Eventually many copies of the basic Law were made. This was perfectly proper as long as

the Temple priests supervised or performed the copying. Of course, over the centuries, even the standard “Ark” copies themselves had to be replaced. But it was not uncommon for reference scrolls made of animal skins to last in good condition for 500 years or more.

The less often the scrolls had to be used, the fewer times they needed replacing. The standard “Ark Scrolls” were used so infrequently that the recopying of such standard scrolls was rare.

In New Testament times, these standard scrolls were even referred to as the “Temple Scriptures.” Paul may have been referring to them in Second Timothy

“And that from a child you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

2 Timothy 3:15 The word “holy” often means “temple,” and Newberry translated Paul as saying such in his version of 2 Timothy 3:15. Newberry believed that Paul was referring to the official

scriptures deposited in the Temple by Ezra when he completed the Old Testament

revelation. The scrolls found in official synagogues throughout the world in the 1^st century were in agreement with these standard “Temple Scriptures.” Newberry’s suggestion may well have been right.

The first period for canonization of sacred scriptures was in the time of Moses. It would be over 400 years later before another canonization took place. We will come to see that there is a remarkable similarity to all the periods when the various canonizations of the biblical writings occurred. Thankfully, the men who finally canonized the New Testament had the example of Ezra as a guide in all matters of canonization.

The Canonization Periods

The Book of Chronicles is the Old Testament book giving us information of the canonizations prior to the final one by Ezra. Indeed, this is one of the primary reasons for its composition.

There were three historical periods discussed at length by Ezra: the times of David and Solomon; the times of King Hezekiah; and the times of King Josiah. We shall see that these time periods were those when extra literature was added to the Law of Moses for Temple use.

We are left in no doubt as to Ezra’s reasons for writing the important Book of Chronicles.

Not only was he recording the three periods after Moses when canonizations occurred, but he also concentrated on matters relative to true worship and the fixing of proper rituals to be observed in the Temple. Chronicles gives us a full genealogical listing of the priests, Levites, and the House of David, and showing who were the legitimate ancestors of Israel and to demonstrate that Jerusalem was to be reckoned the center of all true worship.

The whole emphasis in the Book of Chronicles, which makes it so different from the parallel

Book of Kingdoms, is upon Jerusalem as the center of God’s divine government on earth. It also shows how the proper authorities (the ordained priests and secular rulers as proved by the genealogical lists) were associated with the Temple at Jerusalem, and not in any other area of the world. According to Ezra in the Book of Chronicles, it was at Jerusalem that the standard of all religious teaching was to be centered.

This is why Chronicles gives a great amount of detail to the history of the Ark (1 Chronicles chapters 13–16), the preparations for building the Temple, and the assignments of the priests and Levites in the Temple, and the genealogical lists of proper individuals and families who were necessary to perform the duties in the Temple and to govern Israelite society. As said before, Chronicles also shows when and especially where the canonizations of the Old Testament were accomplished. The making of the Jewish scriptures was at Jerusalem, and the canonizations were done at times when it was necessary to revitalize the Temple services. This was also the case with the final canonization. Ezra resided at Jerusalem and Temple services were once again being authorized. By writing Chronicles, he was demonstrating that Jerusalem was always the place to which Jews needed to look as the source of God’s truth.

David’s Canonization

The next period for canonization after the time of Moses was that of David. The Israelites had been in possession of Mosaic teachings some 400 years. Throughout this period, they had used the portable Tabernacle as the central place of worship. But in the time of David, the former religious system was becoming inadequate for accommodating great masses of people. The Tabernacle had now become ineffectual in handling the religious requirements of all the Israelites. The time had come to establish a permanent building in which a more appropriate worship and regulated services could be made. With this in mind, David planned a Temple to be erected as an honor to God as a non-portable sanctuary for Israel.

The building of the Temple entailed other elaborate arrangements in regard to services to be performed within its precincts. For one thing, priests were no longer a handful in number as they were when Aaron was High Priest. Their number was now so great that they could not possibly perform the Temple rituals all together as a single family. David thought it was time to re-evaluate the duties of the priesthood.

Under directions from Samuel (1 Chronicles 9:22.) David subdivided the enlarged priestly family into twenty-four divisions or courses (1 Chronicles 24). Instead of the priests performing their Temple services as a single family in unison, each priestly course was assigned specified times to do their ministrations. Each course was responsible for

appointing one of its leading priests as chief priest, and to authorize him to select certain members of that course to serve with him at the Temple. Only those particular priests then became responsible for offering the evening and morning sacrifices at the designated times.

The service of each priestly course lasted for one week (from Sabbath noon to Sabbath noon). Thus, each of the twenty-four courses served one week within a six-month period.

They repeated the procedure for the second half of the year. Over the period of a year, each course served in the Temple for two weeks (each week separated by a six month span), and all twenty-four courses served together at the three annual festival periods (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles).

