The Old Testament

the old testament:
an introduction

You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you;
Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. -Micah 6:8

Introduction | History of the Old Testament | Related Links | Sources for this page

Introduction

Divisions of the Hebrew Bible
The Christian Old Testament may be divided into four major sections (three from the Hebrew scriptures, one unique to Christian bibles), each of which probably developed during distinct stages in Israel's history.
For this class, we will follow the Canonical arrangement of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the addition of those books found in the Catholic Deuterocanon/Protestant Apocrypha.
The three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures can be remembered with the acronym "TaNaK" for Torah, Nebi'im, Kethubim.
For a chart listing these divisions, click here.
The Torah ("teaching" or "law"/ Pentateuch/ Five Books of Moses)
- Composed of the first five books of the Christian Old Testament:
  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, & Deuteronomy
- Traditionally thought by both Jews and Christians to have been authored by Moses, although Biblical scholarship has challenged this assumption, esp. in the last century.
- Covers events from "the beginning" (literally) of the world to the death of Moses, just as the Hebrews are about to enter the Promised Land (PL).
  - Since the Hebrews do not actually enter the PL until the book of Joshua, so some scholars consider that book to be properly included with the first five in a literary unity referred to as the "Hexateuch" (six books)- it completes the promise made by Yahweh to Abraham in Genesis.
The Nebi'im ("prophets")
- Subdivided into Former and Latter Prophets.
- Former Prophets:
  Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings
  - The Former Prophets are technically historical books rather than records of the teachings of individual prophets, but they do record the rise of prophecy as an institution in Israel.
  - In Christian bibles, Ruth comes after Judges, but Ruth is placed in the Writings in the Hebrew Scriptures, and is neither an historical or prophetic book.
- The Latter Prophets can be further subdivided into Major and Minor.
  - This does not refer to their importance, but to the size of each book. The Major prophets were large enough to require a separate scroll for each book, while the Minor prophets could all be written on one scroll.
  - Each of these books records the teachings of an individual prophet or "school" of prophecy, some may have been written by the prophet himself, others may have been written by a follower of the prophet.
  - Major Prophets:
    Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel
  - Minor Prophets (or "Book of the Twelve"):
  - Amos, Hosea, Micah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Joel, Malachi, Jonah
The Kethubim ("writings")
- The third major division of the Hebrew Scriptures, this represents a diverse collection of literary genres.
- These books are the last written (most recent).
- In the NT, Jesus regularly refers to the books he considered sacred as the "Law and the Prophets"-
  - during his lifetime the Writings were probably not "official" scripture,
  - but he quotes often from the Psalms, nevertheless (and clearly the Psalms had a major influence on the NT authors)
- These writings became official scripture in 90 AD, when the Jewish canon was closed at Yavneh by Pharisaic leaders at the city's Jewish academy.
- These books include:
  - Wisdom writings:
    Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
The fourth division of books is found only in Christian bibles. In Catholic bibles, it is referred to as the Deuterocanon (meaning "second canon"), while Protestant bibles refer to these books as Apocrypha (meaning "hidden" or "secret")
- Most of the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books date from the 4th to 1st centuries BC.
  - Historical:
    1&2 Maccabees
  - Wisdom:
    Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon
  - Other:
    Baruch, Judith, Tobit,
  - and additions to the canonical book of Daniel:
    Susanna, Bel and the Dragon

history of the old testament

The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew (though some of it was in Aramaic).
In the mid-third century BC, just over two hundred years after the return from the Babylonian Exile, Jews began the work of translating the books of the Hebrew into Greek,
- because younger Jews living outside of Palestine in the Diaspora could not read classical Hebrew.
The result was the Septuagint or LXX- a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Koine Greek.
- According to legend (intended to insure Jews of the text's faithfulness to the original) seventy-two scholars working for seventy-two days produced seventy-two identical versions.
- In reality, however, it wasn't completed for over two centuries (finished in the 1st century BC).
Translating the scriptures from Greek into Hebrew meant that many ideas that had been developed within the Jewish worldview were transferred into the worldview of Greek philosophical thinking.
The Septuagint was most influential outside of Palestine, and it became scripture for Greek-speaking Christians as the early church began to develop.
As a result, most NT quotations of scripture come from the Septuagint, not the Hebrew text of the OT.
The Jewish canon of scripture (the Tanak- without the DeuteroCanonical books) was closed at Yavneh in 90 AD.