The Making of the Bible



The Making

of the Bible

   

  

Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter

Translated by Peter Lewis

      



Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2021

Printed in the United States of America

 

Jacket illustration from the Jewish Cervera Bible, 1299 (vellum) by

Joseph Ha-Zarefati, courtesy of the Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional,

Lisbon, Portugal, and Bridgeman Images.

 ()

 ()

First published in German as Die Entstehung der Bibel: Von den ersten

Texten zu den heiligen Schrien by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter,

e translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaen

International—Translation Funding for Humanities and Social

Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz yssen

Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Oce, the collecting

society VG WORT, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels

(German Publishers & Booksellers Association).

e Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Schmid, Konrad, 1965– author. | Schröter, Jens, 1961–

author. | Lewis, Peter, 1958– translator.

Title: e making of the Bible : from the rst fragments to

sacred scripture / Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter ;

translated by Peter Lewis.

Other titles: Entstehung der Bibel. English

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : e Belknap Press of

Harvard University Press, 2021. | First published in German as Die

Entstehung der Bibel: Von den ersten Texten zu den heiligen

Schrien by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, © VerlagC.H. Beck

oHG, München 2019 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identiers: LCCN 2021009296 | ISBN 9780674248380 (cloth)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible—History. | Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Classication: LCC BS445 .S29613 2021 | DDC 220.1—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009296

Contents

1 What Is “the Bible”? 1

2 Scribal Culture 43

3 Emerging Judaism 105

4 Scripture in Judaism 141

5 Ancient Jewish Texts in Early Christianity 182

6 e Formation of the Christian Bible 222

7 e Jewish Bible, the Mishnah, and the Talmud 280

8 e Book of Books 298

Abbreviations 333

Notes 339

Bibliography 377

Acknowledgments 415

Illustration Credits 417

Scripture Index 419

General Index 427

The Making of the Bible

What Is “the Bible”?

At rst sight, the question “What is ‘the Bible’?” might sound surprising. You

might answer it by simply taking from your bookshelf a volume with the title

Bible on the cover. But if you were to pose the question to people from di-

verse language groups, religions, and denominations, they would show you

very dierent works. Among German speakers, for example, a Lutheran

would likely present a Luther Bible, perhaps a family heirloom dating back

to 1912 or a new edition from 2017, while a Roman Catholic would choose a

standard translation from 2016, and a member of the Swiss Reformed Church

a Zurich Bible in its revised edition of 2007. ese Bibles dier from one an-

other not only in how they have been translated and revised, but also in the

number of books they contain and the order of those books. e picture

grows more complicated if we broaden our scope to English-language trans-

lations: the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version each

have their own distinct linguistic prole and theological character. And an

even more varied picture emerges if we expand to the whole of Western

Christianity. e Old Testament of an Orthodox Christian from Armenia

or Russia, say, includes books that do not appear in Western European edi-

tions. If we look at other eras in the history of Christianity, the panorama

becomes still more complex: in place of the four gospels, the New Testament

of a Syrian Christian of the third century would have had a book entitled

Diatessaron, which combined an account of the life and work of Jesus Christ

with stories from all four gospels of the New Testament that we are familiar

with. Jews from the Middle Ages would bring a Hebrew or Arab Bible to the

mix, whereas those from ancient Alexandria would contribute one in Greek.

All of these Jewish Bibles would dier from one another in both their scope

and the sequence of books.

2     

It should be clear, then, that there is no such thing as the Bible. Rather, there

have always been Bibles that diered in extent, arrangement, and language.



e question “What is the ‘Bible’?” would therefore best be answered by as-

sembling an entire bookcase of these dierent volumes to provide a vivid dis-

play of the great variety of Jewish and Christian Bibles that have existed

from ancient times to the present. is variety would demonstrate the living

history of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, faiths that are

bound together and yet separated by their relation to the biblical texts. It

would also present a fair reection of the history of Christianity, including

its historical forms and dierent denominations. “e Bible,” as a collection

of the authoritative texts of Judaism and Christianity, not only constitutes the

foundation of those religions but also bears witness to their shared yet dis-

tinct histories. ose histories are reected in the diversity of these religions’

ways of life and kinds of faith today.

