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Concerning the Authenticity of the Bible

Who Owns the Old Testament?

Source: Prepared for Spubs by an anonymous writer.
Article ID : MSS030002

Who owns the Old Testament - Judaism or Christianity? This is a very natural question to ask,
especially since the Old and New Testaments are nearly always found, in Christian practice at
least, bound together as one book. Yet it is difficult to assess to what extent Christianity is
sensitive to the fact that what the Church has called the Old Testament is also the property of
Judaism and Jews, and that the Church by no means has a monopoly on it. Because of a strong
awareness that the Old Testament is read by Jews, many people prefer to avoid altogether the
term Old Testament (which is of course not used by the Jews themselves). At the heart of the
matter is the fact that the term Old Testament was coined by Christians to distinguish these
writings from the ever-growing literature of the early Church that began to be regarded as having
religious authority. This appeared to put the Old Testament on an inferior footing to the New
Testament and devalue it, a move that is felt to be insensitive to Jews. A further complication
arises when we learn that the twenty-four books accepted as canonical by Jews (and most
Protestant Christians) are increased to twenty-seven by Catholics, including some books that
were not originally written in Hebrew.
The question of what Christians should do with the texts they had inherited from the ancient
Israelites was the subject of lively debate from the earliest centuries of the Church. Fuel was
added to the debate in the form of one overriding factor which Christianity had then and still
needs to resolve: the existence of fundamental inconsistencies between the Old Testament and
the New. The classic case of rejection of the Old Testament within Christian tradition is that of
Marcion, a very influential churchman of the second century. He emphasised Paul's contrast
between Old Testament law and New Testament gospel to an extreme degree, so much so that he
rejected the whole of the Old Testament. He went so far as to claim that the loving Father of the
New Testament was in fact a different God from the angry God of the Old Testament! This may
be a rather extreme response, but the problem is one that still worries many today. Again, the
factor which led Marcion to reject the Old Testament was, primarily, the problem of
irreconcilable discrepancies between the two Testaments.
Marcion's rejection of the Old Testament was deliberate. As was the rejection in the 1930s, when
anti-Jewish feeling in Nazi Germany put pressure on the Church to deny the Old Testament. The
form that rejection of the Old Testament often takes in modern day Christianity is very different,
amounting usually to an embarrassed silence about that part of the Bible. This attitude, which
might well be said to be typical of very many Christians, is rarely articulated clearly. Of
particular importance here to Christians is the supposed difficulty and obscurity of so much of
the Old Testament; the apparently cruel and primitive nature of large parts of it; and also the
feeling that it is irrelevant to the modern world and even contradicts the scientific views of our
age. The fact that the same could be said for the New Testament is conveniently overlooked by
such Christians.
The alternative to rejecting or quietly ignoring the Old Testament is to affirm its importance for
the Church and to attempt to integrate it with one's understanding of the New Testament. After
all, what we call the Old Testament was the Bible of Jesus and of Paul, who both felt it important
and relevant to quote and read from it, as the following examples highlight:
At Luke 4:18, Jesus, whilst visiting the synagogue as a child, is quoted as reading a passage from
the Book of Isaiah: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the
gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.'
Some of the words from this passage have been underlined to assist in a comparison between
Luke's New Testament rendition of this quote from Isaiah and the form which it takes in the Old
Testament itself, where Isaiah 61:1 reads:
'The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good
tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.'
Surprisingly, the two passages differ. The Old Testament makes no mention of 'recovering of
sight to the blind' whereas Luke does, and he substitutes 'heal the broken-hearted' and 'them that
are bruised' for the Old Testament's 'to bind up the broken-hearted' and 'them that are bound.'
There appears to be no logical explanation for the differences, except that the text has either
suffered corruption or the Old Testament which Jesus read from is not the same as the one in use
today.
Here are two examples of Paul's usage of the Old Testament:
Isaiah 64:4 reads: 'For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the
ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for
him.'
Paul quotes this passage in I Corinthians 2:9 where he says: 'But as it is written, Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.'
It is noticeable that the words underlined do not occur in Isaiah. The Bible commentary of Henry
and Scott explains: "The best opinion is that the Hebrew (Old Testament) text has been
distorted.." Whereas Peake's Commentary offers the following explanation: "The source of the
quotation is very uncertain. If from the Old Testament the points of contact are so slight that no
confidence can be felt in this derivation. If the source is not the Old Testament, Paul has quoted
another work under a misapprehension."
Psalm 40:6-7 reads: 'Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened:
burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of
the book it is written of me.'
Paul reproduces this passage in Hebrews 10:5-7: 'Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a
body thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast no pleasure. Then said
I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God.'
The misquote is clear. Peake's Commentary says (p.896): "As usual the writer (Paul) quotes from
the Septuagint which reads 'but a body hast thou prepared me' instead of 'mine ears thou hast
opened' as in the Hebrew version." Henry and Scott's compilers have said: "This is a mistake of
the scribes. Only one of the two statements is true."
By ignoring the language in which it was first revealed, as most Christians tend to do as a matter
of routine, it became very easy to interpret passages from the Old Testament and mould them to
conform to New Testament views. Hence, a common way of handling the Old Testament in the
early Church was to allegorise it. In this way many non-existent prophecies about the coming
Messiah, the Resurrection and even the Trinity were supposedly found in the Old Testament by
