Confidence in the Canon of Old Testament Scripture

 

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When we talk about the canon of Scripture, we aren’t talking about a piece of artillery, but we are  talking about the collection of books in our Bible which we look to for the final authority for faith and practice for the Christian (although I have to say that Michael Kruger’s play on words with the title of his blog on the NT Canon, “canon fodder,” is brilliant).  Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. explains where the word comes from.  He writes,

The term canon . . . . comes from the Hebrew word qaneh, meaning a “reed” or “stalk” (1 Kings 14:15; Job 40:21) that was used as a measuring stick.  The Greeks incorporated the word into their language as kanon, also meaning “measuring rod,” but with the somewhat broader meaning of “a rule or standard and guideline.”[1]

The Greek word appears in the NT in Galatians 6:16, where Paul writes, “And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.”  The word “rule” there is “kanon.”  The early church used the word to refer to the “rule of faith,” the doctrines of the Christian faith, and then later to the whole of Scripture which contains this rule of faith.  It is in this sense that we speak of the canon of Scripture.  All the 66 books of the OT and NT comprise for us the canon of Scripture, the rule and standard of our faith.  More specifically, we believe that these books and these books alone come from the mouth of God to us.  No other human writing even comes close to the level of authority that are possessed by the Scriptures.

Now the question is, are these books from Genesis to Revelation, God’s word to us?  Could it be that a book snuck in that doesn’t belong there, or that we have left books out?  The presence of books outside our Bibles that claim to be Scripture makes the question relevant.  What about the Apocrypha,[2] the books accepted by the Roman Catholic Church (although with deuterocanonical status)?  What about the gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas, that people like to talk and speculate about? 

Today, I am going to be addressing the topic of the OT canon, and next time David will address the topic of the NT canon.  I am going to argue that we can have confidence that the 39 books in our OT are indeed God’s word to us, and that no other book belongs in the OT.

Now it is said that the canon of Scripture, either OT or NT, was arbitrarily fixed at a certain point in time.  It is argued that the books that comprise our OT were not seen initially as God’s sacred word, but that over time certain books were venerated more and more until they were zapped with canonical status at a church council, or, with respect to the OT, at the Council of Jamnia in AD 90.  So the claim is that the canonical status of a book is not inherent in itself, but that it was bestowed upon the book by an external authority, either a person or a council.  The Roman Catholic view is similar in that it believes that our confidence in the canonical status of the Scriptures depends on the testimony of the church.  They will often quote Augustine, who said, “I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic church.”[3]  Augustine, however, was not saying that the authority of Scripture is dependent upon the authority of the church, but that his own faith was owing to the declarative authority of the church.  As he puts it: “it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel…”.[4]  Augustine’s point is not a distinctly Roman Catholic position, for even the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith says, “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures….”[5] 

None of these views are consistent with Scripture has to say about itself and I am going to argue for a different view.  What I am going to argue is what Kaiser calls the “progressive recognition” of the canon of the OT.[6]  This means that the collection of OT books didn’t suddenly become Scripture years after they were written.  Rather, as they were written, they were received by God’s people as God’s word.  We shouldn’t think therefore that there is some external authority that arbitrarily conferred canonical status of the OT Scriptures.  Rather, the OT itself bears witness to itself concerning its status as Scripture.  And there is also historical evidence and voices outside the OT that confirms that this is how the Jewish people received Bible.

So I want to proceed in two steps.  First of all, let’s look at the witness of the OT, and then at the witness to the OT.

The Witness of the OT

First of all, let’s look at Exodus 24:3-8:

And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.

Here you have “the book of the covenant” (7), which Moses wrote, and which the people immediately recognized as the word of God and the rule for their lives.  This is an immediate recognition of the canonical status of the book of the covenant by the people of God.  This would at least have included Exodus 20-23.  Then at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 31, we read this:

And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, When all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law: And that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it. (9-13)

These words being at the end of Moses’ life, this would probably refer to the entirety of the law of Moses, which includes the entire Pentateuch, with the exception of a few passages which seem to have been added later by Joshua (who is the only one who is said to have written in the book of the law of God, Josh. 24:26).  It was accepted by Israel at God’s word and God’s law and was to be publicly read to them every seven years. 

