Council and Bible Canon in Judaism

Earlier this month I wrote on the history of Christian biblical canons, of which there are several in use today, and the role of Church Councils in the making of Christian Bibles. Today I want to write about the Jewish Bible and what we know about how it came into existence. Just as there is a myth linking Christian Bibles/canon and council, in particular the Council of Nicea, so too with the Jewish Bible, there's a (scholarly) myth that it came into existence following a council of rabbis.

Many Christians assume that the Jewish Bible, is nothing more than the Old Testament. As most Christians are also unaware that there is a plurality of Old Testaments, they also assume that their Old Testament is the one that makes up the Jewish Bible. That's the way I used to think in my younger years until I entered the world of biblical studies.

The standard Protestant Old Testament is the one that most resembles the Jewish Bible. That's because the Reformers, following Jerome's example, took the Hebrew canon as the model for their old Old Testament canon on the notion that original language means original text. Nevertheless the Protestants kept the traditional Christian ordering derived from the old Greek Bible, a four part arrangement of Torah, historical books, wisdom literature and prophets. In contrast the Hebrew Bible has a tripartite structure of Torah, Prophets and Writings (Torah, Nebi'im, Kethubim, hence Tanakh as another name for the Jewish Bible). The Prophets comprise the four 'historical' books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (the latter two not divided into 2 books as in Christian Bibles but each counted as one book/scroll) plus the four prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets (counted as one book/scroll in traditional Judaism). The Writings comprise the rest, (150) Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra/Nehemiah (counted as one book/scroll in traditional Judaism), Chronicles (likewise counted as one book/scroll in traditional Judaism). Christian Old Testaments usually end with Malachi, the last of the Twelve Minor Prophets and thus look forward to the Christ event. Jewish Bibles end with Chronicles and thus end with the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. The central revelation for Judaism is the giving of Torah to Moses; the Prophets and Writings are understood as commentary on Torah. The endpoint is the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon which also evokes the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the final Roman destruction of Jerusalem as a Jewish city in 136 CE. In traditional Rabbinic Judaism, Jerusalem is destroyed and the people banished from the land for failing to fully observe Torah. So the Jewish Bible is structured with the main revelation at the start and closes with the reminder of what happens when that revelation is ignored.

So what are the origins of this canon? When was it defined? The short answer is we don't know. The most traditional answer is that the canon came into existence with Ezra, in the early Persian period, at "the end of prophecy". Some scholars, such as Phillip Davies, have suggested the Hasmonean period, late 2nd century - early first century BCE as the time of canonisation. The only problem is that all the evidence from the time of Christ and before indicates that only the five books/scrolls of the Torah had achieved a canonical status amongst most Jews and Samaritans.

There are a number of references to scriptures as a whole in ancient Jewish texts: Sirach 39.1 and in the Prologue; 4QMMT (4Q397 14-21 ii 10-12); 2 Maccabees (2:13); Philo of Alexandria (de Vita Contemplativa 25). Most commonly they are referred to as law(s) and prophets/prophecies/oracles. (In his writings, Philo wrote commentaries only on the 5 Books of Moses and, more broadly, cites mainly from the 5 Books of Moses but also from Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon.) This same pattern is found in the Gospels where Jesus regularly refers to Moses and the prophets or the law and the prophets. The Letter of Aristeas, which recounts the myth of the miraculous translation of the scriptures from Hebrew into Greek, clearly intends the Torah and not a wider collection of scriptures.

The other evidence we have from the turn of the era is the collection of scrolls discovered at Qumran. Copies of all the texts comprising the Hebrew canon were found at Qumran, with the exception of Esther. Esther is likewise omitted from some early Christian canon lists too. However at Qumran copies were also found of Sirach (in Hebrew), Tobit (in Hebrew and Aramaic) and the Letter of Jeremiah (in Greek). All three are excluded from the Jewish Bible and counted as Apocrypha by Protestants but are included in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments. Furthermore, the various Psalms scrolls not only included Hebrew texts for Psalms 151, 154 & 155 but quite a number of other unknown psalms and two thirds of a poem included in Sirach 51. It's also clear that at Qumran the Psalms and David were regarded as prophetic, an understanding also seen in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles. So when we read ancient references to the Law and the Prophets we can't be certain what texts the designation Prophets includes and refers to. Does it include the Psalms and does it include Daniel (Jesus refers to Daniel as a prophet in Matthew), both of which are included in the Writings in the Jewish Bible?

And does the term Prophets include other texts and figures too? As well as the three Deutero-canonical texts and Psalms 151, 154, 155, multiple copies of two texts included in the Ethiopian canon were also found at Qumran, fifteen scrolls of Jubilees (in Hebrew) and 20 scrolls of 1 Enoch (in Aramaic). Just to put that in context, only four canonical biblical texts were found in equal or greater numbers: Genesis (20), Isaiah (24), Deuteronomy (27), Psalms (34), the last, of course, including non-canonical and hitherto unknown psalms. Jubilees is itself cited in a number non-biblical texts at Qumran and was used extensively; it seems to have been regarded as scripture there. Furthermore many traditions found in later Jewish literature make their first appearance in Jubilees. 1 Enoch was not only important for early Christianity but is likewise probably the oldest text of Jewish esoteric tradition. 1 Enoch gives us a glimpse not only at the mystical (and apocalyptic) gestalt from which Christianity was born but also the matrix from which would come not only Jewish Merkabah mysticism but subsequently mystical traditions including Kabbalah. Neither of these texts made it into the standard Jewish biblical canon but they are pivotal for subsequent Jewish traditions that enframe that canon.

Do ancient references to Law/Torah and Prophets include these two texts? Jubilees is a retelling of Genesis and part of Exodus; it presents itself as a revelation from Sinai given by an angel to Moses. Do ancient references to the Law include Jubilees alongside the five books of Moses? It's quite possible some do. And does 'the Prophets' include Enoch, the great primal prophet of the antediluvian world? If David and the Psalms were counted as prophetic and given the importance of 1 Enoch for ancient Judaism and early Christianity, it's hard to rule out the possibility.

