In 2011 the Salem community is undertaking to read through the Old Testement; we hope you'll join in.

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When it comes to studying the Bible, Christians spend a lot of time reading and studying the New Testament. Since the New Testament only contains part of our faith story, to really understand our Christian faith, we must know the whole story, especially that portion that is revealed in the Old Testament. In fact, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament all assumed that those reading the New Testament would already know the stories of the Old Testament. When the writers of the Gospels and all of the books in the New Testament refer to the “Scriptures,” they are referring to what we call the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Testament, as many refer to it today.

The Old Testament is made up of 39 books that tell the incredible and oftentimes complicated faith story of a God who not only created everything we know, but desired to be in a personal relationship with His creation. The story revealed in the Old Testament books often focuses on the special relationship between God and the Israelites. As we read the Old Testament, though, we also discover that God is also the God of all people, not just the Israelites. In fact, God chose the Israelites not because they were the only people He wanted to be in relationship with, but because He desired that they would be an example to others as to how to be in right relationship with God. As the Israelites discover, this is an extremely difficult task.

The 39 books that make up the Old Testament in the Protestant Christian Bible are the same 39 books that make up the Jewish Bible, except that in the Christian Bible the books have different names and they are in a different order. In the Protestant Bible, the Old Testament is formatted into four sections: 1) the Pentateuch, 2) the historical books, 3) wisdom literature and the Psalms, and 4) the prophetic books.

The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are also known as the Books of Moses, or as the Torah in the Jewish Scriptures. It is in these books that we learn who God is (the Creator and Redeemer), how God chose the nation of Israel to be His chosen people, and how God expects His chosen people live so that they can be a “light” to the rest of creation. We quickly learn that God has high expectations for His chosen people.

The historical books consist of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. It is in this portion of the Old Testament that the “rest of the story’ that began in the Pentateuch is told. It is in these books that we learn how Israel finally gets into the Promised Land, how Israel’s kings came into power and how they did, or did not, follow God’s ways, and what happened to God’s people when they did follow His ways and when they did not. There is some duplication in the telling of the history with different versions of history being told in the various books, but remember that this is a faith story, and the authors of these books were not necessarily so much interested in facts as they were in us coming to believe in God.

The next section of the Old Testament consists of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Most of these writings are poetry and are intended to offer wisdom to God’s people. The book of Psalms is a composition of a variety of hymns and prayers that the Jewish nation has used over the centuries.
And the final section of the Old Testament consists of the prophets. This section contains Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Oftentimes, you will hear the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel referred to as the “major prophets” and the other books referred to as the “minor prophets.” This reference is not about their importance; it is simply referring to their length. When these books were originally written, they were written on scrolls. Scrolls were made up of a specific number of pieces of parchment that were sewn together and then rolled up for storage. All scrolls were physically the same length, and most scrolls contained several different books. However, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are each so long that they each filled their own scroll; therefore, they were referred to as “major prophets.”

As you read the Old Testament, you will discover that, at times, the story is complicated and there are often references to things or customs that we know nothing about. As you read, you may find yourself wondering if any of this applies to us today. These are great observations and questions to ask, but keep in mind that it was these writings that formed the beginnings of our Christian faith. Jesus said that he did not come to change the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). There are many portions of the Old Testament story, such as the dietary laws and the cleanliness codes, that no longer apply, some of which Paul and Jesus address in the New Testament, but by reading these stories we come to know that we have a God that loved His people so much that He took the time to make sure they knew every detail of how to live their lives. So our challenge is to read and come to know the story of the Old Testament so that we might better understand our faith.

I pray that as you read this incredible, complicated, and very messy faith story that you read it with an open mind and an open heart and allow God to fill you with His Spirit as you come to know our Creator and Redeemer in a whole new way.

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When Christians think of the Bible, most of us think of two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. However, until the time of Martin Luther, most translations of the Bible included more books than the 66 we have today (39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament). From the time the canonical Bible was agreed upon, that is, the list of books that was agreed upon to be the authoritative books of the bible, there was some dispute over certain writings. Many of these writings were discovered in later times, and they were known as the “hidden writings.” In Greek, the term for “hidden” is “apocrypha,” and these writings in question became known as the “biblical apocrypha.”

When Luther translated the Bible into German in the 16th Century, he separated these books in question out of the Old Testament and created a third section of the Bible that he called Apocrypha and placed it between the Old and New Testaments. Luther did this because these books are not found in what is considered the oldest and most authoritative version of the Jewish Bible known as the “Masoretic Text.”

The books that are in the Apocrypha are as follows: Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also known as the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach), Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna (Chapter 13 of the Greek version of the Book of Daniel), Bel and the Dragon(Chapter 14 of the Greek version of the Book of Daniel), 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, 3 Maccabees, 2 Esdras, and 4 Maccabees.
It is important to note that Luther did not desire to eliminate these books from the Bible, but he believed that since they did not appear in the text that is considered the most authoritative Jewish scripture that they should at least be separated out of the Old Testament as a separate section. It was not until the 20th Century that Luther’s translation began to be printed without the Apocrypha.

The Roman Catholic Bible and Orthodox Bibles all still contain the Apocrypha, or at least portions of it, and in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) we recognize the Apocrypha as Luther intended.

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