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77-800: Jeshurun appears four times in the Hebrew Bible: three times in Deuteronomy and once in Isaiah . It can refer to the people of Israel ( Deuteronomy 32:15 33:26 ), the Land of Israel ( Deuteronomy 33:5 ), or the Patriarch Jacob (whom an angel renamed Israel in Genesis 32:29 ): The word Jeshurun may have a relationship to the same root as the Hebrew word meaning 'upright' or 'righteous', yashar . Numbers appears to use

154-501: A blueprint for the rest of the book, as chapters 12–26 are the exposition of the Decalogue, thus the expanded Decalogue. (The following "literary" outline of Deuteronomy is from John Van Seters ; it can be contrasted with Alexander Rofé's "covenantal" analysis in his Deuteronomy: Issues and Interpretation . ) The final verses, Deuteronomy 34:10–12, "never again did there arise in Israel

231-621: A different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim . This order is also cited in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah is universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity. The disputed books, included in most canons but not in others, are often called the Biblical apocrypha , a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe

308-822: A few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version. Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon. Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate , formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of the stories of the Pentateuch may derive from older sources. Scholars such as Andrew R. George point out

385-455: A long retelling of Israel's past disobedience – but also God's gracious care, leading to a long call to Israel to choose life over death and blessing over curse (chapters 7–11). Deuteronomy's concept of God changed over time. The earliest 7th century layer is monolatrous ; not denying the reality of other gods but enforcing only the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem. In the later, Exilic layers from

462-518: A number of short appendices or some kind of epilogue (31:1–34:12), consist of commission of Joshua, the song of Moses and the death of Moses. Other scholars have compared the structure of Deuteronomy with Hittite treaties or other ancient Near Eastern treaty texts. But it is clear that Deuteronomy is not in itself simply the text of a treaty, as Deuteronomy is more than simply applying the secular model of treaty to Israel's relationship with God. The Ten Commandments (Decalogue) in chapter 5 serve as

539-583: A pre-existing relationship between God and Israel, established with Abraham and attested to by the Exodus event, so that the laws of Deuteronomy set the nation of Israel apart, signaling the unique status of the Jewish nation. The land is God's gift to Israel, and many of the laws, festivals and instructions in Deuteronomy are given in the light of Israel's occupation of the land. Dillard and Longman note that "In 131 of

616-512: A professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh , identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC, Jews saw the five books of

693-477: A prophet like Moses ," make a claim for the authoritative Deuteronomistic view of theology and its insistence that the worship of Yahweh as the sole deity of Israel was the only permissible religion, having been sealed by the greatest of prophets. Deuteronomy 12–26, the Deuteronomic Code , is the oldest part of the book and the core around which the rest developed. It is a series of mitzvot ( commands ) to

770-592: A school known as biblical minimalism rejected the historical value of the Hebrew Bible for the study of ancient Israel during the Iron Age, "but this extreme approach was rejected by mainstream scholarship." The first five books— Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , book of Numbers and Deuteronomy —reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC) , and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled

847-521: A set period and be followed by the other-worldly age or World to Come . Some thought the Messiah was already present, but unrecognised due to Israel's sins; some thought that the Messiah would be announced by a forerunner, probably Elijah (as promised by the prophet Malachi , whose book now ends the Old Testament and precedes Mark 's account of John the Baptist ). However, no view of the Messiah as based on

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924-669: Is based on the belief that the historical Jesus is also the Christ , as in the Confession of Peter . This belief is in turn based on Jewish understandings of the meaning of the Hebrew term Messiah , which, like the Greek "Christ", means "anointed". In the Hebrew Scriptures, it describes a king anointed with oil on his accession to the throne: he becomes "The L ORD 's anointed" or Yahweh's Anointed. By

1001-518: Is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus , these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on

1078-410: Is much more probable that it is derived from ישׁר, jashar , to be right, upright, or righteous, and that they are called Jeshurun, because they were a people professing righteousness, and were governed by righteous laws". Deuteronomy Deuteronomy ( Ancient Greek : Δευτερονόμιον , romanized :  Deuteronómion , lit.   'second law'; Latin : Liber Deuteronomii )

