The sacred literature of Judaism, in which the corpus of writings is known simply as the Jewish Scriptures or Hebrew Bible, or even sometimes the Torah; it was also adopted by Christians as part of their sacred writings, and they began to call it the Old Testament as distinct from the Christian writings that constitute the New Testament. The Old Testament writings span stories from Creation and the origin of the Jewish people to the centuries of Israelite history describing the rise of Davidic monarchy, the division of the kingdom, exile, and return from exile. The canon of the Jewish religious community, which was fixed AD c.100, was arranged into three parts - the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings - although the precise arrangement and divisions of the books have varied through the centuries. The Law consists of the five books of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). The Prophets have been divided since about the 8th-c AD into the former and latter prophets: the former prophets consist of the narratives (presumed written by prophets) found in Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the latter prophets consist of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve Prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi). The Writings contain all remaining works: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
All the books of the Hebrew Bible appear in the versions of the Old Testament used by Protestant Churches today, but divided so as to number 39 in total. Roman Catholic versions of the Old Testament, however, accept 46 works, the additions not appearing in the Hebrew Bible but being found in Greek versions and the Latin Vulgate. These extra works are considered part of the Old Testament Apocrypha by Protestants.
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Hebrew Bible or Old Testament for details see Biblical canon |
| Jewish, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Torah/Pentateuch Joshua (Jesus Nave) Judges Ruth 1-2 Samuel 1-2 Kings 1-2 Chronicles Ezra (1 Esdras) Nehemiah (2 Esdras) Esther Job Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Minor prophets |
| Roman Catholic and Orthodox include but Jews and Protestants exclude: Tobit Judith 1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees Wisdom (of Solomon) Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) (Wisdom of Sirach) Baruch, includes Letter of Jeremiah (Additions to Jeremiah) Additions to Daniel Additions to Esther |
| Orthodox (Synod of Jerusalem) include: 1 Esdras (see Esdras for other names) 3 Maccabees 4 Maccabees (in appendix but not canonical) Prayer of Manasseh Psalm 151 |
| Russian and Ethiopian Orthodox includes: 2 Esdras (see Esdras for other names) |
| Ethiopian Orthodox Bible includes: Jubilees Enoch 1-3 Meqabyan |
| Syriac Peshitta Bible includes: Psalm 152-155 2 Baruch |
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The term Old Testament refers to all versions and translations of the Hebrew Bible and is the first major part of the Bible used by Christians. It is usually divided by Judaism into the categories of: law Torah, prophecy Neviim, and writings Kthuvim (history, poetry, wisdom books), as denoted by the acronym Tanakh.
The Protestant Old Testament is for the most part identical with the Jewish Tanakh. The differences between the Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament are minor, dealing only with the arrangement and number of the books. For example, while the Tanakh considers 1 Kings and 2 Kings to be one book, the Protestant Old Testament considers them to be two books.
The differences between the Tanakh and other versions of the Old Testament such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac, Latin, Greek and other works, are greater as some include books not in the Tanakh and even in the books included, some have sections that the others do not.
All of these books were written before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, whose teaching and immediate disciples' deeds and teachings are the subject of the subsequent Jewish writings of Christian New Testament. According to most Bible scholars, the Old Testament was composed between the 5th century BC and the 2nd century BC, though parts of it, such as parts of the Torah, and the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), probably date back much earlier.
Canon of the Old Testament
Following Jerome's Veritas Hebraica, the Protestant Old Testament consists of the same books as the Tanakh, but the order and numbering of the books are different. Protestants number the Old Testament books at 39, while the Jews number the same books as 24. This is because the Jews consider Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles to form one book each, group the 12 minor prophets into one book, and also consider Ezra and Nehemiah a single book. This translation was widely used by the Early Christians and is the one most often quoted (300 of 350 quotations including many of Jesus' own words) in the New Testament when it quotes the Old Testament.
Historicity of the Old Testament
See also: Biblical archaeology and The Bible and historyThe historicity of the Old Testament has been a matter of debate, particularly since the 19th century. This view had to be abandoned when the ruins of Nineveh, Babylon, Ashur, and other cities were found, complete with extant tablets describing many of the same events mentioned in the Old Testament, such as the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib during the reign of Hezekiah.
Current debate concerning the historicity of the Old Testament can be divided into several camps. Minimalists (e.g., Philip Davies, Thompson, 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 (save the accounts in Gen 1–11) on confessional grounds, and noted Egyptologists (e.g., Kenneth Kitchen) argue that such a belief is not incompatible with the external evidence.
Some contemporary Israeli archaeologists have now rejected much of the Deuteronomistic history of the Old Testament. Kitchen published the 662 page book On the Reliability of the Old Testament, which defended the Bible's reliability throughout.
