The last few weeks we’ve been tracing the formation of the Old Testament. Let’s summarize what we’ve learned so far.
The key criterion for inclusion in the sacred writings was the credibility of the author. Was he a genuine prophet who spoke the words of God? All Jews agreed that Moses was the greatest prophet in the history of Israel. The five books attributed to Moses (the Torah or Pentateuch) were quickly recognized as possessing divine authority. The prophets (Nevi’im) and the writings (Ketuvim) were later added.
The Wisdom of Ben Sirach (c.180 BC) refers to this three-part division of the scriptures and so does one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QMMT, c.150 BC).
Jesus of Nazareth embraced the same tripartite canon: “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.” (Luke 24:44-45) The Psalms are the largest book in the OT and hold a position of honor at the beginning of the writings. Thus, “the Psalms” can be used as a shorthand way of referring to the writings.
The same language was used by Philo of Alexandria (15BC-45AD), a contemporary of Jesus who wrote about “the laws and the sacred oracles of God enunciated by the holy prophets…and the Psalms.”
These ancient sources give us great assurance that the overall framework of the Old Testament was well established by the time of Jesus.
The first century historian Flavius Josephus gives us even more detailed information about the Hebrew Bible. He writes about the 22 books which the Jews regarded as sacred scripture: the five books of Moses, 13 additional prophetic books recording the history of Israel and 4 books containing “hymns to God & precepts for the conduct of human life.”
Although Josephus didn’t give us a specific list of books, we can (using the rest of his writings and other sources) discern what he meant with a reasonable degree of confidence. Like all Jews, he started with the five books of Moses. To the 8 prophetic books (Nevi’im), Josephus added Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, Esther and Job, thereby arriving at 13 historical books. Like some Jews, Josephus likely appended Ruth to Judges and Lamentations to Jeremiah. This left the 4 books of “hymns…and precepts”(Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Song Songs) bringing the total to 22.
Most Jews eventually came to acknowledge Ruth & Lamentations as separate books. Thus, the Hebrew canon contains 24 books identical in content to the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. To reiterate, the numerical difference merely stems from the fact that the Jewish scriptures group certain writings together as a single book (such as the twelve minor prophets) whereas the Christian Bible counts these books separately.
Discerning readers will recognize that we don’t possess a mountain of evidence regarding the formation of the Hebrew scriptures. There was never a single authoritative body which officially determined the canon. And to this day, scholars continue to debate when exactly the Hebrew canon was finalized.
One must remember that the centuries around the turn of the era were (to put it mildly) tumultuous for the Jewish nation. In 168 BC, the Greek tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes implemented a series of brutal measures intended to extinguish Judaism. The king’s actions sparked the famous Maccabean rebellion. After decades of fighting, the Jewish rebels were eventually able to establish a fragile but independent state.
Jewish freedom did not last long. Famed Roman general Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BC. During the Jewish revolt of 66-70 AD, Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed; many sacred writings stored in the temple were lost. Hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the rebellion & others were scattered among the nations.
Another large-scale Jewish revolt occurred from 132-135 AD, under the leadership of Simon Bar Kokhba. The Roman legions eventually crushed this uprising, but not without suffering horrible casualties themselves. Once again, hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered or sold into slavery.
When the dust had settled, Emperor Hadrian, incensed by the uprising, took measures to obliterate the Jewish nation. The surviving Jews were expelled from Judea. Jerusalem was rebuilt under the Roman name Aelia Capitolina and a pagan temple dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter was erected on the temple mount.
Hadrian sought to erase even the memory of the Jews. The province of Judea was renamed Syria Palestina, which marks the origin of the name Palestine. It would be over 1800 years before the nation of Israel would rise again.
In order to continue our study of the Old Testament, let’s now return to an earlier time in history.
The northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC. The southern kingdom of Judah lasted longer, but eventually they too were conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BC; many of the Jews who survived these catastrophes were taken into exile.
The people of ancient Israel spoke Hebrew, and the scriptures were written in Hebrew (with a few sections in Aramaic). But following the destruction of Israel, the Jewish people were dispersed all over the ancient world (an event known as the diaspora). Since Aramaic was the common language of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, this became the primary language of diaspora Jews.
In around 336 BC, a thunderbolt struck the world. A young Macedonian king named Alexander began to conquer most of the known world. His stunning victories brought an end to the Persian Empire. Everywhere he went, Alexander the Great spread Greek culture and civilization. Greek became the common language of the world.
After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, the Greek Empire was divided into four parts. Egypt was seized by Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander’s most trusted generals. Ptolemy founded a dynasty which endured until 30 BC when Queen Cleopatra died. (Yes, that Cleopatra.) The capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom was Alexandria, the great city founded by Alexander himself.
Alexandria had a large Jewish community. However, most of the Jews had lost their ability to speak or write Hebrew! They now spoke Greek and needed a Greek translation in order to read their scriptures.
Ptolemy I was succeeded to the throne by his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 285 to 246 BC. According to legend, Ptolemy II commissioned a translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language for his library; he brought 70 (or 72) Jewish scribes from Jerusalem to Alexandria in order to complete the task. Each one of these scribes, working independently, translated the Torah into Greek. When they had completed their work, lo and behold, they discovered that all 70 translations were identical!
Parts of this story are obviously far-fetched. But there is strong evidence that by the mid third century, the Pentateuch had indeed been translated into Greek. And by the mid second century, the entire Hebrew canon was available in the Greek language. The new translation eventually came to be known as the Septuagint, from the Latin word Septuaginta (“seventy”) alluding to the 70 scribes. The Roman numeral LXX is used as an abbreviation for the Septuagint.
The Greek translation of the Old Testament was a crucial moment in Biblical history. This was the first time that the Hebrew scriptures had been translated into another language. Moreover, by the time of Jesus, the Septuagint was the Bible used by most Jews throughout the world, even in Judea. Many Christians do not realize that when the authors of the New Testament quote the Old Testament, the large majority (more than 3/4) of these quotes come from the Septuagint and not from the original Hebrew text!
The text of the Septuagint has many small but fascinating differences from the original Hebrew. The most famous is Isaiah 7:14: “a young woman will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.” The Hebrew word for young woman is ‘almah. But the Septuagint employs the Greek word parthenos which explicitly means “virgin.” Such variations make for fascinating study.
But perhaps the greatest impact the Septuagint had on the development of the Bible concerns additional materials which were later added. These writings – known to Protestants as the Apocrypha – have sparked bitter controversy for over two thousand years. But that is a topic for another blog.
