. . . . . in A.D. 90, actually, at Jabneh (or Jamnia, not far west of Jerusalem). This meeting of Rabbis was held with Roman government permission, for Jews had been banned from Jerusalem. It decided that no books written (1) after the time of Ezrah (Esdras c. 450 B.C.), or (2) outside Palestine, or (3) in any language other than Hebrew belonged among the inspired Scriptures of the Torah. The Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament done in the Third century B.C.—was thereafter to be avoided by Jews as a Christian thing. Indeed the Jewish feast day for celebrating it became a day of mourning. The 7 books in the Septuagint now excluded are Baruch, Judith, Tobias, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (a.k.a Sirach, to be distinguished from Ecclesiastes), I Macchabees and II Macchabees. Some parts of Daniel too were excluded, as they had no official early Hebrew version.

The original and true Judaism had been a priestly religion. However, after the 587 B.C. destruction of the Temple of Solomon, the exiled Jews developed a religious way of life centered less on the Temple and more on the synagogue (Greek: ‘meeting’ or ‘meeting house’). Synagogue services were conducted not by priests offering sacrifices but by members of the community who were personally learned in the Scriptures. These came to be called rabbim (Hebrew: ‘masters’), whose learning qualified a Rabbi to explain the Scriptures, to give sermons, to lead the prayers, to teach the young and to adjudicate disputes.

In the centuries after the 515 B.C. resumption of Temple sacrifices in Jerusalem, the ancient Levitical priesthood, influenced by pagan Greek ideas and practices, degenerated until it fell under the domination of the Sadducees (‘Zadokites’), who, denying the existence of spirits or of the afterlife, were virtual atheists. They also denied Scriptural status to any books outside the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible. Few in number, rich, cynical and offering no hope, they lost their prestige among the people.

As the duty of interpreting the Scriptures was relinquished by the priests, it was steadily assumed by the scribes and lawyers. Calling themselves the haberim (‘associates’) but known to their opponents as pherisim (‘exclusives,’ hence pharisees), the scribes and lawyers of Pharisaeism grew in power. Finally, in the reign of Queen Alexandra (76 to 67 B.C.), their most illustrious members were admitted into the Sanhedrin, the ruling council itself of Judaism.

Elias Levita, a contemporary of Fr. Luther, advanced the theory that the Canon of the Hebrew Bible had been completed and closed by ‘the men of the Great Synagogue,’ presided over by Ezrah. This theory encouraged the Protestants to adopt the Judaic Canon rather than the traditional Christian Canon of the Septuagint. Protestant bibles therefore do not contain the seven books ousted as ‘apocrypha’ by the Rabbis at their meeting in A.D. 90. This meeting also prescribed certain anti-‘Nazarene’ prayers to be added to the standard synagogue service. “The excluding act which segregated the apocrypha was the work of Pharisaeism triumphant.”—Max Margolis, Hebrew Scriptures in the Making (Philadelphia, 1922) p. 91.

With the final destruction of the Temple, Judaism ceased to be a priestly religion, remaining the instrument of the scholars of Pharisaeism until the 19th century. Then, as Catholic faith declined Judaic liberalism rose, discarding with timeless contempt conscientious orthodoxy like a serpent shedding a used up skin.—“My rabbi tried to list the Ten Commandments. Instead he named the Seven Dwarfs.” Woody Allen, while working on a non-fiction version of the Warren Report.