Naming of the Old Testament
Tertullian, in the 2nd century, was the first to use the terms novum testamentum/new testament and vetus testamentum/old testament. For example, in Against Marcion book 3 , chapter 14, he wrote:
This may be understood to be the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel
And in book 4 , chapter 6, he wrote:
For it is certain that the whole aim at which he has strenuously laboured even in the drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator, as belonging to this rival god, and as alien from the law and the prophets.
Lactantius, in the 3rd century, in his Divine Institutes, book 4, chapter 20 , wrote:
But all Scripture is divided into two Testaments. but those things which were written after His resurrection are named the New Testament. The Jews make use of the Old, we of the New: but yet they are not discordant, for the New is the fulfilling of the Old, and in both there is the same testator, even Christ, who, having suffered death for us, made us heirs of His everlasting kingdom, the people of the Jews being deprived and disinherited. As the prophet Jeremiah testifies when he speaks such things: [Jer 31:31–32] "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new testament to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; For that which He said above, that He would make a new testament to the house of Judah, shows that the old testament which was given by Moses was not perfect;
The Vulgate translation, in the 5th century, used testamentum in 2 Corinthians 3 :
(6) Who also hath made us fit ministers of the new testament, not in the letter but in the spirit. For, until this present day, the selfsame veil, in the reading of the old testament, remaineth not taken away (because in Christ it is made void).
The term "Old Testament" is a translation of the Latin Vetus Testamentum, which translates the Greek η Παλαια Διαθηκη, hē Palaia Diathēkē, meaning "The Old Covenant (or Testament)". Some believe Christians came to call this group of books the Old Testament because of a belief taught in the Epistle to the Hebrews and based on Jeremiah 31:31–34 that Jesus of Nazareth established a New Covenant or testament between God and mankind. Books written after Jesus established this new covenant or testament are thus called the books of the new covenant/testament, or simply the New Testament. The earlier books are then called the books of the Old Testament in contrast. This is due to a level of ambiguity concerning the translation of diatheke — literally, "by the bag," a foreswearing of faithful trust — which can be read as either testament or covenant.
Most Jews accept as Scripture the same books as those found in the Protestant Old Testament, though the ordering of the books in the Jewish Bible differs from that of the Protestant English Old Testament. However, because Judaism does not accept the books of the New Testament as Scripture, they do not label their Bible "the Old Testament". For Jews the books of the Protestant Old Testament are simply "the Bible". The term "Hebrew Bible" is an attempt at a theologically neutral term as compared with "the Old Testament", which is distinctively Christian. Another Jewish term for the Jewish Bible/Old Testament is Tanakh, which is short for Torah, Nebi'im, and Ketubim, or Law, Prophets and Writings, the three major divisions of the Hebrew Bible.
Twenty-first-century Christian theologian Marva Dawn has advocated calling the Old Testament the First Testament, freeing the writings from any trace of irrelevancy associated with aging in western culture. However, Dawn's label has not yet gained much popularity, although teachers of religious education in the United Kingdom have been advised to avoid using "Old Testament" because of the same reasons .
Christian view of the Law
Traditional Christianity affirms that the laws or Torah of the Old Testament is the word of God, though some Christians deny that all of the laws of the Pentateuch apply directly to themselves as Christians. The New Testament indicates that Jesus Christ established a new covenant relationship between God and his people (Heb 8; Some have interpreted Mark's statement "thus he declared all foods clean" (Mark 7:19) to mean that Jesus taught that the pentateuchal food laws were no longer applicable to his followers, see also Antinomianism in the New Testament. On the other hand, the New Testament repeats and applies to Christians a number of Old Testament laws, including "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18;
While some Christians from time to time have deduced from statements about the law in the writings of the apostle Paul that Christians are under grace to the exclusion of all law (see antinomianism, hyperdispensationalism), this is not the usual viewpoint of Christians. The Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, for example, describes a conflict among the first Christians as to the necessity of following all the laws of the Torah to the letter, see Council of Jerusalem. Others limit the application of the Mosaic laws to those commands repeated in the New Testament. Others are content to grant that none of the Mosaic laws apply as such and that the penalties attached to the laws were limited to the particular historical and theological setting of the Old Testament, and yet still seek to find moral and religious principles applicable for today in all parts of the law. The topic of Paul and the law is still frequently debated among New Testament scholars, for example, see New Perspective on Paul.
In the late 20th century, some Christian groups, such as those found in or influenced by Messianic Judaism, have suggested that God wishes for Christians to obey Torah laws. This is because they believe that all of the Old Testament commands did not have to be reaffirmed individually for them to be applicable; rather they believe that Jesus and the New Testament writers reaffirmed them as a whole (interpreting Matthew 5:17-20, 23:1-3, 23:23, 28:19-20, etc. This interpretation has led to a deeper examination of context and to different interpretations of New Testament passages which have been traditionally understood to invalidate parts of the Law.
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