Are the Old Testament Manuscripts Reliable?

Are the Old Testament Manuscripts Reliable?

A total of 39 books comprise what we today call the Old Testament. These books were written over a period of nearly a millennium, from 1400 BC to 400 BC. This raises a crucial question: How did we get these 39 books? And are they trustworthy in their claim to be the Word from God?

How Did We Get the Old Testament?

These 39 books came to us just as Hebrews 1:1 explained: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets…” Hence, the “various times” covered the extended period from Moses’s day and the next 1,000 years until the last book of the Old Testament was completed—the book of Chronicles[1]

Likewise, the many or “various ways” can be seen in everything from God speaking “face to face” (i.e., He spoke directly) to Moses in Numbers 12:6-8; or to various psalmists, such as King David in inspired lyrics; or through prophets by means of visions, dreams, and the revelation of His word. Moreover, in what is considered by many the oldest book of the Bible, Job, God spoke with Job about pain and suffering in light of His goodness and power. Subsequently, the rest of the 38 books that form what is known as the Old Testament followed the book of Job.

Did the Old Testament Writers Use Any Sources?

In the composition of the earlier part of the divine revelation, we should not be startled by the fact that God also had His writers of Scripture employ sources as they wrote. For example, Luke 1:1-4 acknowledged that Luke used numerous sources that were available to him as he wrote the narrative of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.

However, there are two exceptional instances when we are expressly taught that the inspired record in Scripture came directly from the very “finger” of God, as Moses carefully taught us: “When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18 NIV).

And in another place the Lord taught:

These are the commandments the LORD proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me (Deuteronomy 5:22 NIV).

Israel understood that the Ten Commandments represented the very words of God to the people, for they commented: “The LORD our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire” (verse 24).

The second exceptional time was when the Lord communicated in a direct way in the book of Daniel. This happened when God wrote His message directly on the wall of Babylonian King Belshazzar’s banquet hall:

“Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall…The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking” (Daniel 5:5-6 NIV).

Because this pagan king had not humbled his heart before God or honored Him, his days would come to an end, as this message indicated, and the Babylonian kingdom cease to exist!

Can We Show the Claims for Divine Authority Are Accurate and Reliable?

So far we have addressed the fact that God employed many different ways at many different times to announce His word to mortals on earth. But that does not address the question of how reliable those claims were. Moreover, the transmission of the text in the Old Testament across three millennia is another cause for deep concern if we are going to talk about the text’s reliability. It leads to questions like, Who wrote these texts? Who copied them? What methods did they use to ensure the integrity of what they wrote by hand-copying accurately the wording that was in the original autograph (i.e., first document that came from the hand of the author)?

To begin answering these kinds of questions, we must recognize the limitations placed on scholars 70 years ago, prior to more recent discoveries. At that time there were only three sources of comparison:

(1)          the Samaritan Pentateuch,

(2)          the Greek Septuagint, and

(3)          the Nash

Papyrus dating from around AD 1000. However, with the sensational discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946–47, our evidence improved by leaping in time from around AD 1000 to, in some cases, the third century BC (much closer to the original documents of the Old Testament). This was based on some 900 exemplars of Hebrew biblical texts of the Old Testament ranging from AD 50 to 250 BC.

Even more fascinating was the discovery of a tiny silver scroll just south of Jerusalem, alongside the Valley of Hinnom, that contained the Aaronic Benediction from Numbers 6:24-26 and dated to the mid-seventh or sixth century BC. The scroll was written in a Proto-Canaanite (or Paleo-Hebrew) script and worn around the neck as an amulet roll in the form of a typical signet seal.[2] The Hebrew text inscribed on this roll was practically word for word the same as what had been transmitted from Moses’s day up until our day in the twenty-first century!

In the book of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have another remarkable example of the purity of transmission through the centuries. It represents an unbelievably perfect state of preservation from an eighth-century autograph (original) to our present day. Interestingly, in the entire Isaiah manuscript of 66 chapters, it was discovered that a mere three Hebrew words exhibited a different spelling from that found in our present day copies. This is a fascinating confirmation of accurate hand-copying of a biblical book containing some 100 or more pages of Hebrew text! While this was our best exemplar (compared to other Hebrew texts that had more variations), it is still extremely remarkable the way this text has been accurately passed down to us—a level of accuracy unrivaled in documents from ancient history!

Who or What Criteria Decided What Books Could Be Included in Scripture?

One of the most popular bits of misinformation that has been all too frequently affirmed by many scholars these past two centuries is that a group of rabbinic scholars attended a Jewish council held in Jamnia (AD 90, also known as Jabneh), Israel, to decide which books should be included in the Old Testament.[3] At the council, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, who had earlier escaped from the siege of Jerusalem, was granted permission to set up a school that functioned like the Sanhedrin. But three caveats must be noted regarding the action this school took on two books of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon:

(1) its deliberations had no binding authority;

(2) only the books of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon were discussed, though nothing was concluded about their canonicity because their discussion centered only on their interpretation; and 

(3) the books this council recognized as canonical (authoritative) in subsequent actions were the same as those found in the works of the secular Jewish historian Josephus, as well as those in our present Bibles.

