Twenty Two Books

[Paul Younan]

Shlama Akhay,

As many of you already know, the Hebrew canon of the OT contains only 22 books. They are the same as the Christian OT canon, but it's just that the Jews reckoned certain books as one, such as the two Books of Samuel, the two Books of Kings, the two books of Chronicles, the Twelve Minor Prophets which were originally written on a single scroll, Judges with Ruth and Jeremiah with Lamentations.

In the 1st century, Josephus writes:

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, as the Greeks have, but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine.

Another early witness is Origen (185 ??? 254 AD):

Nor must we fail to observe that not without reason the canonical books are twenty-two, according to the Hebrew tradition, the same in number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For as the twenty-two letters may be regarded as an introduction to the wisdom and the Divine doctrines given to men in those Characters, so the twenty-two inspired books are an alphabet of the wisdom of God and an introduction to the knowledge of realities.

Even Jerome, the famous Hebrew and Aramaic scholar and author of the Vulgate (347-420 AD):

As, then, there are twenty-two elementary characters by means of which we write in Hebrew all we say, and the compass of the human voice is contained within their limits, so we reckon twenty-two books, by which, as by the alphabet of the doctrine of God, a righteous man is instructed in tender infancy, and, as it were, while still at the breast.

Is it a coincidence that the eastern canon of the Peshitta NT contains 22 books? <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->