Old Testament Canon

The Old Testament canon is the collection of books that Christians accept as the first part of the Bible. These books describe God’s work among the people of Israel and include the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), historical books, poetry and wisdom writings, and the Prophets.

Different Christian traditions arrange and count these books in different ways. Some traditions also include books that others place in a separate group or do not include in the Old Testament canon.

The term “Old Testament” does not appear in Jewish writings. Jewish people usually call their Scriptures the Tanakh. This name comes from the first letters of its three main parts:

the Torah (Law),

the Nevi’im (Prophets), and

the Ketuvim (Writings).

In Luke 24:44, these sections are called “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms,” with Psalms being the first book of the Writings in the Hebrew Bible.

Christians later called their own collection of writings the “New Testament.” The word “testament” also means “covenant” (a binding agreement). God made a covenant with Abraham and the patriarchs, and later with Israel through Moses. Jesus spoke of a new covenant with his followers (Matthew 26:28).

Christians in the first century believed that the new covenant given through Christ (1 Corinthians 11:25) continued the covenant God had made earlier with the patriarchs (Ephesians 2:12). The prophets had spoken of this new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Because of this, the earlier covenant came to be called a former covenant (Hebrews 8:7–13; 9:1, 15–22), and in later centuries Christians called it the Old Testament.

The earliest Christian writers did not use the names “Old Testament” and “New Testament.” These terms first appear in the second half of the second century AD in the writings of Justin Martyr (Dialogues 11:2), Irenaeus (Against Heresies 4.9.1), and Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1:5).

At first, they referred mainly to the covenants themselves. Later, they also came to refer to the collections of books.

The word “canon” does not appear in the Old or New Testament as a name for the Jewish Scriptures. During the centuries when the Old Testament books were being written, there was not yet a fixed list of authoritative books. Only the Torah was regarded as a collection to which nothing should be added or taken away (Deuteronomy 4:2).

For many centuries, Israel lived without a closed canon, that is, a final list of authoritative books. The complete collection of the 39 books recognized in the Protestant Old Testament did not exist throughout most of Israel's history because many of those books had not yet been written. Exactly when the Jewish canon was completed is not known.

About 20 years after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, some questions were being asked about religious authority by rabbis at Jamnia. Around AD 170, Melito of Sardis produced the earliest surviving Christian list corresponding to the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. His list does not include any books written after the time of Malachi, unless Daniel is dated to the second century BC.

The Prophets and the Writings were always considered secondary to the Law. These books were written and collected over many centuries. Together, they record Israel's response to God's Law. According to Jewish tradition (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra 14a; compare also Cairo Damascus Document 5.2), the Book of the Law was kept in the ark of the covenant in the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle. Deuteronomy 31:26, however, says that Moses instructed the Levites to place the Book of the Law beside the ark. Even so, its close association with the ark shows its unique authority among the books of the Old Testament.

The Jews divide their Scriptures into three sections.

1.

2.

3.

The Law

The Prophets

The Writings

Genesis

Former Prophets

Psalms

Exodus

Joshua

Proverbs

Leviticus

Judges

Job

Numbers

Samuel (1 & 2)

Five Scrolls

Deuteronomy

Kings (1 & 2)

Song of Songs

Ruth

Latter Prophets

Lamentations

Isaiah

Ecclesiastes

Jeremiah

Esther

Ezekiel

Daniel

The Twelve

Ezra-Nehemiah

Hosea

Chronicles (1 & 2)

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

The 39 books in the modern Protestant Old Testament were arranged as 24 books in early Hebrew tradition. The Talmud, other rabbinic writings, and probably 4 Esdras describe this arrangement. It included:

five books of the Law,

eight books of the Prophets, and

eleven books of the Writings.

The Greek name for the Writings is Hagiographa.

Modern Hebrew Bibles still use this three-part arrangement. The first three printed Hebrew Bibles also used it. These were printed in:

Soncino in 1488,

Naples in 1491–1493, and

Brescia in 1492–1494.

The Law contained the five books from Genesis through Deuteronomy. This collection is also called the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible).

