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  • From: "Joe Sprinkle" <jsprinkl AT tfc.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: The OT?
  • Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 20:12:57 -0400


> Every tradition tends to take for granted that its own traditional order is
> "inspired" to some extent.
> The common Christian tradition treats all the Jewish prophets and writings
> (and some of the Apocrypha for Orthodox, Catholics etc.) equally and
> arrange them thematically: History, Wisdom and Prophecy. But here, there is
> definitely significance to Malachi, last in the (Protestant) OT leading in
> to the birth of Jesus in Matthew, the prophecy of Elijah leading into his
> "double" John the Baptist.

It is interesting, however, that the Christian gospels seem to assume the
ordering of the Hebrew Bible rather than the ordering that developed in
later Christian tradition. Luke 11:51 (parallel Mt 23:35) reads "from the
blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar
and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this
generation." Abel was the first martyr of the Bible (Gen 4:8) while the
Zechariah refered to here was the son of Jehoiada who was stoned in the
courts of the LORD house because, speaking in the Spirit of the LORD he
rebuked the king and the people for violation of God's commands (2 Chr
24:20-24). Zechariah (c. 800 BC) was not chronologically the last martyr
(F.F. Bruce, THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE, 31 points to Uriah in Jer 26:20-23).
Rather he is the last martyr in the Bible read in the order of the Hebrew
Canon which places 2 Chronicles last. Hence this text assumes the
traditional Jewish canonical order is already established.

One other statement in the Gospels assume the same. Luke 24:44 refers to
the "Law, Prophets, and Psalms." This probably refers to the threefold
division of Torah, Nebiim and Ketubim, with the "writings" represented by
the metonym "Psalms", the first and largest of the writings.

Other references to the Law and Prophets (Mt 5:17; 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Lk
16:16; John 1:45; Acts 13:15; 24:14; 28:23; Rom 3:21) seem to be short for
"Law, Prophets, Psalms/Writings" and hence equivalent to the Jewish Canon.

This leads me to think that the earliest church, including Luke and Paul,
when it was still close to its Jewish roots, accepted an order for the
books of the "Old Testament" more or less (if not exactly) the same as the
order of books in the Jewish Canon.

Joe Sprinkle




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