I believe your point is at this point the canon had not been set. It is a valid point. I would like to hear the answer from OldProf.
adrift and fbl9, it is reasonable to believe that the emphasis of Paul’s preaching in the synagogues (see Acts chapters 9 and 13 thru 17) was that Jesus Christ was/is the Messiah, probably in a manner similar to what Jesus did on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:
25 Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (NKJV)
Regarding the OT Scriptures, I expect we all know about the disagreements between the RC canon and Protestant canon. I can easily find 100 articles on the web arguing for or against the “Apocrypha” (Jerome’s term, “Prologus galeatus” as quoted in, “The Canon of Scripture” by F.F. Bruce, 1988, p. 90). This discussion is all very interesting, however, as a Scriptural basis, I would argue as follows.
If you were to look at the table of contents of a Hebrew Old Testament, you would notice two differences from our English Old Testament. First, it has only twenty-two books, not thirty-nine. But it is most important to realize that the content is identical; it is just that the Hebrew Bible combines certain books. (For example, books such as 1 and 2 Samuel are combined into one; other smaller books are attached to larger ones.) A second difference is that the order of the books is rearranged. Interestingly, the last book of the Hebrew Bible is not Malachi but Chronicles.
Now let me share an incidental proof that Christ’s Bible was the same in content as the Hebrew Old Testament we have today. The first murder in the Old Testament was, of course, when Cain killed Abel; the last murder, according to the Hebrew order of books, was when the prophet Zechariah was stoned to death in the temple (2 Chronicles 24:20–21). Only now are we prepared to understand the words of Jesus:
Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. (Matthew 23:34-35 NKJV)
The importance is this. Given the order of the Hebrew Old Testament, Christ gives a sweeping panorama of its entire history. These two murders are “bookends” for the whole of the Hebrew canon. In New Testament terms we would say, “From Genesis to Revelation.” This is a subtle proof that Christ’s Bible was that of the Jewish Hebrew canon (though arranged differently), from our own Old Testament.
Finally, note also that Philo, Alexandrian Jewish philosopher and writer at about the time of Jesus’ ministry, never quoted from the Apocrypha as inspired, but quoted the standard OT books prolifically. Josephus (30-100 a.d.), Jewish historian, explicitly excludes the Apocrypha and defined the OT Scriptures as we know it (“Against Apion”).
So, to sum it up, I think the Bereans confirmed Paul’s teachings with the standard Genesis to Malachi Scriptures, without any need to refer to the Apocrypha. We have no good reason to believe the Jews held any Apocryphal writings as being from God. They didn’t accept them then, and they don’t accept them today.
Today, Jews-For-Jesus use Genesis to Malachi to show Jewish believers that Jesus Christ is truly the Jewish Messiah. Amen to that truth.
Regards, OldProf
Ouch Let me correct this
, I thought that was what you meant!
