The Origin, Transmission, and Canonization of the Old Testament Books

So what should we conclude about the anachron­isms? Simply this: in the years after the Pentateuch was written, inevitable changes in place names, vocabulary, and political situations made these old books harder to comprehend. To alleviate this problem, priestly guardians of the sacred oracles updated the texts at key junctures to reflect contemporary word usage and geopolitical situations. Such changes as these (e.g., Jdg 1:10; 1Sm 9:9) would have been undertaken soberly and with great care to preserve the meaning and intention of the holy text. Thus, under strict guidelines the books underwent helpful editing, with the result that the texts remained accessible with the passage of time.

On the whole, however, virtually all the scribes who ever touched the sacred scrolls did so only to read them or copy them word for word. Literary copying was an important skill in the ancient world since there was no means of rapid duplication, such as modern printing presses or photocopiers. Believing that the writings in their care were authoritative and inspired by God, the Hebrew scribes took exceptional care when copying the scrolls.

In conclusion, we can be confident in the traditional beliefs about the date and authorship of the OT books. We can also rest assured that the books were carefully copied and preserved, and that all editorial updates of the books were done in a strictly conservative fashion.

Are the 39 books of our OT really the ones God meant for us to revere? The first step to answering this question is to address the issue of collection: who was it that originally collected the sacred writings together? Solid evidence indicates that the priests undertook this duty. In Deuteronomy 31:24-26, Moses commanded that the book of the law be kept with the ark of the covenant, where the Ten Commandments were stored. This put Moses’s writings at the very center of Jewish religious life just as soon as they were complete. Further, in Deuteronomy 4:2 we read the command to preserve the commandments of God faithfully. Taken together, these passages indicate that the priests were to keep charge of God’s written revelations, and that these were to be safeguarded against perversion.

Since Moses was the author of the earliest biblical books, and since Moses himself charged the priests with the duties to store and protect God’s words, the high value of identifying, collecting, and protecting the sacred writings was established when the Pentateuch originated. When other prophets and holy men arose in Israel subsequent to Moses and were given revelations by God, their teachings (whether written by them or by their close associates) would have been gathered quickly by the community of the faithful. At some later point the books came to be stored at the Jerusalem temple. We know this because in a time of national backsliding the unused books collected dust in the temple’s storerooms (2Kg 22:8-13). At a much later time in history the books were still kept in the temple, for Josephus (a reputable Jewish historian) received the Scriptures from his Roman benefactors who had sacked the temple in AD 70.

We have seen that the Jews identified, collected, and preserved the sacred writings as a matter of course. Next we must ask if or when they believed the production of sacred writings had ceased. Josephus is helpful for elucidating this matter. He tells us (Against Apion 1.37-43) that the Jews widely recognized that the succession of the prophets ended in the time of Artaxerxes, when Latter Prophets such as Haggai and Malachi fell silent and left no successors. Hence, says Josephus, books written after about 400 BC were not regarded as Scripture even if they were valuable on other terms. In 164 BC Judas Maccabaeus reconsolidated the Scriptures in the temple after the fires of the Antiochene persecution died out, and it appears that the scrolls were harbored there in a long stretch of safety that did not end until the above-mentioned Roman aggressions. There can be no doubt of the identity of the Scriptures held at the temple throughout this time: there were 22 books (or 24, depending on how they were divided and counted), and they were lumped into three major divisions: the Law (Pentateuch), the Prophets, and the Writings. Though we divide them into 39 books rather than 22 or 24, the Protestant OT canon is identical to those books that were safeguarded at the temple before the time of Christ. The two most significant religious bodies in Israel (Pharisees and Sadducees) both accepted this body of books as the canon of Scripture, though one often hears it mistakenly asserted that the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch.

What about the books of the Apocrypha? This is a diverse set of books—most of which were written between 200 BC and early in the first century AD—that treat various aspects of Jewish religious and national life in the intertestamental period, which ranged from 400 BC to the time of Christ. They offer important windows into the Jewish context, and many Jews of that time regarded them as valuable religious literature. However, they were never received as Scripture by mainstream Judaism, and even fringe groups such as the Essenes reckoned them valuable but not scriptural. The books of the Apocrypha were never stored in the temple, a sure sign that they were not thought to be inspired by God.

This is not to say there were no struggles among the Jews about the identity of the canon. In fact, five of the books that were counted as canonical had a hard time winning unilateral acceptance. The books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Song of Songs, and Ezekiel were subjected to scrutiny because they seemed secular in outlook or else promoted teachings that initially seemed inconsistent with the Pentateuch. Jewish leaders debated the merits of these books from time to time, as Christian leaders would do in the centuries to come, but all in all their status in the canon was well established.