The earliest glimpses of a defined canon in Judaism can be found in Josephus and 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) both from the late 1st century. In Against Apion (1. 38-43) Josephus declares

We have but 22 books, containing the history of all time, books that are believed to be divine. Of these, 5 belong to Moses, containing his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind down to the time of his death. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes the prophets who succeeded Moses wrote the history of the events that occurred in their own time, in 13 books. The remaining 4 books comprise hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. From the days of Artaxerxes to our own times every event has indeed been recorded; but these recent records have not been deemed worthy of equal credit with those which preceded them, on account of the failure of the exact succession of prophets. There is practical proof of the spirit in which we treat our Scriptures; although so great an interval of time has now passed, not a soul has ventured to add or to remove or to alter a syllable; and it is the instinct of every Jew, from the day of his birth, to consider these Scriptures as the teaching of God, and to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to lay down his life in their behalf.

But there are several problems here. The standard Jewish canon has 24 books with the Prophets comprising 8 books and the Writings comprising 13 books. Furthermore the biblical texts existed in differing editions some of which, such as Greek and Hebrew Jeremiah, were quite markedly different in size and ordering.

With 2 Esdras we get the first reference to a 24 book canon: "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people" (14:45-46). However in 2 Esdras, we actually find a two-tier, inner-outer, greater-lesser canon with the outer/lesser one being the 24 books and an inner/greater canon of 70 additional books! 2 Esdras also gives no details of what books are included in either of these canons.

The earliest canon listing of the Jewish Bible comes from several centuries later, roughly 550-600CE, in the Babylonian Talmud (Baba Bathra 14b-15a):

Our Rabbis taught: The order of the Prophets is, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. Let us examine this. Hosea came first, as it is written, God spake first to Hosea. But did God speak first to Hosea? Were there not many prophets between Moses and Hosea? R. Johanan, however, has explained that [what It means is that] he was the first of the four prophets who prophesied at that period, namely, Hosea, Isaiah, Amos and Micah. Should not then Hosea come first? — Since his prophecy is written along with those of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, and Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi came at the end of the prophets, he is reckoned with them. But why should he not be written separately and placed first? — Since his book is so small, it might be lost [if copied separately]. Let us see again. Isaiah was prior to Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Then why should not Isaiah be placed first? — Because the Book of Kings ends with a record of destruction and Jeremiah speaks throughout of destruction and Ezekiel commences with destruction and ends with consolation and Isaiah is full of consolation; therefore we put destruction next to destruction and consolation next to consolation.

The order of the Hagiographa is Ruth, the Book of Psalms, Job, Prophets, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther, Ezra and Chronicles. Now on the view that Job lived in the days of Moses, should not the book of Job come first? — We do not begin with a record of suffering. But Ruth also is a record of suffering? — It is a suffering with a sequel [of happiness], as R. Johanan said: Why was her name called Ruth? — Because there issued from her David who replenished the Holy One, blessed be He, with hymns and praises.

Who wrote the Scriptures? — Moses wrote his own book and the portion of Balaam and Job. Joshua wrote the book which bears his name and [the last] eight verses of the Pentateuch. Samuel wrote the book which bears his name and the Book of Judges and Ruth. David wrote the Book of Psalms, including in it the work of the elders, namely, Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Yeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah wrote the book which bears his name, the Book of Kings, and Lamentations. Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. The Men of the Great Assembly wrote the Twelve Minor Prophets, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther. Ezra wrote the book that bears his name and the genealogies of the Book of Chronicles up to his own time. This confirms the opinion of Rab, since Rab Judah has said in the name of Rab: Ezra did not leave Babylon to go up to Eretz Yisrael until he had written his own genealogy. Who then finished it [the Book of Chronicles]? — Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah

I have quoted the text in full as it makes a strong contrast to the ancient passages on canon by its very specificity and detail. (Note that Ezra and Nehemiah are written together on one scroll and so the Book of Nehemiah is not specified in the list; also note the different order of the four Latter Prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and the Twelve) Given how late this passage is, it appears to me that the Jewish biblical canon was evolving at the same time as the Christian one(s).

Nevertheless, just as there is a popular myth about the Council of Nicea and the Christian Bible, there has also been a (scholarly) myth about a Rabbinic Council and the Jewish Bible. This Council was believed to have taken place at Jamnia/Yavne (near modern Jaffa in Israel) around 80 or 90 CE i.e. after the 1st Jewish War and the destruction of the Temple. This Council was believed to have both defined the Jewish biblical canon and also to have issued a prayer against the Minim, a category thought to have included Jewish Christians, designed to exclude them from the synagogue. For many years last century, Jamnia was important for scholars of both Old and New Testaments, the former understanding it as defining once and for all the standard (Protestant) Old Testament and Hebrew Bible, while the latter understood it as both marking the parting of Christianity and Judaism as well as giving a likely date for John's Gospel, believed to have been written for those Jewish Christians being excluded from the synagogues by the prayer against the Minim.

So big a mountain out of such a molehill, on both counts, but I will only address the canonical one here. Josephus wrote after Jamnia but seems not to have known about and neither do early Christians. Whatever might have been happening at Jamnia it was hardly a council like those of the early Church. Furthermore we only know about it from references in later rabbinic texts. Only one of them, Mishnah Yadayim (3:5), refers to scriptural matters but it does not define a canon as in Talmud Bavli quoted above but rather it describes a discussion about whether Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs are to be counted as scripture:

All the holy writings make the hands impure. The Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes make the hands impure.

R. Judah says: The Song of Songs makes the hands impure, but there is a dispute about Ecclesiastes.

R. Jose says: Ecclesiastes does not make the hands impure, but there is a dispute about the Song of Songs.

R. Simeon says: Ecclesiastes is one of the leniencies of Bet Shammai [who say it does not make the hands impure] and one of the stringencies of Bet Hillel [who say it does make the hands impure]..

R. Simeon b. Azzai said: I received a tradition from the seventy-two elders on the day when they appointed R. Eleazar b. Azariah head of the court that the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes make the hands impure.

R. Akiba said: God forbid! No one in Israel ever disagreed about the Song of Songs [by saying] that it does not make the hands impure. For the whole world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the writings are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies. So if they had a dispute, they had a dispute only about Ecclesiastes.

