How Many Books Are In The Old Testament?
How Can One Know For Sure?
(Popes and Councils Proved To Be In Error)
Examine the Old Testament listing of books in a Catholic, and a
Protestant Bible, and you will normally find a discrepancy. You will
find several more books in the Catholic Old Testament than in the
Protestant Bible, the Protestant counting 39 and the Catholic counting
some 46 or 47 books. The extra books in the Catholic Bible are referred
to as the Apocryphal, or Deuterocanonical books, by Protestants and
Catholic respectively. Apocrypha means "hidden", and Deuterocanonical
means "second canon". This raises the obvious question, who has the
correct list of books in their Old Testaments, the Protestant or the
Catholic? (The New Testament is identical in the Protestant and
Catholic Bibles.) For the disputed Old Testament there need not be any
doubt as to who's list of books is correct, Catholic or Protestant,
because the New Testament actually tells us not once, not twice, but three
times. But first, let's begin with the following passage:
Rom 3:1 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is
there of circumcision?
Rom 3:2 Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were
committed the oracles of God.
Now in the Roman Catholic Douay Rheims translation that reads:
Rom 3:1 What advantage then hath the Jew, or what is the profit
of circumcision?
Rom 3:2 Much in every way. First indeed, because the words of God were
committed to them.
So the word of God was committed originally to the Jews. As the
designated custodians of the inspired word of God, they knew which
books were canonical, and which were not, and they knew this without
the assistance of the yet to appear Catholic Church.
Now, on to our quotes defining the Old Testament canon.
Christ Declares The Hebrew
Canon The Word of God.
Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These
are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that
all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms,
concerning me.
Luke 24:45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might
understand the scriptures,
Here in the above verse, Jesus divides the written word of God
into three categories. The Hebrew Bible, known by the acronym TaNaKh,
has these three divisions, first the Torah, the first five
books of Moses, second the Nevi'im or Prophets, and third the Ketuvim
or Writings. Christ was appearing to the disciples shortly after His
resurrection and He was expounding to His disciples on the testimony of
the scriptures about Himself, from one end of the Bible to the other.
From the beginning at Moses; next to the prophets; and then on to the
last division that began with Psalms; Christ explained from the Hebrew
Bible, the TaNaKh, how it revealed Him to be the Messiah.
Next, note this passage in which Jesus is chastising the scribes
and Pharisees:
Mat 23:29 Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and
garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
Mat 23:30 And say, If we had been in the days of
our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of
the prophets.
Mat 23:31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto
yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
Mat 23:32 Fill ye up then the measure of your
fathers.
Mat 23:33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Mat 23:34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and
crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and
persecute them from city to city:
Mat 23:35 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.
Mat 23:36 Verily I say unto you, All
these things shall come upon this generation.
Here the scribes and Pharisees are boldly proclaiming that had
they lived in the times of their forefathers, they would not
have stoned the prophets of God, that they would have known better. But
Jesus says they have persecuted men of God just as their fathers had,
and that they would continue to do so (v. 34). Then note what
is said in the next verse "... from the
blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias"... .
What could Jesus be referring to? Well, Abel was murdered in the book
of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. And Zacharias? What book is
his murder related in? Well let's look at our third text, a parallel
passage, first:
Luke 11:51 From the blood of Abel unto
the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the
temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.
Luke 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for
ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered.
Note that Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of taking away
the key of knowledge. What key is that? And what is God requiring of
that generation? The answer is in the phrase "From
the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias ...". Well,
again, Abel was slain in the first book of the Bible (Gen
4:8). Now those Protestants who anticipate the answer might begin
looking for the murder of Zacharias in the book of Malachi. Why?
Because Jesus is again referring to the full breadth of the scriptures
(the key of knowledge, the oracles of God), from the first book of the
Old Testament, to the last book of the Old Testament. A Protestant
therefore, might well open their Bible to search in the last book of
the Old Testament, Malachi, for the martyrdom of Zacharias. However,
Malachi is not the last book of the Hebrew TaNaKh! What? That is
correct. The Hebrew Bible, though identical in content to the
Protestant Old Testament, is not in the same order as
Protestant or Catholic Bibles. In the Hebrew Bible the last
book is the book of Chronicles. That is where we find the
murder of Zechariah between the altar and the temple:
2 Chr 24:20 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah
the son of Jehoiada* the priest, which stood
above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye
the commandments of the LORD, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have
forsaken the LORD, he hath also forsaken you.
2 Chr 24:21 And they conspired against him, and stoned him with
stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the
LORD.
2 Chr 24:22 Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which
Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he
died, he said, The LORD look upon it, and require it.
It is worth noting that while Abel was the first martyr, Zechariah
is not the last in the Old Testament, chronologically
speaking. That was the prophet Urijah, killed by king Jehoiakim in
Jeremiah 26:20-23, more than a century after the martyrdom of Zechariah:
- King Joash, who had Zechariah stoned within the temple's court
(2 Chr 24:20-22), was the 13th king of the northern kingdom of Israel,
and he ruled from 798-782 B.C.
- King Jehoiakim, who slew Urijah with a sword (Jer 26:20-23),
was the 18th ruler of the southern kingdom of Judah, and he reigned
from 609-598 B.C.
Had Jesus been speaking chronologically, (from the first martyr to
the last) He would have said - from the blood of Able unto the
blood of Urijah, but that is not what He intended. He was clearly
saying from the first book of scripture, to the last book of
scripture. Therefore, in Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:51, and in Luke
24:44, Jesus was explicitly referring to the order and divisions of the
books in the Hebrew Bible as the complete span of scripture.
The following table shows the collective logical result of the
quotes of Jesus. Note particularly that the third division of scripture
is defined as beginning at Psalms and ending with 2 Chronicles.
