A Refutation of the Alexandrian Canon Hypothesis

 

One popular argument made by Roman Catholic apologists and defenders of the Apocrypha is that Jesus and the apostles would have considered these extra books as inspired scripture since they quote from the Septuagint in the New Testament. This argument is, of course, founded on the presupposition that the Septuagint at the time of Christ and prior contained the Apocryphal books. This is very similar to the Alexandrian canon hypothesis, which posits that the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria (and sometimes the Jews of the Diaspora are included) during the Second-Temple period had a larger canon than the Pharisaic Jews in Palestine/Jerusalem. This argument has a number of problems with it, which will be addressed in detail here. 

[1]. We would ask that the Papists define what they mean by the “original” Septuagint. Do they mean at the time of the seventy translators themselves, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, later during the time of Christ, or somewhere in between? The LXX originally (at the time of Ptolemy II) only included the Law of Moses, if the Letter of Aristeas may be believed in this respect. Lee MacDonald acknowledges this multiple times in his book on the canon (pg. 115), which is again cited below. 

[2]. The Alexandrian canon hypothesis (hereafter known as ACH) is based on the assumption that the Jews in the Diaspora (Alexandria itself included) would have looked to Alexandria rather than Jerusalem for knowledge of the canon. In other words, Alexandria, rather than Jerusalem, became the new “Mecca”of Judaism (as Sundberg says in his book The Old Testament of the Early Church [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964]). Philo reports Agrippa as saying “And I am, as you know, a Jew; and Jerusalem is my country, in which there is erected the holy temple of the Most High God….Concerning the holy city I must now say what is necessary. It, as I have already stated, is my native country, and the metropolis, not only of the one country of Judaea, but also of many.” (On the Embassy to Gaius, 36, [trans. C.D. Yonge]). Acts 2:5-13 shows that during the time of Christ, Jerusalem was regarded as the center of Judaism. Therefore, the Diaspora Jews would have followed Jerusalem in the matter of canon (Sundberg, Old Testament, pg. 52).  

[3]. Philo and Josephus both used the Septuagint, and yet did not view the Apocryphal books as inspired (this is especially true in the case of Josephus). 

[4]. Lee Martin MacDonald (who is oftentimes sympathetic to the Apocryphal books), Hebert Ryle, and F.F. Bruce rightly recognize the noticeable lack of evidence for any separate canon in Alexandria amongst the Hellenistic Jews:

“The biggest problem with the theory of the Alexandrian canon is that there are no lists or collections one can look to in order to see what books comprised it. Pfeiffer himself acknowledged that no one knows what the canon of the Alexandrian and other Diaspora Jews was before the LXX was condemned in Palestine, ca. 130 CE. Long ago E. Reuss concluded that we know nothing about the LXX before the time when the church made extensive use of it. That includes the condition of the text and its form as well as its extent. Another problem with the Alexandrian canon theory is that it has not been shown conclusively that the Alexandrian Jews or the other Jews of the Dispersion were any more likely to adopt other writings as sacred scriptures than were the Jews Palestine in the two centuries BCE and the first century CE. Further, there is no evidence as yet that shows the existence of a different canon of scriptures in Alexandria than in Palestine from the second century BCE to the second century CE….Since the communications between Jerusalem and Alexandria were considered quite good during the first century BCE and CE, it is not certain that either the notion or extent of divine scripture would be strikingly different between the two locations during the period before 70 CE…Although the Jews of the Dispersion were more affected by Hellenism than were the Jews of Palestine, there is little evidence to show that this influence also affected their notion of scripture or the boundaries of their scriptures.” (Lee Martin MacDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007], pg. 102)

“The inclusion of the so-called Apocryphal books in the LXX version is sometimes alleged to be a proof, that the Alexandrian Jews acknowledged a wider Canon of Scripture than their Palestinian countrymen. But this is not a legitimate inference. Our copies of the LXX are derived from Christian sources; and all that can certainly be proved from the association of additional books with those of the Hebrew canon, is that these other books found favor with the Christian community. Doubtless, they would not have thus have found favor with the Christians, if they had not also enjoyed high repute among the Jews, from whom they were obtained along with the undoubted books of the Hebrew Canon. The fact, however, that, neither in the writings of Philo, nor in those of Josephus–Jews who both make use of the LXX version–have we any evidence favoring the canonicity of the Apocryphal books, is really conclusive against their having been regarded as Scripture by Greek-speaking Jews before the second century A.D.” (Herbert Edward Ryle, The Canon of the Old Testament [London: MacMillan and CO., 1904], pg. 156)

“It has frequently been suggested that, while the canon of the Palestinian Jews was limited to the twenty-four books of the Law, Prophets and Writings, the canon of the Alexandrian Jews was more comprehensive. There is no evidence that this was so: indeed, there is no evidence that the Alexandrian Jews ever promulgated a canon of scripture.” (F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988], pgs. 44-45)

[5]. It is true that some of the best extant manuscripts containing the Septuagint include some of the Apocryphal books. These manuscripts are Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexandrinus. Each of these codices contain the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach. However, there are also important differences between these three LXX manuscripts in terms of what books are included. Specifically, Codex Vaticanus does not contain the books of the Maccabees, Codex Sinaiticus only includes 1 and 4 Maccabees (omitting 2 and 3 Macc.), and Codex Alexandrinus contains all four books of the Maccabees. None of these manuscripts agrees exactly with the Roman Catholic canon that is used today or that was defined by the Council of Trent. 

One objection to all of this would be the presence of the Kaige recension, a LXX revision from the 1st century BC that includes the book of Baruch and the three chapters added to Daniel (Song of the Three, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon). However, there is no evidence to suggest that this was universally and uniformly accepted by mainstream Jews, nor that it was used as such by the NT writers (though some of their citations of the LXX in the NT do bear some similarities to it).