The Making of the Old Testament

 

Among the first things that were recorded in ancient societies were laws. In the Bible we read that the Ten Commandments, and possibly some other laws, were engraved on slabs of rock, but the Bible’s first reference to writing things down comes even before this, in Exodus 17:14. Later, we also read about the discovery of a “Book of the Law” during Josiah’s reign, in 622 BCE, and later again, after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon in 485 BCE, one of their leaders, Ezra, read out a “Book of the Law” to an assembly of all the people. By Ezra’s time, most of the people no longer understood the Hebrew of this book, so what it said had to be explained to them in their own language, Aramaic.

We have no way of knowing for certain what these books were, but it is traditionally believed that they may have been part of the book of the Bible called Deuteronomy. Other writings also came to be revered as revealing God’s word; some of these were historical works, some poetic, and some were the messages proclaimed by prophets. So the Old Testament as we have it today was written and collected by many people over a period of roughly a thousand years, from Moses’ day (around 1300 BCE) to around 300 BCE.

The Old Testament was first written down in Hebrew on scrolls of animal skin sewn together. Many of these scrolls were nearly a metre wide and 10 metres long. Usually there was one “book” on each scroll, but some of the books were so long that they were written on two scrolls (for example, 1 and 2 Samuel). They were all written by hand, by trained copyists. The copies made were very accurate; the copyist had to look at every individual letter before writing it down. Often, the older copies were destroyed once the new ones were finished.

The Hebrew Bible is arranged in three sections: the Law, which we know as the Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy); the Prophets, which are in two parts, the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1& 2 Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea to Malachi); and the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 & 2 Chronicles).

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