Indeed, the very word “Bible,” which comes from biblía, the Greek term

for “books” (singular biblíon, meaning “book, text, or document”), encap-

sulates these commonalities and dierences, this unity and diversity of

Bibles.



is name makes it clear that the Bible is a book, yet one that gathers

together several books. Indeed, it is sometimes referred to as the “Book of

Books.” is designation has the quite intentional and welcome ambiguity

of meaning both “a book composed of several books” and “the most signi-

cant and authentic book of all time.”

is terminology is found within the Bible itself. e Greek translation of

the Hebrew term sepharim (“books”) in Daniel 9:2 calls the biblical texts

biblía. In 1 Maccabees 12:9 they are called “sacred books” (tà biblía tà hagía),

while in works of the Jewish authors Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Jose-

phus, we nd the designations “sacred books” (hieraì bíbloi) and “sacred writ-

ings” (hieraì grafaí) in reference not just to the Torah, but also to other

writings that had by the rst century CE attained an authoritative status

within Judaism.



With similar emphasis, Paul calls the writings of Israel

“sacred writings” (grafaì hagíai, Romans 1:2). is is related to the term

“sacred books” (hierà grámmata) in 2 Timothy 3:15. Later, in the second

century CE, reference is made to “books of the Old Covenant” and “books of

the New Covenant.” In the fourth century, the church father Jerome wrote

of owning “many books of the sacred library.”



From the ninth century on-

ward, the term “Bible” was commonly used as a collective noun for the books

What Is “the Bible”? 3

of the Old and New Testaments.



us, from earliest times, there was an

awareness that the Bible consisted of several books and that the term had a

plural meaning.

e Bible, then, is not a single book but a collection of books, or a “library.”

And it was in this form—as an assemblage of mostly multipart books, such

as the ve books of the Torah (or Pentateuch) or the four gospels—that it was

produced and also represented pictorially for a long time. An example of this

is an illustration from the Codex Amiatinus, one of the most important bib-

lical codices of the early Middle Ages, in which the prophet Ezra is shown

seated in front of a cabinet containing the Bible in nine volumes (Figure1).



e model for this illustration may have been the scriptorium of a monas-

tery and the monk in charge of it.

Not until the invention of printing in the late eenth century did a single

book (or codex) containing the entire Jewish or Christian Bible become the

most widespread form to be produced and disseminated. Indeed, we have ex-

tensive evidence of a great diversity of forms of the Bible in the preceding

centuries. is diversity reects the complex history of its genesis, which

began with the writing of individual texts. rough a series of interwoven

and mutually inuential processes, these texts then became the Jewish and

Christian Bibles. It is vital to recognize this multifaceted nature of the Bible,

not least because it makes us aware that we are dealing not with a clearly cir-

cumscribed collection but with a compilation that varies in extent and con-

guration and whose boundaries with other texts are oen very uid.

e Jewish and Christian Bibles

e most striking dierence between the Jewish and Christian Bibles is that

Christian Bibles consist of two parts: the Old Testament (a term used exclu-

sively by Christians) and the New Testament. In contrast, Jewish Bibles con-

tain only the texts that are found in the Old Testament. But a Jewish Bible

cannot be considered identical to the Christian Old Testament. A Christian

Bible without the New Testament is not a Jewish Bible, but merely an Old

Testament.

Jewish and Christian Bibles also dier in their external form. In antiquity,

biblical texts in Judaism were written on scrolls, the prevalent book format

up to the third century CE in both Jewish and other ancient civilizations,

Figure 1. e Prophet Ezra, from the Codex Amiatinus. is codex, which was

produced in the early eighth century CE at a monastery in Northumbria, England,

is the earliest surviving manuscript of the Latin Vulgate Bible.

5 What Is “the Bible”?

like those of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Important parts of the Bible were

written on scrolls—these include the Torah, the books of the Major Prophets

(the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the archeological

site of Qumran, is over eight meters long), and the Book of the Twelve, a col-

lection of the shorter books of the Minor Prophets.



Scrolls continued to be

produced well into the medieval period, although the codex format became

increasingly prevalent from the fourth century onward. Codices were com-

posed from sheets—made from wood or wax at rst, and later from papyrus

or parchment (vellum)—laid on top of one another. Like modern books, these

sheets were sewn together at the edge, which made them far more practical

to handle than scrolls. Once this format became more common, the scroll

took on a special status. is is evident in Judaism today; during synagogue

services, readings are done from Torah scrolls.