1155-594: Is neither read nor held among the Hebrews, but does not explicitly call it apocryphal or "not in the canon". The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419) , may be the first council that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes the books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible ; the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo , who regarded

1232-703: Is the New Testament , written in Koine Greek . The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over a period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (which corresponds to the Jewish Torah ); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon ;

1309-633: Is the fifth book of the Torah (in Judaism ), where it is called Devarim ( Biblical Hebrew : דְּבָרִים ‎ , romanized:  Dəḇārīm , lit.   '[the] words [of Moses ]') and the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament . Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to the Israelites by Moses on the Plains of Moab , shortly before they enter

1386-423: Is to worship , or the one "true God", that only Yahweh (or YHWH ) is Almighty. The Old Testament stresses the special relationship between God and his chosen people , Israel, but includes instructions for proselytes as well. This relationship is expressed in the biblical covenant (contract) between the two, received by Moses . The law codes in books such as Exodus and especially Deuteronomy are

1463-582: The Septuagint (Latin for 'Seventy') from the supposed number of translators involved (hence its abbreviation " LXX "). This Septuagint remains the basis of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox Church . It varies in many places from the Masoretic Text and includes numerous books no longer considered canonical in some traditions: 1 Esdras , Judith , Tobit , the books of Maccabees ,

1540-476: The Babylonian exile ) upon his people. The theme is played out, with many variations, in books as different as the histories of Kings and Chronicles, the prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah , and in the wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes. The process by which scriptures became canons and Bibles was a long one, and its complexities account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim,

1617-561: The Book of Wisdom , Sirach , and Baruch . Early modern biblical criticism typically explained these variations as intentional or ignorant corruptions by the Alexandrian scholars, but most recent scholarship holds it is simply based on early source texts differing from those later used by the Masoretes in their work. The Septuagint was originally used by Hellenized Jews whose knowledge of Greek

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1694-567: The Catholic canon comprises 46 books; and the most common of the Protestant canons comprises 39 books. There are 39 books common to essentially all Christian canons. They correspond to the 24 books of the Tanakh , with some differences of order, and there are some differences in text. The greater count of books reflects the splitting of several texts ( Samuel , Kings , Chronicles , Ezra–Nehemiah , and

1771-479: The Dead Sea Scrolls . In general, Catholic and Orthodox churches include the deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament. Most Protestant Bibles do not include them in their canon, but some versions of Anglican and Lutheran Bibles place such books in a separate section called Apocrypha . The Old Testament contains 39 (Protestant), 46 (Catholic), or more (Orthodox and other) books, divided, very broadly, into

1848-504: The Hellenistic time (332–198 BC), though containing much older material as well; Job was completed by the 6th century BC; Ecclesiastes by the 3rd century BC. Throughout the Old Testament, God is consistently depicted as the one who created the world. Although the God of the Old Testament is not consistently presented as the only god who exists , he is always depicted as the only God whom Israel

1925-529: The L ORD our God, the L ORD is one." Verses 6:4–5 were also quoted by Jesus in Mark 12:28–34 as the Great Commandment . Patrick D. Miller in his commentary on Deuteronomy suggests that different views of the structure of the book will lead to different views on what it is about. The structure is often described as a series of three speeches or sermons (chapters 1:1–4:43, 4:44–29:1, 29:2–30:20) followed by

2002-620: The Mosaic covenant was superseded by faith in Jesus and the gospel (the New Covenant ). Old Testament The Old Testament ( OT ) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon , which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible , or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites . The second division of Christian Bibles

2079-706: The Pentateuch (Torah) , the historical books , the "wisdom" books and the prophets. The table below uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Christian Bible, such as the Catholic New American Bible Revised Edition and the Protestant Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version . The spelling and names in both the 1609–F10 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament ) and

2156-495: The Promised Land . The first sermon recounts the forty years of wilderness wanderings which had led to that moment and ended with an exhortation to observe the law. The second sermon reminds the Israelites of the need to follow Yahweh and the laws (or teachings) he has given them, on which their possession of the land depends. The third sermon offers the comfort that, even should the nation of Israel prove unfaithful and so lose

