Gospel Doctrine

Back in November, I published an argument here in “Meridian” against the misuse of certain passages from the New Testament.  I had in mind people who want to argue that the canon of scripture was sealed shut with the completion of today’s Protestant Bible.  (See “The Case Against Sola Scriptura: From the Bible Itself.”)  https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-case-against-sola-scriptura-from-the-bible-itself/)

Now, in this column, I return to two of those passages with a purpose that might seem to be the complete opposite of what I previously argued.

The first passage is 2 Timothy 3:15-17, in which the apostle Paul is addressing his young protegé, Timothy.  In the King James translation, it reads as follows:

“From a child, thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

I argued that anybody using Paul’s words to Timothy to try to prove that the Book of Mormon and other Latter-day Saint texts are unnecessary is also, unwittingly, arguing that the New Testament, too, is redundant.  After all, the only scripture that Timothy knew as a child was what we today call the Old Testament; the New Testament hadn’t yet been written.

The second passage is John 5:29, which can be read either as a commandment, as in the King James Version (“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”), or as a simple statement of fact, as in the Revised Standard Version, or RSV (“You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me.”  (The original Greek allows either possibility.)

Here, too, any Christian who employs this passage against postbiblical revelation is sawing off the branch upon which he or she sits, for Jesus could only have been speaking of the Old Testament; the New Testament hadn’t come into existence until after the Savior’s death and resurrection.

Now, though, I want to emphasize the importance that these passages place upon what we usually call the Old Testament: Paul says that the scriptural texts that were available to Timothy as a child were sufficient “to make [him] wise unto salvation through faith . . . in Christ Jesus,” so that “the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”  And the Lord Jesus himself says that “they . . . testify of me.”

Why Take the Time for the Old Testament?

For the next year, the Church’s scripture-study curriculum will focus on the Old Testament, or what many refer to as the “Hebrew Bible.”  (Since Jews don’t accept what we call the “New Testament,” it’s much more diplomatic and respectful, in mixed audiences, to forego the Christian term for their scriptural canon, since it implicitly presumes the truth of the uniquely Christian New Testament.)  It’s no secret that many Latter-day Saints, like many other Christians, find the Old Testament intimidating, foreign, and sometimes difficult to understand.  We can hope, though, that, with faithful study, such feelings will be reduced.

Why?  Why should we make the effort?  Because the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is not only valuable in itself but essential for understanding what follows.  It was the only scripture that Timothy—and, for that matter, Paul himself—had while growing up.  It was the scripture upon which Jesus himself drew for his mortal ministry.  It was the scripture that the Nephites brought with them to the New World (and that the Mulekites, to their great cost, did not; see Omni 1:17).

When I was younger, I often saw editions of the New Testament published alone, or perhaps accompanied only by the Psalms.  I’m hoping that this is less common today than it once was, because a fully adequate understanding of Jesus is not possible without the Old Testament.  Nor can the New Testament be properly interpreted without seeing the background against which it was written.  Jesus and Christianity should not be severed from their Hebrew roots.  Moreover, to understand the Book of Mormon, clear as it is, and written for our day as it is, at least some grasp of basic Old Testament stories and events is needed.  In fact, a full appreciation of our own Latter-day Saint history, pioneers, and doctrine is only possible when we’re familiar with the Bible.  

Place names like Mount Pisgah, Mount Nebo, and Utah’s Jordan River, ideas such as Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods, the “Abrahamic covenant,” temples and tabernacles, the roles of prophets and patriarchs, Brigham Young as an “American Moses,” the “Mormon Exodus” from Nauvoo as “the wandering Camp of Israel,” and the concept of “Zion” are only intelligible on the basis of at least some acquaintance with the Hebrew Bible.