This is not all: the end of the Pentateuch also provides a steppingstone to the rest of the Bible. Stephen Wellum argues, “The closing verses of chapter 34 [of Deuteronomy] also anticipate a prophetic revelation that begins from Joshua as he carries on the ministry of Moses through the Minor Prophets.”[7]  Thus Joshua, who succeeded Moses, also recognized the law of God in the books of Moses as God’s word.  For we read how God spoke to him:

Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Josh. 1:7-8).

Clearly, the book of the law has a fixed character and is seen to be authoritative for Joshua.  God himself refers Joshua to it!  And the fact that Joshua “wrote these words in the book of the law  of God” (Josh. 24:26) indicates that he recognized his own book to be the inspired word of God, and a continuation of the revelation God gave through Moses. 

Each book that follows is, as it were, hooked to the previous book. The beginning of Judges recapitulates the book of Joshua.  The opening verse in Ruth reminds us of the book of Judges, and sets up the historical context for the books of Samual and Kings.  As Kaiser puts it, “One of the criteria found within the text of Scripture is that there was a passing of the mantle, as it were, from one writer to another.”[8]

In this respect, the books of Chronicles, which were the last OT books to be written, show us how this progressive recognition of the canon of the OT Scriptures worked out.  Again, here is how Kaiser puts it:

… 1 Chronicles 29:29 declared that the history of David was written in the books of the prophets Samuel, Nathan, and Gad.  This is followed by a notice in 2 Chronicles 9:29 that the history of Solomon was written by the prophets Nathan, Ahijah and Iddo.  Similarly, the work of Rehoboam (2 Chron. 12:15) was composed by the prophets Shemiah and Iddo.  Then Abijah’s history was composed by the prophet Iddo (2 Chron. 13:22); Jehoshaphat’s by the prophet Jehu (2 Chron. 20:34); Hezekiah’s by Isaiah the prophet (2 Chron. 32:32); and Manasseh’s by “seers” (another name for prophets) who went unnamed (2 Chron. 33:18-19).  This chain of prophets existed from before the days of David up to the end of the Judean kingdom.  Accordingly, the case for a succession of prophets is a real phenomenon in the biblical text.  In effect, the prophets passed the baton from one to the other, thereby setting up a stream of thought and an indication of where to look for that which was to be regarded as canonical.[9]

We must remember who these prophets were who gave us the OT Scriptures.  They were the spokesmen for God.  Their take on the history of Israel and their take on the moral life of Israel (both included in the Jewish canon under the category of “prophets”) were taken to be inspired and canonical.  The people of God didn’t have to wait for some council to give them inspired and canonical status.  That’s what they were from the very beginning.

We also see this worked out in the way the prophet Daniel looked at the prophecy of Jeremiah, who had written only seventy years earlier.  Here is what Daniel says about Jeremiah’s prophetic book: “In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans; In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem” (Dan. 9:1-2).  Here Daniel is referring to Jer. 25:11-12, and only seventy years later he already regards it as the word of the Lord.  That is to say, it already functioned with canonical status for Daniel.

Jeremiah himself saw earlier prophets in the same light.  For example, he clearly regarded the prophet Micah’s words to the be words of God to Israel (cf. Jer. 26:18).  And in the history of Israel recorded by Ezra and Nehemiah, we see that the law of God to Moses was canonical.  When the last prophet Malichi was written, he closed with these words: “Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:4-6).  This is significant because Moses represents the law of God and Elijah the prophets of God.  Hence, Malichi is basically affirming the canonical status of the entire OT.

My point is that the OT itself bears witness to the fact that Israel recognized the word of God through Moses and the prophets very soon after they were written.  The books of the OT didn’t have to wait to become recognized as the word of God.  Now it is true that the OT isn’t completed until the fifth century BC, and so we don’t have a complete canon of OT Scripture until then.  But it doesn’t have canonical status because a church council gave it to it but because God gave it to it.

Now let’s look at the witness to the OT.  We will begin with our Lord and then look at other external witnesses to the early canonical status of the OT books.

The Witness to the OT

Jesus our Lord is our primary witness to the OT, and he does this in at least two ways.  First, he is a witness to the fact of a fixed body of authoritative Scripture (a canon) in that he was able to appeal to the Scriptures without having to spell out what he was talking about.  For example, in Mark 12:24, he says to his Sadducee interlocutor, “And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?”  That he sees “the Scriptures” as being different from other writings, can be clearly seen in his distinguishing it from the traditions of men, even though such tradition was seen as authoritative by many in the Jewish community.  As he puts it to them: “He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition” (Mk. 7:6-9).  He not only quotes from Isaiah (6-7), but also from the Pentateuch (10), ascribing it to Moses.  He says that in following the tradition of men, they were in fact “making the word of God of none effect” (13). 

