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Catholic and Protestant scholarship has not completely dealt with the implications of the fact that the

LXX was the primary Bible of the NT writers and the exclusive Bible of the early church for at least the

first four hundred years of its existence! In recent years, two European Protestant scholars, Mogens

Muller and Martin Hengel, have produced significant studies that address these Septuagintal issues and

the implications they raise for canon and textual decisions.

Of special concern is their discussion of the

limits of the OT canon among early Christians. These dialogues cite in an authoritative way the following

books not recognized in the Protestant canon: Baruch, Bel and Dragon, Judith, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom of

Solomon and 1 Maccabees. How do we respond to Hengel's suggestion that the NT describes the closing

of Israel's "prophetic" period in the following way, "The Law and the Prophets are until John . . ." (Luke

16:16)? He concludes that "the Law and the prophets were not simply closed with Ezra or Esther, but

only find their goal and fulfillment in the messianic work of Jesus of Nazareth."

The second aspect of the dialogues that strikes me is their vital role in helping us to better

understand the history of Jewish-Christian discussion in the early church. Not many would disagree with

my statement as it stands. What I mean to convey, however, is that greater attention should be directed to

these dialogues for their value as examples of the real discussion that was taking place between the two

communities from the second through the sixth centuries. It is in this proposed role that my suggestion

runs against the grain of much of the modern attitude toward them. Mention has been made earlier of the

critical evaluations of many writers about the misrepresentations of Judaism in these dialogues. A few

statements from a standard work in the field illustrate this attitude. In discussing the adversus Judaeos

literature in general and the dialogic literature in particular, Rosemary Ruether writes, "These dialogues

are almost useless as sources for what Jews might actually have said about Christianity. The Christians'

opponents are the Jews of Christian imagination."

Mogens Muller, The First Bible of the Church: A Plea for the LXX (Sheffield: Sheffield Press, 1996); Martin

Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its Canon, translated by Mark
Biddle (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002).

Hengel, 126.

Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (NY: Seabury Press, 1974), 120.