The Old Testament of the Early Church (A Study in Canon)

Abstract

For three-quarters of a century the hypothesis of an Alexandrian canon has been the commonly accepted solution to the problem of how the Jewish canon and the Old Testament of the early church came to differ. That hypothesis suggests that a larger canon of scriptures was initiated in Alexandria and circulated throughout Diaspora Judaism than what obtained in Palestine. The Christian church, becoming predominantly Gentile early in its history, adopted this enlarged canon, that included the books of the Apocrypha, from Diaspora Judaism. The hypothesis represents essentially a geographic distinction in canonical usage between Palestinian Judaism and Alexandrian and Dispersion Judaism. It is the opinion of the present writer that the Alexandrian canon hypothesis is not only unprovable, as Pfeiffer has recognized, but is erroneous. This opinion is based (1) on a study of the history of the Alexandrian canon hypothesis, (2) on an examination of the arguments favoring the hypothesis, and (3) on a re-evaluation of the status of canonical usage in Judaism at the time of the emergence of Christianity into the world.