Secondly, not only is our Lord a witness to a recognized body of Scripture with authority as the word of God that is distinct from the tradition of men, but he also gives us a hint as to what that body of Scripture was.  He points us to what is the standard canon of the OT in his description Mt. 23:35, when he says, “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.”  This is interesting because Abel’s martyrdom is recorded in Genesis, the first book of the OT, and the martyrdom of Zecharias is recorded in the book of 2 Chronicles, the last book in the Jewish canon.  This is our Lord’s way of saying, “every martyr recorded in all of Scripture, from the first book to the last.” 

We also see this in his words to the disciples in Luke 24:44, when he summarizes the contents of the OT as what was “written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” 

This is significant because others referred to this tripartite division of the OT, and help us to understand what books were understood to be a part of this collection.  Here are some of the witnesses:

1.  There is the witness

…from Bava Batra 14b, a Baraita, that is, a tradition “external” to the Mishnah quoted in the Babylonian Talmud.  It is dated to the first or second century AD (no later than AD 240), and its significance is that it lists the exact books of the OT (twenty-four) in their specific ordering and according to a threefold division: Torah, Prophets, and Writings.  Since the tradition goes back to an earlier time, it is strong evidence that before the coming of Christ, there was a specific collection of books in the temple organized in a specific order according to a threefold division.[10]

Bava Batra states that along with the Torah, “the order of the Prophets  (Nevi’im) is – Joshua and Judges, Samuel and Kings, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets . . . . The order of the Writings (Ketuvim) is – Ruth and the Book of Psalms, and Job, and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Lamentations, Daniel, and the Scroll of Esther, Ezra, and Chronicles.”[11]

2.  Philo, a first century Jew, also refers to the tripartite division of the OT in On the Contemplative Life, which assumes a fixed collection of Scripture in the first century, and before the coming of Jesus.[12]

3.  Josephus in his book Contra Apion, also writing in the first century, says this about the OT Scriptures:

Our books, those which are justly accredited, are but two and twenty, and contain the record of all time.  Of these, five are the books of Moses.  . . . [T]he prophets subsequent to Moses wrote the history of the events of their own time in thirteen books.   The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.  We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own scriptures.  For although such long ages have now passes, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them.[13]

In particular, we know that Josephus’s twenty-two book canon is the same as our OT Scriptures (which is also the same as the standard twenty-four book Jewish canon), though organized a little differently.  He lists the thirteen books of the prophets as Joshua, Judges and Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets, and Daniel.  The four books of hymns and precepts are “probably a reference to Psalms, Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes.”[14]

What’s also significant about Josephus’s testimony is that he recognizes a closed canon.  To this list of books, he says, “no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable.”  Hence, when our Lord refers to the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Writings), he no doubt had this exact collection of books in mind.

In fact, in addition to Josephus, there is further proof that the canon of the OT was closed all the way back in the days of Nehemiah.  According to 2 Maccabees, “The same things are reported in the records and in the memoirs of Nehemiah and also that he founded a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets and the writings of David and letters of kings about votive offerings. In the same way Judas also collected all the books that had been lost on account of the war that had come upon us, and they are in our possession” (2:13-14, NRSV).  The Jews never included the books of the Maccabees in their canon; however, they did consider them to be generally historically reliable.  Here, we read the Nehemiah had a collection of books “about the kings and prophets and the writings of David and letters of kings about votive offerings.”  Though we don’t know exactly what is included in this library, it does point us to the fact that there was already even in Nehemiah’s day a recognized body of Scripture.

So what about that council of Jamnia that some scholars say is what determined the OT canon?  It turns out that this is a misrepresentation of the facts.  The council of Jamnia wasn’t interested in the canonicity of the OT, with maybe the exception of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon.  And as Wellum puts it, even with regard to these books, “the debate was not whether these books should be put into the canon; instead, it was whether they should remain in the canon, which assumes their prior canonical status.”[15]

Now what about the Apocrypha?  First of all, it should be noted that though the Roman Catholic Church does recognized it as Scripture, it took it until 1546 at the Council of Trent to formally recognized it as such.  However, this is not the way the Jewish community saw the Apocrypha, who have never accepted it as Scripture.  Even though they and the early Christians read it and quoted it, they never did so as Scripture.  As Wellum notes, “the acceptance of the Apocrypha was more of a Christian phenomenon, a slow, irregular, and adverse development.”[16]  It was rejected at the Council of Laodicea in AD 360 as well as by the church fathers Origin, Jerome, and Athanasius.

