MSS. of the Septuagint contain, indeed, the O. T. Apocrypha, but the writers of the latter do not recognize their own work as on a level with the canonical Scriptures, which they regard as distinct from all other books (Ecclesiasticus, prologue, and 48:24; also 24:23-27; 1 Mac. 12:9; 2 Mac. 6:23; 1 Esd. 1:28; 6:1; Baruch 2:21). So both ancient and modern Jews. See Bissell, in Lange's Commentary on the Apocrypha, Introduction, 44. In the prologue to the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, we read of “the Law and the Prophets and the rest of the books,” which shows that as early as 130 B. C., the probable date of Ecclesiasticus, a threefold division of the Jewish sacred books was recognized. That the author, however, did not conceive of these books as constituting a completed canon seems evident from his assertion in this connection that his grandfather Jesus also wrote. 1 Mac. 12:9 (80-90 B. C.) speaks of “the sacred books which are now in our hands.” Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 3:611—“The O. T. was the result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the decisions of the Council of Jamnia”—Jamnia is the ancient Jabneh, 7 miles south by west of Tiberias, where met a council of rabbins at some time between 90 to 118 A. D. This Council decided in favor of Canticles and Ecclesiastes, and closed the O. T. Canon.
The Greek version of the Pentateuch which forms a part of the Septuagint is said by Josephus to have been made in the reign and by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, about 270 or 280 B. C. “The legend is that it was made by seventy-two persons in seventy-two days. It is supposed, however, by modern critics that this version of the several books is the work not only of different hands but of separate times. It is probable that at first only the Pentateuch was translated, and the remaining books gradually; but the translation is believed to have been completed by the second century B. C.” (Century Dictionary, in voce). It therefore furnishes an important witness to the genuineness of our O. T. documents. Driver, Introd. to O. T. Lit., xxxi—“For the opinion, often met with in modern books, that the Canon of the O. T. was closed by Ezra, or in Ezra's time, there is no foundation in antiquity whatever.... All that can reasonably be treated as historical in the accounts of Ezra's literary labors is limited to the Law.”
(d) From indications that soon after the exile, and so early as the times of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.), the Pentateuch together with the book of Joshua was not only in existence but was regarded as authoritative.
2 Mac, 2:13-15 intimates that Nehemiah founded a library, and there is a tradition that a “Great Synagogue” was gathered in his time to determine the Canon. But Hastings' Dictionary, 4:644, asserts that “the Great Synagogue was originally a meeting, and not an institution. It met once for all, and all that is told about it, except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the later Jews.” In like manner no dependence is to be placed upon the tradition that Ezra miraculously restored the ancient Scriptures that had been lost during the exile. Clement of Alexandria says: “Since the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, Esdras (the Greek form of Ezra) the Levite, the priest, in the time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, having become inspired in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.” But the work now divided into 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, mentions Darius Codomannus (Neh. 12:22), whose date is 336 B. C. The utmost the tradition proves is that about 300 B. C. the Pentateuch was in some sense attributed to Moses; see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 35; Bib. Sac., 1863:381, 660, 799; Smith, Bible Dict., art.: Pentateuch; Theological Eclectic, 6:215; Bissell, Hist. Origin of the Bible, 398-403. On the Men of the Great Synagogue, see Wright, Ecclesiastes, 5-12, 475-477.
(e) From the testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, dating from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.).
The Samaritans had been brought by the king of Assyria from “Babylon, and from Cuthah and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim” (2 K. 17:6, 24, 26), to take the place of the people of Israel whom the king had carried away captive to his own land. The colonists had brought their heathen gods with them, and the incursions of wild beasts which the intermission of tillage occasioned gave rise to the belief that the God of Israel was against them. One of the captive Jewish priests was therefore sent to teach them “the law of the god of the land” and he “taught them how they should fear Jehovah” (2 K. 17:27, 28). The result was that they adopted the Jewish ritual, but combined the worship of Jehovah with that of their graven images (verse 33). When the Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, the Samaritans offered their aid, but this aid was indignantly refused (Ezra 4 and Nehemiah 4). Hostility arose between Jews and Samaritans—a hostility which continued not only to the time of Christ (John 4:9), but even to the present day. Since the Samaritan Pentateuch substantially coincides with the Hebrew Pentateuch, it furnishes us with a definite past date at which it certainly existed in nearly its present form. It witnesses to the existence of our Pentateuch in essentially its present form as far back as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 44, 45—“After being repulsed by the Jews, the Samaritans, to substantiate their claim of being sprung from ancient Israel, eagerly accepted the Pentateuch which was brought them by a renegade priest.” W. Robertson Smith, in Encyc. Brit., 21:244—“The priestly law, which is throughout based on the practice of the priests of Jerusalem before the captivity, was reduced to form after the exile, and was first published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt temple of Zion. The Samaritans must therefore have derived their Pentateuch from the Jews after Ezra's reforms, i. e., after 444 B. C. Before that time Samaritanism cannot have existed in a form at all similar to that which we know; but there must have been a community ready to accept the Pentateuch.” See Smith's Bible Dictionary, art.: Samaritan Pentateuch; Hastings, Bible Dictionary, art.: Samaria; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O. T., 1-41.
(f) From the finding of “the book of the law” in the temple, in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, or in 621 B. C.
2 K. 22:8—“And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.” 23:2—“The book of the covenant” was read before the people by the king and proclaimed to be the law of the land. Curtis, in Hastings' Bible Dict., 3:596—“The earliest written law or book of divine instruction of whose introduction or enactment an authentic account is given, was Deuteronomy or its main portion, represented as found in the temple in the 18th year of king Josiah (B. C. 621) and [pg 168]proclaimed by the king as the law of the land. From that time forward Israel had a written law which the pious believer was commanded to ponder day and night (Joshua 1:8; Ps. 1:2); and thus the Torah, as sacred literature, formally commenced in Israel. This law aimed at a right application of Mosaic principles.” Ryle, in Hastings' Bible Dict., 1:602—“The law of Deuteronomy represents an expansion and development of the ancient code contained in Exodus 20-23, and precedes the final formulation of the priestly ritual, which only received its ultimate form in the last period of revising the structure of the Pentateuch.”
Andrew Harper, on Deuteronomy, in Expositor's Bible: “Deuteronomy does not claim to have been written by Moses. He is spoken of in the third person in the introduction and historical framework, while the speeches of Moses are in the first person. In portions where the author speaks for himself, the phrase 'beyond Jordan' means east of Jordan; in the speeches of Moses the phrase ‘beyond Jordan’ means west of Jordan; and the only exception is Deut. 3:8, which cannot originally have been part of the speech of Moses. But the style of both parts is the same, and if the 3rd person parts are by a later author, the 1st person parts are by a later author also. Both differ from other speeches of Moses in the Pentateuch. Can the author be a contemporary writer who gives Moses' words, as John gave the words of Jesus? No, for Deuteronomy covers only the book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23. It uses JE but not P, with which JE is interwoven. But JE appears in Joshua and contributes to it an account of Joshua's death. JE speaks of kings in Israel (Gen. 36:31-39). Deuteronomy plainly belongs to the early centuries of the Kingdom, or to the middle of it.”