The Old Testament is the collection of books that forms the first of the two-part Christian Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament. Christianity comprises three major branches: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy (which parted ways with Catholicism in 1054 A.D.) and Protestantism (which came into existence during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Biblical The Bible refers to collections of sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity. There is no single version: both the individual books and their order vary. The Hebrew Bible contains 39 books, while Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. The oldest surviving Christian Bibles canon A Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Biblical books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity. The term itself was first coined by Christians, but the idea is found in Jewish sources. The internal wording of the text can also be specified, for example:. The contents of the Old Testament canon vary from church to church Christian Church and church (Greek kyriakon , "thing belonging to the Lord"; also ekklesia (ἐκκλησία) (Latinized as ecclesia, "assembly") are used to denote both a Christian association of people and a place of worship. In the phenomenological sense there are many such associations of people that call themselves, with the Orthodox communion having 51 books: the shared books are those of the shortest canon, that of the major Protestant communions, with 39 books.

All Old Testament canons are related to the Jewish Bible Canon (Tanakh The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name "Tanakh" is a Hebrew acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses),), but with variations. The most important of these variations is a change to the order of the books: the Hebrew Bible ends with the Book of Chronicles The Books of Chronicles are part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Masoretic Text, it appears as the first or last book of the Ketuvim (the latter arrangement also making it the final book of the Jewish bible). Chronicles largely parallels the Davidic narratives in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings. It appears in two parts (I & II, which describes Israel restored to the Promised Land The Promised Land is a term used to describe the land promised by God, according to the Hebrew Bible, to the Israelites. The promise is firstly made to Abraham (Genesis 15:18-21) and then renewed to his son Isaac, and to Isaac's son Jacob (Genesis 28:13), Abraham's grandson. The promised land was given to their descendants and was described in and the Temple restored in Jerusalem The earliest tradition regarding Jerusalem states that Adam, the first man, was created from the same place where in future the Altar would stand in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. After he was ejected from the Garden of Eden, he returned to this spot to offer a sacrifice to God. Cain and Abel also brought their offerings on this Altar. It is; in the Hebrew Bible God's purpose YHWH is the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. The conception of God in Judaism is strictly monotheistic. Judaism maintains that YHWH Tzeva'ot is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who created the world, delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, and gave the Ten Commandments. Jewish tradition teaches the true aspect of God is is thus fulfilled and the divine history is at an end, according to Dispensationalism Dispensationalism is a Protestant evangelical tradition based on a biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants. As a system, dispensationalism is rooted in the writings of John Nelson. In the Christian Old Testament the Book of Malachi Malachi is a book of the Hebrew Bible, written by the prophet Malachi. Possibly this is not the name of the author, since Malachi means 'my messenger' or 'my angel' in Hebrew. The last of the twelve minor prophets (canonically), the final book of the Hebrew Bible in Christian, but not Jewish tradition is commonly attributed to a prophet by the is placed last, so that a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah The word originally came from Hebrew messiaḥ, “anointed”. In Judaism, the expected king of the Davidic line who would deliver Israel from foreign bondage and restore the glories of its golden age. The Greek New Testament’s translation of the term, Christos, became the accepted Christian designation and title of Jesus of Nazareth, leads into the birth of the Christ in the Gospel of Matthew The Gospel According to Matthew commonly shortened to the Gospel of Matthew, is one of the four Canonical gospels and is the first book of the New Testament. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from his genealogy to his Great Commission.

