Old Testament

Of the three major monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the writings of Judaism are the oldest. The Hebrew Bible is the holy scripture of Judaism. Most Christians refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament, which forms the first of two parts of the Christian Bible. However, there are differences between the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible, primarily in terms of the canon—that is, which books are included—as well as the order in which they appear. Furthermore, there are variations among Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christian churches in this respect. The second part of the Christian Bible is the New Testament, which centers on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, emphasizing the covenant between God and the followers of Jesus.

Background

The word “Bible” comes from the Greek word biblía, meaning “books,” plural; this is a reflection of the fact that the Bible is, in fact, a collection of many books. The word “scripture” derives from the Latin scriptura, “writing” (noun), or scriptus, “written,” emphasizing that these works have been laid down in writing, a departure from oral folklore. The Hebrew Bible is also known as the Tanakh, which stands for the Hebrew names of the three parts it comprises: the Torah (teaching or law), the Nevi’im (prophets), and the Ketuvim (writings). Most of the Hebrew Bible (and thus the Old Testament) was originally written in Hebrew, with some books in Aramaic.

The Torah—sometimes referred to by its Greek-rooted name, Pentateuch—consists of five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. According to rabbinic teachings in Jewish tradition, the Torah was revealed by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and it was Moses who recorded them in writing. According to biblical scholars, the actual writing was begun around 1000 BCE. The Torah tells of the creation of the world, the history of the families of Abraham and Sarah, and the exile of the Jews in Egypt and their return to the land of Canaan. It is the expression of the covenant with God for leading a just life that conforms to the laws that God established. In the Jewish tradition, the Torah also includes the “Oral Torah,” written down in the fifth century CE and known as the Talmud.

The Nevi’im contains the books of the prophets, which chronicle the history of the area known today as Israel. While some of the prophets sang of the heroic deeds of such leaders as Joshua and David, the dominant theme is how the fortunes of the leaders were tied to their devotion to the covenant with God. The prophets also foretold miracles from God, famines and droughts, and the revival of the land of Israel.

The Ketuvim, the third section of the Hebrew Bible, includes poetry, song, and musings on the meaning of life, following the best path to wisdom, and the goodness of God and his justice. These manuscripts date from the Second Temple Period (ca. 530 BCE–70 CE).

Overview

Melito of Sardis, a Christian writer, is credited with coining the term “Old Testament” sometime around 170 CE in order to differentiate that part of the Christian Bible from the New Testament, which presents the teachings and gospel of Jesus Christ and covers the earliest history of the Christian church. Most Christians regard elements of the Old Testament as prophecies of the coming of Jesus Christ, God’s appointed messiah.

The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible was the Septuagint (Latin for “seventy,” referring to the number of translators), written in Greek in the second and third centuries BCE. The Septuagint contains several books that are not part of the original Jewish canon; these works are known as the Apocrypha. The most famous are the four books of Maccabees, which tell of the miracle of Hanukkah. These books are still included in most Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles but not in most modern Protestant Bibles. Originally used by the Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt, the Septuagint became an important instrument for spreading the gospel of Christ, as the New Testament was first written in Greek.

The Septuagint was the basis for some of the texts of the first major Latin translation of the Old Testament. Around 382, under the commission of Pope Damasus I (ca. 305–84), Saint Jerome (ca. 347–420) began work on the Vulgate, the first reliable Old Testament translation into Latin. At the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Vulgate was declared the “authentic” text. However, one further revision was deemed necessary and was carried out under Pope Clement VII (1536–1605) in 1592. The Catholic Church declared this revision to be the official Latin Bible.

One of the reasons for standardizing the Bible was the invention by Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1398–1468) of a printing press with movable type sometime around 1436. The Bible was the first book printed with the new press; this landmark text is known as the Gutenberg Bible.

For centuries, the Catholic Church in Rome reigned supreme in western Europe. This hegemony was shattered when a brilliant German theologian named Martin Luther (1483–1546) penned his Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum (1517), popularly known as the Ninety-Five Theses, a document sharply critical of the church’s teachings. Luther’s teachings, along with those of French theologian John Calvin (1509–64), became the basis of the Protestant Reformation. The printing press was instrumental in spreading the ideas that led to this schism and the founding of the various Protestant denominations.

Protestantism took hold in England under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), leading to translations of the Bible into Early Modern English. Of these, the third is the most well known. Commissioned by King James I (1566–1625), this work was completed in 1611 and bears his name: the King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV). The Old Testament was translated from original Hebrew texts and the New Testament from the Greek. The KJV originally included the Apocrypha, but these books were omitted in Benjamin Blayney’s 1769 revisions.

Bibliography

Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. Rev. and updated by Richard Clifford and Daniel Harrington. 2nd ed. Mahwah: Paulist, 2012. Print.

Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. Garden City: Doubleday, 1983–85. Print.

Eusebius. The History of the Church. Trans. G. A. Williamson. Rev. Andrew Louth. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin, 1989. Print.

Josephus. The Complete Works. Trans. William Whiston. Nashville: Nelson, 1998. Print. Rpt. of The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus, the Jewish Historian. 1737.

Matthews, Victor H., and James C. Moyer. The Old Testament: Text and Context. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012. Print.

Merrill, Eugene H., Mark F. Rooker, and Michael A. Grisanti. The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament. Nashville: B&H, 2011. Print.

The Official King James Bible Online. King James Bible Online, 2014. Web. 3 Oct. 2014.

Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006. Print.