David’s organization did not stop with the priests. The Levites and singers in the Temple were divided into twenty-four courses as well (1 Chronicles 25). This meant that, for all practical purposes, a new religious system had come to Israel. Instead of a temporary dwelling for God, there was to be a permanent structure. Along with this magnificent and rich building, there were to be regular successions of authorized personnel performing needed rituals in the Temple. All these things required definite liturgies to be ordained and followed. David, under the direction of Samuel, set about arranging all these matters into a proper order before Solomon constructed the Temple. We will now see that David’s work necessarily involved canonization.

Temple Services Required Liturgies

The Levitical singers were authorized to sing appropriate songs in the Temple. These various singers had been divided into twenty-four courses (1 Chronicles 25). The times for their singing, and the prophetic songs they were ordained to sing, were arranged by David with the help of Gad, the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet (2 Chronicles 29:25).

David, as is well known, was the most famous psalmist in the Old Testament. People customarily refer to the Book of Psalms as being of David’s authorship. While this is not quite accurate (for some psalms were written by others), David certainly composed the majority of the ones found within the Old Testament canon.

A notable section of psalms entirely from the hand of David is that from Psalm 1 to 72 in our present Book of Psalms. At the end of Psalm 72 there is a subscription to all those seventy-two psalms. It informs us: “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.”

This does not mean that no more of David’s psalms were to be found in later portions of the Book of Psalms. The subscription simply means that the preceding Psalms represented a set of seventy-two Davidic songs which were to he sung in succession by the twenty-four priestly courses. ²

Notice also that some of these Davidic psalms are titled “Korah’s” (e.g., Psalms 44–49), to Asaph (Psalm 50), and one was composed for Solomon (Psalm 72). David wrote these psalms in honor of, or for and on behalf of, Korah and Asaph who were Levites responsible for performing these assigned psalms in the regular Temple services.

Indeed, David wrote many psalms for various Levitical singing groups. An example is found in 1 Chronicles 16:7. He composed a psalm in commemoration of a special occasion. Of this, Ezra says in Chronicles: “On that day David delivered first this psalm to thank the Lord into the hand of Asaph and his brethren.” It was a psalm for Asaph but written by David. Many of the titles of the psalms indicate to whom the psalm was to be delivered, or they signified the Levitical families responsible for singing those particular psalms in the Temple services.

Thus, the first section of seventy-two psalms, which are found in our present Book of Psalms (Psalms 1 to 72), was probably the original collection ordained at the time of David.

Later on, in the days of Ezra, the totality of the Law of Moses began to be read in

synagogue services in weekly portions (about twenty verses each week). This allowed the complete five books of Moses to be recited, and commented on, over a three-year period.

These were known as Triennial Cycle readings because they took three years to complete.

To correspond to this reading, another set of seventy-two psalms was no doubt added by Ezra to the first group, making a hundred and forty-four — enough for singing one psalm each Sabbath in the Temple services over a three-year period. Six other psalms were added to the final collection, making a hundred and fifty in all, probably to account for the extra month in the calendar that occurred about every third year. ³ Every seventh year, however, the first five books of the Law, along with the five sections of the Psalms, were read over the period of one year. This was the Sabbatical Year cycle of readings, and after the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., it was this annual reading of the Law and Prophets that prevailed in Judaism.

The point to remember is that David was probably the first to appoint the initial seventy-two psalms of our present Book of Psalms to be sung by the Levites at the Temple services.

The official singing of these psalms involved canonization, because those psalms had become part of the sacred services. To Ezra, singing Temple songs in regular succession clearly entailed their official canonization. ⁴

Other Works Canonized During This Period

With a permanent religious society established in Israel by Solomon’s time, there was need for additional literary works to direct the people in their religious duties. The Bible says that Solomon searched the books of the wise men of old (ancient philosophers, poets,

theologians and historians) to find what their teachings were. Solomon “was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs” (Ecclesiastes 12:9). This tells us that Solomon did not originate all the proverbs for which he became famous.

Certain proverbs and proverbial illustrations now found in the Bible were composed by several wise men who preceded Solomon in time. In some cases, Solomon merely catalogued the wisdom from the pens of ancient wise men. He openly stated that he collected many proverbial sayings so that people might “understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise ones [the Hebrew is plural], and their dark sayings” (Proverbs 1:6).

In a superscription to one group of proverbs (Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22), Solomon advised: “Bow down your ear, and hear the words of the wise ones.” Another batch of proverbs was also “set in order” by Solomon or his editors and given the title: “These things also belong to the wise ones” (Proverbs 24:23).