Johanan b. Joshua the son of the father-in-law of R. Akiba said: in accordance with the words of Ben Azzai so they disputed, and so they reached a decision.

Indeed, early rabbinic texts recount similar discussions about whether various other biblical texts are to be counted as scripture too. So rather than an account of a final ruling what we really have is an account of one of many discussions that would lead to the final canonical ruling recorded in the Talmud Bavli. And yet, ironically, three times in that same Talmud, Sirach is cited as scripture, one of them citing it as part of the Kethubim or Writings (Baba Kamma 92b, also Hagigh 13a and Yebamoth 63b). What's also overlooked by Christians is that the Mishnah, itself is regarded as Torah in Rabbinic Judaism, given to Moses on Sinai along with the Pentateuch and passed down orally by the sages until written down after the Jewish Wars and the destruction of the Temple. So Mishnah stands beside Tanakh as equally Scripture for Jews. And furthermore, the subsequent texts of Judaism, Talmudim, Midrashim, Targumim, even the much later Zohar come to be counted as part of that Oral Torah Tradition that ends up in writing and so all share to some degree in the authority of Scripture. So in reality the Jewish canon is bigger than anything that Christians can imagine in terms of sacred text, the Tanakh or Jewish Bible being part of a much broader (and open/expanding?) canon of sacred, inspired texts.

My discussion has mostly focused on ancient Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism. The Samaritans, famously, regard only the Five Books of Moses as canonical scripture. Curiously, however, the Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel (or Falashas), kept the Book of Jubilees in their Bible just like their Christian neighbours. Whether or not their Bible included other texts outside the Hebrew canon I've yet to ascertain.

Nevertheless the history of scripture in Judaism demonstrates the same principle found in the history of Christian biblical canons. Bible or canonical scripture did not just fall out of heaven one day but was created and shaped by the communities that cherish it. Furthermore there is no normative canon binding on all communities but multiple and overlapping canons shared by many different communities now and in the past. There is not and never has been and never can be a single normative canon binding on all. Such a singular and exclusive canon would in fact mark a serious breach, rupture, distortion of the richness of the biblical tradition itself.

Council and Bible Canon in Christianity

I recently had a discussion with a friend in Facebook about the question of biblical canons and Ecumenical Councils. The key point concerned the role of Nicea, the famous first ecumenical Council of the Christian Church convened by Emperor Constantine. My friend, a (Roman) Catholic, assumed that the standard Bible of the Roman communion had been first defined at Nicea. He'd also assumed that the Bible canon of The Eastern Orthodox Churches was the same as the Roman canon, and was surprised to discover that not only was that not the case, but that there is and always has been canonical variation in the various Churches of the East.

The fact is at the time of the Council of Nicea (313 CE) there was no fixed canon of Christian scripture. Most Christians then used the Septuagint Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures as their Old Testament. The Greek Old Testament was more of a gestalt, resembling both Roman and Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments today, with different versions of some Jewish texts such as Jeremiah, or with major additions to them such as in Daniel and Esther, or containing small variations and additions as with Joshua, Judges, Proverbs and some of the Books of Moses (Torah). There were a range of other books, not found in the Jewish canon because they were composed in Greek, or the prior Hebrew texts were 'lost' (the Hebrew version of Sirach was known in Judaism for many centuries, during which time Sirach sat on the edges of the Jewish canon; Origen also knows the Hebrew name for 1 Maccabees, Sarbeth Sarbaniel; Greek Tobit was translated from Hebrew, and a Hebrew plus Aramaic versions of it were found at Qumran). Most Syriac Christians, however, used a Syriac (Peshitta) Old Testament translated directly from the Hebrew and, initially, identical to the Jewish canon but the influence of the Greek would also change and expand it the particularly for West Syriac Christians within the Roman Empire. The overall Christian Old Testament gestalt generally consisted of Torah, plus historical, prophetic/apocalyptic and wisdom texts.

The New Testament was likewise fluid and not set in stone. At its core remained the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a collection of Pauline letters. Syriac Christians, however, used a harmony of the four gospels, the Diatessaron, that had been put together in the 2nd century by Tatian and they would continue to use it for another century or so until concerns about possible heresy meant that they reverted to the four individual gospels. Especially in the East (Greek and Syriac), there were doubts about texts such as Revelation, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2-3 John and Jude. The Church of the East didn't include them in their New Testament, but again the western Syriac Christian Churches would do so. But there were other texts associated with the New Testament gestalt, as well, such as Epistle of Barnabas, 1 & 2 Clement, Apocalypse of Peter and Shepherd of Hermas. The Shepherd, a wisdom/apocalypse text, was very popular in early Christianity, probably much more so than Revelation and for a long time was treated as a New Testament text in many local churches in and out of the Empire. Thus the New Testament gestalt at the time was the four gospels (individually or in a harmony), Pauline letters, other letters, A/acts and possibly apocalypses. Church 'constitutions' are also floating around the gestalt and eventually in Ethiopia (and apparently for a period in Armenia too) became incorporated into the local New Testament canon.

In the centuries before Nicea a number of individuals issued lists of texts they considered to be scripture. There's a list of them here, both those before and after Nicea, when local church councils also get into the act. The very fact of these lists shows that no canonical determination of scripture was ever made at Nicea. As far as Constantine goes, his main involvement in matters biblical was to commission 50 bibles for the new churches at Constantinople. Apparently, they were commissioned from the scripture academy at Caesarea in Palestine, which was where the Church historian and supporter of Constantine, Eusebius, was based. What texts were ruled in or out these Bibles we don't know because none survive. Eusebius had written his own listings of what were scriptural and what weren't and so perhaps we can get an idea of what Constantine's bibles looked like from there. However it has been suggested that maybe one or even all three of the oldest Christian Bibles in existence might have been part of that order of 50 Bibles. The one in question is Codex Sinaiticus and the other two, C. Vaticanus and C. Alexandrinus. All are in Greek and all date from the 4th/5th centuries. However Sinaitiacus included all 4 books of Maccabees in its Old Testament and ends its New Testament by adding Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas. Vaticanus is most like a Greek Orthodox Bible in that it includes 1 Esdras in its Old Testament. Alexandrinus includes all four books of Maccabees, plus Psalm 151 and the Book of Odes which includes the Prayer of Manasseh. The Alexandrinus New Testament ends adding 1 & 2 Clement and it also has an appendix which included a range of other texts but only one, Psalms of Solomon, remains. These three bibles from roughly the same period and from roughly the same region show just how fluid the Christian scriptural canon remained for a long time after Nicea.

