The Law and the Prophets: A Study in Old Testament Canon Formation, by Stephen B. Chapman. Updated edition. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2020. xviii + 412 pp. $55.00.
Stephen Chapman is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC. First published by Mohr Siebeck in 2000, this updated edition includes a supplemental bibliography of sources published since the original edition (37 pages!) and a postscript situating the study’s significance 20 years on. Both editions have ultimate antecedents in Chapman’s doctoral dissertation at Yale University under Christopher Seitz, himself a student of Brevard Childs. The book seeks to apply Childs’s canonical approach to historical questions surrounding the formation of the canon. Chapman rejects earlier theories of OT formation as linear and Torah-centered (a later rabbinic retrojection, he claims), with the Law, Prophets, and Writings putatively developing in successive stages. Chapman contends instead that the Law and Prophets took shape simultaneously and with mutually informing awareness as the two leading impulses and repositories of the theological ideals guiding Israel. He posits an understanding of canon as “theological grammar,” within a Deuteronomistic framework, whereby divine revelation is perceived as always and intrinsically conveyed by dual channels: law (Moses as lawgiver) and prophecy (Moses and his successors as prophets). An important component of this argument lies in Chapman’s bifurcation between the terms law (תּוֹרָה) and words (דְּבָרִים), collocated in a handful of texts (Isa 1:10; Jer 6:19; 26:4–5; cf. 2 Kgs 17:15–16), as technical terms respectively for the Torah and the prophets in their canonical groupings.
The study divides into six chapters, with a postscript, original and supplemental bibliographies, and three indices. In the chapter 1 Chapman surveys historical scholarly discussions of canon formation from Wellhausen and Ryle to Miller and MacDonald. For readers interested in these discussions, Chapman provides extensive documentation. In chapter 2 he builds on Altieri’s work in developing the understanding of canon as “theological grammar,” which he posits as not a static crystallization of past dogmas but as a dynamic shaper of faith communities (concomitantly pushing back on the notion that all canon-formation activity arose from naked power assertions by ideologues) (95–99). In chapter 3 Chapman analyzes canonical conclusions, especially Deut 34:10–12 (“no prophet has arisen…like Moses”) and Mal 4:4–6 (“remember the law of my servant Moses”), as hermeneutical guides to the process of canon formation. Chapters 4 and 5 work through the OT text from Deuteronomy to Daniel in seeking to outline his proposed trajectory of law and prophets as twin springs of canon-shaping influence. In chapter 6 he makes the case for the minority position of the Torah as possessing dual authority with the prophets from the inception of Scripture rather than as preeminent in authority as it became in later rabbinic Judaism. The postscript takes on developments since the publication of the book, along with its reception, and includes droll anecdotes about the process of writing his doctoral dissertation and the first edition of the book.
Chapman has written an erudite contribution to discussions surrounding the formation of the Old Testament canon, a topic that has become central in OT studies over the last several decades. The book provides extensive documentation and is insightful at points. He offers a valuable critique to the prevailing critical view of OT canon formation, from the close of the nineteenth century onward, that the OT canon was recognized only very late and in accordance with its tripartite structure: Law being canonized during the time of Ezra (ca. 444 BC), Prophets during the Ptolemaic period (ca. 200 B.C.), and the Writings during the first century AD (often connected to the so-called Council of Jamnia). Chapman provides ample evidence against this view. There are a few issues, however, that prevent me from commending the book without qualification. I will mention two. First, and most important, for all his critique of the critical consensus on the canon, Chapman himself adopts a redactional approach to OT formation that accepts at face value most of the tenets of higher criticism. This leads him to embrace a number of assumptions or to make affirmations that conservative scholars holding to inerrancy will find problematical, such as the following: “No book of the Old Testament likely has a single author or can be assigned to a single social context or agenda. ‘Scripture’ is not characteristically a one-time, single-author deposition but a socio-literary means of providing corporate religious testimony over time….” (294). Scripture is intrinsically, according to Chapman, process-oriented, textually open-ended, and largely dislodged from the inherent bond between author and text. The Bible’s own testimony or Jewish/Christian traditions concerning authorship are downplayed or rejected in favor of higher-critical conclusions. In contrast, readers interested in conservative, evangelical treatments of canon formation, especially in the ways in which the so-called canonical seams of the OT provide hints at its formation, would be better served to consult the work of John Sailhamer or Stephen Dempster, among others. In terms of an overview of the process of canon formation, Roger Beckwith’s study still holds pride of place (The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church [Eerdmans, 1985]). Second, I found unconvincing Chapman’s distinction between law and prophets as concurrent repositories of divine revelation based, in part, on the alleged distinction between the terms law and words. The term words appears more likely to be itself a synonym for law, or perhaps more specifically commandments,given its frequency as a designation in Deuteronomy for the Torah (“the words of this law” [Deut 17:19; 27:3, 8, 26; 28:58; 31:12, 24; 32:46]) and for the Ten Commandments (i.e., “the ten words” [Exod 20:1; 34:1, 27–28; Deut 5:22]). While the entire weight of Chapman’s argument does not rest on this distinction, a major building block of his claims concerning dual channels of authoritative revelation remained unpersuasive. The book provides an impressive treatment of an important study, but its methodological presuppositions left me dissatisfied in the end.
