.
Therefore the Hebrews say the books of the Old Testament are equal in number to the letters, so that they are an introduction to all divine knowledge, just as the letters are [an introduction] to all wisdom for those who learn. Therefore, they are quadrupled, perhaps because the elements of bodies are four.
The last sentence is a little confusing. My guess is that it refers to the four acrostic poems that make up the first four chapters of the Book of Lamentations (the last chapter, though containing 22 verses, is not an acrostic). Since these four acrostics each proceed through the entire Hebrew alphabet, Origen says that Lamentations has quadrupled the alphabet. He thinks the reason for quadrupling the alphabet (i.e. letters = “elements”) is to maintain an analogy with the four physical elements (earth, water, air, fire).
In any case, my point here is that this fragment definitely affirms that the connection between the 22 letters of the alphabet and the 22 books of the OT is current in the Judaism of Origen’s day. This should be considered when one tries to determine the chronological development of the Jewish canon. As Peter Katz showed long ago, and as, e.g., Gilles Dorival has emphasized of late (see references below), the 22-book canon has much better and earlier attestation than the 24-book canon. However, the 24-book canon appears already in 4 Ezra 14:45 and the Gospel of Thomas 52, so they must have co-existed in Judaism for several centuries. Much investigation has been done in this area, but more could be done.
References:
Peter Katz, “The Old Testament Canon in Palestine and Alexandria,” ZNW 47 (1956): 191–217; repr. in S.Z. Leiman (ed.), The Canon and Masorah of the Hebrew Bible (New York: Ktav, 1974), 72–98.
Gilles Dorival, “L’apport des Pères de l’Église à la question de la clôture du canon de l’Ancien Testament,” in J.-M. Auwers and H.J. De Jonge (eds.), The Biblical Canons, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 163 (Louvain: University Press, 2003), 81–110.
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