The Old Testament is the Bible of the Hebrews and their Jewish descendants down to the present. In its general framework, the Old Testament is the account of God’s dealing with the Jews as his chosen people, customs, and ceremonies. The term Old Testament was devised by a Christian, Melito of Sardis, around 170 C.E to distinguish this part of the Bible from the New Testament. The names given to the Old Testament in the writings of the New Testament are; “The Scriptures” (Mathew;21:42), “Scripture” (2Peter;1:20), “The Holy Scriptures” (Roman;s1:2), “the Law” (John;12:34), “The Law of Moses, The Prophets, and The Psalms” (Luke;24:44), “The Law And The Prophets” (Mathew; 5:17), “The Old Covenant” (2Corinthians;3:14). Jewish Bible includes only the books known to Christians as the Old Testament.
Thirty Nine Books:
The Old Testament consists of thirty-nine books, concerned with the Hebrew God, Yahweh, and purports to be a history of the early Israelites. The arrangements of the Jewish and Christian canons differ considerably. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox versions of the Old Testament are slightly larger. The Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Old Testament place the books in the same sequence, but the Protestant version includes only those books found in the Bible of Judaism. The content of the Old Testament varies according to religious tradition, the Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Protestant canons all differing from each other as to which books they include.
Except for a few passages in Aramaic, the Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew. The composition of the various books of The Old Testament began in about 1000 B.C. and continued for more than a thousand years. Much oral material was included. This was repeated from father to son, revised over and over again, and then put into written form by various editors in different languages, under different circumstances; writers of almost every social rank, statesmen and peasants, kings, herdsmen, fishermen, priests, tax-gatherers, tentmakers; educated and uneducated, Jews and Gentiles; most of them unknown to each other, and writing at various periods during the space of about 1600 years. There is a break of 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The writers and editors often worked in different locales and in different time periods and were usually unaware of each other. Their work was primarily intended for local use and it is unlikely that any author foresaw that his work would be included in a “Bible.” No original manuscripts exist.
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