Unlike the Jews, Christians used codices for their scriptures from the

outset. is is quite remarkable because the liturgical practice of reading the

scriptures of Israel from scrolls was familiar not only to Jesus and his early

followers but also to Paul and his collaborators, all of whom had their roots

in Judaism. Luke 4:16–20 tells of Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth reading

from a scroll containing the book of the prophet Isaiah. As Luke recounts,

this scroll was unrolled before the reading and rolled up again aerward.

Whether this story is based on a specic historical event or not, it accurately

reects the use of sacred texts in a rst-century synagogue.

From the second century onward, Christian manuscripts are almost ex-

clusively codices rather than scrolls.



ere has been much discussion about

the possible reasons for this. A number of potentially overlapping factors may

have played a part. It could be that the pronouncements of Jesus or collec-

tions of his sayings were written down early on, so that they could be pre-

served and disseminated. And codices, because they are easy to handle and

carry around, may have provided the ideal vehicle. Itinerant missionaries and

apostles may also have taken codices containing the gospels or letters with

them on their mission journeys so that they could read aloud from them at

the places they visited. In addition, the letters of Paul or several gospels may

have been bound together in codices to create a body of scriptures for use in

meetings of early Christian communities. Whatever the case may be, codices

were cheap to produce and would have been highly practical items to read

from in gatherings of early believers or on missionary journeys. Not least,

6     

codices, because they were inexpensive products, may have been more suit-

able than expensively produced scrolls, given the lowly status of most Chris-

tian communities at the time.

Even in their external appearance, then, Christian texts from these early

centuries were quite dierent from Jewish scrolls. e codices were small

books around 15 to 25 centimeters high—about the size of a paperback. e

rst ones generally contained just a single text (a gospel or a letter, say), but

later they held multiple texts, such as two of the gospels, or even all four, or

several of Paul’s letters. ese books were used in Christian services, which

were then held in private dwellings, and were also kept in private collections,

where they could be read at home.



From the fourth century onward, larger

(and in some cases lavishly produced) codices of biblical texts began to

appear. Famous examples of these are the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex

Vaticanus, both dating from the fourth century. A similar development took

place in the non-Christian realm during this same period, when beautifully

designed codices of secular texts, such as the works of Homer and Virgil, were

also being created.



Nothing about the Christian Bible at this early stage, at least from its ex-

ternal appearance, would have given the impression that it would one day be

a book containing the authoritative Jewish and Christian texts under one

cover. e notion of a New Testament and that of a connection with the Jewish

scriptures—seen as a contrasting Old Testament—were rst mooted pri-

marily on the level of theological debate and found expression only much

later in the creation of books containing both of these texts.

e texts of the Jewish Bible are written in Hebrew for the most part,

though some are in Aramaic.



Scriptures that were originally written in

Greek, or which survived only in a Greek translation, did not feature in it.

e Jewish Bible was compiled at a time when Judaism was transforming it-

self aer the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. Al-

though the Jewish Bible that evolved during this period, like the Christian

Bible, has its roots in developments that go far back in the history of Israel,

the form in which it has gained recognition and authority in Judaism up to

the present day did not take shape until the end of the rst century of the

Christian era.

is process is sometimes linked to a supposed synod that is said to have

been held at Jamnia (Jabneh or Yavne), around 20 kilometers south of the

7 What Is “the Bible”?

modern city of Tel Aviv. In 1871, the German historian Heinrich Grätz sug-

gested that such an event had taken place, on the basis of information gleaned

from rabbinical literature.



Jamnia was certainly a site of great signicance

in the formation of Rabbinic Judaism in the period between the two Judeo-

Roman Wars of 66–70 and 132–136 CE. Yet we can be sure that there was

never any synod held here at which the content of the Hebrew Bible was de-

termined. e very term “synod” wrongly imputes to ancient Judaism a

form of ecclesiastical council that did not develop until later. e supposi-

tion that an authoritative collection of scriptures was laid down at a synod

of Jews is anachronistic and does not do justice to the complex processes

behind the creation of the Jewish Bible.