2233-603: The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition ) use the same "standardized" (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g. 1 Chronicles as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings instead of 1–4 Kings) in those books which are universally considered canonical: the protocanonicals . The Talmud (the Jewish commentary on the scriptures) in Bava Batra 14b gives

2310-565: The Temple at that time. The books of Joshua , Judges , Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c.  587 BC . There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called " Deuteronomistic History ") during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much

2387-688: The Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC, the Prophets had a similar status, although without quite the same level of respect as the Torah; beyond that, the Jewish scriptures were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books. Hebrew texts began to be translated into Greek in Alexandria in about 280 BC and continued until about 130 BC. These early Greek translations – supposedly commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus – were called

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2464-590: The Twelve Minor Prophets ) into separate books in Christian Bibles. The books that are part of the Christian Old Testament but that are not part of the Hebrew canon are sometimes described as deuterocanonical books . These books are ultimately derived from the earlier Septuagint , the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and are also Jewish in origin. Some are also contained in

2541-594: The Zohar , Rabbi Hiya explains that "Jeshurun suggests the word shur [row, side] and indicates that he [Jacob] has his rank on this side and on the other." (Zohar 1:177b.) In the Chassidic discourses of the Baal Shem Tov and his students, it is suggested that the word Yeshurun comes from the root "shir", meaning song or ring, suggesting the circular nature of melodies, i.e. that Jacob's descendants will sing mystical melodies in

2618-423: The exilic or postexilic periods (597–332 BC). The second prologue (Ch. 5–11) was the next section to be composed, and then the first prologue (Ch. 1–4); the chapters following 26 are similarly layered. The prophet Isaiah , active in Jerusalem about a century before Josiah, makes no mention of the Exodus , covenants with God, or disobedience to God's laws. In contrast, Isaiah's contemporary Hosea , active in

2695-510: The 167 times the verb "give" occurs in the book, the subject of the action is Yahweh." Deuteronomy makes the Torah the ultimate authority for Israel, one to which even the king is subject. Deuteronomy 6:4–5: "Hear, O Israel ( shema Yisra'el ), the L ORD is our God, the L ORD is one!" has become the basic credo of Judaism , the Shema Yisrael , and its twice-daily recitation is a mitzvah (religious commandment). It continues, "Thou shalt love

2772-626: The 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions which are derived from the Hebrew Masoretic Text . For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For

2849-677: The Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as "Esaias" (for Isaiah ). In the spirit of ecumenism , more recent Catholic translations (e.g. the New American Bible , Jerusalem Bible , and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as

2926-519: The Deuteronomic Code, are the earliest section. Since the idea was first put forward by W. M. L. de Wette in 1805, most scholars have accepted that this portion of the book was composed in Jerusalem in the 7th century BC in the context of religious reforms advanced by King Hezekiah (reigned c. 716–687 BC), although some have argued for other dates, such as during the reign of his successor Manasseh (687–643 BC) or even much later, such as during

3003-650: The Hebrew, Greek and Latin versions of the Hebrew Bible are the best known Old Testaments, there were others. At much the same time as the Septuagint was being produced, translations were being made into Aramaic, the language of Jews living in Palestine and the Near East and likely the language of Jesus : these are called the Aramaic Targums , from a word meaning "translation", and were used to help Jewish congregations understand their scriptures. For Aramaic Christians, there

3080-465: The Israelites regarding how they should conduct themselves in the Promised Land . Mosaic authorship of the Torah, the belief that the five books of the Torah – including the Book of Deuteronomy – were dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, is an ancient Jewish tradition that was codified by Maimonides (1135–1204 AD) as the 8th of the 13 Jewish principles of faith . Virtually all modern secular scholars, and most Christian and Jewish scholars, reject

3157-452: The L ORD thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might"; it has therefore also become identified with the central Jewish concept of the love of God, and the rewards that come as a result. In the Gospel of Matthew , Jesus cited Deuteronomy 6:5 as a Great Commandment . The earliest Christian authors interpreted Deuteronomy's prophecy of the restoration of Israel as having been fulfilled (or superseded ) in Jesus Christ and

