HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14b, Bava Kamma 92b & Eruvin 65a) on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 200 AD (the baraita of Bava Batra 14b is tannaitic material conventionally placed at the Mishnaic horizon; embedded in the Babylonian Talmud, whose redaction is c. 500–600) · Wikipedia
Verdict on the deuterocanon: two-edged. The Babylonian Talmud is the clearest early Jewish witness to a Hebrew-sized Scripture — its baraita at Bava Batra 14b enumerates the Prophets and the Writings, ending the whole with Chronicles, and lists none of the Greek extras (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees). Yet the same compilation, at Bava Kamma 92b, quotes Ben Sira (Sirach) as a verse of the Writings, alongside Torah and Prophets, and again at Eruvin 65a cites a Ben Sira saying with the Scripture-citation formula "as it is stated" — a line Rashi, unable to find it anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, traces to "the book of Ben Sira." So the rabbinic milieu that supplies the Chronicles-last order did not draw an airtight line around the deuterocanon. This is the Judaism-side marker whose distinctive value is its explicit enumerated list and that internal tension.

Claims & evidence

Bava Batra 14b: an enumerated Hebrew canon ending in Chronicles

"The order of the books of the Prophets when they are attached together is as follows: Joshua and Judges, Samuel and Kings, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and Isaiah and the Twelve Prophets… The order of the Writings is: Ruth and the book of Psalms, and Job and Proverbs; Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Lamentations; Daniel and the Scroll of Esther; and Ezra and Chronicles."

— a baraita preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b (William Davidson translation, Sefaria).¹ Two things matter for the canon question. First, the list is Hebrew-sized: it runs through exactly the books of the Law, Prophets, and Writings that the synagogue kept, and it names none of the deuterocanonical books the Greek Septuagint carried. Second, it closes the entire Scripture with Chronicles — the single clearest ancient Jewish attestation of the Genesis-to-Chronicles arrangement on which the "from Abel to Zechariah" argument leans. Because a baraita is tannaitic material (the stratum of the Mishnah, roughly the first two centuries AD, capable of preserving older tradition), this is a real and comparatively early witness that some Jewish circle ordered its Bible this way — though, as the argument page weighs, it stands almost alone for a millennium and the Chronicles-last order became standard only with print, so its currency in or before the first century is a probability, not a demonstration.

Bava Kamma 92b: Ben Sira (Sirach) cited as a verse of the Writings

"… And it is triplicated in the Writings, as it is written: All fowl will live with its kind, and men with those like him."

— the Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 92b (William Davidson translation, Sefaria); the quoted line is Ben Sira (Sirach) 13:15–17.² Here Rabba bar Mari proves a popular saying ("bad people seek out other bad people") from all three divisions of Scripture — "written in the Torah, repeated in the Prophets, and triplicated in the Writings" — and for the Writings he adduces a verse of Ben Sira, a deuterocanonical book, with the same scriptural formula ("as it is written") he uses for the Torah and Prophets quotations beside it. It is a single datum and not a canon list, but it shows the rabbinic stream that hands down the Chronicles-last order did not cleanly exclude the disputed books from the language of Scripture — the two-edged character that keeps this witness from being a tidy Jewish "No."

Eruvin 65a: a saying cited "as it is stated" that Rashi traces to Ben Sira

"Anyone whose mind is unsettled should not pray, as it is stated: When distressed, one should not issue decisions."

— the Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 65a (William Davidson translation, Sefaria), Rav Ḥiyya bar Ashi in the name of Rav.³ The proof-line, be-tzar al yoreh ("בְּצָר אַל יוֹרֶה"), is introduced with she-ne'emar ("as it is stated") — the formula the Talmud reserves for quoting Scripture. But the line is in no book of the Hebrew Bible, and Rashi says so outright: searching for it, he writes, "I looked for this verse and it is not in all the Writings, and perhaps it is in the book of Ben Sira"; Tosafot, weighing the same crux, observe "that we find in several places that the Talmud brings verses written in the book of Ben Sira."⁴ The passage is doubly two-edged. It is a second place — beyond Bava Kamma 92b — where the rabbinic stream cites a deuterocanonical book with a scriptural formula, evidence that the line around the disputed books was not airtight. Yet Rashi's own gloss is the counter-weight: by the medieval period Ben Sira is recognized as standing outside "all the Writings," so the very comment that locates the quotation also marks the book as non-canonical. The Talmud's loose citation and Rashi's careful exclusion together map the long process by which the Hebrew canon's edge hardened — the same gradual settlement weighed under the argument that the Jews rejected the deuterocanon.

Notes

• Why this sits on a Christian-canon timeline. The deuterocanon dispute is, at bottom, a quarrel between two Old Testaments — the broader Greek Septuagint the church inherited and the narrower Hebrew text the synagogue kept. The Talmud is the fullest early articulation of the synagogue's collection: not a ruling against the church (it predates the dispute as a Christian controversy) but the rabbinic stream's own table of the books, given here as an explicit enumeration rather than a bare count.
• Distinct from the other Jewish markers. The "Council of Jamnia" marker concerns whether a datable council ever closed the Hebrew canon (it did not); the Masoretic Text is the medieval crystallization of the Hebrew letter-text. This page adds what neither does: the named, ordered list of the books (Bava Batra) and a rabbinic source treating a deuterocanonical book as Scripture — twice, at Bava Kamma 92b and Eruvin 65a.
• Both passages are weighed adversarially in the Arguments. The Bava Batra order is the evidential core of the Chronicles-last order argument (and feeds the Abel-to-Zechariah group); the Bava Kamma and Eruvin Sirach citations are adduced there as counter-weights (and bear on whether the early Jewish line against the deuterocanon was as clean as sometimes claimed, and on whether the Jews rejected the deuterocanon at all). The adjudication lives on those pages and is not restated here.
• Dating. The Bava Batra list is a baraita — tannaitic material conventionally placed c. 200 (the Mishnaic horizon) — embedded in the Babylonian Talmud, whose redaction runs c. 500–600. It is slotted on the timeline by the earlier date, as a witness to the tradition rather than to the date of the Talmud's final redaction, following the same convention used for the b. Megillah 9a baraita elsewhere on this site.

Sources