Where here did we get our Old Testament? Who decided which books were holy and deserved to be included as part of the Bible? Did some council of Jewish rabbis define the canon? If not, when was it done and who did it? Also, where did they get the authority to say that certain books belonged in the Bible while others did not?
Many of the commentators argue and dispute who actually wrote the various books of the Old Testament. Is there a way of really knowing? For years, many of the so-called higher critics argued that Moses could not have written the books attributed to him, because the alphabet had not been invented yet. Arguing from an evolutionary model, they tried to decide when various phases of the Hebrew religion evolved. They then assigned the writings reflecting those themes to the time period that they imagined to have been correct. Such circular reasoning led them to give certain Biblical books multiple authors and assign whole books and portions of books to periods that were centuries after the time the books claimed to have been written.
Needless to say, these critics have tended to disparage the worth of the Bible as a historical document. Particularly, they have discounted the accuracy of accounts set in the times of the patriarchs, the judges, or the earlier kings. Assuming the Biblical record to have been compiled from oral traditions that were written down centuries after the events mentioned, the critics reasoned that such a record could not be considered very reliable.
We should also note that Roman Catholic Bibles contain several books that Protestant editions omit; the books of the Apocrypha. Also, there are various other books, such as Enoch, Jasher, or Jubilees, which some have thought to be lost books of the Bible. Is there a way to be sure that we have ALL the books that are legitimate scripture in our current copies of the Old Testament?
What about it? Does the record of the Bible, together with that of secular history, provide significant evidence about the origin and development of the Old Testament? How did it come to be written, and can we prove that what we have in our possession is truly authoritative?
The Role of Moses
The first five books of the Old Testament are called the books of Moses. What evidence is there to believe that Moses actually wrote the books attributed to him? During portions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain scholars discounted that the alphabet and writing even existed in the 15th-century bc, the Biblically stated time of Moses. Modern archaeology has demonstrated the fallacy of such an idea. Notice what Donald Wiseman, Chairman of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq states: “By the time of the entry of the Hebrews into Canaan… they would be confronted, if not already familiar, with at least five different forms of writing systems used for eight or more languages…” (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 1, p. 319). Examples of written documents dating back to almost 2,000 years before the days of Moses have been found in the Middle East.
Moses, after all, had the best education that was available in the world of his day. He was raised as a prince of Egypt and would have learned not only the Egyptian form of writing, but also the alphabetic form used by Egypt’s near neighbors and trading partners. In other words, Moses, who excelled in learning among the Egyptians (cf. Acts 7:22), would have certainly been highly literate.
The Bible records that near the end of his life, Moses delivered to the priesthood the books that he had written. This official copy of the Book of the Law was then laid up in the Tabernacle by the side of the Ark of the Covenant (Deuteronomy 31:9, 26). This was the basis of other copies that the priesthood made to use for teaching purposes. It was the origin of what we call the canon of scripture.
These books were not to be kept away from the people. Rather, every seventh year during the Feast of Tabernacles, the entire Torah was to be read to the people of Israel. Future kings were to make their own personal handwritten copies from the scrolls laid up in the sanctuary. God, from the very beginning, intended that His word be faithfully preserved and also made available to the people.
As for critics’ claims that the first five books of the Bible were written much later than the time of Moses, their ideas were simply based upon circular evolutionary reasoning, not upon any sound basis in fact. For years, for instance, the critics dismissed the story of Sodom and Gomorrah on the basis that there were no secular references to cities of that name. Several years ago, however, that claim was demonstrated to be false by excavations at ancient Ebla, located in Syria. The Ebla tablets date from the time of the patriarchs and mention many cities and place names that had previously been known only from Genesis. The point is, much of the record of antiquity has been lost, but what has been found has inevitably confirmed the Biblical account.
The Next Period of Canonization
About 400 years after the days of Moses, a major reorganization took place in the Israelite worship of God. At the beginning of King David’s rule over the twelve tribes, he conquered the Jebusite citadel at Jerusalem and established his capital there. Later he brought up the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, though the tabernacle of Moses remained at Gibeon for a number of years more. During the latter period of David’s reign he began to make plans for the building of a magnificent temple in Jerusalem.
Though God did not allow David personally to build the temple, He nevertheless allowed him to oversee the preparations. In doing this, King David organized the priests and the Levites into 24 courses, which were to rotate their time of service in the temple. He also organized special groups of musicians to sing and provide musical accompaniment. What were they to sing? King David was known as the “sweet psalmist of Israel” and was responsible for much of the book of Psalms. Interestingly, Psalm 72:20 shows that Psalm 72 ends the compilation that King David originally put together. Since there were 24 courses of Levitical singers, David used a multiple of that number (3 x 24 = 72) in originally selecting the psalms that were to be used in temple worship.