And so in the centuries that follow Nicea, the production of lists continues and likewise the production of texts continues and again those which survive show a continuing fluidity. At the same time, Christianity spread widely outside the Roman Empire and so even if the state was interested in asserting a scriptural uniformity it could only apply to those churches within the Roman borders but not without. So the Armenian and Ethiopian Bibles developed with their own dynamic but nonetheless drawing from the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, just the same. The Ethiopian remains the most fluid to this day existing in both a broad and narrow canon. Nevertheless the narrow canon remains the biggest Christian canon in existence, including other ancient Jewish and Christian texts such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees and 1 Clement (thus perhaps making it the most conservative of the canons, nevertheless) as well as texts unique to Ethiopia itself, 1-3 Meqabiyya. As I said above the West Syriac Bible also gets expanded through Septuagint and other influence too and would incorporate at times 2 Baruch and Psalms 152-155 (and the Armenian Bible would include for a time Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and 3 Corinthians) .

You can get an idea of the current state of play concerning what's in and out of scripture across the various forms of Christianity from this Wikipedia table here.

In the century after Nicea we start getting Church councils producing lists. We're in the era of the Ecumenical Councils but the councils producing scripture lists are local not ecumenical. There's one in the East, Laodicea, and the rest in the West and primarily in Africa at Hippo and Carthage. These African lists match the standard Roman biblical canon of today but the African councils were not ecumenical. But their decisions were subsequently confirmed by the Pope in Rome, under whose jurisdiction they were then subject, being Latin rite churches. The Roman Pontiff was their Patriarch. The issue was important for the Latin rite churches because all of this was happening at the time Jerome was working on a new translation of the scriptures into Latin. Originally he worked from the Greek, but Jerome not only knew of the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament texts, he accorded them a priority over the Greek - if they're in the original language then they must be the original or authentic texts, is the thinking here. That assumption turned out to be wrong (there are no original texts for one thing) but it would take the discoveries at Qumran in the 20th century to demonstrate that. Jerome not only wanted to translate from Hebrew not Greek but he also wanted to scrap those Old Testament texts like Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach etc that weren't in the Hebrew canon of Judaism. Jerome's position generated considerable controversy in the West and was opposed by none other than Augustine, bishop of Hippo. Augustine not only wanted to keep those texts not found in the Jewish canon but he also believed that the Greek as well the Hebrew versions of the Old Testament texts should have equal standing. Jerome's position was rejected by those Western Councils and consequently the Latin Vulgate emerged as a hybrid text, as far as its Old Testament was concerned, because it gave priority wherever possible to the Hebrew but remained overwhelmingly shared by the Greek.

The Council of Carthage was in 397 CE. It would be another 300 years before a decision scripture would be made by a Council with a claim for ecumenicity, although that claim was contested by Rome. In 692, the Council in Trullo met at Constantinople. Also known as the Quinisext Council, it met to finish off the work of the 5th and 6th Ecumenical Councils which had also met at Constantinople. On matters scriptural it confirmed both the decisions of the councils of Laodicea and Carthage, even though both produced different lists (e.g. Laodicea omitted Revelation from the New Testament but Carthage included it). It also confirmed the lists produced by various individuals, which likewise disagreed with each other (and the Councils) and further sanctioned the listing from the Apostolic Constitutions , which counted all four books of Maccabees as canonical. What seems to be happening at Trullo is that it is affirming the various scripture canons of the Church, endorsing local usage in the broader orthodox and Catholic context. Trullo is recognised by the Eastern Orthodox Church as sharing in the ecumenicity of the previous two Councils of Constantinople but it was rejected by the West.

And that's where matters stood up until the Renaissance and Reformation. In other words there was no Ecumenical Council that produced a single agreed on list of canonical texts that could be called The Bible. On the ground, though, was an even more interesting reality. According to the Council of Carthage the Vulgate Latin Bible of the medieval West should have looked like the standard Bible of the Roman communion today. The thing is, it didn't. It included some Old Testament extras some of which are found in the Greek Bible and one not. The Vulgate's extras included 1 & 2 Esdras, Psalm 151 and Prayer of Manasseh. All but 2 Esdras are found in the Greek Bible. 2 Esdras is however found in the Slavonic and Georgian Bibles. These extras were included in the Old Testament of the Gutenberg Bible, printed in the 15th century. However the Gutenberg did not include the Vulgate's addition to the New Testament, Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans as that had only recently been removed. But it seems that in the medieval period there was remarkable cohesion in the Old Testaments of the Byzantine and Roman communions. As far as the Greek Church was concerned the Roman Bible had one text they didn't, 2 Esdras, and lacked one text that they had, 3 Maccabees. Even more odd is that the Western Old Testament stayed this way after the Council of Florence had produced a canon list following the Carthaginian one as part of an attempt at reunion with the Byzantine Church under negotiation in 1439-41. This reunion was unsuccessful but while it resulted in a papal bull declaring the Carthaginian canon as normative for the Bible, it doesn't actually seem to have changed the Roman/Western Old Testament at all, despite the fact that Rome regards Florence as an Ecumenical Council. It was only the Reformation that would actually change the Western Bible .

Luther picked up on Jerome's complaint and in his translation of the Bible into German, he created new category, the Apocrypha, into which he placed not only 1 & 2 Esdras, Psalm 151 and Prayer of Manasseh, but also the other texts questioned by Jerome but endorsed by Carthage (and Trullo): Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, plus the Greek additions to Daniel and Esther. The Bible of the English Reformation followed Luther's lead too and the texts outside the Jewish canon were likewise collected into the Apocrypha. Luther also wanted to re-open the New Testament as well. It seems he would have preferred one like that used by the Church of the East, except that Luther would also have dumped the Letter of James. But Luther's proposed New Testament failed to win the support of the Reformation movement as a whole and thus the New Testament finally remained unchanged.