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3234-405: The Mosaic authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy and date the book much later, between the 7th and 5th centuries BC. Its authors were probably the Levite caste, collectively referred to as the Deuteronomist , whose economic needs and social status the book reflects. The historical background to the book's composition is currently viewed in the following general terms: Chapters 12–26, containing

3311-405: The Old Testament predicted a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of all people. The story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition. The name "Old Testament" reflects Christianity's understanding of itself as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a New Covenant (which is similar to "testament" and often conflated) to replace

3388-400: The Old Testament. Of the remainder, the books of the various prophets— Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel , and the twelve " minor prophets "—were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, with the exceptions of Jonah and Daniel , which were written much later. The "wisdom" books— Job , Proverbs , Ecclesiastes , Psalms , Song of Songs —have various dates: Proverbs possibly was completed by

3465-451: The Septuagint ( 3 Ezra and 3 and 4 Maccabees are excluded); the Anglicans after the English Civil War adopted a compromise position, restoring the 39 Articles and keeping the extra books that were excluded by the Westminster Confession of Faith , both for private study and for reading in churches but not for establishing any doctrine, while Lutherans kept them for private study, gathered in an appendix as biblical apocrypha . While

3542-459: The Septuagint's, and Theodotion's. The so-called "fifth" and "sixth editions" were two other Greek translations supposedly miraculously discovered by students outside the towns of Jericho and Nicopolis : these were added to Origen's Octapla. In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople . Athanasius recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans . Little else

3619-419: The Western Church, specifically as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate , while the Churches in the East continued, and continue, to use the Septuagint. Jerome, however, in the Vulgate's prologues , describes some portions of books in the Septuagint not found in the Hebrew Bible as being non- canonical (he called them apocrypha ); for Baruch , he mentions by name in his Prologue to Jeremiah and notes that it

3696-407: The books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) , use the traditional name of anagignoskomena , meaning "that which is to be read." They are present in

3773-417: The canon as already closed. In the 16th century, the Protestant reformers sided with Jerome; yet although most Protestant Bibles now have only those books that appear in the Hebrew Bible, the order is that of the Greek Bible. Rome then officially adopted a canon, the Canon of Trent , which is seen as following Augustine's Carthaginian Councils or the Council of Rome , and includes most, but not all, of

3850-417: The canon. However, Jerome (347–420), in his Prologue to Judith , claims that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures". In Western Christianity or Christianity in the Western half of the Roman Empire , Latin had displaced Greek as the common language of the early Christians, and in 382 AD Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome ,

3927-429: The coming redemption. The Reformer John Calvin reflected that "by using the word 'upright' for Israel, [the author] ironically taunts them with having departed from rectitude, and, reminding them of the high dignity conferred upon them, more severely reproves their sin of unfaithfulness". Nineteenth century theologian Charles H. Waller argued that "Jeshurun is a diminutive—a term of endearment: either 'the child of

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4004-402: The covenant: "obedience is not primarily a duty imposed by one party on another, but an expression of covenantal relationship." Yahweh has elected Israel as his special property (Deuteronomy 7:6 and elsewhere), and Moses stresses to the Israelites the need for obedience to God and covenant, and the consequences of unfaithfulness and disobedience. Yet the first several chapters of Deuteronomy are

4081-538: The death of Moses was originally the ending of Numbers, and was simply moved from there to the end of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy stresses the uniqueness of God, the need for drastic centralisation of worship, and a concern for the position of the poor and disadvantaged. Its many themes can be organised around the three poles of Israel, Yahweh, and the covenant which binds them together. The themes of Deuteronomy in relation to Israel are election, faithfulness, obedience, and Yahweh's promise of blessings, all expressed through

4158-413: The establishment of the Christian Church (Luke 1–2, Acts 2–5), and Jesus was interpreted to be the "one (i.e., prophet) like me" predicted by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15 (Acts 3:22–23). While the exact position of Paul the Apostle and Judaism is still debated, a common view is that in place of mitzvah set out in Deuteronomy, Paul the Apostle , drawing on Deuteronomy 30:11–14, claimed that the keeping of

