“We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us disagreeing and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be divine. . . .It is true our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of a like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time, and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our nation, is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one hath been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it has become natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines” (emphasis added).
This quotation from Josephus reveals:
- The Jews believed in verbal inspiration;
- The Jews received the canonical books because they were written by prophets;
- The Apocryphal books (to be discussed in a forthcoming article) and others were known not to have been written by prophets;
- The canon included all the 39 books in our Bible today and no others (the Hebrew canon of twenty-two books is the exact equivalent to the 39 books of our OT);
- The first and only listing of the OT books until about 170 A.D.;
- Josephus gave great prominence to prophetic authorship; and,
- Nno book was added to the Hebrew Scriptures after the time of Malachi (a contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah–the period of Artaxerxes).
- Our next article looks at the Apocryphal Books of the OT
- Return to our Introduction Post to see a list of all articles in this series.
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