Elohīm (God) instead of Yahweh. Both these documents are
considered to have originated in the Northern kingdom, Israel,
where also in the 8th century appeared the prophets Amos and
Hosea. To the same period belong the book of Micah, the earlier
parts of the books of Samuel, of Isaiah and of Proverbs, and
perhaps some Psalms. In 722 B.C. Samaria was taken and the
Northern kingdom ceased to exist. Judah suffered also, and it is
not until a century later that any important literary activity
is again manifested. The main part of the book of Deuteronomy
was “found” shortly before 621 B.C. and about the same time
appeared the prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah, and perhaps
the book of Ruth. A few years later (about 600) the two Pentateuchal
documents J and E were woven together, the books of
Kings were compiled, the book of Habakkuk and parts of the
Proverbs were written. Early in the next century Jerusalem
was taken by Nebuchadrezzar, and the prophet Ezekiel was
among the exiles with Jehoiachin. Somewhat later (c. 550) the
combined document JE was edited by a writer under the influence
of Deuteronomy, the later parts of the books of Samuel were
written, parts of Isaiah, the books of Obadiah, Haggai, Zechariah
and perhaps the later Proverbs. In the exile, but probably after
500 B.C., an important section of the Hexateuch, usually called
the Priest’s Code (P), was drawn up. At various times in the
same century are to be placed the book of Job, the post-exilic
parts of Isaiah, the books of Joel, Jonah, Malachi and the Song
of Songs. The Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) was finally completed
in its present form at some time before 400 B.C. The latest parts
of the Old Testament are the books of Chronicles, Ezra and
Nehemiah (c. 330 B.C.), Ecclesiastes and Esther (3rd century)
and Daniel, composed either in the 3rd century or according
to some views as late as the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (c. 168
B.C.). With regard to the date of the Psalms, internal evidence,
from the nature of the case, leads to few results which are convincing.
The most reasonable view seems to be that the collection
was formed gradually and that the process was going on during
most of the period sketched above.
It is not to be supposed that all the contents of the Old Testament were immediately accepted as sacred, or that they were ever all regarded as being on the same level. The Torah, the Law delivered to Moses, held among the Apocryphal literature.Jews of the 4th century B.C. as it holds now, a pre-eminent position. The inclusion of other books in the Canon was gradual, and was effected only after centuries of debate. The Jews have always been, however, an intensely literary people, and the books ultimately accepted as canonical were only a selection from the literature in existence at the beginning of the Christian era. The rejected books receiving little attention have mostly either been altogether lost or have survived only in translations, as in the case of the Apocrypha. Hence from the composition of the latest canonical books to the redaction of the Mishna (see below) in the 2nd century A.D., the remains of Hebrew literature are very scanty. Of books of this period which are known to have existed in Hebrew or Aramaic up to the time of Jerome (and even later) we now possess most of the original Hebrew text of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) in a somewhat corrupt form, and fragments of an Aramaic text of a recension of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, both discovered within recent years. Besides definite works of this kind, there was also being formed during this period a large body of exegetical and legal material, for the most part orally transmitted, which only received its literary form much later. As Hebrew became less familiar to the people, a system of translating the text of the Law into the Aramaic vernacular verse by verse, was adopted in the synagogue. The beginnings of it are supposed to be indicated in Neh. viii. 8. The translation was no doubt originally extemporary, and varied with the individual translators, but its form gradually became fixed and was ultimately Targum.written down. It was called Targum, from the Aramaic targem, to translate. The earliest to be thus edited was the Targum of Onkelos (Onqelōs), the proselyte, on the Law. It received its final form in Babylonia probably in the 3rd century A.D. The Samaritan Targum, of about the same date, clearly rests on the same tradition. Parallel to Onkelos was another Targum on the Law, generally called pseudo-Jonathan, which was edited in the 7th century in Palestine, and is based on the same system of interpretation but is fuller and closer to the original tradition. There is also a fragmentary Targum (Palestinian) the relation of which to the others is obscure. It may be only a series of disconnected glosses on Onkelos. For the other books, the recognized Targum on the Prophets is that ascribed to Jonathan ben Uzziel (4th century?), which originated in Palestine, but was edited in Babylonia, so that it has the same history and linguistic character as Onkelos. Just as there is a Palestinian Targum on the Law parallel to the Babylonian Onkelos, so there is a Palestinian Targum (called Yerushalmi) on the Prophets parallel to that of Ben Uzziel, but of later date and incomplete. The Law and the Prophets being alone used in the services of the synagogue, there was no authorized version of the rest of the Canon. There are, however, Targumim on the Psalms and Job, composed in the 5th century, on Proverbs, resembling the Peshiṭtā version, on the five Meghillōth, paraphrastic and agadic (see below) in character, and on Chronicles—all Palestinian. There is also a second Targum on Esther. There is none on Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah.
We must now return to the 2nd century. During the period which followed the later canonical books, not only was translation, and therefore exegesis, cultivated, but even more the amplification of the Law. According to Jewish teaching Halakhah. (e.g. Abhoth i. 1) Moses received on Mount Sinai not only the written Law as set down in the Pentateuch, but also the Oral Law, which he communicated personally to the 70 elders and through them by a “chain of tradition” to succeeding ages. The application of this oral law is called Halakhah, the rules by which a man’s daily “walk” is regulated. The halakhah was by no means inferior in prestige to the written Law. Indeed some teachers even went so far as to ascribe a higher value to it, since it comes into closer relation with the details of everyday life. It was not independent of the written Law, still less could it be in opposition to it. Rather it was implicitly contained in the Torah, and the duty of the teacher was to show this. It was therefore of the first importance that the chain of tradition should be continuous and trustworthy. The line is traced through biblical teachers to Ezra, the first of the Sōpherīm or scribes, who handed on the charge to the “men of the Great Synagogue,” a much-discussed term for a body or succession of teachers inaugurated by Ezra. The last member of it, Simon the Just (either Simon I., who died about 300 B.C., or Simon II., who died about 200 B.C.), was the first of the next series, called Elders, represented in the tradition by pairs of teachers, ending with Hillel and Shammai about the beginning of the Christian era. Their pupils form the starting-point of the next series, the Tannāīm (from Aram. tenā to teach), who occupy the first two centuries A.D.
By this time the collection of halakhic material had become very large and various, and after several attempts had been made to reduce it to uniformity, a code of oral tradition was finally drawn up in the 2nd century by Judah ha-Nasī, Mishnah.called Rabbi par excellence. This was the Mishnah. Its name is derived from the Hebrew shanah, corresponding to the Aramaic tenā, and therefore a suitable name for a tannaitic work, meaning the repetition or teaching of the oral law. It is written in the Hebrew of the schools (leshōn hakhamīm) which differs in many respects from that of the Old Testament (see Hebrew Language). It is divided into six “orders,” according to subject, and each order is subdivided into chapters. In making his selection of halakhōth, Rabbi used the earlier compilations, which are quoted as “words of Rabbi ‘Aqība” or of R. Me‘īr, but rejected much which was afterwards collected under the title of Tosefta (addition) and Baraita (outside the Mishnah).
Traditional teaching was, however, not confined to halakhah. As observed above, it was the duty of the teachers to show the connexion of practical rules with the written Law, the more so since the Sadducees rejected the authority Midrash.of the oral law as such. Hence arises Midrash, exposition, from