Luther's attempted revision of the New Testament was based on dogmatic grounds - James in particular could be used by Rome to critique Lutheran theology of justification. Similarly with the revision of the Old Testament. The so-called apocryphal (Protestant) or deutero-canonical (Roman) texts could be used by Rome in its arguments with the Reformers. Jerome, the 'father' of the Latin Bible, gave the Reformers the precedent to reject scriptural authority for those texts placed in the Apocrypha. Rome clearly turned to the Council of Carthage, especially as its decisions had been endorsed by the Pope of the day (and subsequently reaffirmed at Florence), and at the Council of Trent (which met in 25 sessions from 1545 to 1563) the standard Roman biblical canon was formally declared as the norm for the Roman communion. As I've written before, the other four texts, 1 & 2 Esdras, Ps 151, Manasseh, weren't dumped from the Latin Bible but transferred to an Appendix (together with the Epistle to the Laodiceans) where they remain, effectively as Roman Catholic Apocrypha. They were even included in the first Douai-Rheims English translation of the Latin Bible in an appendix to the Old Testament. But they have been dropped from subsequent translations of the Latin Bible so that most Roman Catholics have no idea these texts have been part of the scriptural legacy of the Western Church.

Curiously as I was writing this piece, I stumbled across a Roman Catholic apologetic site against the Eastern Orthodox Church. On that site there was an article on the Orthodox Bible by Mark Bonocore. He argues that the Roman canon was affirmed by an Ecumenical Council, accepted by East and West, and held at Nicea too. It's the second Council of Nicea, the 7th Ecumenical Council, held in 787 CE. His argument is that Nicea 2 affirmed the decisions of the Council at Trullo validating the decisons of the Council of Carthage. Consequently, the Roman Bible canon has been defined by an Ecumenical Council accepted by East and West and so should be adopted by the Eastern Orthodox communion. Unfortunately for Bonocore's argument, Trullo affirmed a range of biblical canon lists, as well as the Carthaginian one, in which case Nicea 2 has itself given ecumenical authority - an authority binding on West and East - to canonical diversity and fluidity.

And perhaps, too, the meme concerning the Bible and Nicea is unknowingly derived from Nicea 2. If that's the case, it's a meme that's not only misidentified the Council but also got the decision wrong too. Rather than setting a single locked down canon in stone it effectively defined plurality and diversity as the only possible norm.

This conciliar history further reminds us that *The Bible* in Christianity is not something that fell out of heaven but rather is something that, as the Russian theologian Georges Florovsky said, is created by the Church instead.

Samaritans

I might have been 15 or 16 when I discovered that the Samaritans, mostly known through the famous Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan, still existed in the Middle East. Ever since then I have been intrigued and fascinated by this community, once quite extensive in Palestine and the Roman world (there were ancient Samaritan communities as far afield as Sicily). Ed Conrad remembers me in my early undergrad days asking questions about the Samaritans. For me I guess what was important was that the Samaritans had consistently received a bad press in the biblical narratives, hence the punch of the Good Samaritan story, but if they were still around I was intrigued to find out what their side of the story was. Why was it so infrequently referred to in the studies of Ancient Israel and ancient biblical religion? So when doing my PhD, I was determined to get my hands on whatever Samaritan texts in translation I could find. I couldn't find a lot, the Memar Marqah, the Asatir, the Samaritan version of Joshua and the subsequent history of Ancient Israel. I also read a number of studies of Samaritan religion.

For those who don't know, the Samaritans reject the legitimacy of the Temple at Jerusalem, reject the very legitimacy of Jerusalem itself as a sacred site. Instead they believe that Mt Gerizim near modern day Nablus on the West Bank is the true site intended for the worship of the God of Israel, being the ancient Mt Moriah where Abraham took Isaac for sacrifice. If Jerusalem is illegitimate so too is the priesthood that was based there. The Samaritans maintain a line of priests and high priests claiming a direct descent from Aaron, the first High Priest according to the books of Moses. The Samaritans also venerate as scripture only these books of Moses, the Pentateuch, the Torah. They have their own version of Joshua which introduces a Chronicle of the history of Israel and the Samaritans but these aren't counted as scripture. The Samaritans reject as false all the additional books of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testaments. I found the Samaritan Chronicle a fascinating read. Not only are the kings and priests of Judah and Jerusalem treated negatively (with the exception curiously of David, who while not counted as among the Samaritans is treated fairly positively notwithstanding) but also the kings and priests of the northern kingdom based at Samaria. In the Samaritan account, the Temple at Mt Gerizim was as much challenged by the Samarian kings as by the Judahite establishment. The Samaritans name for themselves means something like the Faithful or the Pure.

So I was interested to read this article by Benjamin Balint on the modern Samaritans via a link at Dr Platypus. The article describes the celebration of Passover by Samaritans this year at Mt Gerizim. Unlike Jews, for whom Passover is a household feast, Samaritans observe Passover as a pilgrimage feast i.e. it's a Temple feast and hence must be observed at the sacred site of the Temple, Mt Gerizim. The article touches on the rescue mission launched last century by a Jewish group and subsequently supported by the second President of Israel whereby Samaritan men married Jewish women who had effectively converted to Samaritanism. The Samaritan community numbered then only 140 people and was in danger of dying out. Now, while split into two communities based in Nablus and near Tel Aviv in Israel, they number some 730. I also found out from the article that Yasser Arafat appointed a Samaritan to the Palestinian Legislative Council. Nablus Samaritans aim to keep good relations with their Arab neighbours. In actual fact, I remember this fascinating story from 2007 on the now lamentably defunct ABC Radio National Religion Report program about Samaritans in Nablus. It would appear that Samaritan priests have a reputation as being effective fortune tellers and dealing with magic and consequently are in great demand from both Muslim and Christian Palestinians and some Jews as well.