Solomon, the son of David, oversaw the completion of the temple that his father had envisioned. In his lifetime he authored numerous songs and proverbs. He was responsible for teaching the people many things pertaining to wise living and conduct (Ecclesiastes 12:9). Interestingly, just as David assembled 72 psalms (24 x 3) for the Levites to sing in the new temple, Solomon compiled 24 chapters of Proverbs for the Levites to use in teaching the people wise conduct.
At this time the historical writings of Joshua and Samuel were clearly recognized as well. We are told that Samuel caused certain of his writings to be “laid up before the LORD” (1 Samuel 10:25). This major change in the course of the nation’s history, the institution of the monarchy and the construction of a temple, was overseen by God’s chosen prophets, Samuel and Nathan. Kings David and Solomon, helped and guided by these men of God, oversaw the expansion of the canon of Scripture.
The Epochs of Hezekiah and Josiah
About three hundred years after the death of King Solomon, his descendant, Hezekiah, came to the throne in Jerusalem. He was responsible for reopening the temple of Solomon, which had been closed for several years, and initiating a time of religious reform and revival in the land. Guided by the prophet Isaiah, he was responsible for adding additional material to the canon of scripture. The last seven chapters of the book of Proverbs were added at this time (cf. Proverbs 25:1). Also, Hezekiah was responsible for adding additional psalms, beginning with the psalms of Asaph, Psalms 73–83 (2 Chronicles 29:30). He also added the fifteen psalms of degrees, Psalms 120–134, prepared at the occasion of his miraculous healing and the addition of fifteen years to his life (Isaiah 38:20). It is likely, most of the two books of Kings were compiled by Isaiah (2 Chronicles 32:32) at this time, along with the prophetic book that bears his name.
Almost 100 years after Hezekiah had come to the throne, another righteous king, his great-grandson Josiah, became king. Josiah, encouraged and helped by the prophet Jeremiah, was responsible for the last major spiritual revival in the nation of Judah prior to its captivity. The temple had been shut by his grandfather Manasseh and had fallen into serious disrepair. Josiah collected money to finance a cleaning and refurbishing of the temple and launched this ambitious project under the oversight of the priesthood.
Copies of the scriptures were found during this refurbishing and were immediately brought to the attention of the king (2 Chronicles 34:14-18). Undoubtedly secreted away by faithful priests to protect the scrolls from the minions of evil King Manasseh, these copies of God’s word came to light once again, and at the proper time. Regardless of what the enemies of God have sought to do, the Creator has always ensured the faithful preservation of His word. In addition to the rediscovery of existing scripture, the writings of Jeremiah, including Lamentations (2 Chronicles 35:25), were completed at this time. These writings, laid up in the temple along with the other sacred writings, were undoubtedly taken to Babylon with the other temple treasures when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Jerusalem temple.
We find that Daniel had access to these writings while in Babylon (Daniel 9:2, 13). Clearly God, in order to ensure faithful preservation of His own revealed word, brought Daniel and his three friends into prominent positions in Babylon. In fact, they were the chief of the wise men of Babylon (Daniel 2:48) and as such would have certainly had complete access to the royal library. In this way, the Bible was not only preserved until God’s time came to restore true worship in Jerusalem, but His servant Daniel had access to studying and teaching God’s word as well.
The Time of Ezra
The Old Testament, as we know it, was completed in the days of Ezra the Priest and Governor Nehemiah. Ezra was allowed by King Artaxerxes to return to Jerusalem with the temple scrolls and other treasures which had been kept in Babylon since the days of Nebuchadnezzar (Ezra 7:14). Ezra came back to teach the scriptures to the people (v. 10) and to institute religious reform for people who were on the verge of losing their very identity and absorbing the syncretistic paganism of their neighbors. A few years after Ezra’s return, Nehemiah returned as governor and had the authority to insist that Ezra’s reforms be carried out.
During the many decades in Babylon the Jews had adopted a new style of writing the letters of their alphabet. They had also taken to using Babylonian names for the months of their calendar and to using Aramaic, which was the language of Babylon and similar to Hebrew, as the language of their everyday speech.
Ezra caused the temple scriptures to be recopied in the square Babylonian script, which is the script that we commonly think of as Hebrew writing today. He also set the books in the order in which the Jews have faithfully preserved them.
The first-century Jewish historian and priest, Flavius Josephus, recorded the history of the Hebrew scriptures and contrasted them to the Greek writings extant in his day. “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only 22 books… which are justly believed to be divine…” (Against Apion, I, 8). Josephus went on to state that the Jewish scriptures had been compiled in their final form in the days of King Artaxerxes, who reigned in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. He emphasized that, while many books had been composed among the Jews since that time, they were not considered to have divine authority, because there had not been a succession of prophets since the time of Malachi, a late contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah.
