The Origin of the Bible - Flipbook - Page 16
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THE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE
Samuel, and Kings; and the “Latter Prophets,” comprising Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and “The Book of the Twelve Prophets.” The
Writings contain the rest of the books: first are Psalms, Proverbs,
and Job; then the five “Scrolls,” namely Song of Songs, Ruth,
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther; and finally Daniel, EzraNehemiah, and Chronicles. The total is traditionally reckoned
as twenty-four, but these twenty-four correspond exactly to our
common reckoning of thirty-nine, since in the latter reckoning
the Minor Prophets are counted as twelve books, and Samuel,
Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah as two each. There were
other ways of counting the same twenty-four books in antiquity;
in one (attested by Josephus) the total was brought down to
twenty-two; in another (known to Jerome) it was raised to twentyseven.
The origin of the arrangement of books in the Hebrew Bible
cannot be traced; the threefold division is frequently believed to
correspond to the three stages in which the books received canonical recognition, but there is no direct evidence for this.
In the Septuagint the books are arranged according to similarity of subject matter. The Pentateuch is followed by the historical
books, these are followed by the books of poetry and wisdom,
and these by the prophets. It is this order that, in its essential features, is perpetuated (via the Vulgate) in most Christian editions
of the Bible. In some respects this order is truer to chronological sequence of the narrative contents than that of the Hebrew
Bible; for example, Ruth appears immediately after Judges (since
it records things that happened “in the days when the judges
ruled”; Ruth 1:1), and the work of the chronicler appears in the
order Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
The threefold division of the Hebrew Bible is reflected in the
wording of Luke 24:44 (“the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the
Psalms”); more commonly the New Testament refers to “the Law