Why We Have a Different Bible
Some people don’t know this, but we have a different Bible from that used by most Christians!
Actually, we don’t have a different Bible, we have a different Old Testament, and it only differs
insofar as it has ten more books in it, books which are not found in the Bibles of most North
Americans. How did this happen? Let me explain.
There are three parts to the Old Testament; the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, the latter of which usually includes what is called the “Wisdom Literature.” The first section of the Old Testament, the Torah, or “the Law,” was canonized around 400 B.C. This means that Jewish authorities identified the five books of the Torah and acknowledged that these and only these books were divinely inspired and reflective of the truth of the Law. Again, this happened around 400 B.C. and the Prophets were likewise canonized around 200 B.C. The last section of the Old Testament, “the Writings,” was not canonized until the first century A.D., and herein lies the story as to why our version of the Old Testament differs from that of others.
The original works of the Bible were written in Hebrew, but around the time that the Prophets were canonized, a major translation into Greek was completed in Egypt. This translation became known as the “Septuagint,” and it quickly became the Bible of use for most, if not all, Jews outside Palestine. As the use of the Septuagint spread in what is called the “Diaspora”, that is, Judaism outside the Holy Land, diaspora Jews included in the “Writings” several books which were not being used in Palestine. These included the 4 books of the Maccabees, 2 Esdras, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith, with additions to the books of 2 Chronicles, Esther, and Daniel. This version of the Writings became the normative usage for Jews outside of the Holy Land, thus introducing into Judaism two differing collections of that section of the Old Testament. Of course, these books had not been approved officially, so it was a matter of custom as to which was authoritative and which was to be used.
When Christianity was born c. 30 A.D., its Bible was the Law and Prophets, as is evidenced in the New Testament itself [Acts 26:22, Luke 16:29, 31, John 1:45]; nearly everywhere the Old Testament is mentioned in the New Testament, the Old Testament is called the “Law and the Prophets.” This was the Bible of the Church. However those other books were also being used, i.e., the books of the Writings, including the additional works used only by Jews outside Palestine. Indeed, among Christians, as the Faith spread outside the Holy Land, it was the collection of books in Greek that the Jewish and Gentile Christians inevitably used and declared as their Bible. In fact, over 80 % of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament utilize the Greek Old Testament texts.
In other words, the Christians, who by 70 A.D. were primarily Greek speaking and Gentile, used the Greek collection of Old Testament books, which included the books not popular in Palestine. This became a point of dispute to the non-Christian Jews, since the Greek Old Testament better served to support the Christian theological views than did the Hebrew text. Inevitably, in a series of councils held in the sea port of Jamnia, Palestine, between 80-90 A.D., Jewish authorities declared which books of the “Writings” were to be considered authoritative among faithful Jews, thus officially closing the canon of the Old Testament for the Jewish people. This declaration included the rejection of the Greek Old Testament called the “Septuagint” [and its extra books] because Christians used this translation to argue the Messiahship of Jesus. This rejection of the Septuagint by Jewish authorities was made as much to undermine the Christian theological argument as it was to combat any other factors.
In other words, the Old Testament with the fewer books, the one which most people today recognize, was formed IN REACTION TO Christianity and its practice, and is NOT the Old Testament used by the majority of first century Christians. Orthodox and Catholic Christians still use this longer Old Testament because of the fact that it is the Old Testament which the New Testament Church used, and because we don’t let someone outside the Church determine for us what is to be included in our Bible [if that were the case, the New Testament wouldn’t be in it].
You see, we really don’t have a “different” Bible. We DO have a longer Bible, and we still have it because that is the Bible handed on to us by the early Church.