Josephus explicitly excluded them from his list.

[JoeyWarren]

Originally Posted by Valke2

Torah allows divorce.

Repeatedly?

[Daniel Marsh]

Hi MM, you said, "but the real motive was that some of the books qwere considered to be too convenient to Christians"

What's your proof of this? Are you thinking of the text used to support purgatory? Some Jews believed in it.

Rabbinic Views.

The view of purgatory is still more clearly expressed in rabbinical passages, as in the teaching of the Shammaites: "In the last judgment day there shall be three classes of souls: the righteous shall at once be written down for the life everlasting; the wicked, for Gehenna; but those whose virtues and sins counterbalance one another shall go down to Gehenna and float up and down until they rise purified; for of them it is said: 'I will bring the third part into the fire and refine them as silver is refined, and try them as gold is tried' [Zech. xiii. 9.]; also, 'He [the Lord] bringeth down to Sheol and bringeth up again'" (I Sam. ii. 6). The Hillelites seem to have had no purgatory; for they said: "He who is 'plenteous in mercy' [Ex. xxxiv. 6.] inclines the balance toward mercy, and consequently the intermediates do not descend into Gehenna" (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 3; R. H. 16b; Bacher, "Ag. Tan." i. 18). Still they also speak of an intermediate state.

Regarding the time which purgatory lasts, the accepted opinion of R. Akiba is twelve months; according to R. Johanan b. Nuri, it is only forty-nine days. Both opinions are based upon Isa. lxvi. 23-24: "From one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before Me, and they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched"; the former interpreting the words "from one new moon to another" to signify all the months of a year; the latter interpreting the words "from one Sabbath to another," in accordance with Lev. xxiii. 15-16, to signify seven weeks. During the twelve months, declares the baraita (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 4-5; R. H. 16b), the souls of the wicked are judged, and after these twelve months are over they are consumed and transformed into ashes under the feet of the righteous (according to Mal. iii. 21 [A. V. iv. 3]), whereas the great seducers and blasphemers are to undergo eternal tortures in Gehenna without cessation (according to Isa. lxvi. 24).

The righteous, however, and, according to some, also the sinners among the people of Israel for whom Abraham intercedes because they bear the Abrahamic sign of the covenant are not harmed by the fire of Gehenna even when they are required to pass through the intermediate state of purgatory ('Er. 19b; Ḥag. 27a).

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/vi...arch=purgatory

[KarenNC]

Originally Posted by JoeyWarren

Repeatedly?

While there are restrictions (women can't initiate a divorce, a man cannot remarry his ex-wife if she marries another man who then dies or divorces her, men of the priestly class can't marry divorced women, etc) I haven't seen anything that puts limits on the number of times one can divorce. If you have evidence of Jewish laws that do so, I would be glad to read it.

And you still haven't listed the requirements to be considered a "True Jew" in your opinion.

[Hesychios]

Originally Posted by Daniel Marsh

... you said, "but the real motive was that some of the books qwere considered to be too convenient to Christians"

Jewish theology was very diverse at the time of Christ. Some very conservative traditional Jews did not even have a well developed idea of an afterlife. The Sadducees did not accept the writings of the Prophets (in that sense they paralleled their old adversaries, the Samaritans), this reflected the oldest form of the Hebrew religion.

After the age of the Prophets a long period ensued which was full of great troubles under foreign masters. Apocalyptic writings circulated widely and influenced thought. People began to look forward to a deliverer. These newer popular writings tended to be composed in the common spoken language, Hebrew was no longer spoken on the street outside of Jerusalem.

The orthodox Christian Faith came directly out of apocolyptic and Messianic Judaism (most scholars will place Jesus directly in the Pharisaic tradition of teachers). The apocolyptic movement was a very late development and supported by the most recent scriptures. The theory that a Messiah was to come was not universally embraced by Jews.

The Septuagint was popular all over the Mediterranean region and even in Galilee because of the widespread working knowledge of Greek. Because all of the books were translated as one collection (except for the books that did not require translating, being already in Greek) the Septuagint serves as a snapshot of the popular scriptures known to Jewish communities at the time. It was also distributed as a set, so it had the effect of standardizing the set of accepted books used in synagogs all over.

After the first revolt and the destruction of the Temple, Judaism in Palestine was very disrupted. The revolt was a complete disaster from the perspective of the surviving Rabbinic teachers. The Council of Jamna (?) was a conservative reaction to those crises. This was not merely a direct reaction to Christianity, it was intended to blunt or restrain Messianic expectations in Judaism.

The Christians in Palestine, for their part, were taking full advantage of those texts (Tobit, Machabees etc.) to support their claims and proselytize among the remaining Jewish population, some of which had become discouraged and were rethinking their convictions. The later rejection of books not known to have been composed in Hebrew was therefore a way to de-legitimize the claims and arguments of Christian apologists, it help isolate the two communities from each other, and helped the Jewish community make a case with the Roman government to forbid the Christians making use of Jewish exemptions.