But what is more problematic is the nature of the Apocrypha itself.  It doesn’t even grant itself the kind of inspiration needed of the Scripture.  The author of Maccabees admits, at the end of the second book, “If it is well told and to the point, that is what I myself desired; if it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could do” (2 Macc. 15:38, NRSV).  Indeed, the author seems to recognize that by the time he was writing, prophecy had ceased (“So there was great distress in Israel such as had not been since the time a prophet had last appeared among them.” 1 Macc. 9:27, NRSV). 

Further, there are problems with the claims of the Apocrypha, which contradict the rest of Scripture. Wellum notes:

Judith wrongly identifies Nebuchadnezzar as king of the Assyrians (1:1, 7).  Tobit endorses the use of burning the liver of a fish to turn away demons because they cannot cope with its smell.  Tobit claims to have been alive when Jeroboam revolted (931 BC) and when Assyria conquered Israel (722 BC), which is not possible (1:3-5; 14:11).  There is also the endorsement of prayers and atonement for the deed (2 Macc. 12:39-46), which has no other Biblical warrant.[17]

One might point to Jude’s quotation of 1 Enoch and The Assumption of Moses in his letter as examples of a NT writer thinking of books not in our canon as Scripture.  Technically, these are not part of either the Jewish canon or of the Apocrypha, but are part of a collection of intertestamental writings called the Pseudepigrapha.  However, we must note that Jude does not quote these as Scripture.  He does not say, for example, “As it is written,” or “as the Holy Spirit says,” which is the typical way the NT authors introduce quotations from the OT.  This is no more a validation of these books as Scripture than Paul quoting pagan writers (such as Epimenides in Titus 1:12) makes their works a part of the Biblical canon.

Conclusion

What have we demonstrated?  We have shown that

1.  The evidence in the OT itself is that the books of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, were accepted as Scripture at the very time they were written down.  This has to do with the fact that the men who wrote them were the prophets of God, who were recognized by the people of God as such.

2.  The evidence to the OT by our Lord and by other outside sources such as Josephus shows that the canon of the OT was a known body of literature whose boundaries were well known. 

3.  The evidence shows that the OT canon was closed before the time of Christ and possibly even in the days of Nehemiah. 

4.  This evidence also shows that the books in the OT canon that was recognized by the Jewish people and by our Lord are exactly the same books (though perhaps in a different order) that we have in our OT today.  We shouldn’t therefore include books from the Pseudepigrapha and the Apocrypha in our OT Bibles (though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t read them).

In short, we can have genuine confidence that the OT contains all of God’s written and inspired words for his people before the coming of Christ and the writing down of the NT.

[1] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? (Downers Grove: IVP, 2001), p. 29-30.

[2] The books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees. Along with these books, the Roman Catholic Church also accepts additions to Esther, Daniel, and Jeremiah.

[3] Quoted in Stephen Wellum, Systematic Theology: From Canon to Concept (Brentwood: B&H, 2024), p. 369.

[4] See https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1405.htm.  This is from chapter 5 of his Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus.   

[5] Chapter 1, Paragraph 5 of the 1689 LBCF.  Note the careful distinction by Francis Turretin: “So if it is asked why or on account of what I believe Scripture to be of divine quality, I will reply that this happens through Scripture itself which proves itself to be such by its marks. If it is asked how or by what it happens that I believe, I will reply, by the Holy Spirit, who produces this faith within me. Finally, if it is asked by what means or organ I believe this, I will reply, through the church, which God uses in giving me Scripture” [Institutes of Elenctic Theology, II.vi.vi.].

[6] Kaiser, p. 31.

[7] Wellum, p. 377.

[8] Kaiser, p. 32.

[9] Kaiser, p. 32.

[10] Wellum, p. 374-375.

[11] Ibid., footnote 38.

[12] Ibid. p. 377.

[13] Kaiser, p. 35.

[14] Wellum. P. 376

[15] Ibid., p. 372.

[16] Ibid., p. 382.

[17] Ibid.