TaNaKh
(Hebrew Bible As Delineated By Christ) |
| The Law |
The Prophets |
The Writings |
| Genesis - Deuteronomy |
Joshua - Malachi |
Psalms - 2 Chronicles |
Already in apostolic times, long before any Roman Catholic
councils, this same Hebrew Bible, the TaNaKh, was being
referred to by the Christians as the Old Testament.
2 Cor 3:14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day
remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old
testament; which veil is done away in Christ.
* Son of Barachias - Son of Jehoiada: Some
Catholics may object that there is a discrepancy between 2 Chr 24:20
and Matt. 23:35, that they refer to two different people because of the
seeming difference in fathers. So why the seeming discrepancy in
lineage? The author of the book of Zechariah (about 520 B.C.) was "the
son of Berechiah, the [grand]son of Iddo the prophet" (Zec 1:1,7),
however, there is no record of his being martyred at the temple. It may
be that "son of Barachias" in Matt. 23:35 is the result of a scribal
insertion, in a mistaken effort to clarify the text. Because the
parallel passages of Luke 11:51 and Matt. 23:35 both state that
Zechariah perished between the altar and the temple, it is clearly the same Zechariah mentioned in
2 Chronicles 24:20-21, which is also well documented in other Jewish
literature.
The Altered Grouping and Ordering of
Books
in the Greek Septuagint
The Alexandrian canon
The Old Testament as it has come down in Greek translation from
the Jews of Alexandria via the Christian Church differs in many
respects from the Hebrew Scriptures. The books of the second and third
divisions have been redistributed and arranged according to categories
of literature -- history, poetry, wisdom, and prophecy.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
B. THE CANON AMONG THE ALEXANDRIAN JEWS
(DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS)
It is a
significant fact that in all these Alexandrian Bibles the traditional
Hebrew order is broken up by the interspersion of the additional
literature among the other books, outside the law, thus [in the opinion
of the Catholic writer] asserting for the extra writings a substantial
equality of rank and privilege.
Canon of the Old
Testament entry, Catholic Encyclopedia Online.
It is this striking change in grouping and sequencing of books in
the Greek Septuagint that so eloquently testifies to the fact that in
the above quotes from Jesus Christ, He was referring not to the
Septuagint, which included apocryphal books not found in the Hebrew
canon, but to the original TaNaKh, the Hebrew Bible, which excludes
the apocryphal books. Yet, Catholic Tradition largely accepted the
books of the Greek Septuagint as the canon of the Old Testament. Note
below the significant variations in content and ordering of books in
the oldest existing copies of the Septuagint, and that no two are
exactly alike.
While many have previously believed that Christ and
the Apostles used the Greek Septuagint because it was the common tongue
of the day, the recent discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran
proves conclusively that the Old Testament was available in
Hebrew in Israel at the time of Christ. Note the following verse:
Matt. 5:18 For amen I say unto you, till heaven and
earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all
be fulfilled.
A Catholic Bible commentary says the following about
the above verse:
jot or tittle: "Jot" refers to yôd, the
smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet; "tittle" is a slight serif on a
Hebrew letter that distinguishes it from another, similarly formed
letter.
Source: The New Jerome Bible Commentary, copyright 1990, 1968,
by Prentice Hall, Inc., ISBN 0-13-614934-0, page 641.
So it would seem, based on the above Catholic
commentary, that Catholics do, in fact, accept that Christ was
referring to scripture in the Hebrew language, and NOT a Greek
translation!
So the New Testament, recognized unanimously by
Catholics and Protestants alike as the inspired word of God, clearly
indicates through the words of Jesus Christ that the Hebrew Bible, the
TaNaKh, contains all the inspired canonical books of the Old Testament.
This excludes as spurious, and non-canonical, the Apocryphal or
Deuterocanonical books found in Catholic Bibles, which are colored red
in the above tables, and proves that Catholic definitions of the canon
by Popes and Councils, to include the "infallible" declaration of
Trent, are in error.
Definitions of the Canon of Scripture
Frequently Cited By Catholics
360 - Synod
of Laodicea (Canon LX) [Omits most of the apocrypha]
382 - Synod of Rome (Pope
Damasus / Decretal of Gelasius), Roman Code lists the canon
393 - Council of Hippo
(Canon XXXVI)
397 to 419 - First /
Second Council of Carthage (Canon XXIV - Greek xxvii.)
405 - Canon of Pope
Innocent I (letter to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse)
787 - Second
Council of Niceae (ratifies Council of Carthage/African code)
1442 - Council of
Florence (Session 11)
1545 - Council of
Trent (first ecumenical council to define the canon)
The Protestant Bible of 66 books, while it contains
the same 39 Old Testament canonical books as the Hebrew TaNaKh, does
not retain the original grouping and order cited by Jesus Christ,
rather, it follows the order of the Latin Vulgate used by the Council
of Trent in 1546, when it allegedly declared the Roman Catholic Canon
infallibly.
The Hebrew Bible (TaNaKh)
Online
The
TaNaKh (English Translation) is available at Amazon.com
Council of
Trent Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures
The Hebrew Bible
entry of the Catholic Encyclopedia Online.
Canon of the Old
Testament entry of the Catholic Encyclopedia Online.
The Septuagint
Version entry of the Catholic Encyclopedia Online.
A
Rebuttal to Catholic Apologetics International
on the Old Testament Canon
CAI's Wibisono Hartono Responds
Revised 7 Sept 2002
A
Challenge To The Scripture Expert At EWTN's Web Forum
On the Old Testament Canon
A
Challenge To The History Expert At EWTN's Web Forum
On the Old Testament Canon (11-12 Nov 2001)
A screen capture from EWTN's site.
