How We Got the Old Testament

[Josiah]

This is in 4 parts....


How We Got the Old Testament



Writing began around 3400 BC in ancient Samaria, a land where Abraham (and Judaism) would be born some 1300 years later, so writing was already an ancient and well established by the time of Abraham. It’s very likely that Abraham could read and write but evidently he wrote nothing of a biblical nature (nothing known anyway). The first known Jewish writing would not be for some 600 years, when God (literally!) quote the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets. Does this mean the Jews had nothing in writing for 600 years? Probably not…


+ Pre-Bible?

What MAY remain from this period might be found in Genesis chapters 1-10. Genesis (along with the other first 5 books of the OT) are attributed to Moses (perhaps 1440 BC) but clearly the entire book of Genesis predates him, and the first 10 chapters of Genesis predates even Abraham. This material in the first 10 chapters of Genesis (including Creation, the Fall, Noah and the Flood and the Tower of Babel) are recorded with Hebrew that is very ancient and often unique, and clearly were separate records. This suggests to some scholars that these were accounts written many centuries before Moses, part of a perhaps much larger collection of religious works among the Hebrews, and which Moses simply incorporated into Genesis. We can’t know if people then regarded this as Scripture (God’s written, inerrant words) or simply a cherished part of their heritage, but Moses incorporating it into material that soon WOULD be seen as such and so made it so.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy record at least 15 other books or other writings – all predating them and used as sources. While all of these have been lost, but they were around and used before the OT began to come into existence, although we cannot know if they were simply viewed as history or as Scripture.


+ The Ten Commandments

We usually identify the Ten Commandments as the first Scripture and the oldest part of the Old Testament (Exodus 20). The dating of this is controversial, but the traditional date of 1440 BC works.

What is truly remarkable about this is not only the dramatic way it’s inscripturated (remember the movie?) but how it is INSTANTLY embraced as divine and authoritative! It is immediately seen as absolutely critical and even defining the people! They were now “People of the Commandments,” “People of the Book.” Scriptures would remain a hallmark of Judaism… and then for both Christianity and Islam that sprang from Judaism.

It all started on that Mountain! And yet, this would be the only time God would directly inscribe His word. Thereafter, God would inspired His word, working through people.


+ The Pentateuch

This refers to the first 5 books of the OT, traditionally ascribed to Moses (although he may have been more an editor than an author). After the first 10 chapters of Genesis, it covers the history from Abraham thorough Moses (roughly six centuries, from 2100 – 1400 BC). These books are largely historical in nature.

While theories abound, we just don’t know how this material came together… or when it was accepted as Scripture. The books allude or outright mention many sources that pre-existed the Pentateuch (at least 15 different books are specifically mentioned by name) so clearly there were already written materials with some of this history recorded in them, ones Moses not only used as sources but actually credits. And there are long sections with quite unique vocabulary and style that suggest that Moses was doing some copy/pasting. However this happen, tradition dates the writing of this material to near the end of Moses’ life (around 1406 BC). Jesus Himself seems to affirm this.

Was the Pentateuch accepted as God’s inerrant, authoritative, canonical Word or simply as an accurate account? Were other materials (now lost) accepted that way? We simply cannot know. But we have a fascinating account from King Josiah. In 621 BC (some 800 years after the Pentateuch was written), King Josiah finds “The Book of the Covenant” – which had been lost. There is some indication (2 Kings 23:21 for example) that suggest this was the Pentateuch. It had been lost! But perhaps more importantly, King Josiah embraces it as Scripture – and it would be since that time (if not for many centuries before that).

Many scholars hold that this was the original “BIBLE” of the Jews, the first written material accepted as Scripture – in every sense equal to those Ten Commandments. To this day, Jews hold this material as supreme, first among all Scripture. They are always mentioned first and placed first in collections.


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[Josiah]

Part 2....


+ History Books

This generally refers to Joshua through Esther. Dating these books is difficult (Joshua for example has a 400 year gap in it!), and there may have been a lot of editing in this material. But basically it covers a 1000 year history, from the death of Moses to the end of the historical record of the OT: Joshua, Judges, the settling of the Promised Land, the great kings and the united kingdom, the dividing kingdoms, the fall of both the North (Israel) and South (Judah), the Exile, the Return. Some of these books overlap or record information found in another book in this corpus. Some of the authors are known, many are not; some likely are collections of many works by many authors.

Again, were these books accepted merely as important history – good to know? Or were they seen as God’s divinely inspired and canonical word? In Jesus’ time, Jews were divided on just that! Some (including the Pharisees) embraced this material as Scripture – although not quite at the level of the Pentateuch. Others (including the Sadducees) held all this in high esteem but not as Scripture. Jesus clearly sides with the “in” view, often quoting or alluding to material here and regarding it as authoritative, and the early Christians did the same.


