IV.

Authenticity of the Old Testament

The following verses from the Old Testament show how seriously God takes the preservation of His Word. He will not allow it to be corrupted. The evidence that follows shows how history bears this out.

A. Manuscript Evidence

There are many Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts predating Muhammad. (6)

  1. The Dead Sea Scrolls: these manuscripts were found in the desert by the Dead Sea and contain one complete Old Testament book (Isaiah) and thousands of portions and fragments of varying length. Among these manuscripts every Old Testament book is represented except Esther. They are all dated before AD 70, and many can be dated a century earlier.
     
  2. The Nash Papyrus: a papyrus portion containing sections of Exodus and Deuteronomy dated to between 100 BC to AD 70.
     
  3. The Geniza Fragments: these are 200,000 fragments of Biblical texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, other Jewish religious literature, and other nonreligious texts. The earliest Biblical texts are dated to the AD 400's.

Though manuscripts have not yet been found that date back to the times of Moses and the Old Testament prophets, manuscripts do exist from a very ancient date and these have the same contents of the Old Testament we possess today. The textual variants in them do not alter one doctrine but are mainly scribal errors consisting in items like misspelled words, transposed words, and portions copied twice.

B. Lists of Old Testament books predating Muhammad lists.

The following people and events pre-dating Muhammad gave lists of the books making up the Old Testament:

  1. Josephus ( AD 90): a Jewish historian who wrote in defense of the Jewish nation and faith to Greeks and Romans. (7)
     
  2. Council of Jamnia ( AD 75117): an assembly of Jewish elders at a college that in the course of discussions listed Old Testament books recognized as Scripture.(8)
     
  3. Council of Laodicea (AD 363): a Christian church council held to recognize the true books of Scripture in the Old and New Testaments for the use of churches in their services and teaching.(9)

These main lists (there are other personal lists in the writings of various early church fathers) show that the Jews were very sure of the contents of the Word of God they had received. They all list the same books that are in the present Old Testament. The Christians accepted the same Hebrew Scriptures as the Word of God also. There was no disagreement between them as to which books were in the Old Testament.

C. Evidence from within the Old Testament as to its own transmission

Presented here are Scripture quotations which show that the preserving of manuscripts goes back to Moses. (All quotations are from the New International Version of the Bible)

  1. Deuteronomy 31:26: (Around 1400 B.C., Moses commanding the Jewish priests) "Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you."
     
  2. Joshua 24:26: (Joshua succeeded Moses as leader of the Israelites) "And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord."
     
  3. 1 Samuel 10:25: (Samuel was a prophet after Moses and before David) "Samuel explained to the people the regulations of the kingship. He wrote them down on a scroll and deposited it before the Lord."
     
  4. Proverbs 25:1: (Solomon's Proverbs were preserved) "These are more proverbs of Solomon, copied by the men of Hezekiah King of Judah." 
     
  5. 2 Kings 23:24: (Josiah was a king of Israel after David and Solomon who sought to reform Israel after the people had lapsed into idolatry) "Furthermore, Josiah got rid of the mediums and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the requirements of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the temple of the Lord."
     
  6. Jeremiah 45:1: (Jeremiah was the prophet who most clearly predicted Babylon conquering the Jews and taking them to Babylon. He himself died in Egypt having been taken there against his will by some Jewish rebels. Jeremiah also predicted that the Jews would return to their land after 70 years.) "This is what Jeremiah the prophet told Baruch son of Neriah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, after Baruch had written on a scroll the words Jeremiah was then dictating:..."
     
  7. Daniel 9:2: (Daniel was a prophet to the Jews in captivity in Babylon) "in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years."
     
  8. Ezra 7:6,10: (Around 400 B.C., Ezra was a scribe sent to the Jews after they had returned to their land after the seventy years exile in Babylon.) "this Ezra came up from Babylon. He was a teacher well versed in the Law of Moses, which the Lord, the God of Israel, had given. The king had granted him everything he asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was on him....For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel."

The Israelites preserved their scriptures throughout their history. The oldest Old Testament manuscripts date back to the 400 year period preceding Jesus' birth, the period of time between Ezra the scribe and Jesus. During this period the Old Testament Scriptures were to be found wherever Jews were found, especially in Egypt, Palestine, and Babylonia.

D. Jesus' testimony to the Old Testament's authenticity

Most of Jesus' public ministry was spent preaching and explaining the Old Testament. He knew the whole of the Old Testament intimately and quoted from it readily. In every instance he upheld the Old Testament as we have it today as the Word of God without error or corruption. He only spoke of it in ways that assumed its total authority and truth, and he held others accountable to it. Jesus also submitted himself to it unreservedly and in totality. He lived according to it strictly, and He even died according to its words, quoting it three times while on the cross, and dying in the precise manner it predicted the Messiah would die (Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22). There is no evidence that Jesus held any other book given to the Jews to be the word of God and no evidence he saw any of the Old Testament as being corrupt.

E. Attempts by the Jews to corrupt their Scriptures

The only such attempt known to this writer is discussed in Edmund Wilson's book, The Scrolls From the Dead Sea. This scholar documents a Greek version of the Old Testament that some Jews made to disagree with the Septuagint. The passages they altered concerned major prophecies of the Messiah and were changed to make it more difficult to identify Jesus as the Messiah. They did this because Christians were using the Septuagint with great success to show that Jesus really was the promised Messiah.(10) Note that this was a failed attempt! First, it did not change the text of the Hebrew Scriptures but was a biased translation into Greek. Second, this version was not adopted by mainstream Judaism even though they too rejected Christ. Instead, this translation dropped off into obscurity. Third, note that it involved only verses concerning Jesus, not whole books or sections of the Old Testament. And fourth, note the motive of the changes: to deny recognition of Jesus as the predicted Messiah of the Old Testament. This attempt shows how God, the great majority of the Jews, and the Christians protected the authentic Word of God given to them.

F. Conclusions

The Old Testament in the Bible as is available today is the same as was available in and before Jesus' time. This Old Testament is also considered by Jews to be their Holy Scriptures. There is no evidence that any other book except the version mentioned above was ever regarded as the Scriptures of the Jews. The Jews and the Christians protected the Old Testament Scriptures from corruption and any isolated attempts to corrupt it did not succeed. Therefore the present Old Testament is the uncorrupted Scripture of the Jews that was available before and up to the time of Muhammad.