The Divisions of Scripture amid Canonization

The beginning of Ben Sira 39 (see “An Ideal Scribe”), written circa 180 BCE, lists a broad range of sources that a learned person of the early second century might study. These include “the law of the Most High,” “wisdom of all the ancients,” “prophecies,” “sayings of the famous,” “parables,” and “proverbs.” But by the time his grandson translated Ben Sira’s Hebrew text into Greek, around 130 BCE, the range of texts had narrowed to “the law and the prophets and the others.” This suggests some scriptural consolidation in the mid-second century BCE, perhaps under the Hasmoneans.

The noncanonical Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1975 among the Gnostic codices at Nag Hammadi, shows that the number of prophetic books was already set at twenty-four in the first century CE. The Gospel of Luke, from the late first century CE, attests to a tripartite division of scripture: the law of Moses, prophets, and psalms.