The Scriptures.

The Jews of New Testament times, including Jesus, regarded the Old Testament as

the word of God (John 10:35). At that time they had come to think of their Scripture as

composed of three groups of books: the Law, the five books of Moses; the Prophets, including

many books of history as well as most of the books of prophecy; and the Writings,

including the Psalms and many other books of our Old Testament (Luke 24:44). In their

minds the books of the Law came from God through Moses (John 7:19, 9:28-29). Moses was

insistent that the commandments and the other things he wrote should be received and kept as

coming from God (Deut. 6:6; 31:9-13, 24-26) and from the time of the settlement in the land

of Caanan these books of Moses were regarded as God’s law (Josh. 1:8; 8:32-36). There

were, however, long periods of neglect of the law. At the time of the captivity the Jews must

have been permitted to take with them to Babylon copies of the law and of other treasured

books — history and prophecy and the Psalms and books of wisdom. A new interest in the

study of the law was stirred during the Babylonian Exile. At that time the Jewish captives,

being in a strange land and deprived of their temple and their sacrificial system would gather

in groups for a study of the law, the singing of the Psalms and prayer (Ezek. 8:1; Ps. 137).

Ezra who lived first at Babylon and then at Jerusalem shortly before the close of the

Old Testament period, is credited with bringing together the books of the Old Testament. He

was of the priestly family and he also designated himself “a ready scribe” (Ezra 7:1-6, 12).

When he migrated to Jerusalem he aroused a lively interest in studying the sacred books so

that from his days the Scriptures were the principal influence among the Jewish people.

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew except for small portions of

Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezra which were written in Aramaic — a language closely resembling

Hebrew. About 250 B.C. a translation into Greek was made at Alexandria (Egypt) known as

the Septuagint because the work was done by seventy scholars. That translation was made

from a Hebrew text which differed slightly at many places from the text accepted by the

scribes (the Masoretic text), but the Septuagint was very influential in New Testament times.

In making quotations from the Old Testament, Jesus and the apostles would sometimes quote

from the Hebrew and sometimes from the Septuagint, and that fact accounts for some differences

between New Testament quotations from the Old Testament and the way those passages

read in our Old Testament.

Many Jews in the days of Jesus had come to give to traditional interpretations of the

law by the scribes equal weight of authority with the law itself. These are referred to in Matt.

15:2 and Mark 7:5 as the tradition of the elders. This tradition was gathered together in the

third century A.D. in a work known as the Mishnah. By the end of the fourth century it had

been enlarged with much other material into a voluminous work known as the Talmud, which

has been authoritative for Jewish rabbis down to the present.

The fourteen books which we know as the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical were in

existence in the days of Jesus. First Maccabees probably sets forth authentic history and

portrays inspiring examples of courageous loyalty to true religion; but the other books of this

collection are of little historical or religious value. It is possible that they influenced to some

extent the thought of the people of New Testament times. The early Christians, though they

permitted these books to be read for edification, considered them not so important as the

Canonical books.