read.” Tanak implies an authoritative order, an order that place Torah before the other two parts.
Mikra names the performative function associated with the Jewish Bible: it is to be read aloud in
synagogue. In addition, biblical scholars’ use the term ‘Hebrew Bible’ as an attempt at a suitable,
theologically-neutral, inclusive term for the collection of texts they study. This term is not
adequate either, since the collection of texts contains passages which were written in Aramaic
and it ignores the importance of ancient translations of the collections.
2
Jonathan Z. Smith influences my understanding of canon.
3
As a scholar of religion, Smith
redescribes canon as a subgenre of lists. A canon is a closed collection with a relatively clear
principle of order. As a closed collection of books, canon is a retrospective category. It is
received as an authoritative collection of books. Smith further suggests that while canon has a
limiting function in terms of which books are included, they are not merely closed. A
hermeneute offers exegetical ingenuity to overcome the limitation and closure of a canon. For
scholars of religion, authority and power do not inhere in the books; rather human communities
come to receive canons as authoritative through the manipulation of the books through social
practices. The Tanak and the Old Testament, while containing the same books, 1) exhibit
different orders, 2) have had different hermeneutical principles, and 3) different social practices
within the community that indicate the canon’s authority. In this note, I will focus on the
received order of the canons that one can find in a Jewish Bible or Protestant Bible.
4
2
Once the decision is made to study Hebrew Bible, the place of ancient Jewish texts found primarily in Greek, such
as Ben Sira, are no longer necessary for general study as part of the scholar’s canon, even though it may be a part of
one or another group’s canon. In addition, while this is not the place to enter an insider-outsider argument, such a
name also leads to confusion for insiders (Jews or Christians) since the outsider (scholar) category ‘Hebrew Bible’ is
not native-insider-language for the canon of Jews or Christians.
3
J.Z. Smith. "Sacred Persistence: Toward a Redescription of Canon," in Approaches to Ancient Judaism (ed. Green;
Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978), 11-28; J.Z. Smith. "Canons, Catalogues and Classics," in Canonization and
Decanonization (eds. Kooij, et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 295-311.
4
I use the received order found in a JPS Tanak and a NRSV Old Testament.