Monday, December 02, 2013

Review of Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon

MARGINALIA: Edmon L. Gallagher on Timothy H. Lim’s The Formation of the Jewish Canon. Excerpt:
Timothy Lim’s new book The Formation of the Jewish Canon does not seek to provide a comprehensive treatment of canon formation but rather attempts to address select questions with some depth. He thus gives little attention to what we can learn of the Jewish Bible from patristic sources, which scholars such as Gilles Dorival have shown to be valuable for this task. Nevertheless, each of the debatable points listed above receives treatment here. Lim concentrates on the pre-rabbinic sources that illuminate (however faintly) the process by which the main contours of the Jewish canon were established during the period from Ezra in the fifth century BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
The book was noted earlier as forthcoming here.