It is much more likely that the tra-

ditions and texts that formed the basis of Jewish self-perception were collected

by Rabbinic Judaism aer the fateful year 70 CE. Among these texts, the

status of the Torah and the prophetic scriptures was undisputed, whereas that

of the Ketuvim, or Writings, was as yet unresolved. is same period wit-

nessed the development of the Mishnah, a written record of oral doctrines

expounded by ancient Jewish scholars (the Tannaim, or teachers). is com-

pendium of biblical exegeses would soon surpass the Jewish Bible in its

practical importance. e Mishnah was itself the subject of wide-ranging

interpretations, which are contained in the Gemara, the “elucidation” of the

analyses and commentaries oered by the Tannaim. e Mishnah and the

Gemara together form the Talmud, the principal focus of study in Judaism

of late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the present day.

One important dierence between the Christian and Jewish Bibles is that

the former included certain texts that were originally written in neither He-

brew nor Aramaic or that existed only in Greek translation. In the Orthodox

and Roman Catholic churches, these have the status of either canonical or

deuterocanonical (secondary) texts, whereas in the churches of the Reforma-

tion, they are treated as Apocrypha.



ese texts are the books of Judith,

Wisdom, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch, the rst and second books of

Maccabees, additions to the book of Daniel (the Song of the ree Children,

the Story of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon), additions to the book of

Esther, and the Prayer of Manasseh.



ey arose from Judaism during the

Second Temple period, but aer 70 CE they were handed down further only

through Christianity because, as documents written in Greek, they were not

considered in Rabbinic Judaism to be of equal ranking with the Hebrew texts.

8     

eir designation as apocryphal in the Protestant churches is explained by

the fact that the reformers wanted to scale back the preeminence of the Latin

Bible translation (the Vulgate). ey returned to the original languages of

the Bible—namely, Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New

Testament—and translated the texts anew from those languages. In doing

so, they were guided by the humanist emphasis on basing the reading of an-

cient texts on original sources rather than relying on later translations. Be-

fore the Reformation, these texts formed an integral part of the Bible in all

Christian churches and were not considered any dierent from the other

scriptures. ey were included in the Vulgate, which in turn took its cue

from the rst Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, which con-

tained the Hebrew and Aramaic texts in Greek translation alongside those

texts for which no Hebrew or Aramaic original was known.



ese books

are also missing from lists of the books of the Old Testament compiled by

certain ancient Christian theologians who gave precedence to texts with a

Hebrew provenance (see the following section on the Tanakh, the Old Tes-

tament, and the New Testament). us, the status of these texts was already

questionable in ancient Christianity, which may have played a part in the de-

cision of the Protestant reformers to consign them to the Apocrypha.



Finally, the Jewish and Christian Bibles dier in the sequence of the books,

with the variability among Christian Bibles being greater than among Jewish

ones. Jewish Bibles have been relatively consistent in content and order, espe-

cially since the advent of printing.



Although there are some dierences

between the various Bible manuscripts, a certain standard order has become

the norm. e Bible invariably begins with the Torah, or Pentateuch (the ve

books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).

In the Jewish Bible, these are followed by a section called Nevi’im (Prophets),

which contains the historical books from Joshua through 2 Kings (the Former

Prophets), along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve

(together known as the Latter Prophets). e third section, the Ketuvim

(Writings), includes the book of Daniel and the Five Megillot (scrolls), which

are all associated with Jewish feasts: the books of Ruth, Song of Songs, Ec-

clesiastes (or Qohelet), Lamentations, and Esther. While some variation ex-

ists within the Ketuvim, the sequence that was established in the sixteenth

century is rarely deviated from now. Jewish Bibles customarily conclude with

the books of Ezra and Nehemiah along with the two books of Chronicles.

9 What Is “the Bible”?

Christian Old Testaments exhibit a dierent arrangement (with some vari-

ation among denominations). e Pentateuch is followed by the historical

books, which include the books of Chronicles and two of the books of Ezra

(roughly corresponding to the Hebrew books of Ezra and Nehemiah) as well

as other books with a historical content: Ruth, Judith, Tobit, and the two

books of Maccabees. Next come the wisdom books: the Psalms, followed by

the Odes (a compilation of eulogistic texts from the Old and New Testaments),

Proverbs, and the books of Job, Wisdom, and Sirach. e prophetic books,

including the book of Daniel (with additions that have come down to us only

in Greek), are at the end.

is arrangement may derive from the Greek-Jewish tradition in Alexan-

dria.