Admittedly Solomon wrote many proverbs of his own, especially those from Proverbs 10 to Proverbs 22:16. But lots of others came from older sources that he had sought out and put in order. It could be possible that the section from Proverbs 1:6 to the end of chapter 9 might have been written by the patriarch Joseph. ⁵

It should be understood that at the time of Solomon, there must have been scores of documents circulating in Israel — written not only by Solomon but also by other important men. Some of those works may have been used temporarily for divine services in that period. On the other hand, some documents of our Old Testament may not have received their canonical status until Ezra selected them to be among the scriptural works. We are speaking of documents such as Ruth, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. The fact is it was finally up to Ezra and the Great Assembly of priests to establish which documents would enter the Old Testament canon. Though there was a type of canonization when the Temple was first inaugurated in the time of David and Solomon, the real canon came from Ezra.

The Canonization by King Hezekiah

Circumstances surrounding the canonizations in the time of Moses and of David and Solomon were entirely different from the three periods to follow — those in the times of Hezekiah, Josiah, and Ezra. In the first instance, Moses had “leisure time” during the forty years in the wilderness (no external wars were being fought for most of the period) to authorize the first five books as divine literature and to present them as the basic Law to Israel. Near the end of his life, Moses simply put finishing touches to the Law and delivered it for safekeeping to the official priesthood. He told the Israelites which books were divine and then charged them to obey them. No one argued with him about the matter.

In the reigns of David and Solomon, the only reason for adding certain literature to the already existing documents of the Law was the establishment of the permanent Temple, with its elaborate services, and the expanded type of religious society that accompanied it.

There were also no national emergencies of impending war facing either Moses or David and Solomon, and the establishment of the Tabernacle and later Temple services was accomplished in times of relative peace and security for the nation. But all the other canonizations were produced under entirely different circumstances. When Hezekiah ruled, for example, canonization was forced upon the authorities because a time of great external stress was besetting the nation.

At the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign the national existence of Judah was in jeopardy of being destroyed. An Assyrian invasion and captivity were threatening utter ruin to the nation and to the Mosaic religion. This emergency prompted Hezekiah and Isaiah to move swiftly to place their seal of authority upon certain sacred documents that were in Israel.

They sought to preserve all Temple documents because it appeared as though the Temple services and all physical components of Judah’s religion might soon be extinguished. They later came to realize that their fears were unfounded (because Isaiah said God would step in to preserve Judah from ruin), but we can be assured that the expectations of Isaiah and Hezekiah at first produced a further set of authorized books for use by the Temple

authorities.

The Historical Background

Let us consider the period from Solomon to Hezekiah. After the time of Solomon, the religious purity of the Temple services gradually deteriorated. Such corruption ultimately became so widespread that idols and images of foreign gods began to be set up all over Judah (2 Chronicles 31:1). The twenty-four specific divisions of the priests, Levites, singers and others, established by David for the purpose of organizing Temple services, fell into confusion and practically passed out of existence. Things got so bad by the time of Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, that many Jews, particularly Ahaz himself, thoroughly abandoned their religious duties to the God of their fathers.

Ahaz, we are told, actually stripped the Temple of its decorations, giving them to the Assyrian king as a present (2 Chronicles 28:21–24). The Temple furniture was destroyed

because Ahaz “cut them in pieces,” then he “shut up the doors of the house of the Lord” (v. 24) and instituted Syrian paganism as the official religion of Judah. Ahaz,

“made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem, and in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers.”

2 Chronicles 24–25 For all practical purposes Judah had reverted to a heathen state.

It was in this paganized society that Hezekiah ascended the throne. Right from the beginning of his reign, he made a concerted effort to reform Judaic society. He desired to purify and rebuild the ruined Temple and to re-establish the Temple services with the priests and singers performing their prescribed duties.

“He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and repaired them. [They had been defaced and nailed up. Also the Temple had to be cleansed of accumulated filth after its sixteen years of disuse.] And he brought in the priests and the Levites.”

2 Chronicles 29:3–4

“Hezekiah appointed the courses of the priests and the Levites after their courses, every man according to his services, the priests and the Levites for burnt offerings and for peace offerings, to minister, and to give thanks, and to praise in the gates of the tents of the Lord.”

2 Chronicles 31:2

“He set the Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, with psaltries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet: for so was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets.”

2 Chronicles 29:35

“Moreover Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites to sing praise unto the Lord with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer.

And they sang praises with gladness.”

2 Chronicles 29:30 Hezekiah even exceeded David in assigning certain psalms to be sung in regular Temple services. He included not only the performing of David’s psalms (i.e., the first seventy-two psalms), but he also ordained certain ones to be assigned to the Asaph division of the Levites. These eleven psalms followed immediately after David’s first seventy-two psalms.

2 Chronicles 29:30 Hezekiah even exceeded David in assigning certain psalms to be sung in regular Temple services. He included not only the performing of David’s psalms (i.e., the first seventy-two psalms), but he also ordained certain ones to be assigned to the Asaph division of the Levites. These eleven psalms followed immediately after David’s first seventy-two psalms.