Old Testament

The Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures are the collection of books that forms the first of two parts of the Christian Biblical canon. The contents of the Old Testament canon vary from church to church, 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. Christians hold different views of the Old Testament or Old Covenant in contrast to the New Covenant.

All Old Testament canons are related to the Jewish Bible Canon (Tanakh), 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, which describes Israel restored to the Promised Land and the Temple restored in Jerusalem; in the Hebrew Bible God's purpose is thus fulfilled and the divine history is at an end, according to Dispensationalism and Supersessionism (see Jewish Eschatology for Jewish beliefs on the subject). In the Christian Old Testament the Book of Malachi is placed last, so that a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah leads into the birth of the Christ in the Gospel of Matthew.

The Tanakh is written in Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic, and is therefore also known as the Hebrew Bible (the text of the Jewish Bible is called the Masoretic, 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, Hellenistic-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. This translation, known as the Septuagint, 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, this was replaced by Jerome's Vulgate, 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. In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the Divino Afflante Spiritu which allows Catholic translations from texts other than the Vulgate, notably in English the New American Bible.

The Hebrew Bible divides its books into three categories, the Torah ("Instructions"), the Nevi'im ("Prophets") (according to some Christians, essentially historical, despite the title), and the Ketuvim ("Writings)," which according to some Christians might better be described as "wisdom" books (the Song of Songs, Lamentations, Proverbs, etc.). The Christian Old Testament ignore this division and instead emphasise the historical and prophetic nature of the canon─thus the Book of Ruth and the Book of Job, 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, and not as a revelation complete in its own right, see Supersessionism for details.

Although it is not a history book in the modern sense, the Old Testament is the primary source for the History of ancient Israel and Judah. 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.

The oldest material in the Hebrew Bible – and therefore in the Christian Old Testament – may date from the 13th century BCE. 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, see Development of the Jewish Bible canon for details.

History

The first four books of the Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers - were probably written in their present form after the Deuteronomistic history was completed, as was the book of Chronicles. The prophets - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the so-called "minor prophets" - are all heavily edited works, some parts of them dating from as early as the 7th century, but with many later additions; the remaining books, such as the Psalms, Lamentations, and Job, are a wide variety of genres, dating from the centuries between the Exile and the last centuries before Christ.

The early Christian Church primarily used the Septuagint, often referred to as the LXX, the oldest Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, as its religious text until at least the mid-4th century (Targums were used by Aramaic speakers). Until that time Greek was a major language of the Roman Empire and a major language of the Church (exceptions include Syrian Orthodoxy and the Church of the East which used the Syriac Peshitta and Ethiopian Orthodoxy which used the Geez, and others, see Early centers of Christianity). In the late 1st century, Rabbinic Judaism (see Council of Jamnia) began expressing a strong distrust of the accuracy of the Septuagint and eventually rejected it. Talmudic tradition considers the LXX to be both divinely inspired and full of errors.

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.

When Jerome undertook the revision of the Old Latin 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. He broke with church tradition and translated most of the Old Testament of his Vulgate from Hebrew rather than Greek. His choice was severely criticized by Augustine, 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.

The Hebrew text differs from the Septuagint in some passages that Christians hold to prophesy Christ, and the Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers the Septuagint text 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. 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). 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.

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. The Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel was discarded, in favour of Theodotion's version, in the second to 3rd centuries; in Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the 2nd century, and in Latin-speaking areas (at least in North Africa), it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. 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.

Literary and philosophical reception

Christian views of the Old Covenant

There are differences of opinion among Christian denominations as to what and how Biblical law (generally understood as the "first five books" of the Old Testament or the Old Covenant) applies today. Most conclude that only parts are applicable, such as the Ten Commandments, some conclude that all are set aside by the New Covenant, while others conclude that all are still applicable to believers in Jesus and the New Covenant.

Historicity of the Old Testament narratives

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Category:Bible Category:Christian law Category:Christian terms Category:Hebrew Bible Category:Hebrew Bible topics Category:Judeo-Christian topics Category:Old Testament Category:Rastafarian texts