If so, it is possible that the librarians there gave the biblical books a

structure that reected existing literary genres. It is also possible that the ar-

rangement is Christian in origin, with the prophetic books positioned at the

end because of the Christian perspective on the scriptures of Israel, in which

the Old Testament and New Testament are seen, respectively, as prophecy and

fulllment. is order of books is used in the Codex Vaticanus, one of the

earliest biblical codices from the fourth century, whereas the Codex Sinait-

icus and the Codex Alexandrinus place the wisdom books at the end of the

Old Testament. e sequence with the Prophets at the end is also evident in

the writings of the ancient Christian theologians Athanasius and Cyril of

Jerusalem.

In light of the dierences between the Jewish Bible and a Christian Old

Testament, any claim that Judaism and Christianity are linked by virtue of

a shared Old Testament is insuciently nuanced. In terms of the language,

composition, and arrangement of the scriptures of Israel, each faith tradi-

tion has its own unique perspective. Christians have taken up and carried

forward the Greek translations of the scriptures of Israel, along with Jewish

interpretations of them. In Judaism the Greek texts were not handed down,

and the Hebrew scriptures in the sequence outlined above came to form the

basis of Jewish self-perception.

Regardless of the dierences between them, Judaism and Christianity

share convictions that are expressed in the authoritative Jewish texts. ese

include the belief in the God of Israel as the creator of heaven and earth; the

belief that the Israelites are God’s chosen people and that God has preserved

them throughout history; the view of God as a being to whom one can direct

10     

one’s prayers and turn in times of need, from whom one can expect comfort

and help, but to whom one can express one’s suering and with whom one

can argue; the setting aside of one special day per week to devote to rest and

worship; and liturgical formulas and prayers. ese commonalities nd ex-

pression in the fact that Jews and Christians both call upon God through the

Psalms of Israel, that they refer to the proclamations of the prophets of Israel

(albeit with diering interpretations), and that they see the history of Israel as

a template through which to interpret their own history. Finally, the idea of

a second divine gure, variously described as the “Son of Man,” “Son of the

Most High” or “First-born of all Creation,” is a prominent feature of early

Judaism.



is presents an important background for early Christian ways

of speaking about Jesus Christ, which tie in with Jewish usage and form the

basis for the relationship between God and Jesus Christ.

By analogy with the Old Testament, groups of texts also coalesced within

the New Testament, which were then assembled into the Bible codices of the

fourth and h centuries (see Chapter6). e corpus of the four gospels de-

veloped over the course of the second century, when they became dierenti-

ated from other gospels that were labeled “apocryphal.” e collecting of

Paul’s letters also began in the second century, or possibly as early as the end

of the rst. e collection that nally made it into the New Testament com-

prises fourteen letters, which include both “genuine” epistles (those written

by Paul himself) and letters composed later in his name, as well as the Letter

to the Hebrews. e collection called the Catholic Letters (the letters of James,

Peter, John, and Jude) has a somewhat dierent history. ey were not com-

piled until some time later, when they were bound together with the Acts of

the Apostles into the so-called Praxapostolos, as testimonies of the apostles.

Finally, the book of Revelation was added to this collection.

Christian Bibles dier depending on denomination and language. Never-

theless, it is not hard to identify a Christian Bible as such. It must consist of

an Old Testament, generally containing at least thirty-nine books, and a New

Testament with twenty-seven. e numbering of these texts can vary, since

in some Bibles a group of books is aggregated into a larger unit, as for ex-

ample the twelve Minor Prophets of the Old Testament, which are combined

to form one book, or the four gospels. Deviations from this pattern are most

apparent between the Eastern and Western churches. In the Western churches,

the Apocrypha, or deuterocanonical scriptures, of the Old Testament can also

11 What Is “the Bible”?

be included. In the Eastern churches, right up to late antiquity, the canon of

biblical texts could look very dierent. Until the h century, for example,

the Syrian New Testament contained the so-called Diatessaron instead of the

four gospels. is work was composed by the theologian Tatian of Adiabene

in the second century. It conated the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles,

and the letters of Paul into a single account. e biblical canon of the Ethio-

pian Orthodox Tewahedo Church recognizes eighty-one books, including

some that are regarded as apocryphal in the Western tradition. Although

the number of books in the Ethiopian Bible is strictly circumscribed, their

selection is not.