Christians as proof of the correctness of their beliefs. Invariably, these became to a large extent
the only texts Christians were content to quote from the Old Testament. This brought with it
another problem, and which again deserves an answer: what should be the response to those
cases in which the New Testament understands the Old in ways that diverge from the original
meaning, particularly when the peculiarities of the original Old Testament language are ignored?
The New Testament uses Old Testament material in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes the New
Testament authors state explicitly that they are quoting from the Old so as to show that the
events recorded in the New Testament fulfil the promises of the Old. For example the passage
which Matthew quotes in his Gospel, chapter 27, verse 9:
'Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, And they took the
thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of
Israel...'
This excerpt turned out to be one of Matthew's best known mistakes. The statement he ascribes
to Jeremiah is not found anywhere in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. A passage similar to
it, however, is found in Zechariah 11:13. Horne observed in his Bible commentary
(Vol.2/pp.385-386): "Some scholars think that it is an error of Matthew's version and the copier
wrote Jeremiah instead of Zechariah; or it may be a later addition."
Another of Matthew's famous errors is found in his Gospel at 2:23: 'And he came and dwelt in a
city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be
called Nazarene.'
This prophecy is not found in any of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament. Manfred, a
Catholic scholar, wrote in his The Questions of the Question: "The books which contained this
description have been destroyed, because in any of the present books of the Prophets we do not
find the statement that Jesus would be called a 'Nazarene'."
Psalm 14 of the Latin and Greek translations of the Old Testament read: 'Their throat is an open
sepulchre, with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. Whose
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery
are in their ways and the way of the people of peace have they not known. There is no fear of
God before their eyes.'
This passage is not in the Hebrew Old Testament, nor is it found in the current English
translations. Nevertheless, we find Paul quoting this passage in its entirety in the New Testament
in his letter to the Romans 3:13-18! Where did he get it from? Which version of the Old
Testament was Paul using when writing his letter and why do modern English translations not
rely on the same version when reproducing Psalm 14 so as to match the usage of Paul. Footnotes
in the New International Version attempt to piece together the statement in Romans by citing
excerpts from four different Psalms and Isaiah, but the effort is hardly convincing, particularly
when we remember that the passage is quoted in its entirety in Psalm 14 of the Latin and Greek
versions.
Mark's Gospel highlights again the concern about the New Testament authors' insufficient
knowledge of the Old Testament. He states in his Gospel 2:25-26: 'Have ye never read what
David did... How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did
eat the shrew bread.'
This is incorrect because the high priest at the time of this incident was not Abiathar but rather
Ahimelech, as can be seen in the Old Testament at I Samuel 21:1. Therefore, Peake's
Commentary says (p.684): "The reference to Abiathar is a mistake."
In view of the above comparisons, one is left a little less than fully convinced about the New
Testament's handling of the Old Testament. Why were the New Testament authors unable to
reproduce accurately the texts they needed from the Old Testament? And are these inaccuracies
compatible with a work that claims for itself Divine inspiration? Corruption of the text (Old
Testament and New) is one obvious answer, something that Professors of Biblical Exegesis have
long since affirmed for the Old Testament at least. This can be seen from even a cursory look at
Peake's Commentary on the Bible (edited by Arthur S. Peake, once Professor of Biblical
Exegesis at the University of Manchester, is a compilation of commentaries, articles and works
by the editor himself as well as, amongst others, Professors of Hebrew and Old Testament
Exegesis, a Professor of Divinity, Semitic Languages, New Testament Exegesis and a Professor
in New Testament Greek. It was published by Thomas Nelson and Son Ltd (London) in 1919 as
a single 1014 page volume) which has the following to say about various Books of the Old
Testament:
It says in the concluding statement to the commentary on the Book of Joshua (p.255):
"According to critical investigation the book appears to be a medley of contradictory narratives,
most of which are un-historical."
Commenting on Judges chapter 17 and 18 it states (p.269): "In not a few places the text has
evidently been tampered with by scribes, who took offence at practices which were from a later
point of view irregular."
In its commentary to I Samuel 2:3 we read (p.275): "These verses do not make sense; the present
wording cannot be the original one, but must be due to mistakes in the copying. We cannot now
discover the original form."
Again in I Samuel, this time against verse 14:18, it says (p.288): "The introduction of the Ark in
I Samuel 14:18, is due to a corruption of the text."
On p.292, commenting on II Samuel 23:4-7, it states: "The text and translation of the last line,
and of 5-7, are uncertain; there is no agreement amongst scholars as to how they are to be
restored."
On page 321, in the commentary to II Chronicles, chapters 29 to 32, we read: "The Chronicler in
this long section writes, from his own point of view, much that is quite un-historical... it is
probable that another source (or witness?) was utilised by the Chronicler but he himself is
evidently responsible for many of the variations."
Commenting on Ezra 4, verses 6 and 7 (p.327): "These are two stray verses which have been left
in the text here by mistake. This offers a good example of the way in which fragments of sources
are jumbled together in our book... Scholars have suggested a number of solutions, but they
differ from each other considerably."
In the introduction to the Book of Hosea, we read (p.534): "As will be apparent from the notes,
the text is in places very corrupt. We must often resort to conjectural emendation, and reach only
a possible approximation to the original text."
Commenting on Zechariah 6:9-15, it says: "The text is considerably confused, partly through
accident, partly it would seem by deliberate alteration."
It would appear that Christianity's attachment to the Old Testament will continue, and along with
it all of the problems highlighted above!