4235-421: The first and fundamental commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") the people have entered into relations with other gods. Dillard and Longman in their Introduction to the Old Testament stress the living nature of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel as a nation: The people of Israel are addressed by Moses as a unity, and their allegiance to the covenant is not one of obeisance, but comes out of

4312-418: The giving of establishment of the Law. The core of Deuteronomy is the covenant that binds Yahweh and Israel by oaths of fidelity and obedience. God will give Israel blessings of the land, fertility, and prosperity so long as Israel is faithful to God's teaching; disobedience will lead to curses and punishment. But, according to the Deuteronomists, Israel's prime sin is lack of faith, apostasy : contrary to

4389-447: The individual laws are older than the collection itself. The two poems at chapters 32–33 – the Song of Moses and the Blessing of Moses were probably originally independent. Deuteronomy occupies a puzzling position in the Bible, linking the story of the Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness to the story of their history in Canaan without quite belonging totally to either. The wilderness story could end quite easily with Numbers, and

4466-454: The introduction to the full history. But there is an older theory, which sees Deuteronomy as belonging to Numbers, and Joshua as a sort of supplement to it. This idea still has supporters, but the mainstream understanding is that Deuteronomy, after becoming the introduction to the history, was later detached from it and included with Genesis–Exodus–Leviticus–Numbers because it already had Moses as its central character. According to this hypothesis,

4543-467: The land, with repentance all can be restored. The final four chapters (31–34) contain the Song of Moses , the Blessing of Moses , and the narratives recounting the passing of the mantle of leadership from Moses to Joshua and, finally, the death of Moses on Mount Nebo . One of its most significant verses is Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema Yisrael , which has been described as the definitive statement of Jewish identity for theistic Jews: "Hear, O Israel:

4620-414: The leading scholar of the day, to produce an updated Latin Bible to replace the Vetus Latina , which was a Latin translation of the Septuagint. Jerome's work, called the Vulgate , was a direct translation from Hebrew, since he argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on both philological and theological grounds. His Vulgate Old Testament became the standard Bible used in

4697-436: The mid-6th century, especially chapter 4, this becomes monotheism , the idea that only one god exists. God is simultaneously present in the Temple and in heaven – an important and innovative concept called "name theology." After the review of Israel's history in chapters 1 to 4, there is a restatement of the Ten Commandments in chapter 5. This arrangement of material highlights God's sovereign relationship with Israel prior to

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4774-478: The name of Rabbi Judah b. Rabbi Simon interpreted Jeshurun to mean "the noblest and best among you." (Genesis Rabbah 77:1.) Rabbi Aha bar Jacob told that the breastplate of the High Priest (or Kohen Gadol) contained the Hebrew words for "The tribes of Jeshurun," thus supplying the otherwise missing Hebrew letter tet in the word " Shivtei " ("tribes"). (See Babylonian Talmud Yoma 73b for full explanation of "otherwise missing"; see also Exodus Rabbah 38:9.) In

4851-416: The northern kingdom of Israel , makes frequent references to the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, a covenant, the danger of foreign gods and the need to worship Yahweh alone. This discrepancy has led scholars to conclude that these traditions behind Deuteronomy have a northern origin. Whether the Deuteronomic Code was written in Josiah's time (late 7th century BC) or earlier is subject to debate, but many of

4928-402: The patriarchs" and "the unified conquest of the land" were widely accepted in the United States until about the 1970s. Contrarily, Grabbe says that those in his field now "are all minimalists – at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. ... [V]ery few are willing to operate [as maximalists]." In 2022, archaeologist Avraham Faust wrote that in the 1990s

5005-419: The poetic and " Wisdom books " dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world; and the books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The books that compose the Old Testament canon and their order and names differ between various branches of Christianity . The canons of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches comprise up to 49 books;

5082-413: The same material as the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history and probably date from the 4th century BC. Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah , was probably finished during the 3rd century BC. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain two (Catholic Old Testament) to four (Orthodox) Books of the Maccabees , written in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. These history books make up around half the total content of