Biblical texts are not only found in compilations of dierent content and

conguration, but were produced and employed in dierent ways: as single

texts; as scrolls containing the Torah, the Prophets, or the Psalms; as codices

with the Gospels or the letters of Paul; or as amulets or miniature codices. A

Jewish Bible of the rst century BCE looked unlike one from a later period.

One cannot draw a rm boundary between biblical and nonbiblical texts for

the early years of Christianity—nor indeed for later eras. Rather, the autho-

rization of biblical texts and the process by which they became canonical in-

volved certain texts emerging as essential to Judaism and Christianity, while

others became regarded as not authoritative in the same way. Some of those

in the latter group were nonetheless still used for private study and devotional

purposes. What led to these distinctions and what they imply for “the Bible”

in relation to other texts—the Apocrypha, the pseudepigrapha, and the deu-

terocanonical texts—is examined in greater detail below.

e Tanakh, the Old Testament, and the New Testament

ere is no rmly established technical term for the Bible in Judaism. e

Hebrew scriptures may simply be referred to as “the Bible,” and the term

“Jewish Bible” is sometimes used to distinguish it from the Christian Bible. In

Hebrew, terms such as miqra (“scripture”) or kitve haqqodesh (“sacred texts”)

are also common.



In allusion to its tripartite division into the Torah (Law),

Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), the Hebrew Bible is also called

the Tanakh.



is acronym, however, did not appear until the Middle Ages.

e terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” for the two parts of the

Christian Bible only emerged over time. e point of departure was the Greek

12     

term diathéke (testamentum in Latin). is word was used in the Septuagint

to translate the term berit, which denotes the covenant that God made with

Israel or with humankind. e New Testament picks up this language, as in

those passages where the term is used to describe God’s covenants with the

Israelites.



e point at issue is the nature of the relationship between God

and his people, which is dened by the Torah as God’s settlement. e broader

sense of “testament,” or “compact,” can be seen in Paul’s Letter to the Ga-

latians. Here, Paul illustrates God’s promise to Abraham, which is fullled

through Christ, with the image of the testator, the provisions of whose tes-

tament (diathéke) remain in force until they are nally redeemed. e

contrast between the old and the new covenant is also to be understood

against this background. Its origins can be seen in the third chapter of Paul’s

Second Letter to the Corinthians. In this passage, Paul contrasts his own ser-

vice on behalf of Christ with that performed by Moses and emphasizes that

“ministry of the new covenant,” as a “service of the Spirit,” is more glorious

than that which, as “a ministry of death,” is only engraved on “stone tablets”:

Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves,

but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as

ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the

letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:5–6)



In the same context, Paul also speaks of the “reading of the old covenant”

and remarks that “Moses is read”; these are references to the practice of

reading aloud from the Torah in synagogue services:

For till the present day, the same veil remains over the reading aloud of

the old covenant, and it is not uncovered because it is [rst] removed in

Christ. But till today, whenever Moses is read, a veil is placed on their

hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:14–15)



Paul is drawing a polemical contrast between the old and the new covenant.



e old covenant is represented by the Torah, for which he uses “Moses” as a

metonym. A similar contrast of the two covenants appears in the Letter to

the Galatians (4:21–31), where Paul interprets the sons of Abraham, one of

13 What Is “the Bible”?

whom he had by a slave woman, the other by a free woman, as two “cove-

nants,” one of which leads to servitude, the other to freedom.

e “new covenant” (kainé diathéke) is also mentioned in the accounts of

the Last Supper in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and in the Gospel

according to Luke. Both describe the chalice used at the Last Supper as the

“new covenant” (1 Corinthians 11:25; Luke 22:20). is image succinctly

expresses the new bond that is forged between God and humanity in the

celebration of the Eucharist. e idea of a new covenant recalls Jeremiah

31:31 (38:31in the Septuagint):

“e days are coming,” declares YHWH, “when I will make a new cov-

enant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.”