While I recommend Balint's article at the same time I have some problems with aspects of it. He glosses over a key fact of Samaritan history crucial to the antipathy between Samaritans and Jews at the base of both the Good Samaritan story and also John's account of Jesus meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. Balint says:

When the Jews made Jerusalem, some 40 miles to the south, the exclusive center of worship—a chosen city for a chosen people—the Samaritans regarded the Jewish cult as illegitimate. This initiated the ancient “temple race” between the Samaritans and the Jerusalem-centric Jews whose beliefs and history shaped modern Jewry. By permission of Alexander the Great, the Samaritans built a temple of their own, measuring 400 by 560 feet, atop Gerizim. In use for some 200 years, the temple was destroyed before the first century BCE, never to be rebuilt.

He then recounts ancient tales of Samaritan-Jewish antipathy:

The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus reports on Samaritans who intruded into the temple in Jerusalem one Passover eve and scattered human bones to render the place unclean. The Samaritan Chronicle boasts of another episode in which Samaritans substituted rats in a cage of doves being carried to Jerusalem as temple offerings.

The antipathy ran both ways. Among Jews threatened by a rival to Jerusalem’s claim of exclusivity, a deep anti-Samaritanism prevailed. This culminated in a rabbinic ruling by Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi that, despite their scrupulousness in the observance of biblical law, the Samaritans were to be considered as Gentiles in every respect.

In Balint's acccount these attempted acts of Samaritan desecration seem odd; he gives a clear sense of them being unprovoked or due to some irrational rivalry. But he omits a key fact about the destruction of the Samaritan Temple. It was destroyed in 128/29 BCE by John Hyrcanus who was both the High Priest of Jerusalem and ruler/de facto king of the independent Maccabean Jewish state that had extended its rule over much of Palestine. Hyrcanus's son and eventual successor, Alexander Jannaeus, made it official and declared himself king as well as high priest thus restoring the old priestly kingship that hadn't been seen in Palestine since the Iron Age. In light of the facts of the destruction of the Gerizim Temple, the Samaritan attempts at desecration of Jerusalem's Temple don't seem so irrational.

Balint also cites scripture to give a picture of a long antipathy between Samaritans and Jews:

The Bible recounts that when Ezra and Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem and its temple, the Samaritans tried to prevent them; Sanballat, then leader of the Samaritans, mocked “these feeble Jews” (Neh. 4:2).

I have to confess that I'm sceptical of such stories. Jews and Samaritans share the same religious origins i.e. they both share the Torah as scripture and both follow the Mosaic Law, albeit in different ways. Both were also in origin Temple religions with a shared framework of ritual and symbolism. It is a curious fact that Mt Gerizim is referred to a number of times in the Torah but never Mt Zion. The fact is we don't know who wrote the Torah or where it was written (or even when). It's generally assumed that Jerusalem was the location but can we be sure of that. Perhaps the work began at Mt Gerizim or was even a much more collaborative work across the various shrines and scribes and priests of Yahweh. Certainly the Torah represents the rewriting, the reconstruction of the older Palestinian cults of Yahweh, a process I think most likely took place in the Persian period, a process I think was an indigenous response to Persian (religious) hegemony.

We know very little of the religious world of Persian Palestine (or of Greek Palestine in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid periods either, for that matter). As Balint observes, Ezra-Nehemiah paints a picture of rivalry and antipathy between Samaria and Jerusalem. A similar sense of antipathy emerges in the Twelve Minor Prophets and there is also the fiction that all the Israelites of the north had been deported by the Assyrians to be replaced by foreigners and 'half breeds' thus making northern religiosity suspect. But we know from Assyrian archives that the north was not depopulated en masse. A substantial minority, but a minority nonetheless, were deported and replaced by foreigners but the majority remained behind. The 'ten tribes' were never lost but always remained in the land. Obviously, Ezra-Nehemiah and the Twelve Minor Prophets are written in Jerusalem or at least with a Jerusalem perspective and quite likely much later after a breach between Gerizim and Jerusalem.

When did that breach occur? We don't know but I'm inclined to think it was very late. What I find most telling is that in the 4th century BCE, the Jewish military colony at Elephantine in the south of Egypt wrote to both Samaria and Jerusalem asking permission to rebuild their own Temple. So for this ancient Jewish community both Samaria and Jerusalem had equal and authoritative status. We know that both Samaria and Jerusalem gave approval to the rebuilding of the Temple at Elephantine and gave instructions about how the cult was to be conducted there. Presumably then for these Jews in southern Egypt there was no breach. It must have come later.

The Samaritan Chronicles were written quite late, definitely after the breach, probably after the destruction of the Gerizim Temple. They read almost as a response to Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles and the Twelve. I mentioned above that they give a fairly positive portrait of David. The name David means beloved and in the biblical accounts everyone loves David (he, however, is much more limited, and faithless, in his affections) and it seems the Samaritans also fell under his spell. The Samaritans also regarded the northern kingdom as apostate but in their account both Judah and Israel apostatise and only the Samaritan community, centred around the Temple at Gerizim, stays faithful. Furthermore, while both apostate north and south suffer deportation by Assyria and Babylon respectively, God protects the Samaritans and keeps them in the land.

I don't regard the Samaritan Chronicle as history, any more than I regard Samuel, Kings, let alone Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah as history. But I think all of them contain elements of history in their stories. I hope to write some more about that at a later stage.

But right now I want to say how thankful I am that the Samaritans survive and I hope that they will continue and maybe even grow. Because they follow a much more literal application of the Mosaic laws they can never be be a large community. Oddly enough I think that such Samaritan literalism may well have been an innovation because I don't believe those laws were meant to be followed en masse. They are portraits of utopia and had their strongest application in Temple practice, whether it be in Jerusalem or Gerizim (or Leontopolis or Elephantine for that matter). But to be followed by everyone and in every way, I don't think so. But that's something for another post. But I am not someone who believes in one religion for all (or no religion either). I like the mosaic of religious plurality and don't want to see religions die out, particularly small and vulnerable religions like the Samaritans, the Karaites, the Mandaeans, the Donmeh, the Parsis/Zoroastrians, not to mention the many indigenous religions. Like languages, religions express something about what it means to be human. The death of a religion, like the death of a language is an irreparable loss. Religious diversity must be fostered, encouraged, sustained and celebrated; respected.