The Tanakh is written in Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew, also called Classical Hebrew, is the archaic form of the Hebrew language in which the Hebrew Bible and various Israelite inscriptions were written and Biblical Aramaic Biblical Aramaic is the form of the Aramaic language that is used in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible and should not be confused with the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible known as targumim, and is therefore also known as the Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew, with some Biblical Aramaic. It is also called the Hebrew Scriptures. The term closely corresponds to contents of the Jewish Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament (see also Judeo-Christian) and does not include the (the text of the Jewish Bible is called the Masoretic The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible regarded almost universally as the official version of the Tanakh.[citation needed] It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation known as the Masorah. The MT, after the medieval Jewish rabbis who compiled it). The Masoretic Text (i.e. the Hebrew text revered by medieval and modern Jews) is only one of several versions of the original scriptures of ancient Judaism, and no manuscripts of that hypothetical original text exist. In the last few centuries before Christ Jewish scholars produced a translation of their scriptures in Greek, the common language of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire since the conquests of Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon , popularly known as Alexander the Great (Greek: Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος, Mégas Aléxandros), was a Greeki[›] king (basileus) of Macedon. He is the most celebrated member of the Argead Dynasty and created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Born in Pella in 356 BC, Alexander received a classical. This translation, known as the Septuagint The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation , is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC in Alexandria. It was begun by the third century BC and completed before 132 BC, forms the basis of the Orthodox and some other Eastern Old Testaments. The Old Testaments of the Western branches of Christianity were originally based on a Latin translation of the Septuagint known as the Vetus Latina Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the Biblical texts in Latin that were translated before St Jerome's Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christians. The phrase Vetus Latina is Latin for Old Latin, and the Vetus Latina is sometimes known as the Old Latin Bible. It was, however, written in Late Latin, not the, this was replaced by Jerome Saint Jerome (formerly Saint Hierom) (Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Greek: Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος) was an Illyrian Christian priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia (and was overthrown by the Goths). He is best known for's Vulgate The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin version of the Bible, and largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the "commonly used translation", and ultimately, which continues to be highly respected in the Catholic Church, but Protestant churches generally follow translations of a scholarly reference known as the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, or bhs, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is published by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft in Stuttgart. In 1943, Pope Pius XII The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (2 March 1876 – 9 October 1958), reigned as the 260th Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958 issued the Divino Afflante Spiritu Divino Afflante Spiritu is an encyclical letter issued by Pope Pius XII on September 30, 1943. It inaugurated the modern period of Roman Catholic Bible studies by permitting the limited use of modern methods of biblical criticism. The Catholic bible scholar Raymond E. Brown described it as a 'Magna Carta for biblical progress' which allows Catholic translations from texts other than the Vulgate, notably in English the New American Bible The New American Bible is a Catholic Bible translation first published in 1970. It had its beginnings in the Confraternity Bible, which began to be translated from the original languages in 1948.

The Hebrew Bible divides its books into three categories, the Torah The term Torah , also known as the Pentateuch (Greek: penta [five] and teuchos [tool, vessel, book]), refers to the Five Books of Moses—the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts. A "Sefer Torah" (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah") or Torah scroll is a copy of the Torah written on parchment ("Instructions"), the Nevi'im Nevi'im is the second of the three major sections in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. It falls between the Torah (teachings) and Ketuvim (writings) ("Prophets") (according to some Christians, essentially historical, despite the title), and the Ketuvim Ketuvim is the third and final section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), after Torah (teachings) and Nevi'im (prophets). In English translations of the Hebrew Bible, this section is usually entitled "Writings" or "Hagiographa". The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the Ruach HaKodesh, but with one level less authority ("Writings)," which according to some Christians might better be described as "wisdom" books (the Song of Songs, Lamentations, Proverbs, etc). The Christian Old Testaments ignore this division and instead emphasise the historical and prophetic nature of the canon - this the Book of Ruth The Book of Ruth is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It is a rather short book, in both Jewish and Christian scripture, consisting of only four chapters and the Book of Job The Book of Job is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of Job, his trials at the hands of Satan, his theological discussions with friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally a response from God. The Book itself comprises a didactic poem set in a prose framing device and has been, part of the Writings in the Hebrew Bible, are reclassified in the Christian canon as history books, and the overall division into Instructions, Prophets and Writings is lost. The reason for this is the over-arching Messianic intention of Christianity - the Old Testament is seen as preparation for the New Testament The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament. Unlike the Old Testament, the contents of the New Testament deal explicitly with Christianity, although both the Old and New Testament are regarded, together, as Sacred Scripture. The New Testament, and not as a revelation complete in its own right, see Supersessionism Supersessionism and replacement theology or fulfillment theology are Christian interpretations of New Testament claims, viewing God's relationship with Christians as being either the "replacement" or "fulfillment" or "completion" of the promise made to the Jews and Jewish Proselytes. Biblical expressions of God's for details.

