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167 CHAPTER EIGHT 4QSAMa (= 4Q51), THE CANON, AND THE COMMUNITY OF LAY READERS Donald W. Parry INTRODUCTION The topic of the biblical “canon” is complex and enigmatic. Sometimes in a puzzling manner, scholars and theologians use a variety of expressions to describe aspects of the canon, including scripture, authoritative text, sacred book, canonical criticism, canonical process, open/closed canon, and canonical text. Scholars do not always agree on the definition of canon,1 its historical and sociopolitical framework, its original composition, or its meaning to different religious sects.2 Other puzzling items connected to the canon pertain to our uncertainty as to what rules fixed the canon, what authorities or council(s) established it, who was authorized to include/exclude texts, which variant versions were considered, or how the content of the collection was determined. None of the texts of the Bible speak directly about the establishment of a canon, none of the prophets revealed guidelines , and the Torah itself is silent on the subject. The canonization occurred centuries after the texts of the canon were created, perhaps in the last literary stages of the various texts. Also, as is well known, canon is a Greek term used by Christian theologians for a Christian collection of sacred works. There is no equivalent term in the Hebrew Bible or early Jewish literature—Jewish authorities refer to scriptural books as works that “defile the hands” (m. Yad. 3.5; 4.6). 1. On the problems with the definition of canon, see Thomas A. Hoffman, “Inspiration, Normativeness, Canonicity, and the Unique Sacred Character of the Bible,” CBQ 44 (1982): 463–65 and the bibliography in nn48-49. See also Eugene C. Ulrich, “The Canonical Process, Textual Criticism, and Latter Stages in the Composition of the Bible,” in Sha(arei Talmon: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (ed. M. A. Fishbane, E. Tov, and W. W. Fields; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 269–70. 2. See James A. Sanders, “Biblical Criticism and the Bible as Canon,” USQR 32 (Fall 1976): 157–65, esp. 160–62. 168 THE COMMUNITY OF LAY READERS Further, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has created a new set of questions about the canon: How did members of the Qumran community view the canon? What did they consider a sacred, authoritative text? Did they have an open or closed canon? What sacred books were included in their canon? How does the discovery of the scrolls change our view of the history of the canon? For what sociopolitical or religious reasons was the canon closed to the Jewish community during the first century C.E.? What is the present role of the newly discovered versions of the Bible, such as 4QSama, in the context of an already two-thousandyear -old canon? To attempt to answer all of these questions in a brief conference paper would be folly. The chief goal of this paper is to discover, insofar as possible, the role of 4QSama, an ancient version of 1 and 2 Samuel, in the present-day canon of Scripture and to attempt to determine the extent that its readings should be used by the community of believers in our generation. This is not a position paper, but an exploratory piece designed to open a set of questions regarding the significance of 4QSama for contemporary Judaism and Christianity. CANON AS SACRED BOOKS For the purposes of this paper, I refer to Professor Ulrich’s significant clarification that first the canon (as it pertains to the Hebrew Bible) represents a “reflexive judgment,” “a judgment that is made in retrospect, self-consciously looking backward and recognizing and explicitly affirming that which has already come to be.…The reflexive judgment when a group formally decides that it is a constituent requirement that these books which have been exercising authority are henceforth binding is a judgment concerning canon.”3 Second, “canon denotes a closed list. Exclusion as well as inclusion is important.…I would argue that it is confusing to speak of an open canon. The fact that there were disagreements on the extent of the canon was not so much a toleration of an open canon as a lack of agreement concerning which particular closed list was to be endorsed.”4 Third, “canon concerns biblical books, not the specific textual 3. Ulrich, “The Canonical Process,” 272. 4. Ibid., 272–73. When we speak of canon as a “closed list,” we must remember that “there were probably as...

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