In the passage that follows, this new covenant is contrasted with the one God

made with the “ancestors,” or ”fathers,” when he led them out of Egypt. In

the new covenant, God will make his law intelligible to people’s reason as well

as writing it on their hearts.

e new covenant identied in the account of the Last Supper, and sym-

bolized by the chalice, stands in this tradition. At the same time, the image

of the “blood” of Jesus Christ (which is central to the doctrines of transub-

stantiation and consubstantiation in the communion service) harks back

to the idea of a covenant sealed with blood rst mentioned in the Bible in

Exodus 24:8.

ese two Old Testament texts from Jeremiah and Exodus also play a role

in the Letter to the Hebrews, in which another mention of a “new covenant”

appears. e text from Jeremiah 31:31–34 (38:31–34in the Septuagint, from

which the Letter to the Hebrews quotes) is cited verbatim in Hebrews 8:8–

12, where it is hinted that God has, through his proclamation of a new cov-

enant, declared the existing one to be “obsolete” and therefore about to

disappear (Hebrews 8:13). We also encounter in Hebrews the notion of the

“blood of the covenant” from Exodus 24:8: “is is the blood of the cove-

nant that YHWH has made with you.” is verse, which in Exodus refers to

the sealing of the covenant between God and Israel through the blood of

young oxen, is quoted in Hebrews 9:20, where it is linked to the blood of Jesus

Christ—the blood that has been shed for the remission of sins once and for

14     

all time and which has established a new order. For this reason, Christ can

be called the “mediator of a new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15).

us, whenever the New Testament mentions the old and new covenants,

or testaments, it is not juxtaposing two “books,” but two orders. Talk of a

“new covenant” or “new testament” picks up on the proclamation of a “new

covenant” in Israelite-Jewish texts and relates it to God’s actions through

Jesus Christ. Christ’s blood can thereby be interpreted as the “blood of the

covenant”—in other words, the blood that seals the new bond.

e theme of the covenant also plays an important role in the Letter of

Barnabas, a theological treatise written in around 130 CE. e principal con-

tent of this work is an explanation of how God’s covenant has been fullled

through Jesus Christ. e treatise does not use the terminology of the old and

new covenants, but it does refer to the “new law of Our Lord Jesus Christ,”

which does not demand any burnt oerings or sacrices but instead requires

a person’s heart to oer praise to God.



In a polemical way, the writer ex-

plains that Israel lost the covenant by turning to false gods. at is why Moses

smashed the tablets of the law—so that the covenant of “our dear Lord Jesus

might be sealed into our hearts.”



As a result, the Christians are the heirs to

the covenant that the Israelites had shown themselves unworthy of.



e juxtaposition of old and new covenants reappears later in the works

of Justin Martyr, an early Christian theologian from the rst half of the

second century, and Irenaeus, who wrote his main work, Adversus Haereses

(Against Heresies), in around 180.



In the writings of both of these scholars—

as in the New Testament texts—the two covenants denote, respectively, God’s

actions in Israel and God’s actions through Jesus Christ. Using biblical refer-

ences, they both refer to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the “new testament,”

which has taken the place of the old one but has been instigated by the same

God. ese writers were not yet using that term to describe collections of

biblical texts, however.

e rst use of “Old Testament” (or “Old Covenant”) to designate the rst

part of the Christian Bible occurs in a letter written around 170 by Melito,

the bishop of a town in Asia Minor called Sardes. Eusebius of Caesarea re-

fers to the letter in his History of the Church.



It contains a list of the books

of the Old Testament (or the Old Covenant) which corresponds in large mea-

sure to the list found somewhat later in the works of Origen of Alexandria,

Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius: the ve books of Moses, Joshua, Judges,

15 What Is “the Bible”?

Ruth, the four books of Kings (that is, the rst and second books of Samuel

and the rst and second books of Kings), two books of Chronicles, the Psalms

of David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah,

the book of the twelve Minor Prophets, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Ezra.



Nehe-

miah is not named in its own right since it was presumably counted along

with Ezra as a single book, which was the case in the Hebrew tradition until

the early Middle Ages.