Although it is not a history book in the modern sense, the Old Testament is the primary source In historiography, a primary source is an artifact, a document, a recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study. If created by a human source, then a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions are used for the History of ancient Israel and Judah The history of ancient Israel and Judah refers to the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They emerged from the regional Canaanite and Israelite culture of the Late bronze age, and were based on villages that formed and grew in the southern Levant highlands (i.e. today's definition for the region between the coastal plan and the Jordan Valley). The Bible historians presented a picture of ancient Israel based on information that they viewed as historically true. Of particular interest in this regard are the books of Joshua through Second Chronicles.^[1][2]

The oldest material in the Hebrew Bible - and therefore in the Christian Old Testament - may date from the 13th century BCE^[3]. This material is found embedded within the books of the current Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, which reached their current form at various points between the 5th century BCE (the first five books, the Torah) and the 2nd century BCE^[4], see Development of the Jewish Bible canon Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the 24 books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible. Evidence suggests that the process of canonization occurred between 200 BCE and 200 CE. A popular position is that the Torah was canonized circa 400 BCE, the Prophets circa 200 BCE, and the Writings circa 100 CE perhaps at a hypothetical for details.

History

The early Christian Church Early Christianity is commonly known as the Christianity of the roughly three centuries between the Crucifixion of Jesus (c.26-36) and the First Council of Nicaea in 325 used the Septuagint The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation , is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC in Alexandria. It was begun by the third century BC and completed before 132 BC, the oldest Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, as its religious text until at least the mid-fourth century. Until that time Greek was a major language of the Roman Empire and the language of the Church (except Syrian Orthodoxy which used the Syriac Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared around the 1st century C.E., Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries, the classical language of Edessa, preserved in a large body of Syriac literature Peshitta The Peshitta (Classical Syriac for "simple, common, straight, vulgate") is the standard version of the Syriac Bible and Ethiopian Orthodoxy The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is an Oriental Orthodox Christian church in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Church was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959, when it was granted its own Patriarch by Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa, Cyril VI which used the Geez Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court). In the second century, the Jewish community (See the Gospel According to the Hebrews The Gospel according to the Hebrews, commonly shortened to the Gospel of the Hebrews, is a lost gospel preserved only in a few quotations of the Church Fathers . It was written in Aramaic,[citation needed] and was the most widely known of the non-canonical gospels. The Gospel of the Hebrews was the gospel in use among Hebrew Christian sects, which and the Ebionites The Ebionites were a Jewish-Christian sect that insisted on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites. They regarded Jesus as the Messiah but not as divine. The Ebionites used only the Jewish Gospels, revered James the Just as the head of the Jerusalem Church and rejected Paul of Tarsus as an apostate towards the Law. Their name) began expressing a strong distrust of the Septuagint (see also Council of Jamnia) and eventually abandoned it. Talmudic tradition considers the LXX to be both divinely inspired and full of errors.^[5] Early church teachers and writers reacted with even stronger devotion, citing the Septuagint's antiquity and its use by the Evangelists and Apostles. Being the Old Testament quoted by the Gospels and the Greek Church Fathers, the LXX had an essentially official status in the early Christian world.^[5] Following in the steps of Philo Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria (gr. Φίλων ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς), Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia and Philo the Jew, was an Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria and Hellenistic Judaism Hellenistic Judaism was a movement which existed in the Jewish diaspora before the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, that sought to establish a Hebraic-Jewish religious tradition within the culture and language of Hellenism. The major literary product of the contact of Judaism and Hellenistic culture is the Septuagint, they claimed its inspiration was not inferior to that of the original. They argued that divergences of the Septuagint from the current Hebrew text were due to accidents of transmission, or that they were not actual errors, but Divine adaptations of the original for the sake of the future Church.^[6]

When Jerome Saint Jerome (formerly Saint Hierom) (Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Greek: Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος) was an Illyrian Christian priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia (and was overthrown by the Goths). He is best known for undertook the revision of the Old Latin Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the Biblical texts in Latin that were translated before St Jerome's Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christians. The phrase Vetus Latina is Latin for Old Latin, and the Vetus Latina is sometimes known as the Old Latin Bible. It was, however, written in Late Latin, not the translations of the Septuagint in about 400 AD, he checked the Septuagint against the Hebrew text that was then available. He came to believe that the Hebrew text better testified to Christ than the Septuagint.^[7] He broke with church tradition and translated most of the Old Testament of his Vulgate The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin version of the Bible, and largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the "commonly used translation", and ultimately from Hebrew rather than Greek. His choice was severely criticized by Augustine Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, or St. Austin was Bishop of Hippo Regius. He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity, his contemporary, and others who regarded Jerome as a forger. But with the passage of time, acceptance of Jerome's version gradually increased in the West until it displaced the Old Latin translations of the Septuagint.^[8]

