The Beginning of the Old Testament Canon

We are currently looking at the concept of the canon of Scripture. Because the beginning of God’s revelation of Himself is contained in what we often refer to as the “Old Testament”, our discussion of the development of the canon must begin there. 

 We see evidence of the beginning of the Old Testament canon during the time of Moses. The first thing we see is that God’s covenant with Israel was written down, read to the people, and accepted as the Word of God. In Exodus 24:7 it is recorded “Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.’” The Word was not just audible; it was written down, read to the people, and accepted as God’s binding covenant Word.

Later, we see that the Ten Commandments were also written down and accepted by the people as God’s Word. In Deuteronomy 10:4–5 Moses recounts “The Lord wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the Lord gave them to me. 5 Then I came back down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark I had made, as the Lord commanded me, and they are there now.” The Ten Commandments, written by the finger of God, are permanently kept for Israel to read and obey.

Finally, Moses tells us that the whole Torah – the book of the Law – was written down to be kept by Israel as God’s Word. In Deuteronomy 31:24-26 we learn “After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, 25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: 26 ‘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.’” Notice that it is not just the Ten Commandments or the covenant, but the whole book of the Law – from beginning to end. This is in essence at least Exodus-Deuteronomy but probably included Genesis as well, which is more or less the preamble to the rest of Torah.

From this, we learn that the development of a canon of Scripture, a set of inspired authoritative writings was not something that developed late in Israel’s history. On the contrary, the process had already begun during the time of Moses, so that when Moses died Israel had the Torah – what we know as the first five books of the Bible, or the books of Moses.

Next week we will look at how the Old Testament canon grew with the inclusion of the prophets and the writings.

In Christ,

Bret