So, at the beginning of this curriculum year devoted to the Old Testament, let’s answer some basic questions about it.  These may be matters of common knowledge to many readers, but I’m guessing that some can profit from the following notes:

• Why is the Old Testament sometimes called the “Hebrew Bible”?  Because it was created by the Hebrew people in the Hebrew language, and because the term “Old Testament” is a Christian designation that implies inadequacy or incompleteness—an implication that Jews, of course, cannot accept.
• Was the Hebrew Bible written entirely in Hebrew?  The vast majority of the Old Testament was composed in Hebrew, a Semitic language related to such other tongues as Arabic and Babylonian.  However, small portions of it, especially in the books of Daniel and Ezra, seem to have been composed originally in Aramaic, another Semitic language that is closely related to Hebrew and that, for a time, was the common language of the Babylonian Empire.
• So the Old Testament wasn’t written in Greek?  No.  The New Testament was composed in Greek, wholly or in very large part.  The original authors of the Hebrew Bible didn’t know Greek, a language that only spread around the eastern Mediterranean with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the mid-fourth century before the birth of Jesus.  However, there is a very important ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the “Septuagint.”  Its name derives from the legend that it was translated by a committee of seventy (or seventy-two) scholars.  (“Septuaginta” is the Latin word for “seventy.”)
• Why, if the Septuagint is only a translation, is it still considered important?  By the third or second century before Christ, when the Septuagint originated, most Jews lived outside of the historical land of Israel and no longer spoke Hebrew.  So the Septuagint was created to meet their needs.  And because it is very old, it reflects how Jewish scholars of the time understood the Bible, and sometimes it seems to reflect manuscript variants that no longer survive.  (It is, by the way, the version of the Old Testament that is typically cited in the New Testament, which is sometimes distinguished from the “Hebrew Bible” as the “Greek Testament.”)
• Is the Hebrew Bible a single unified whole?  No.  From a certain perspective, the Old Testament is a curiously varied collection of miscellaneous documents.  It contains historical chronicles, poetry, proverbs, legal texts, and prophetic oracles from a diverse group of authors.  In a sense, it is a library.  So it is fitting that our word “Bible” comes from the Greek “biblia,” which is plural.  It means “books,” not merely “book.”
• What are the traditional divisions of the Old Testament?  Traditionally, Jews have divided their Bible, the Christians’ Old Testament, into three main parts: the Torah (the Law or Instruction, which includes the first five biblical books, also called the “Pentateuch”: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy); the Nevi’im (the “Prophets,” covering Israel’s history after the Torah, focusing on the “Former Prophets” from Joshua to Kings and the “Latter Prophets” such as Isaiah and Jeremiah; and, third, the Ketuvim ( “Writings,” which include a varied collection of poetic, wisdom, and historical books such as Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and Daniel).  From the initial letters of the Hebrew words for these three divisions comes the traditional Jewish name for the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, which is “TaNaKH” or “Tanakh.”
• What historical period is covered by the Hebrew Bible?  The story told by the Old Testament commences, of course, with God’s creation of the world.  It concludes with the ministry of the prophet Malachi, probably around 430 BC.  Thus, there is a long gap between the time of its last prophet and the appearance of the New Testament’s John the Baptist.
• What book of the Old Testament was written last?  Some scholars suggest that the book of Nehemiah may have been written after the book of Malachi—around, say, 400 BC.  And opinions vary widely as to the composition of the book of Daniel.  Some argue for an early date, at about the time in which its story takes place (in the sixth century before Christ), whereas others insist that it took its final form, at least, as late as the middle of the second century BC.
• What is the oldest manuscript of the Old Testament? The oldest surviving substantial manuscripts of the Old Testament are found within the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from between the third century before Christ to the first century after Christ.  By contrast, the oldest complete Old Testament manuscript in Hebrew is the so-called Leningrad Codex (which dates to approximately 1008 AD).  However, the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible yet known are the “Ketef Hinnom scrolls” or “Ketef Hinnom amulets,” which were recovered in 1979 from an archaeological site located slightly to the southwest of Jerusalem’s Old City.  Containing a variant of the “priestly blessing” of Numbers 6:24-26, they have been dated to approximately 600 BC—in other words, to the time of the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi.  And, strikingly, the texts were written not on parchment or papyrus or clay but, rather, on small plates or strips of metal.  Silver, to be exact.

I hope that you’re looking forward as much as I am to the great adventure of delving into the Old Testament, which is essentially the Bible that was known to Lehi and to Jesus.  As such, it forms the basis of the scriptural texts and prophetic messages that have followed in its wake.  It is foundational to the three great religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity and, yes, Islam.  And the argument can certainly be made that it constitutes one of the pillars upon which western civilization rests.  Without at least some knowledge of it, much of the greatest sculpture, painting, music, and literature of the West is, at best, opaque.  And of pivotal importance is this:  During our study of the Hebrew Bible, we should be trying to discern Jesus Christ in it, for, as he himself said, it testifies of him.