All religions are inter-related and Christianity needs to recognise and acknowledge its Samaritan roots, to acknowledge and honour the Samaritan woman at the well, the Good Samaritan and all those early Samaritan converts mentioned in the book of Acts. To that end I think the Samaritan Torah should sit beside both the Masoretic and Septuagint versions in Christian Old Testaments. Furthermore, I think the Samaritan Chronicle should be included in Christian Bibles, perhaps as an appendix to the Old Testament, to show that there was another account of that history by another community who saw themselves, and still do, as the faithful holding on tenaciously to the religion of ancient Israel, to the God of Moses and Abraham, when all others had forsaken it.

Kindle and Canon

This past week has been a very busy one so I've not had much of an opportunity to write much at all. But I didn't want to let things go for too long without putting up a post. I've got quite a backlog of topics to write on too. But I wont be dealing with any of them tonight.

Instead I want to note some thoughts arising from Pat McCullough's latest piece on his kata ta biblia blog. He gets quite carried away with Amazon's Kindle, especially the latest model, and its potential for biblical scholars. Pat has a dream - "do I have a dream... the ability to convert and transfer my resources on Logos Bible Software to the Amazon Kindle, something like this most recent edition."I don't have the Logos software but instead Bibleworks on my laptop. I'm not certain how comaprable they are, But my version of Bibleworks has a suite of different Bible translations in both English and other languages. It also has the Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible/LXX (Rahlfs) and Greek New Testament and Latin Vulgate plus a range of dictionaries and reference materials as well. It only needs the Targumim in Aramaic plus a range of modern languages, the Peshitta likewise plus the Ethiopian Bible, Qumran texts and pseudepigrapha and New Testament apocrypha to make it almost complete. So I can just imagine having all that on a small portable device like the Kindle.

But that got me thinking about the interaction of technology and canon. Two thousand years ago, biblically, there really was no canon. Back then, texts were written on scrolls and one could say that the very act of writing them down gave these texts a canonical authority. Now, while some scrolls might have more authority than others, e.g. the books of Moses, any written text had an aura of authority, especially those believed to be of great age, the books of Moses, Enoch, David and other prophets. Scrolls were relatively easy to store but highly prized so it's unlikely most ancient synagogues would have had very many scrolls but the more well off synagogues, one could assume, would have more extensive collections. Nevertheless I would assume that a synagogue's library collection would have at its centre, texts required for worship. I don't know how much the synagogues of rabbinic Judaism stand in continuity by way of worship practice with the synagogues in Temple days. However, I would assume that worship/liturgy would have been a key determinant of any synagogue's 'canon' of scrolls. Temple libraries would have been much larger and the libraries of other important religious centres too (I'm thinking here especially of whatever the Samaritans would have put in place as their centre, following the destruction of their Temple on Mt Gerizim by the Hasmoneans in the 2nd century BCE). I would assume too that ritual, worship, liturgy along with instruction and training would be key determinants of what comprised the collection and hence 'canon' of scrolls stored in those libraries. The fact is that we have no real idea of what the Temple liturgies involved. Leviticus and other texts give an outline of basic procedures and type of sacrifices but the liturgies, in which the sarifices were embedded, are lost forever (and that's why the Jerusalem Temple can only ever be rebuilt but never restored). However, I would assume that the liturgies would involve recitation and chanting of specific texts: psalms obviously, and also the stories of creation, the revolt of the angels, Azazel and the Flood would have played their part primarily in the New Year and Day of Atonement and associated High Holy Days. As the Temples were centres of pilgrimage for those feasts and Pesach/Passover, in particular, presumably other texts were used for sacred performances for the crowds of pilgrims thronging Jerusalem, Leontopolis and Ha-Gerizim. As most people could not go on pilgrimage at any one time, presumably, related ceremonies and performances took place in the synagogues and worship centres of local communities.

And, of course, it's important to remember that in that ancient world reading was a group practice; reading was a performance. The population, as a whole, was not literate and the cost of scrolls meant that a personal library was only ever the preserve of the upper classes. Most people heard texts rather than read them. The synagogal annual cycle of reading Torah is one example of how most Jews would likely have 'read' Torah two thousand years ago. Sacred texts can also be mined to create liturgical productions; that is how most Christian liturgies function. The eucharistic liturgies of east and west draw most of their prayers from the scriptures in a mixture of direct recitation and allusive paraphrase. So for most Jews/Samaritans, their scriptures would have been heard either through cycles of public reading or through scripting of liturgical performances or through other public dramatic performances. Those who were literate would also have likely encountered these texts pedagogically as well.

In the Roman Empire, during the first and second centuries, there was a major technological shift in the making of texts, the invention of the codex. The codex was the precursor of the book as we know it in the West and would eventually replace the scroll. One thing is clear, early Christians took to the codex like a duck to water (in contrast to Jews who stayed with scrolls and canonised the use of scrolls in the synagogue liturgy). Just about all the ancient Christian manuscripts are in the form of codices not scrolls. The codex makes possible a fixed canon of a holy book but it takes Christians several centuries to have a go at defining such a canon.

Prior to the codex, each scroll was itself a book. The notion of a collection of books comprising a book was not possible, with the exception of say the Twelve Minor Prophets, which is either a scroll of twelve small books or a book of twelve prophets (and Jeremiah likewise drew into its scroll Lamentations and 1 Baruch, both short works which possibly economically filled an unwanted space on the Jeremiah scroll). But with the codex, at last, a bible could be possible (and that's why Jesus, Peter, Paul, John, James, Mark, Matthew, Luke etc knew of no such entity as a bible but only scriptures).

Early Christian codices were small, either comprising a single biblical book, or a handful of books. The codex had a number of advantages over the scroll in terms of capacity and portability but their production was very much the same, being written by hand, and the codex had also to be stitched together. So it would take time before a bible as we understand the term could develop. The production of bibles required Christian communities endowed with numbers, wealth and status.