The eight books of the Prophets were:

Joshua,

Judges,

Samuel,

Kings,

Isaiah,

Jeremiah,

Ezekiel, and

the Minor Prophets.

First and Second Samuel were counted as one book, and First and Second Kings were counted as one book. The twelve Minor Prophets were also counted as one book. They appeared in the same order found in most English Bibles.

The Writings contained eleven books. Three were books of poetry:

Psalms,

Proverbs, and

Job.

Five were known as the Five Scrolls:

Song of Songs,

Ruth,

Lamentations,

Ecclesiastes, and

Esther.

Jewish communities read these books during important festivals, and they arranged them according to the order of those festivals.

The final three were narrative or historical books:

Daniel,

Ezra–Nehemiah, and

First and Second Chronicles.

Ezra and Nehemiah were counted as one book, as were First and Second Chronicles.

Outside the main Jewish tradition, some writers arranged the Hebrew Scriptures as 22 books. They combined Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah. Josephus used this arrangement in the first century AD. His arrangement may have been influenced by the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

In the early third century, Origen noted that the 22 books matched the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Athanasius made the same observation in the fourth century. Jerome and other Christian writers later followed this view.

Some writers concluded that God had determined the number of biblical books to match the number of Hebrew letters. Several church fathers treated this numerical match as an act of God's providence (his guidance of events). However, this 22-book arrangement reflects Greek influence and does not appear in the main Hebrew tradition.

The oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the complete Old Testament are the Masoretic Texts. These manuscripts date from no earlier than the eighth century AD. Older copies of individual books have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but no complete Old Testament manuscript has survived from that earlier period.

The Masoretic scribes do not appear to have followed a fixed order for arranging the books. Early Hebrew manuscripts place the Latter Prophets and the Writings in different orders. Ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible also show no single arrangement.

The three oldest Greek Bible manuscripts are:

Codex Alexandrinus,

Codex Vaticanus, and

Codex Sinaiticus.

These codices all arrange the books differently. Early Christian writers who describe the contents and order of the Hebrew Bible, but do not follow its traditional three-part structure, appear to depend on the Greek tradition associated with Alexandria rather than on the Hebrew Bible.

Modern Protestant Bibles follow the order of the Latin Vulgate while using the books of the Hebrew Bible. Both the Vulgate and the Septuagint include the Apocrypha, a group of books that were not accepted as part of the Jewish canon. Roman Catholic Bibles also include these books because of the influence of the Vulgate on Catholic tradition. In those Bibles, they are called deuterocanonical (a second group of accepted books).

Although the order of the books was not always the same, Greek manuscripts generally grouped them by subject. The main groups were narrative, history, poetry, and prophecy. The apocryphal books were placed within these groups according to their subject matter. This arrangement did not follow the traditional three-part division of the Hebrew Bible.

Early Hebrew Bibles divided the text into small and large sections. These sections were somewhat like modern paragraphs. Scribes marked the smaller sections by leaving a space equal to three letters. They marked the larger sections with a space equal to nine letters. The number of sections was not the same in every manuscript. Jesus may have referred to one of these sections when he mentioned the burning bush in Mark 12:26.

Later, Jewish communities divided the Law into more sections for public reading in synagogues. Babylonian synagogues used 54 sections so that they could read the whole Law in one year. Palestinian synagogues used 154 sections so that they could read it in three years. Some early Hebrew Bibles contain marks that show these cycles of readings.

Stephen Langton divided the Latin Vulgate into modern chapters around AD 1228. This chapter system was applied to the Hebrew Bible in the 1518 Bomberg Edition. However, chapter numbers were not added until 1571. They appeared in the Hebrew Bible of Benito Arias Montano, which included a Latin translation between the Hebrew lines.

Verse divisions appeared in Bomberg’s Great Bible of 1547–1548. In that edition, every fifth verse was marked with a Hebrew number, such as 1, 5, or 10. Verse numbers were added to the Latin Vulgate in 1555 in a small edition published by Robert Estienne, also known as Stephanus.

See also Apocrypha; Canon of the Bible.