Jack Lewis commented on this long history of misinformation when he wrote, “It would appear that the frequently made assertion that a binding decision was made at Jabneh [also Jamnia] covering all Scripture is conjectural at best.”[4]

It is worthy of note that there was a continuous chain of commendations of their predecessors’ contribution to Scripture. For example, 1 Chronicles 29:29 states that the history of David was written in the books of the prophets Samuel, Nathan, and Gad. This was followed by another such notice in 2 Chronicles 9:29 that the history of Solomon was written by the prophets Nathan, Ahijah and Iddo. Likewise, the work of King Rehoboam was written by the prophets Shemaiah and Iddo (2 Chronicles 12:15), while the history of King Ahijah was written by the prophet Iddo (2 Chronicles 13:22). This veritable link of verses in Chronicles[5] shows that the prophets passed the baton from one to the other, thus setting forth a steady stream of historical events and theology. As such, it also meant that there was a progressive recognition of what was an authoritative word from God.

But there is more! In Daniel 9:2, the prophet Daniel explained that Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jeremiah 25:11-12), which was written only 100 years earlier, was both the “word of the LORD” and were a part of the “Scriptures” (NIV). In addition, Daniel cited Jeremiah in this text when he predicted that the captivity of the Jewish people would last 70 years. Daniel read that the 70 years was about to come to an end, and he expected God to be true to His word and deliver Israel from captivity.

Likewise, the prophet Jeremiah treated the prophecy of Micah in the same way, for even though Micah had preceded Jeremiah by 125 years; Jeremiah announced that Micah’s prediction that Jerusalem would be plowed like a field would be fulfilled (cf. Jeremiah 26:18; Micah 3:12).

Thus, once again, a later prophet certified the truthfulness and reliability of what an earlier prophet had said in Scripture, and in some cases was able to witness the actual fulfillment of that prediction, thereby guaranteeing its divine origin!

The Threefold Division of the Canon

Both the historian of the Jewish people, Josephus, and Jesus Himself used the threefold division of the Old Testament: the “law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). While there were also other references to a different summary of the Old Testament as containing only two divisions, usually “the Law and the Prophets” (Luke 16:16-17; see also Matthew 5:17), there seemed to be a wider use of the threefold division. For example, the noncanonical and apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus appealed to the same threefold division of the Old Testament in its prologue in 132 BC. The significance of this trifold division is that it allows researchers to project the concept of the present canon of the Old Testament back to the second century BC. Thus, along with the progressive recognition of what books were authoritative, as shown in the prophets’ chain of references, here would be another, even if there were a later formalization of the same canonical concept.

In addition, Moses laid up the books he had written before the Lord in the tabernacle (Deuteronomy 31:26), with Joshua doing the same thing (Joshua 24:26). Later, the prophet Samuel wrote “the rights and duties of kingship” on a scroll and he too deposited them “before the LORD” (1 Samuel 10:25). Thus, the placing of these writings before the Lord (in the temple) indicated the enormous regard and reverence they had for the Scriptures. Namely, they viewed them as being from God, and being fully trustworthy and reliable.

Jesus’s View of the Old Testament

There can be no doubt that Jesus pointed to this same set of 39 books as being the inspired body of authoritative teachings from the Father. While Jesus boldly spoke of the temple being destroyed (a site the Jewish people held in highest regard), He did not treat the 39 books of the Old Testament in the same way. Instead, He declared, “These are the very Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39 NIV).

If some are still doubtful as to just what books Jesus’s affirmation included, then the answer is found in Matthew 23:35 with its parallel in Luke 11:51. In these two passages, Jesus showed what He meant by the “Scriptures”—namely, the identical 39 books we have today as the Old Testament. He did this by pointing to the two texts just mentioned to “all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you [Jews] murdered between the temple and the altar” (NIV). The reference to Abel comes from the Genesis record, the first book in the Old Testament canon.

But the mention of Zechariah is not a reference to the prophet who wrote a book by that name, but to a Zechariah killed near the temple (2 Chronicles 24:20-22). Given that the order of the 39 books of the Old Testament runs from Genesis to the last book in the Jewish order of the books (1 and 2 Chronicles), Jesus was pointing to the very same canon we possess today— even though today, the books are in a different order. Thus Jesus pointed to the first and the last murders recounted in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament was given by the inspiration of our Lord, and it is still useful for teaching, rebuke, correction, and even the way of salvation (2 Timothy 3:15-17). The text is fully reliable and accurate in all its details.

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[1] For a similar treatment of this same topic, see Bruce Waltke, “How We Got the Old Testament,” Cruce 30 (December 1994), 14.

[2] See the article by the head archaeologist of the cave excavation, Gabriel Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction on the Ketef-Hinnom Plaques,” Cathedra 52 (1989), 37-76.

[3] The best scholarly work on this question was done in a doctoral dissertation and eventually an article by Jack P. Lewis, “What Do We Mean by Jabneh?” Journal of Biblical Literature 32 (1964), 125-130

[4] Lewis, “What Do We Mean by Jabneh?” 130.

[5] I am beholden to my teacher R. Laird Harris for setting forth this concept in his book Inspiration and Canonicity in the Bible: An Historical and Exegetical Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1957), 166-79. This series of prophets and their work is continued in verses such as 2 Chronicles 20:34; 32:32; 33:18-19