There is no evidence of a decision drawing up a list of books

(6) For example, in the Gospel of Matthew there are 160 implicit quotations and allusions; 60 in the Gospel of Mark; 192 in the Gospel of Luke; 137 in the Gospel of John; 140 in Acts; 72 in the Letter to the Romans, etc.

(7) There are 38 quotations in Matthew; 15 in Mark; 15 in Luke; 14 in John; 22 in Acts; 47 in Romans and so on.

(9) Subjects understood: Scripture (Rm 10:8; cf. ), the Lord (Ga 3:16; cf. Gn -15; Heb 8:8; cf. 8:8,9), Christ (Heb 10:5).

(10) Subjects expressed: “Scripture” (Rm 9:17; Ga 4:30); “the Law” (Rm 3:19; 7:7); “Moses” (Mk 7:10; Ac 3:22; Rm ), “David” (Mt ; Ac 2:25; 4:25; Rm 4:6), “the prophet” (Mt 1:22; 2:15), “Isaiah” (Mt 3:3; 4:14, etc., Jn 1:23; ,41; Rm ,20), “Jeremiah” (Mt 2:17), “the Holy Spirit” (Ac 1:16; Heb 3:7; ), “the Lord” (Heb 8:8,9,10 = Jr ,32, 33).

(23) The origin and extension of the canon of the Jewish Bible will be treated below in I.E., no. 16.

(26) Qal wa-homer is found in Mt 6:30; 7:11; Jn 7:23; -36; Rm 5:15,17; 2 Co 3:7-11; gezerah shawah in Mt 12:1-4; Ac 2:25-28; Rm 4:1-12; Ga 3:10-14.

(27) Cf. Ga 3:19 (Paul derives from the mediation of angels in the promulgation of the Law an argument to demonstrate investigate this site the inferiority of the Law); 4:21-31 (the mention of Sarah and Hagar serves to demonstrate that Gentiles who believe in Christ are “children of the promise”); Rm 4:1-10 (it is the faith of Abraham, not circumcision, that justifies him); 10:6-8 (the verse that speaks of ascending the heavens is applied to Christ); 1 Co 10:4 (Christ is identified with the rock that accompanied the people in the desert); -47 (the two Adams, of whom Christ is the second and more perfect); 2 Co 3:13-16 (a symbolic meaning is attributed to the veil that covered Moses’ face).

(28) Cf. Ep 4:8-9 (where a text on ascending the heavens, traditionally applied to Moses, is applied to Christ); Heb 7:1-28 (on the superiority of the priesthood according to Melchizedek over that of the levitical priests).

It was not the Alexandrian Jews who fixed the exclusive canon of Scripture, but the Church, beginning from the Septuagint

(30) Jews count 24 books in their Bible, called TaNaK, a word formed from the initials of Tor 1) The Catholic Church accepts 46 books in its Old Testament canon, 39 protocanonical books and 7 deuterocanonical, so called because the former were accepted with little or no debate, while the latter (Sirach, Baruch, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom 1,2 Maccabees and parts of Esther and Daniel) were accepted only after centuries of hesitation (on the part of certain Eastern Church Fathers as well as Jerome); the Churches of the Reformation call these “Apocrypha”.

Scholarly discussion on the status of certain books continued into the third century

(32) In Contra Apion(1:8), written between 93 and 95, Josephus comes very close to the idea of a canon of Scripture, but his vague reference to books to which titles had not yet been attached (later called the “Writings”), shows that Judaism had not yet accepted a definitive collection of books.

(33) The so-called Council of Jamnia was more in the nature of a school or an academy that sat in Jamnia between the years 75 and 117. It seems that the canon of the Jewish Scriptures was not definitively fixed before the end of the second century.

(34) If the early Church had received from Alexandria a closed canon or a closed list of books, one would expect that the existing manuscripts of the ent books would be virtually the same. But this is not the case. The Old Testament lists of books of the Church Fathers and early councils do not have such unanimity.