The Jews considered the numbering of 22 books of Hebrew scripture significant. This is because it corresponded to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. An illustration is found in Psalm 119. In the King James translation, as well as many others, a character of the Hebrew alphabet precedes each section of eight verses in this Psalm. In Hebrew the first eight verses all begin with the letter “a” (aleph), the next eight verses all begin with the letter “b” (beth), and so on. The idea was that when all of the letters had been used, the subject was thoroughly covered and nothing more remained to be said. This was the concept with the Hebrew scriptures. God’s revelation in the Hebrew language was deemed complete. After all, the entire alphabet was “used up.”
The 22 books, as counted by the Jews, correspond to the books of our Old Testament—normally counted as 39 books in modern translations. The difference in number is because of a difference in the way the books were counted. The 12 Minor Prophets, for instance, were kept on one scroll in Hebrew, and were counted as simply one book, not as twelve separate ones. There are several other combinations as well. The two books of Samuel and the two books of Kings were counted as one book. Both books of Chronicles were also counted as one. The other two combinations were the books of Joshua–Judges and the books of Ezra–Nehemiah.
Evidence of the Reliability of the Old Testament
Modern critics have continued to cast aspersions on the reliability and accuracy of the Old Testament scriptures. For instance, they have disputed the historicity of Daniel. Why have critics singled out Daniel for special attention? Primarily, because of the specific prophecies that it contains.
It gives, for instance, a detailed picture of history from Daniel’s day on through the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman empires that dominated the world scene in future centuries. Daniel also makes clear reference to the Seleucids and Ptolomies as well as to the Maccabees, all of whom flourished three or more centuries after the stated date of the book. Also, Daniel gives a clear chronological prophecy pinpointing the time of the Messiah’s first coming. All of this is simply too much for the critics. They are “scholars” who do not believe in a real God who can “declare the end from the beginning.”
Now let us look briefly at the kind of claims made by so-called higher critics and see what the real facts are. For instance, a recent book by Peter Lemche, one of Denmark’s most noted Biblical scholars, has gotten a lot of attention in “educated” circles. In it, he states that it is impossible to locate historical Israel. He, along with a number of others, asserts that the Israel of the Old Testament is simply the product of the literary imagination of writers from the late Persian and Hellenistic times.
Ronald Hendel, professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, exposed the shallowness of Dr. Lemche’s thesis in a recent book review. He writes: “We have numerous Hebrew seal inscriptions of people named in the Bible, particularly from the eighth to the sixth centuries bce, that attest to the existence of these people in the right time and place. How could religious zealots five hundred years later have known these small details? Moreover, the study of historical linguistics of Northwest Semitic languages corresponds neatly to the chronology of the Biblical writings that scholars have deduced on other grounds. How could Jews of late Persian and Hellenistic times have accurately reproduced the linguistic features of pre-Exilic Hebrew when these features had been dead for hundreds of years?” (Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov.–Dec. 1999, p. 60).
For many years, critics claimed that the Aramaic of the book of Daniel could not have been written prior to 167bc. The discovery and study of the Qumran texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls has shed new light on the Aramaic language of the second century. The text of Daniel is considerably different from the Aramaic of the Qumran scrolls. As Professor William LaSor emphasizes in an article he wrote on the Dead Sea Scrolls for The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, the language of the book of Daniel “…is linguistically closer to the fifth or fourth-century bc than to the second or first” (vol. 1, p. 403). Dr. R. K. Harrison, a professor of Old Testament at the University of Toronto, states in a different article in the same commentary: “The Aramaic of Daniel was the kind used in government circles from the seventh century onwards, and thus akin to that of the Elephantine papyri of the fifth century bc and the book of Ezra” (p. 247).
For many years, scholars have scoffingly pointed to what they labeled as historical inaccuracies in Daniel, events such as Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity and the reigns of Belshazzar and Darius the Mede. The real facts, however, demonstrate that it has been the scholars, not Daniel, who were inaccurate. Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity, for instance, is alluded to in the writings of Berossus, a third-century bc Babylonian priest. Another ancient Babylonian chronicler, Abydenus, recorded that Nebuchadnezzar was “possessed by some god or other” and after a startling prophetic outburst disappeared from Babylon.
Several years ago, archaeologists uncovered records that Belshazzar was associated as co-regent with his father Nabonidus, and was the ruler present in Babylon at its fall. Discoveries of the Nabonidus Chronicle at Haran in recent years have shed light on Darius the Mede, long a mystery to historians.
As we can see, in case after case, modern archaeology is serving to confirm the historical accuracy of the Biblical record and to confound the claims of the doubting critics. The Old Testament, preserved by the Jews in the three-fold division of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, has come down to us as the accurate and inspired word of God. It is a trustworthy account of origins and of the Creator’s dealings with mankind. Beyond that, it contains prophecies, verifiably written centuries in advance of their fulfillment, which attest to the divine inspiration of this book of books, the Holy Bible.