The Hebrew text differs in some passages that Christians hold to prophesy Christ, and the Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers to use the Septuagint as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages. The Orthodox Church of Constantinople, the Church of Greece and the Cypriot Orthodox Church continue to use it in their liturgy today, untranslated. Many modern critical translations of the Old Testament, while using the Hebrew text as their basis, consult the Septuagint as well as other versions in an attempt to reconstruct the meaning of the Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear, undeniably corrupt, or ambiguous.^[8]

Many of the oldest Biblical verses among the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly those in Aramaic, correspond more closely with the Septuagint than with the Hebrew text (although the majority of these variations are extremely minor, e.g., grammatical changes, spelling differences or missing words, and do not affect the meaning of sentences and paragraphs).^[9][10][11] This confirms the scholarly consensus that the Septuagint represents a separate Hebrew text tradition from that which was later standardized as the Hebrew text (called the Masoretic Text).^[9][12]

Of the fuller quotations in the New Testament of the Old, nearly one hundred agree with the modern form of the Septuagint^[13] and six agree with the Hebrew text.^[14] The principal differences concern presumed Biblical prophecies relating to Christ. For example, the Septuagint of Isaiah contains the phrase "a virgin shall conceive"^{[Isa. 7:14]} which is quoted in the New Testament,^{[Mt. 1:23]} but the Masoretic Text of Isaiah instead says "a young woman shall conceive", the Hebrew word for virgin being quite different,^[15] see Isaiah 7:14 for details.

Books of the Old Testament

See also: Septuagint: Table of books

The Septuagint

In early Christianity the Septuagint was universally used among Greek speakers, while Aramaic Targums were used in the Syriac Church. To this day the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint, in an untranslated form. Some scriptures of ancient origin are found in the Septuagint but are not in the Hebrew. These include Additions to Daniel and Esther. For more information regarding these books, see the articles Biblical apocrypha, Biblical canon, Books of the Bible, and Deuterocanonical books.

Some books that are set apart in the Hebrew text are grouped together. For example the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are in the Septuagint one book in four parts called "Of Reigns" (Βασιλειῶν). Scholars believe that this is the original arrangement before the book was divided for readability. In the Septuagint, the Books of Chronicles supplement Reigns and are called Paraleipoménon (Παραλειπομένων—things left out). The Septuagint organizes the Minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve.^[16]

All the books of western canons of the Old Testament are found in the Septuagint, although the order does not always coincide with the modern ordering of the books. The Septuagint order for the Old Testament is evident in the earliest Christian Bibles (5th century)^[16], namely the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Peshitta.

The New Testament makes a number of allusions to and may quote the additional books (as Orthodox Christians aver). The books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus Seirach, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremy (sometimes considered part of Baruch), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Sosanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasses, and Psalm 151.

Extracts from Theodotion

In most ancient copies of the Bible which contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel is not the original Septuagint version, but instead is a copy of Theodotion's translation from the Hebrew.^[17] The Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel was discarded, in favour of Theodotion's version, in the second to third centuries; in Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the second century, and in Latin-speaking areas (at least in North Africa), it occurred in the middle of the third century.^[17] History does not record the reason for this, and Jerome basically reports, in the preface to the Vulgate version of Daniel, this thing 'just' happened.^[17]

The canonical Ezra-Nehemiah is known in the Septuagint as "Esdras B", and 1 Esdras is "Esdras A". 1 Esdras is a very similar text to the books of Ezra-Nehemiah, and the two are widely thought by scholars to be derived from the same original text. It has been proposed, and is thought highly likely by scholars, that "Esdras B"─the canonical Ezra-Nehemiah─is Theodotion's version of this material, and "Esdras A" is the version which was previously in the Septuagint on its own.^[17]

Latin translations

Jerome's Vulgate Latin translation dates to between 382 and 420 CE. Latin translations predating Jerome are collectively known as Vetus Latina texts.

Origen's Hexapla placed side by side six versions of the Old Testament, including the 2nd century Greek translations of Aquila of Sinope and Symmachus the Ebionite.

