Abstract
Through a reading of a passage from the Book of Nehemiah, chapter 8, reporting Ezra's reading of the Book of the Law of Moses at the Water Gate in Jerusalem in 458 or 398 B.C., we can take a closer look at a moment that is often passed over in silence in religious traditions: the moment of canonization, the moment of inauguration and formalization of a canon.
What is a canon? Canon is a word of Greek origin. In ancient Greek, kanôn originally meant a reed stem, then any long, straight wooden rod or stick. By further extension, kanôn naturally comes to designate a ruler, usually made of wood, used for measuring, as used by masons and carpenters. Finally, a new semantic extension brought out the abstract meaning of rule, principle, model. More generally, canon can refer to any list of works intended for reading or study on account of their quality, value or representativeness.
This meaning of canon as a list or selection of works has unquestionably dominated usage over the last two centuries, and has taken precedence over the word's original meaning, namely the rules or principles of writing that should prevail. More generally, the notion of list can be seen as constitutive of that of canon: the canon of Polyclitus lists a certain number of rules to be respected in order to obtain a good representation of the human body; the canon of a given ritual (whether the enthronement of a pharaoh in ancient Egypt or the Roman Catholic mass) lists the fixed elements of the ritual that must not be omitted if the ritual is to be valid and effective (thus the prayer for the consecration of the offerings in the so-called Roman canon of the mass). A canon is therefore a set of principles or reference texts for a given use, whether religious, artistic, literary or cultural in the broadest sense.
