Development of the OT ‘Canon’ (collection of writings from God)

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1. Genesis as family records of the Patriarchs (cf. Noah, Shem, Jacob)“this is the account of…” 10X in Genesis   + Moses’ personal accounts in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (with minor editing later)

+ Joshua>Esther as the continuing historical records of God’s relationship with His people (Samuel and Jeremiah traditionally seen as primary compilers)

Added to these historical accounts were other writings:

+“Wisdom literature” (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon)

+Prophetic writings of people moved by God to speak and/or write in relation to a specific situation but often also speaking into the future

Ezra was traditionally understood to be the ultimate compiler for most of the Old Testament.

 

2. The Skeptics’ Challenge: Written long afterward as “pretend history”, myth, not historically accurate? No. The historical reliability of the OT accounts has been confirmed at many points by archaeology, and by comparison with other ancient documents.

 

3. Inter-Testamental Period Developments- (400 BC to 1 AD)

            a. Septuagint (Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures from before Jesus came)

            b. Apocrypha - Early Christian scholar Jerome later translated the Old Testament into Latin. Among the Jewish writings were 12 other Jewish writings, all written after the OT documents. Inspired? canonical? They were never accepted by Jews as part of the canon of their Holy Scriptures. Protestant Christians usually do not accept them as inspired or canonical, either.   

 

4. Jesus affirmed the truth of the historical accounts in the Hebrew Scriptures, the authority of their teachings, and their divine source (agreeing with the Pharisees on these points).

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OT Text Transmission  and Preservation (Has the text been changed?)

  

1. The OT documents were originally hand-written on papyrus (pressed reeds) or parchment (leather) scrolls, or on tablets of clay or beaten metal.

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2. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947, our earliest surviving copies of the entire Hebrew OT were from the 900s AD. Rabbi traditions have attested to the extreme care taken by Jewish scribes, at least since the 1st century AD, in copying the Biblical texts. New Testament quotes, Jewish commentaries, and quotes in other Jewish texts, as well as translations into other languages (such as the “Septuagint” translation into Greek), provide indirect evidence of a generally quite trustworthy transmission of the text.

 

3. The precise copying standards of the royal scribes in ancient Babylonia and Egypt, from as early as 1400 BC, also reasonably suggest equally high standards for Moses and Israel regarding God’s Holy Word.

 

4. The dramatic discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, and other recent discoveries of additional pre-AD manuscript portions of the OT, have confirmed more than 1000 years of accurate textual transmission, to a point long before the coming of Christ. Thus, the authenticity of the text of important passages such as Isaiah 53, for example, has been verified.

 

5. The one area of problems in preserving and transmitting the Hebrew text derives from the facts that ancient Hebrew did not use vowels or written numbers, so poetic passages sometimes are hard to interpret, and numbers were particularly difficult to accurately preserve.