+ Wisdom Literature

This includes 5 books – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Dating this material is very difficult, and while Solomon and David are prominent as authors, others are mentioned too and some just aren’t know. Tradition dates this material to roughly 1000-900 BC.

Several things make this material very unique.

+ It’s not meant to be history or even necessarily theology, it is meant to be practical wisdom for daily living. Issues are addressed such as poverty and wealth, marriage, rising children, dealing with poverty and wealth, dealing with persecution and injustice – and much more. The Book of Psalms is a kind of song book (probably meant to be sung or at least chanted), Proverbs is simply a miscellaneous series of sayings for a young man to consider. Job is probably history, but it’s recorded as a kind of play meant to explore the age old question of why bad things happen to good people – and what good people do with that. This material stands out in sharp contrast to the rest of the Bible.

+ It has very unique literary style. It’s a style also found in Egypt and Mesopotamia at the time. Much of it is a kind of poetry (English translations convey poetry sections with a special layout). Most of this is not the rhyming we are used to in English but many different forms including the first letter of the first word starting with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet, contract (“not this, but this”), parallel sounds (we have clues what ancient Hebrew sounded like from this), parallel thought (“weeping comes by day, joy comes at night”) and many other forms. It was highly stylized, all lost in translation to English. Like modern poets, writers took great delight in their creativity and beauty in creating these various poems.

What was the status of this? We know that in Jesus’ time, this material was more controversial than the historical writings. Clearly Jesus (and the early Christians) fully accepted it, indeed Jesus quotes very often from the Psalms.


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[Josiah]

Part 3....


+ The Prophets:

These 17 books (by our count) are gathered after the Wisdom books in Christian Bibles, but before them in Jewish ones. They were likely written between roughly 700 and 400 BC. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel are much longer than the other 12 and generally regarded as more important (the last 12 are combined into one book in the Jewish Bible, called simply “The Minor Prophets.”).

Of course, these aren’t all the prophets. Abraham, Enoch, Jacob, Moses, Saul, David, Solomon and many others are called prophets and predate Isaiah by centuries. But while their teachings are imbedded in larger historical accounts, these 17 books are quite different – they stand alone and read more like sermons. Each is traditionally seen as authoring their own book, likely near the end of their lives as a way of preserving their message.

When were these accepted as inerrant, canonical Scripture? It seems that happened in tandem with the Historical books.

The above represent the modern Jewish Bible and our Christian Old Testament. Christians count these as 39 books while Jews (ancient and modern) count them as 24 but they are the same material (just organized differently).


+ Other Books


Many other books were floating around, too. The historical books (Joshua – Esther) specifically mention by name at least 40 books not found in our OT (all of which now lost).

The book Forth Ezra (dated around 200 BC) states that Ezra translated 94 books into Greek, 70 of which “delivered to the wise” and the rest “to the people.” Obviously this is a lot more than the 39 books (as we count) or 24 (as Jews count), perhaps 3 times as many! Unfortunately, this book doesn’t name any of them. It’s unlikely they all were seen as canonical Scripture but clearly they existed.


+ The Septuagint (LXX)


This is a Greek translation done in Alexandra, Egypt (home of a very large Jewish community). According to ancient legend (none of which is historically confirmed), King Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt (285-246 BC) wanted to add the “Jewish Writings” to his very famous library (which contained over 250,000 volumes at the time). The legend says he asked the High Priest in Jerusalem to send him scholars able to do this translation, and the High Priest sent him 70 to do that (Septuagint is Latin for 70). In a matter of weeks, the work was complete. However this happened, scholars think this may have been done as early as 250 BC.

By the year 200, this was a very popular and widely used collection of books available in koine Greek. For nearly all Jews everywhere, this was their Bible. And it remained so for at least 300 years. This is the translation that Jesus seems to have used and certainly the one early Christians used since Hebrew was mostly a “dead” language by this time and Greek was the universal language of literature.

What’s important here is what books were included in this collection. It has all the books that today form the Jewish Bible and the 39 books of our Old Testament. BUT there were others, too. The list wasn’t always exactly the same (there isn’t ONE LXX; one tradition says it contained 94 books) but generally included were 1 Esdras, Judith, 1-4 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah and additions to both Esther and Daniel. Many of these are referred to as Deuterocanonical (secondary canon) or Apocrypha (hidden) by Christians today. Remember: there were no books at this time, no tomes with a collection of stuff in them. There was no "table of contents" in some book with that stuff in them. The books in Greek were individual scrolls, and none of them had a table of contents in them. The LXX is simply a title for Greek translations of Hebrew texts.

