This concise history of the Hebrew Bible by
Christopher Dost shows the development of the Old Testament in the biblical texts
Jesus and the Apostles would have known.
As the Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at Alliance
Theological Seminary in New York and author of related books, Dr. Dost documented
a wide range of resources to give us this slim paperback, chocked with
information.
For some, the Jesus’Bible might challenge thinking or even offer more information than wanted! Despite the scholarly nature of the
book, however, the author writes in an accessible style that keeps the text from
being as dry as an old scroll.
As Dr. Dost quickly points out in the introduction, “There was no Bible in Jesus’ day. The Torah
and the Prophets – the first two sections of what would become the Hebrew Bible
– were essentially canonized (i.e., accepted as authoritative), but they were
still textually fluid. The third section, however, the Writings, was not fixed.”
Another aspect of fluidity arose because of the Hebrew
manner of writing words in consonants only with no vowels included. Dr. Dost gives examples of this, but if we
look at the same situation in English, that might help to clarify problems
that arise in translation.
For instance, take the English words “mite,” mate,” “mote,”
or “moot” and remove the vowels, as Hebrew scribes would do, and you’d have “mt.”
As you can see, each of those words has an entirely different meaning to be
determined only by the context in which the word is found.
In addition, the
connotations and denotations of a word can change over time. For example, a “mite”
in Jesus’ day brings to mind the widow with a single coin left to her name,
while in our era, the word might mean we need to put protective covers on our
pillows and mattresses to keep out dust mites!
Besides the fact that a living language does not
remain static, there’s the regional dialect to consider. In Virginia, for
instance, “a run” doesn’t mean a 5K race but a brook, a creek, or, as some
parts of the country say, a crick, which, for me, means an achy neck.
Similarly, “The
Hebrew Bible was penned over the course of the first millennium BCE in what is
known today as the Middle East. Many of the biblical tests were written in
Israel and Judah (roughly modern-day Israel and Palestine), while others were
written in Babylonia (southeastern Iraq) and in Egypt.” The author also goes
on to say, “…we cannot overstate how
significantly foreign domination impacted the growth, development, and
interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.”
Along those lines, we learn “…that the oldest extant (i.e., still in existence) Christian Bible was
not limited to the modern Protestant Canon. In fact, when we examine a list of
the New Testament’s quotations and allusions to sacred Jewish texts, we see
that the writers of the New Testament have a much bigger ‘Bible’ than do
twenty-first century Protestant Christians….”
We’re talking
now about the “apocryphal” books (a misnomer, as they’ve never been hidden),
which are part of the Greek scriptures (aka Septuagint.) As Dr. Dost explains:
“Because the Old
Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, one might expect early
Christianity to have revered the ‘original’ much as the Reformers did, but such
was not the case. The Septuagint was for all intents and purposes the Bible for many Jews in antiquity.
And since early Christianity was really no more than a movement within
first-century Palestinian Judaism, it should be no surprise that the Septuagint
was immensely important for the writers of the New Testament. In fact, those
who regard Paul as the author of 2 Timothy must conclude that ‘all scripture,’
which the letter’s author regards as ‘inspired and profitable,’ includes both
the Hebrew and the Greek, since Paul quotes extensively from the Septuagint in
his writings.”
If these well-researched thoughts seem at all upsetting,
lovers of the Protestant version of the Bible might be glad to know that the
beloved King James Version originally
contained more books than it does now. In addition, publishers of the accurate and
evangelically oriented English Standard
Version of the Bible typically omit the apocryphal books in both reader and
study editions, but the ESV translation of the Apocrypha is available as a
separate volume, well worth reading – not only for the wisdom to be found but
for the historical accounts of events that occurred between the Old and New
Testaments.
To order, click this link
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