Perhaps that's why the myth has developed that the Bible or biblical canon as we know it was determined by Constantine, with or without the Council of Nicea. There is no record anywhere of Nicea making any determinations regarding what was canonical or not. Neither did Constantine decree a uniform bible. Mike Heiser offers this possibility however:

I had an interesting discussion a few days ago at work. I’ve been trying to get one of my co-workers (Vince Setterholm) to guest blog for me on the canon matter since he’s done a lot of thinking about that. I think he’ll end up contributing. In the meantime, one thing he said really made good sense to me. We were talking about the myth that Constantine created the canon (a la, The DaVinci Code). What Constantine did was demand that copies of the Scriptures be made and distributed. That act, Vince noted, was what (in his mind) brought the canon as subsequent generations knew it, to fruition. In other words, once people were confronted (by the Emperor no less) with the task of having the canon copied out and distributed, they had to produce. There were lots of books out there that were considered canonical, but there was some disagreement. The choices made to fulfill Constantine’s order resulted in a collection disseminated throughotu the empire AS the “canon” — and so it stuck, so that, for generations thereafter, THAT collection became (pardon the pun) canonized. Constantine’s demand forced a decision.

It's an intersting conjecture but rather than THE canon I would suggest that Constantine's legacy might be the notion of A canon. The oldest Christian bibles, the codices Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus, are post-Constantine. Now while they have a large core of texts in common, they also show diversity as well, both in Old and New Testament. So clearly, after Constantine, there was no final canon even though there was a notion of a canon. Nevertheless the notion of a canon, a sacred book, a bible can only arise when the means to construct it is available i.e. the codex.

Indeed there never has been a single Christian biblical canon and the boundaries of the canon have remained fuzzy throughout Christendom, that is until the invention of the printing press in the west. Printing gave rise to two concepts: standardisation/uniformity and widespread distribution. When texts are created individually by copyists by hand then there is ample opportunity for scribal error. With printing, while there can be errors, there is also a guaranteed uniformity of text across multiple copies to a degree not possible with scribal copyists.

The Protestant stress on the centrality of the text is not really possible without the invention of printing. Notions of biblical inerrancy are also a likely result of the wonders of printing. Hand copied texts will generally have variations and discrepancies that give the lie to such a notion. The development of printing generates further pressures propelling the importance of the written word on society. With industrialisation comes the need for a literate and numerate workforce. Such developments provide marvellous opportunities for the spread of Protestant book religion, The Bible is central in a new way; it's uniform, standardised as befits the eternal Word of God. But to be uniform and standardised the canon needs to be clearly demarcated. The religion of the Book needs a Book. So while the Church of England and the Lutheran churches opted to keep the Apocrypha/Deutero-canon and use them in their liturgies, Protestant bookism would have none of that. From the 1820s the Bible societies distributed a Bible without any reference to these other books that give hint of canonical fluidity. They faced a big battle in Europe where Lutherans especially were determined to hang on to the broader canon bequeathed them. But it was economics and technology that gave the Pure Book it's final victory. Following WW2 the shortage of paper necessitated a rigid economics of bible production such that Protestant bibles would no longer include the so-called Apocrypha.

The internet and Kindle provide a marvellous opportunity to undo such biblical canonical monomania and change completely notions of canon. Like Mike Heiser, I too, have a dream. It stems from my vision of one day full communion being restored between the Roman church and the other Catholic churches of the West and with the three communions of the Eastern Church. If such a restoration of communion would take place, does that mean that the Roman biblical canon based as it is on the old Latin Bible would replace the Bibles of, say, the Anglican or Swedish or Greek or Russian or Coptic or Ethiopian Churches. I should certainly say not. Instead, I envisage what I would term a new ecumenical bible emerging. One that would fulfil Augustine's answer to Jerome calling for the Greek and Hebrew Bibles to sit together side by side rather than one (Hebrew) superseding the other (Greek) as it has in Western Christianity. I would also want to see the Samaritan Torah and Joshua sit beside the Greek and Hebrew. And certainly Qumran Isaiah with all its variation should sit beside Greek and Hebrew Isaiah too. And the great Psalm Scroll from Qumran round out the Greek & Hebrew Psalms and the Syriac Psalms 151-155 as well. And every text that is or has been part of any Christian biblical canon should be incorporated too. And that's just my Old Testament which I would argue might also be rounded off with the Targumim since I read somewhere recently that one New Testament text cites Targum Isaiah (and I'm sorry but I don't have the details of that right now).

At another time I might explore further details of my vision of an Ecumenical Christian Bible but for now I might turn to a major practical objection to such a project. Such an Old Testament alone would be a massive publication exercise. And I acknowledge that for paper publishing the standard Protestant Bible is economically compact. But I had already been thinking that the internet makes such a project possible as an online publication. Clearly Kindle makes it a personal and portable possibility too. I'm sure Origen would have loved something like Kindle for his Hexapla and I must confess the Hexapla stands behind my biblical vision, too.

But to put the Kindle posibilities in a more interfaith perspective, I should add that I draw further inspiration from the Rabbinic Bible or Mikraot Gedolot. This remarkable 16th century Jewish production puts Hebrew text, Aramaic Targumim and the commentaries of several of the great Rabbis together in one volume. For Rabbinic Judaism, Torah and commentary go hand in hand and there is a rich range of publications which embed biblical text in a sea of commentary drawn from over the centuries. I'm a proud owner of several of the Artscroll Bible commentaries which provide a digest of 2000 years of Jewish biblical commentary. Rashi's Torah commentaries alone run into several volumes (and there are commentaries on Rashi's commentaries). Then there are the Midrashim, many volumes of ancient biblical commentary there. And of course for Rabbinic Judaism, the Tanakh/Bible is not the whole of scripture. There is also the Oral Law/Torah which is written down in the Mishnah and then supplemented by the Tosefta which are then expanded in not one but two Talmuds/Talmudim, the Babylonian Talmud Bavli and the Palestinian Talmud Yerushalmi. And then don't forget the Zohar. I don't know the full capacity of Kindle and I suspect it's being constantly upgraded but I can imagine a Kindle with Tanakh, Targumim, Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmudim, Zohar and maybe Midrashim (depending on capacity).

In Islam, Qur'an and Hadith are likewise embedded in rich commentary traditions which could be made available through Kindle. Both Hinduism and Buddhism are known for their extensive scriptures, which could make something like Kindle a real boon for those traditions too. Boon and maybe even curse, because a new technology of reading and publishing will change the way sacred texts function in communities and probably in ways that none of us can even grasp. Just look what happened with the codex.

But I hope an Ecumenical Bible would prove to be more boon than curse.