Following the example of Jesus, His apostles frequently referenced the accepted Jewish scriptures as they taught about His life, mission, atoning sacrifice, and resurrection. Matthew opens his Gospel with a genealogy connecting Jesus to King David and back to Abraham. He frames each major event at the beginning of Jesus’ life—the virgin birth, the visit of the wise men, Herod’s massacre of infants in Bethlehem, and the family’s migration to Egypt and back to Nazareth—as a fulfillment of prophecy. (See Matthew 1:22-23; 2:4-6, 14-18, 23.)
Peter explained the miracle on the day of Pentecost by quoting from the books of Joel and Psalms. (See Acts 2:14-36.) The epistle to the Hebrews shows how institutions established in the Torah, including the priesthood, sacrifices, and the tabernacle, prefigure the ministry of Jesus and presents Him as the ultimate realization of those earthly symbols. And Paul, who was himself a former Pharisee and well-versed in Hebrew scripture, promised church members in Corinth that the Spirit of the Lord could remove the “veil” which covered their minds, so that they could see the glory of God in those ancient scriptures and be changed by it. (See 2 Corinthians 3:14-18.)
As the church expanded beyond Israel, early Christians relied heavily on a Greek translation of Israel’s scriptures known as the Septuagint. This library of scrolls, completed about 150 years before the birth of Jesus, included the Torah, the prophets, some of the writings, and a number of other books. Collectively, these documents eventually came to be known as ta biblia (τα βιβλία), which means “the writings” or “the documents.” In modern Greek, biblia means “books,” but books as we know them didn’t exist at the time. The main point is that the word biblia, the predecessor of the English word Bible, was a generic word to describe a library, not a single book.
In about the year 200 CE, a theologian named Tertullian began using the term “Old Testament” to describe the Hebrew scriptures. He borrowed this term from 2 Corinthians 3:14, where Paul refers to the Jewish scriptures as the palaias diathēkēs (παλαιᾶς διαθήκης), which means “old covenant,” as contrasted with the “new covenant” established by Christ at the Last Supper. (See Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25.) The Latin version of this term was vetus testamentum, and that term became the accepted label for all of the scriptures which preceded the life of Jesus.
In the fourth century, under the leadership of Constantine, Christians began producing codices, bound volumes which function like modern books. Now that all of these writings could be included in a single document, the order of the books became important. Instead of adopting the Jewish groupings of law, prophets, and writings, Christians began to organize the Old Testament in a way that emphasized the sacred history. The five books of Moses, now commonly called the Pentateuch, already traced events from the Creation through the death of Moses. By reclassifying some of the other books as historical, that story line could continue all the way through the Babylonian exile and the reconstruction of the temple. The non-historical books were then grouped into two categories: wisdom and poetry, including the books of Psalms and Proverbs, and the prophets, which were divided into the relatively long books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel (the greater prophets) and twelve relatively shorter books (the lesser prophets). In subsequent centuries, there was substantial variation in the ordering of the books, but by the publication of the Paris Bible in about 1230 CE, the structure of the Old Testament as we know it today had become standardized.
- The Pentateuch (5 books): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
- History (12 books): Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
- Wisdom and Poetry (5 books): Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
- The Prophets (17 books)
- The Greater Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel
- The Lesser Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
The Old Testament’s structure reflects how early Christians read Israel’s scriptures as sacred history testifying of Christ.
Today I will seek the guidance of the Holy Ghost as I study the scriptures, trusting Paul’s promise that God can remove the veil from my mind and enable me to receive light and truth by studying His word.