Jewish congregations all over the diaspora, alarmed by the division and losses caused by Christian proselytism, adopted the new recommended Canon of Jamna and retired their Septuagint manuscripts. Some of the oldest fragments of Septuagint manuscripts known today were castoffs from old synagogs (as opposed to churches). They stopped using them before they were completely worn out and tucked them away.

[Lion of Narnia]

Originally Posted by Hesychios

The Council of Jamna (?) was a conservative reaction to those crises. This was not merely a direct reaction to Christianity, it was intended to blunt or restrain Messianic expectations in Judaism...

.

to which:
The Council That Wasn’t
The Myth of Jabneh and the Old Testament Canon
By Steve Ray

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

Essentially, its a myth Jabneh speciicaly ruled out the DT's as scripture--that was not ruled on by general rabbinical consensus until 150+ years later

[Hesychios]

Originally Posted by Lion of Narnia

to which:
The Council That Wasn’t
The Myth of Jabneh and the Old Testament Canon
By Steve Ray

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0409fea4.asp

Essentially, its a myth Jabneh speciicaly ruled out the DT's as scripture--that was not ruled on by general rabbinical consensus until 150+ years later

Steve Ray sets up a straw man by insisting that the Jews did not have an authoritative council.

The Jews just wouldn't think of it that way. No they did not have authority to dictate to all the rest of Judaism, they were a collection of local Rabbis, essentially all that was left of the Jewish religion in the region, and they decided policy for themselves. Everything else was gone: the Temple, the Essenes, the Sadducees and probably a few more marginal varieties of Judaism.

I am not getting into a pissing contest over this, I doubt that Steve's opinion or mine makes any difference after all. The Greek speaking Jews used the Septuagint well before Christ was born, Christ and the Apostles used it, and after Christ the Jews were not using it. Precisely when or how that happened is ultimately an unimportant detail, but we can see that it did happen.

Eventually, most of the Jewish synagogs had stopped reading the Deutero-Canonicals, they essentially reached a concensus. It may have taken hundreds of years for some synagogs to conform but they did, not because some "council" told them they must. A more likely explanation is that the schools turning out Rabbis had stopped reading and studying the Deutero-Canonicals: that more recent scriptural literature was problematic for them.

Steve Ray's argument against the meeting of Rabbi's at Jamna is quite meaningless (and unnecessary, and probably wrong). He burns up too much energy fighting a will-o-the-wisp because Jamna was decades after the death and resurrection of Christ, so it doesn't matter. The only meaningful claim Protestants could make for their abbreviated canon would be if the Jews stopped using the Septuagint at some point before the time of Christ, and that dog won't hunt, no scholar has attempted to make such a claim, as far as I know.

[Valke2]

I admit that I've had some trouble following this argument, so I apologize if the following comment is irrelevant.

the original Septuagint was a greek translation of the Torah only (First 5 books of Moses).

[colliric]

Originally Posted by Valke2

I admit that I've had some trouble following this argument, so I apologize if the following comment is irrelevant.

the original Septuagint was a greek translation of the Torah only (First 5 books of Moses).

It's irrelevant because the Septuagint which existed at the time of Christ contained the deuterocanon so if they had that version of it, which they did, it contained the deuterocanon. I believe the only book possibly written and included after the time of Christ is 4 Maccabees.

[Valke2]

Originally Posted by colliric

It's irrelevant because the Septuagint which existed at the time of Christ contained the deuterocanon so if they had that version of it, which they did, it contained the deuterocanon. I believe the only book possibly written and included after the time of Christ is 4 Maccabees.

So the Septuagint went from the five books of Moses to the Tanakh prior to Jesus? Because it was originally only the TOrah.

[KarenNC]

Originally Posted by Valke2

So the Septuagint went from the five books of Moses to the Tanakh prior to Jesus? Because it was originally only the TOrah.

Information on the development of the Septuagint http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/

[Seth]

Short, sweet and to the point.

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5103

[Valke2]

Originally Posted by KarenNC

Information on the development of the Septuagint http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/

Thanks for the link.

[eliasaph99]

Originally Posted by KarenNC

As to your "confusion" icon.....there were no Christians prior to, at minimum, 0 CE. You accept (and the church accepts) the Jewish religion's word that the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures were inspired, therefore you are accepting the word of a non-Christian in that respect.

There is no year zero in any calendar in use by common people today. The designation CE is a ridiculous modernism, but if you wish to use it, you should do so correctly.

You are quite wrong about why the Church (note the capital C) has defined its canon as it is. It is not dependent, as you imply, on prior use by Jewish peoples, although it does not exclude this entirely. The issue is more complex than that.

[KarenNC]

Originally Posted by eliasaph99

The issue is more complex than that.

There is nothing about any religion that is not "more complex" than can be stated in a single sentence. Certainly not the reason that the Jews chose the particular books for their canon, nor that the Christians did.

[eliasaph99]

Originally Posted by KarenNC

There is nothing about any religion that is not "more complex" than can be stated in a single sentence. Certainly not the reason that the Jews chose the particular books for their canon, nor that the Christians did.

Then why imply that the only reason that the Church believes in the inspiration of Hebrew Scriptures is because the Hebrews did?

You are oversimplifying the issue in one argument, and now here, you are stating that oversimplifying is wrong.