The LXX not only does not tell us WHICH books are Scripture, nor does not tell us is the STATUS of any books. Clearly, the books were scrolls read and used (or no effort would be made to translate them) but does that mean they were all seen equally? Probably not. Scholars theorize that there was a Three-Tier understanding: The Pentateuch most authoritative (as it is still seen by the Jews), under that the History, Wisdom and Prophet books (some in Jesus’ day accepted these as fully canonical, some not), and under that a not quite set number of additional books considered helpful but perhaps of limited authority. This third tier is what the Jews ultimately rejected and what today is the Apocrypha among Christians. Notable: Jesus only quotes or references the books of the Pentateuch, History Wisdom and Prophet books, never the Deuterocanical/Apocrypha ones on this “Third Level”

A side note: Some today want to claim that because Jesus read from the LXX, ergo He accepted all the books in that book to be fully canonical. This falls at two counts: Books did not exist until the First Century, there were only individual scrolls so Jesus didn’t accept or read a book but from one scroll (say Isaiah); reading the scroll of Isaiah and embracing it as authoritative is only embracing that scroll as such. Secondly, there is no reason to assume that all the material translated in Greek in the LXX were considered canonical. The LXX was a loose collection of books (not exactly the same books) used by Jews but it’s unlikely they all had the same status.


Continues in the next post....


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[Josiah]

Part 4....


+ Tradition

So, how did the Jews come up with a solid embrace of their 24 books (our 39)? Well, it was never official. No Council or Decision or Ruling has ever been made in Judaism on this topic. It was an evolving matter of consensus or Tradition.

The Jews abandoned the LXX translation by the Third Century. By the Fourth Century or so, the Pentateuch, History, Wisdom and Prophet books are fully (if not equally) accepted by general consensus. The other books simply fell out of use and pretty much forgotten by the Jews. Why were these other “third tier” or Apocrypha books abandoned by the Jews? We simply don’t know, but scholars theorize 2 things: 1) These books often were originally written in Greek and Jews saw Scripture as originating in Hebrew. 2) These books were often late in composition, the Jews only embracing older texts.


+ Christians

Christians embrace the Jewish Bible as part of our Bible and as Scriptures. And in a sense, more so than Jews since all the 39 books are accepted equally (no “tier” system). Why? That’s not clear. We simply don't know. The best theory is simply that Christianity flows from Judaism and because Christians clearly saw Christ all over the Old Testament; the NT quotes from 33 of the 39 books of the OT (not mentioned are Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Obadiah and Naham).

Among the Jews, those Deuterocanonical books were forgotten… they just disappeared from Jewish Bibles and forgotten in common use. But this was not so among Christians. Many of those “extra” books of the LXX were still used by Christians – indeed, those and more. Christian Bibles often contained a lot more than 39 OT books… and various ones were included in Christian Bibles very recently, although not always the SAME extra books. The Oriental Orthodox included the most, then Eastern Orthodox, and finally Roman Catholic. Luther included 8 of them in his German translation (one more than Catholics).

But the central issue is not what books were typically in Bibles (and lectionaries) but the STATUS of such books. Are they “in” because they are helpful OR are they “in” because they are seen as Scripture (the inerrant, divinely inspired, authoritative Word of God)? It’s not always clear. It was common among Christians to accept the 24/39 books as fully canonical but the others (however many “others” that included) as DEUTEROcanonical (secondary, under, subject to others). Several Early Church Fathers referred to these as “Ecclesiastical” in contrast to “canonical” – edifying and inspiring but not authoritative; important to read and even teach but not a source or norm for doctrine.

Officially, the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these without any ruling on the authority or status of them. The Roman Catholic Church declared 7 of them as “inspired” in 1442 and then as “canonical” in 1546 but no other denomination has done that.

Early Protestants carried on with the earliest view that there were books beyond the 39 that are good to read and can be included in Bibles and Lectionaries – but aren’t fully canonical (secondary at most), not to be used to source or norm doctrine. The Anglican Church embraced 15 of these books (or additions to books) in its Thirty-Nine Articles but specifically as “Apocrypha.” This was the personal view of Martin Luther (who included 8 of them in his translation) but Lutheranism never officially adopted that view. Calvin also held to this view, although they are not mentioned at all in the Westminster Confession (which only lists the canonical books). In practice, modern Protestants have largely abandoned these books in the past couple of centuries.



Thank you.


- Josiah



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[Josiah]

A thread for the New Testament...

How We Got the New Testament

. This is in 6 parts: How We Got the New Testament It’s an important question but one very few Christians ask. There are two common MYTHS: Roman Catholic: Jesus told Peter that these 27 books (and only these) are canonical, Peter told the Catholic Church, and eventually (it took many...

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