The lecture continued Desnitsky's series on biblical texts: he had previously spoken about Old Testament books in light of archaeological data and about the authorship of biblical books. This time the subject was the canon as a corpus of texts. According to the lecturer, the ancient Greek word “canon” meant a reed ruler, while the Slavic “rule” (pravilo) meant that which makes something straight; hence the narrow meanings — a rule of conduct, an external form, the composition of the Bible.
Desnitsky proposed starting with the question that, in his view, underlies any discussion of the canon: who said that the Bible is Divine Scripture. The answers, he noted, will be confessional. Rabbinic Judaism, he said, answers that revelation was given to the prophets from Moses onward and they recorded it under the action of Divine inspiration. In Christianity, the lecturer believes, the most adequate answer is the conciliar decision of the community about the text.
The Jewish Canon and Its Boundaries
The lecturer listed the books of the Jewish canon in the familiar Russian order — from the Pentateuch to the twelve minor prophets — and recalled that the word “Tanakh” is formed from the names of three sections: Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim. On the time of the canon's formation, he said, there is no single answer: rabbinic tradition attributes it to the scribe Ezra after the return from exile, while modern scholarship dates the final shaping of the list to the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries, linking it with the town of Yavne, where scribes and Pharisees fled after the Jewish revolt. Desnitsky emphasized that not only the composition of the books was chosen but also a specific textual variant — the Masoretic, from the word “masorah,” tradition.
Outside the Jewish canon remained books that in Christian traditions are added to it. As an example, the lecturer cited the Book of Jesus son of Sirach with the translator's preface, which, in his assessment, already stands on the border of Scripture and Tradition. Catholics, he continued, add the books of Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, and the first and second Maccabees; Greeks — the second book of Ezra; the Slavic and Russian traditions — the third Maccabees and the third book of Ezra. Protestants call these books apocrypha, Orthodox call them non-canonical, and sometimes, following Catholics, deuterocanonical.
The Christian Canon: A Diversity of Lists
If the Jewish canon by the mid-2nd century, according to the lecturer, was strictly defined, the Christian one took shape differently. Until the 4th century, Desnitsky asserted, the concept of “canon” does not exist in Christian sources, and lists of books in different monuments differ. Among the disputed texts of the New Testament he named the Epistle to the Hebrews, Revelation, and above all the Second Epistle of Peter. There was no disagreement about the four Gospels and most of the epistles.
As examples, the lecturer cited the Muratorian Canon of the 2nd century, which lacks the Epistles of James, both Epistles of Peter, the last Epistle of John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, but includes the Revelation of Peter; the list of Cyril of Jerusalem in a 4th-century catechism; the Codex Claromontanus of the same century with the Epistle of Barnabas, the Acts of Peter, and the Revelation of Peter. John of Damascus in the 8th century, according to Desnitsky, included in the New Testament the “Apostolic Constitutions,” written by Clement of Rome.
“Even in the 8th century there was still no final list of New Testament books for everyone, and moreover, there is none to this day,” said the lecturer.
He noted that in the Ethiopian Church there are 35 books of the New Testament, whereas in the other local Christian Churches there are 27. Desnitsky explained the Ethiopian tradition by isolation after the Arab conquests of the 6th–7th centuries, comparing the preservation of an archaic form of the canon to marsupial animals in Australia.
The First Lists and the Problem of Counting
The lecturer named the first known list of the New Testament canon as the 4th-century festal letter of Athanasius of Alexandria, where the word “canonized books” is used for the first time. Athanasius, according to Desnitsky, names 22 books of the Old Testament — the Jewish canon without the books of Esther, Baruch, and the Epistle of Jeremiah. The lecturer explained that the number 22 corresponds to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, but without listing the books such a count remains an abstraction: the twelve minor prophets may be counted as one book, the books of Kingdoms as one, two, or four, and the composition of the corpus of Jeremiah with Baruch, the Epistle, and Lamentations requires a separate caveat.
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