Following Jesus’s example, early Christians adopted the Jewish consensus on the OT canon. During his ministry Jesus showed that he was in line with the standard Jewish assessment of the canon by quoting from all three divisions of the OT. Furthermore, he demonstrated that the OT included many prophecies and veiled allusions to himself, the Messiah. Thus, Christians learned to read the Jewish holy books with a view to seeing Jesus in them. In fact, for the first few decades of the church the majority of Christians had little access to the New Testament (NT) writings that were starting to emerge. The OT was the only Bible many of them knew, and they valued it greatly as they read it from a Christ-centered vantage point. Interestingly, they tended to hold the Apocrypha in high esteem as well—higher than most Jews did, in fact. A little background information helps us understand how this situation arose.

Several centuries before Christ the Jews living in Alexandria commissioned a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT. They did this because they increasingly spoke and read Greek rather than Hebrew. Known as the Septuagint, this Greek translation was the Bible of choice for many Jews and early Christians. In addition to the authoritative Holy Scriptures, the Septuagint included Greek translations of some key Jewish apocryphal books. The reason they were added is clear: Jews living in predominantly Greek-speaking areas wanted access to all the important Jewish writings, both canonical and noncanonical. As the early church grew and experienced ever greater tensions with traditional Judaism, Christian and non-Christian Jewish communities were increasingly isolated from one another socially and religiously. For this reason, the Jewish assessment that the Apocrypha was noncanonical was perhaps somewhat lost on many Christians as they picked up the Septuagint and noted that the books of the Apocrypha were included along with the canonical OT books. This is an important fact because Greek was the dominant language of the early church, which means few Christians gave close attention to the Hebrew OT. Thus, every time they took up the OT they took it up in its Greek version, and in doing this they took up the Apocrypha as well. Additionally, early Christians noted that the NT authors most often quoted from the Septuagint, not the Hebrew OT. Finally, many Christians had high regard for the Apocrypha because its books were deemed useful for kindling religious affections. In summary, the early church automatically adopted the Jewish OT canon, most often read the Septuagint version of the OT rather than the Hebrew, and held the Apocrypha to be valuable.

Does this mean the early church took the Apocrypha to be on par with the canonical books? There is no evidence that the church in the first century did. The Septuagint that the Jews and Christians of the first century were using didn’t include any books from the Apocrypha. Some NT writings have allusions to material from the Apocrypha (e.g. Jd 9) and Jude quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 (Jd 14-15). What Jude quotes is a truth that is attested in other parts of canonical Scripture. Jesus quotes proverbs and maxims that were current in his day (Lk 4:23-24). Paul quotes Greek poets (Ac 17:28; 1Co 15:33-34) and the Cretan philosopher Epimenides (Ti 1:12-13) to make or amplify a point. By doing so, they don’t imply that these poets’ and philosophers’ works are inspired Scripture. Despite the fact that the Apocrypha was not part of the canon recognized by Jews of the first century, the early church developed a custom of giving the Apocrypha a place in religious life, and over time some misinformed leaders came to view the Apocrypha as Scripture.

Even the early Reformers included the Apocrypha in their English and German translations of the Bible, though they set it off in sections that were separate from the canonical OT books and introduced it with a note saying that throughout church history the Apocrypha had not been received as Scripture. Thus the Reformers initially kept alive the old tradition of packing the Apocrypha into the Bible, though as in a seatless balcony reserved for bystanders. As they continued to debate Roman Catholic leaders over the proper bases for doctrinal formation, the Reformers eventually concluded that for the sake of clarity the Apocrypha should be dropped altogether from the Bible. As inheritors of the Reformation movement, Protestant Bibles today exclude the Apocrypha, signifying that while those books may be useful, they are nonbiblical.

We have solid reasons for believing that the OT books include only true history and that they were written by men who were appointed by God to deliver Spirit-inspired writings to humanity. Further, it is clear that the Jews of old received these books with awe and a sense of responsibility. Hence, the sacred books were identified, collected, preserved, and transmitted through the generations by men approved for such high tasks. The 39 books of the Protestant OT are assuredly the books God would have us venerate as scriptural. The books of the Apocrypha are valuable (indeed, more valuable than most Protestants realize), but should be consulted for their historical value and not for instruction in doctrine or religious practice.