How Did the Old Testament Get Here?

Preservation of the Originals

I’ve talked a little bit about the transmission of the New Testament Scriptures in previous posts, but now I’d like to turn briefly to how the Old Testament was transmitted. Unfortunately, so much of what we would like to know about how the Old Testament was past down is buried beneath the sands of time. However, this does not mean that we are uncertain concerning the words of Scripture. Rather, we have maximum security that God has fulfilled His promise to forever preserve His words.

Deuteronomy 31:9, 26 makes it very plain that Moses had the priests place the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, beside the Ark of the Covenant. So long as the Tabernacle and later the Temple were kept safe, the originals would have also remained safe. It is not unlikely that Joshua would have done the same with his book. These scrolls were discovered during a time of renovation of the Temple under King Josiah over 700 years later (2 Kings 22:8, 2 Chronicles 34:15). It was not unusual to hide such documents in foundation boxes or within walls, especially if there was fear of them being purposefully damaged or destroyed.

Samuel placed his writings, possibly including Judges and Ruth, “before the Lord” (1 Samuel 10:25), indicating that he originally followed the custom established by Moses and Joshua. The other books we classify as “history” seem to have been considered official state or religious documents (1 Chronicles 29:29, 2 Chronicles 16:11, 1 Kings 14:19) and therefore would have been stored either in the Temple library or the royal archive.

The poetic books of Psalms and Proverbs alone of the books of the Bible were compiled and arranged. This began in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 4:32) and continued beyond the time of Hezekiah. (Proverbs 25:1) Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon would have most likely remained in the royal archives since they were written by King Solomon.

As early as the time of Daniel (Daniel 9), we find that the writings of the Prophets are recognized as canon. Daniel refers to reading from Jeremiah when he prays and asks God to fulfill His promises mentioned in Jeremiah. The Prophets would have also been placed in libraries associated with the post-exilic Temple alongside the official records of Ezra and Nehemiah. While not considered canonical, 2 Maccabees 2:13 does record that Nehemiah founded a national archive of sorts in the Temple.

Witnesses to the Originals

The Masoretic Text is the traditional text of the modern Hebrew Bible and the vast majority of (if not all of) Christian translations. The Masoretes compiled, copied, and preserved copies of the Old Testament from AD 500 to 1100, and it is based on hundreds of manuscripts that are now lost to us or destroyed. The oldest surviving manuscripts of the Masoretic Text include Cairensis (AD 895), Aleppo (930), Leningradensis (1008), and the Damascus Pentateuch (late 9th century).

The Nash Papyrus was considered to be the oldest available example of the Old Testament until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scholars do not agree on a precise date for the copying of this papyrus, but the style of script dates it to the Hasmonean period (37 BC at the absolute latest). It is actually a liturgical or perhaps devotional book which consists of several passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 230 Old Testament manuscripts which include fragments or whole copies of every Old Testament book except for Esther. Some scholars have dated these manuscripts as being written around 225 BC. They are significant because, in the case of the Minor Prophets, they were copied only a few generations after the originals were penned. The Isaiah scroll (1QIsa-a), which was written 1000 years before the Aleppo Codex, agrees with the Masoretic Text in over 95% of the text. The remaining 5% of the text that did not agree with the Masoretic Text was due to slips of the pen and spelling errors.

While the Septuagint is an imperfect Greek translation of the original Hebrew Old Testament, it is important as a secondary witness to the Old Testament text. This is because it is proof of a coherent Hebrew text which existed before the time of the Masoretes or the Dead Sea Scrolls. As a translation, there are words that have been added for the sake of communicating the meaning of the original and there are variants based on translation philosophy and misinterpretation of the Hebrew language. The Chester Beatty Papyri (AD 200-400), Rylands Papyri (200-500), Vaticanus (400s), Sinaiticus (400-500), and Alexandrinus (500s) are all manuscripts of the Septuagint.

The Samaritan Pentateuch is a “modernized and expanded” copy of the first five books of the Old Testament. It was written 200-500 years before the time of Christ. There are a number of differences in spelling, but there are also around 6000 variants from the Masoretic Text. Since it was used in Samaritan worship as opposed to Jewish worship, these changes were most likely purposefully made to alter facts in favor of the Samaritans. Once again, the value of the Samaritan Pentateuch is not in making “corrections” to the Old Testament text, but in that it proves that a coherent biblical text existed hundreds of years before the time of Christ.

The Aramaic Targum and the Syriac Peshitta are Aramaic texts which consist of biblical translation, paraphrase, and commentary mingled together. You might consider them somewhat akin to the study Bibles of our day. They are useful for the purpose of comparison and are also witnesses to the existence of a coherent Old Testament text that had made its way to Jews and converted Gentiles living outside of Israel.

It is impossible to discuss the history of ancient Israel without understanding that God has directed that history and is an intrinsic part of it. If we fail to do so, we lose the concept of an all-powerful God, the literal fulfillment of prophecy, and a Bible that can be trusted. Believers have no choice to affirm the verbal, plenary inspiration and preservation of the Bible by God, and the evidence from history and biblical texts alike support this belief. Believers can truly have maximum security.