Development of the Old Testament canon

The Old Testament is the first section of the two-part Christian biblical canon; the second section is the New Testament. The Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or protocanon, and in various Christian denominations also includes deuterocanonical books. Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants use different canons, which differ with respect to the texts that are included in the Old Testament.

Martin Luther, holding to concurrent Jewish and some ancient precedent,^[1] excluded all deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament of his translation of the Bible, placing them in a section he labeled "Apocrypha" ("hidden"). The Westminster Confession of Faith, published in 1647, was one of the first Reformed confessions in the English language to exclude the Apocrypha from the Bible, leading to the removal of these books in later Nonconformist Protestant Bible publications in the English-speaking world, though Lutherans and Anglicans retained these books as an intertestamental section that are regarded as non-canonical but useful for instruction.^[2]^[3]^[4]

To counter the growing influence of the Reformers, the fourth session of the Catholic Council of Trent in 1546 confirmed that listed deuterocanonical books were equally authoritative as the protocanonical in the Canon of Trent,^[5] in the year Luther died.^[6] The decision concurred with the inclusion of listed deuterocanonical books made almost a century earlier at the Council of Florence.^[7] It based its refutation of Martin Luther's depiction of the apocryphal texts on the first published Christian canon which drew from the Septuagint texts used by the authors of the 27 books of the New Testament.^[8]

In compiling his index of the Old Testament, Luther drew from the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, which was still an open canon as late as 200 and probably even after the Catholic canon was set in 382.^[9] Following Jerome's Veritas Hebraica (truth of the Hebrew) principle, the Protestant Old Testament consists of the same books as the Hebrew Bible, but the order and division of the books are different. Protestants number the Old Testament books at 39, while the Hebrew Bible numbers the same books as 24. The Hebrew Bible counts Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles as one book each, the 12 minor prophets are one book, and also Ezra and Nehemiah form a single book.

The differences between the modern Hebrew Bible and other versions of the Old Testament such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, the Greek Septuagint, the Ethiopian Bible and other canons, are more substantial. Many of these canons include books and sections of books that the others do not. For a more comprehensive discussion of these differences, see Books of the Bible.

^ Reig, George. "Canon of the Old Testament." The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908).
^ Geisler, Norman L.; MacKenzie, Ralph E. (1995). Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. Baker Publishing Group. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-8010-3875-4. Lutherans and Anglicans used it only for ethical / devotional matters but did not consider it authoritative in matters of faith.
^ Wells, Preston B. (1911). The Story of the English Bible. Pentecostal Publishing Company. p. 41. Fourteen books and parts of books are considered Apocryphal by Protestants. Three of these are recognized by Roman Catholics also as Apocryphal.
^ Quaker Life, Volume 11. Friends United Press. 1970. p. 141. Even though they were not placed on the same level as the canonical books , still they were useful for instruction . ... These–and others that total fourteen or fifteen altogether-are the books known as the Apocrypha.
^ Crawford Howell Toy; Israel Lévi (1906). "Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of". Jewish Encyclopedia.
^ Samuel Fallows et al., eds. (1910) [1901]. The Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopædia and Scriptural Dictionary, Fully Defining and Explaining All Religious Terms, Including Biographical, Geographical, Historical, Archæological and Doctrinal Themes. The Howard-Severance company. p. 521. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ "Quotations in the New Testament. Crawford Howell Toy". The Old Testament Student. 3 (9): 363–365. May 1884. doi:10.1086/469455. ISSN 0190-5945.
^ "Do the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes Belong in the Bible?". My Jewish Learning. Retrieved 2019-12-01.

[1] Reig, George. "Canon of the Old Testament." The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908).

[GeislerMacKenzie1995-2] Geisler, Norman L.; MacKenzie, Ralph E. (1995). Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. Baker Publishing Group. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-8010-3875-4. Lutherans and Anglicans used it only for ethical / devotional matters but did not consider it authoritative in matters of faith.

[Wells1911-3] Wells, Preston B. (1911). The Story of the English Bible. Pentecostal Publishing Company. p. 41. Fourteen books and parts of books are considered Apocryphal by Protestants. Three of these are recognized by Roman Catholics also as Apocryphal.

[FUP1970-4] Quaker Life, Volume 11. Friends United Press. 1970. p. 141. Even though they were not placed on the same level as the canonical books , still they were useful for instruction . ... These–and others that total fourteen or fifteen altogether-are the books known as the Apocrypha.

[Jewish_Encyclopedia-5] Crawford Howell Toy; Israel Lévi (1906). "Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of". Jewish Encyclopedia.

[6] Samuel Fallows et al., eds. (1910) [1901]. The Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopædia and Scriptural Dictionary, Fully Defining and Explaining All Religious Terms, Including Biographical, Geographical, Historical, Archæological and Doctrinal Themes. The Howard-Severance company. p. 521. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

[:0-7] Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[8] "Quotations in the New Testament. Crawford Howell Toy". The Old Testament Student. 3 (9): 363–365. May 1884. doi:10.1086/469455. ISSN 0190-5945.

[9] "Do the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes Belong in the Bible?". My Jewish Learning. Retrieved 2019-12-01.

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