Canonical Christian Bibles were formally established by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem in 350 and confirmed by the Council of Laodicea in 363, and later established by Athanasius of Alexandria in 367. The Council of Laodicea restricted readings in church to only the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The books listed were the 22 books of the Hebrew Bible plus the Book of Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy, together with the New Testament containing 26 books, omitting the Book of Revelation, see Development of the Old Testament canon for details.

The Council of Carthage, called the third by Denzinger,^[18] on 28 August 397 issued a canon of the Bible restricted to: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Josue, Judges, Ruth, 4 books of Kingdoms, 2 books of Paralipomenon, Job, Psalter of David, 5 books of Solomon, 12 books of Prophets, Isaias, Jeremias, Daniel, Ezechiel, Tobias, Judith, Esther, 2 books of Esdras, 2 books of Machabees, and in the New Testament: 4 books of Gospels, 1 book of Acts of the Apostles, 13 letters of the Apostle Paul, 1 of him to the Hebrews, 2 of Peter, 3 of John, 1 of James, 1 of Judas, and the Apocalypse of John.

Other traditions

The canonical acceptance of these books varies among different Christian traditions, and there are canonical books not derived from the Septuagint. For a discussion see the article on Biblical apocrypha.

The exact canon of the Old Testament differs among the various branches of Christianity. All include the books of the Hebrew Bible, while most traditions also recognise several Deuterocanonical books. The Protestant Old Testament is, for the most part, identical with the Hebrew Bible; the differences are minor, dealing only with the arrangement and number of the books. For example, while the Hebrew Bible considers Kings to be a unified text, and Ezra and Nehemiah as a single book, the Protestant Old Testament divides each of these into two books.

Translations of the Old Testament were discouraged in medieval Christendom. An exception was the translation of the Pentateuch ordered by Alfred the Great around 900, and Wyclif's Bible of 1383. Numerous vernacular translations appeared with the Protestant Reformation.

The differences between the Hebrew Bible and other versions of the Old Testament such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac, Greek, Latin and other canons, are greater. Many of these canons include whole books and additional sections of books that the others do not. The translations of various words from the original Hebrew may also give rise to significant differences of interpretation.

Relationship between Old and New Testament

The Old Testament is written with a vocabulary of about 5,800 words. The New Testament is written with a vocabulary of about 4,800 words.

The Old Testament is God's biography, the story of his passionate encounters with people. It is also a prequel to the story of Jesus, who came to answer the questions that troubled the ancient writers and still trouble us today. For expressing our deepest longings and voicing our whole range of our lives and emotions, the Old Testament has no equal.

– Philip Yancey in The Bible Jesus Read.^[19]

Christian views on Mosaic Law

There are differences of opinion among Christian denominations as to what and how Biblical law applies today. Some conclude that none are applicable, some conclude that only parts are applicable, others conclude that all are still applicable to believers in Jesus and the New Covenant.

Historicity of the Old Testament narratives

Current debate concerning the historicity of the various Old Testament narratives can be divided into several camps.

• One group has been labeled "biblical minimalists" by its critics. Minimalists (e.g., Philip Davies, Thomas L. Thompson, John Van Seters) see very little reliable history in any of the Old Testament.
• Conservative Old Testament scholars, "biblical maximalists", generally accept the historicity of most Old Testament narratives on confessional grounds, and some Egyptologists (e.g., Kenneth Kitchen) admit that such a belief is not incompatible with the external evidence.
• Other scholars (e.g., William Dever) are somewhere in between: they see clear signs of evidence for the monarchy and much of Israel's later history, though they doubt the Exodus and Conquest.
• "Arabian Judah" proponent Kamal Salibi suggests that evidence from Arabia and Ethiopia appears to support the hypothesis that the Old Testament historical account is accurate but that ancient Israel and Judah were located in south-west Arabia before the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests.

See also

• Antinomianism
• Covenant (biblical)
• Expounding of the Law
• Law and Gospel
• List of ancient legal codes
• Lost books of the Old Testament
• Old Testament: Timeline
• Quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament
• Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture

References

1. ^ Like modern historians, biblical writers sometimes provided "historical" explanations or background information of the events they describe (e.g., 1 Sam. 28:3, 1 Kings 18:3b, 2 Kings 9:14b-15a, 13:5-6, 15:12, 17:7-23.
2. ^ Halpern, B. the First Historians: The Hebrew Bible. Harper & Row, 1988, quoted in Smith, Mark S.The early history of God: Yahweh and the other deities in ancient Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; 2nd ed., 2002. ISBN 978-0802839725, p.14
3. ^ "Bible: Growth of Literature." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online (accessed March 5, 2010).
4. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica: "Written almost entirely in the Hebrew language between 1200 and 100 BCE"; Columbia Encyclopedia: "In the 10th century BCE the first of a series of editors collected materials from earlier traditional folkloric and historical records (i.e., both oral and written sources) to compose a narrative of the history of the Israelites who now found themselves united under David and Solomon."
5. ^ ^{a b} "The Septuagint" The Ecole Glossary. 27 Dec 2009
6. ^ H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, revised by R.R. Ottley, 1914; retrieved 27 Dec 2009. Reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1989.
7. ^ Jerome's Prologue to Genesis
8. ^ ^{a b} Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, trans. Errol F. Rhodes, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1995.
9. ^ ^{a b} Karen Jobes and Moises Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint. Paternoster Press, 2001. ISBN 1-84227-061-3. (The current standard for Introductory works on the Septuagint.
10. ^ Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research. ISBN 0-8028-6091-5. The current standard introduction on the NT & Septuagint.
11. ^ V.S. Herrell, The History of the Bible, "Qumran: Dead Sea Scrolls."
12. ^ William Priestly, "The Dead Sea Scrolls." - A detailed explanation with scholarly apparatus.
13. ^ Jones, Table: "Instances where the New Testament agrees with the Septuagint."
14. ^ Jones, Table: "Instance where the New Testament agrees with the meaning of the Hebrew texts."
15. ^ Gordon, Cyrus H. "'Almah in Isaiah 7:14." Journal of Bible and Religion, Vol. 21, No. 2 (April 1953), p. 106
16. ^ ^{a b} Jennifer M. Dines, The Septuagint, Michael A. Knibb, Ed., London: T&T Clark, 2004
17. ^ ^{a b c d} This article incorporates text from the 1903 Encyclopaedia Biblica article "TEXT AND VERSIONS", a publication now in the public domain.
18. ^ Denzinger 186
19. ^ Yancey, Philip. The Bible Jesus Read. Zondervan, 1999. ISBN 0-310-22834-4

Further reading

• Anderson, Bernhard. Understanding the Old Testament. (ISBN 0-13-948399-3 )
• Bahnsen, Greg, et al., Five Views on Law and Gospel. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993).
• Berkowitz, Ariel and D'vorah. Torah Rediscovered. 4th ed. Shoreshim Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-9752914-0-8
• Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites? William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003. ISBN 0-8028-0975-8
• Gerhard von Rad: Theologie des Alten Testaments. Band 1–2, München, 8. Auflage 1982/1984, ISBN
• Hill, Andrew and John Walton. A Survey of the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000. ISBN 0-310-22903-0 .
• Kuntz, John Kenneth. The People of Ancient Israel: an introduction to Old Testament Literature, History, and Thought, Harper and Row, 1974. ISBN 0-06-043822-3
• Lancaster, D. Thomas. Restoration: Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus. Littleton: First Fruits of Zion, 2005.
• Rouvière, Jean-Marc. Brèves méditations sur la Création du monde Ed. L'Harmattan, Paris, 2006
• Salibi, Kamal. The Bible Came from Arabia, London, Jonathan Cape, 1985 ISBN 0-224-02830-8
• Silberman, Neil A., et al. The Bible Unearthed. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2003. ISBN 0-684-86913-6 (paperback) and ISBN 0-684-86912-8 (hardback)
• Sprinkle, Joe M. Biblical Law and Its Relevance: A Christian Understanding and Ethical Application for Today of the Mosaic Regulations. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006. ISBN 0-7618-3371-4 (clothbound) and ISBN 0-7618-3372-2 (paperback)

External links

• Full Text of the OT
• Full text of the Old (and New) Testaments in 42 different languages.
• Old Testament Reading Room Extensive online OT resources (incl. commentaries), Tyndale Seminary
• Old Testament Video Lectures from Yale University
• Scholarly articles on the Old Testament from the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library
• Barry L. Bandstra, "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible"
• Old Testament stories and commentary.
• John J. Parsons, "Are Christians restored to the Sinai Covenant?"
• Old Testament Timeline

Categories: Bible | Christian law | Christian terms | Fertile Crescent | Hebrew Bible | Hebrew Bible topics | Judeo-Christian topics | Old Testament | Rastafarian texts

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