lon, Burma, and Siam) was settled in a series of councils
coming down to the middle of the third century B.C. or later (several
centuries after the death of Buddha), the object being to define the
faith against heresies; probably the reports of the Master's discourses
(he left no writings) were examined, and those declared authentic were
brought together, but the date of the final settlement of the canon is
not certain, and the sacred books were not reduced to writing till the
first century B.C. The canon of Northern Buddhism (accepted in Tibet,
Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Japan) is less definite and was fixed
later.[2075]

+1130+. The development of the Jewish canon extended over a long period,
and its history in outline is well known. While the discourses of the
prophets were regarded with respect as giving divine revelations, there
is no record of the recognition of an authoritative book before the
fifth century B.C., when a sacred law was proclaimed by Nehemiah and
Ezra.[2076] Even then there seems to have been no definite collection of
writings. The Law was the national religious constitution, and in
process of time prophetic books and others came to be regarded with
reverence. The translator of Ben-Sira (Ecclesiasticus) into Greek (132
B.C.) mentions three groups of national books (the law, the prophets,
and "other writings"), but does not speak of them as divinely inspired.
But the intimate contact with the Greek world, and especially the
Maccabean struggle, deepened the Palestinian Jewish reverence for the
national literature. A process of sifting and defining, at first
unofficial, began, and this work naturally passed, with the growth of
legal learning, into the hands of leading doctors of law. Early in the
first century of our era public opinion in Palestine had taken shape;
the standard established was a local national one--books illustrating
the national history and teachings, and written in Hebrew, were accepted
(so, for example, the book of Esther, which is nonreligious but
national), others (as the Wisdom of Solomon) were rejected. For various
reasons certain books (Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs)
remained doubtful. After the destruction of Jerusalem the increasing
literary feeling, the establishment of rabbinical schools, and the
necessity of defining the Jewish position against growing Christianity
and other heresies led to definite action[2077]--in the Synod of Jamnia
(about 100 A.D.) t