5159-408: The similarity of the Genesis flood narrative and the Gilgamesh flood myth . Similarities between the origin story of Moses and that of Sargon of Akkad were noted by psychoanalyst Otto Rank in 1909 and popularized by 20th-century writers, such as H. G. Wells and Joseph Campbell . Jacob Bronowski writes that, "the Bible is ... part folklore and part record. History is ... written by

5236-427: The story of Joshua's conquests could exist without it, at least at the level of the plot. But in both cases there would be a thematic (theological) element missing. Scholars have given various answers to the problem. The Deuteronomistic history theory is currently the most popular. Deuteronomy was originally just the law code and covenant, written to cement the religious reforms of Josiah, and later expanded to stand as

5313-544: The term to refer to a pledge. Further themes in the Old Testament include salvation , redemption , divine judgment , obedience and disobedience, faith and faithfulness, among others. Throughout there is a strong emphasis on ethics and ritual purity , both of which God demands, although some of the prophets and wisdom writers seem to question this, arguing that God demands social justice above purity, and perhaps does not even care about purity at all. The Old Testament's moral code enjoins fairness, intervention on behalf of

5390-442: The terms of the contract: Israel swears faithfulness to God, and God swears to be Israel's special protector and supporter. However, The Jewish Study Bible denies that the word covenant ( brit in Hebrew) means "contract"; in the ancient Near East, a covenant would have been sworn before the gods, who would be its enforcers. As God is part of the agreement, and not merely witnessing it, The Jewish Study Bible instead interprets

5467-435: The time of Jesus, some Jews expected that a flesh-and-blood descendant of David (the " Son of David ") would come to establish a real Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem, instead of the Roman province of Judaea. Others stressed the Son of Man , a distinctly other-worldly figure who would appear as a judge at the end of time . Some expounded a synthesised view of both positions, where a messianic kingdom of this world would last for

5544-415: The upright', or 'the beloved Israel'". He suggested that "the letters of the diminutive of Israel, if slightly abbreviated, would make 'Jeshurun'". However, Joseph Benson noted that "some consider the word as being derived from שׁור, shur , to see, and think the appellation was given them because they were so highly favoured with divine manifestations". Benson himself dismissed this view, suggesting that "it

5621-479: The victors, and the Israelis , when they burst through [ Jericho ( c.  1400 BC )], became the carriers of history." In 2007, a historian of ancient Judaism Lester L. Grabbe explained that earlier biblical scholars such as Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) could be described as 'maximalist', accepting biblical text unless it has been disproven. Continuing in this tradition, both "the 'substantial historicity' of

5698-457: The vulnerable, and the duty of those in power to administer justice righteously. It forbids murder, bribery and corruption, deceitful trading, and many sexual misdemeanours . All morality is traced back to God, who is the source of all goodness. The problem of evil plays a large part in the Old Testament. The problem the Old Testament authors faced was that a good God must have had just reason for bringing disaster (meaning notably, but not only,

5775-630: The word yashar (in its plural form yesharim ) as a play on the word "Jeshurun" to refer to the people of Israel. ( Numbers 23:10 ). Joshua 10:13 refers to a Book of Jasher (or Book of Jashar), translated in some versions as "the Book of the Upright". In the Midrash , Rabbi Berekiah in the name of Rabbi Simon interpreted Jeshurun to mean the Patriarch Israel. ( Genesis Rabbah 77:1.) Similarly, Rabbi Berekiah in

5852-501: Was a Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Peshitta , as well as versions in Coptic (the everyday language of Egypt in the first Christian centuries, descended from ancient Egyptian ), Ethiopic (for use in the Ethiopian church , one of the oldest Christian churches), Armenian (Armenia was the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion), and Arabic . Christianity

5929-533: Was better than Hebrew. However, the texts came to be used predominantly by gentile converts to Christianity and by the early Church as its scripture, Greek being the lingua franca of the early Church. The three most acclaimed early interpreters were Aquila of Sinope , Symmachus the Ebionite , and Theodotion ; in his Hexapla , Origen placed his edition of the Hebrew text beside its transcription in Greek letters and four parallel translations: Aquila's, Symmachus's,

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