Similarly unnamed is the book of Esther, which con-

tinues to be omitted from lists of biblical books from the fourth century,

such as those drawn up by Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus. us, Meli-

to’s list, like those compiled by other Christian theologians, includes only

books with a Hebrew basis, and excludes the apocryphal or deuterocanon-

ical books.



Some early Christian writers made an explicit connection be-

tween the count of twenty-two books and the twenty-two letters of the

Hebrew alphabet.



is tradition is also found in Jewish texts.



Melito’s letter, nevertheless, introduces no rm linguistic usage for the term

“Old Testament,” nor does it contrast the “Old Testament” and the “New Tes-

tament” as two distinct books. Melito’s formulation “books of the Old Cov-

enant” should be taken to mean that God’s “old covenant” with Israel is rep-

resented by the texts Melito cites, not that these texts themselves are called a

“covenant” or “testament.” Melito does not use the expression “books of the

new covenant” because he is responding in the letter to his friend Onesimus’s

specic request for information about the number and sequence of the books

of the Old Testament.

e designation “New Testament” for the books whose content reects

God’s new covenant with humanity rst occurs in the writings of Clement

of Alexandria and Origen, around the end of the second century and the rst

third of the third century.



Some scholars have argued that the term can be

traced back as far as about the year 140, to the works of the early Christian

thinker Marcion of Sinope.



Because Marcion’s writings have not survived,

however, this theory relies upon Tertullian’s critical analysis of Marcion from

the early third century.



Even supposing Tertullian’s claim to be true, there

is still no proof that Marcion used the term “New Testament” to denote an

authoritative group of scriptures for the church. We know that Marcion com-

piled his own collection of scriptures, which consisted of a particular ver-

sion of Luke’s gospel and the letters of Paul that he had edited, and that this

collection was roundly rejected by early Christian theologians.



Even if he

16     

had indeed called this group of texts the “New Testament,” we would not be

justied in taking this to refer to a particular section of the Christian Bible,

in contradistinction to the “Old Testament,” for the simple reason that Mar-

cion utterly repudiated the latter. Consequently, Marcion plays no signicant

role in the history of designations for the parts of the Christian Bible.

Around the end of the second century, the terms “Old Testament” and

“New Testament” shied from signifying two covenants to referring instead

to the collections of scriptures that represent those covenants. We can see this

process clearly by comparing use of the term “testament” by Irenaeus, who

applies it to the covenants, with its use by Clement and Origen, who also apply

it to the scriptures. In the Latin-speaking realm, the works of Tertullian still

contain both testamentum and instrumentum as translations of the Greek di-

athéke, though testamentum subsequently won out. e former polemical or

negative use of “testament” in the sense of “(old) covenant” which we nd,

say, in the letters of Paul, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Letter of Bar-

nabas had now changed. Henceforth, the term came to refer exclusively to

books, while the older meaning of “testament” as “covenant” receded.

From this starting point, “Old Testament” and “New Testament” became

well established as the names of the two parts of the Christian Bible. Con-

troversy did not arise again until the late twentieth century, when some

scholars called for the term “Old Testament” to be dropped as an alternative

name for the Hebrew Bible on the grounds that the adjective “old” was pejo-

rative. e name “First Testament” was put forward instead, though this sug-

gestion has failed to catch on.



First, it ies in the face of a long tradition;

second, it does not take account of the ancient logic that old things, not new

ones, were to be preferred; and third, the contrast of old with new—

notwithstanding the judgmental presentation of the old and the new cove-

nant in Paul’s letters and the Letter to the Hebrews—was not fraught with

disparaging connotations when the Christian Bible was created. roughout

the history of Christianity, both the Old and the New Testaments have

been interpreted as evidence of God’s acts of salvation. e term “First Testa-

ment” is therefore an unnecessary neologism. What’s more, it would seem to

imply that the New Testament should be renamed the “Second Testament,”

a move that would be both historically and theologically questionable and

misleading. Today, the terms “Hebrew Bible,” “Jewish Bible,” and “Old Tes-

tament” are used in a nuanced way that makes clear that the scripture col-

17 What Is “the Bible”?

lections of either Israel or Judaism are being referred to as great literature

and as the Holy Scripture of both Judaism and Christianity.

How the Text of the Bible Is Structured

e Jewish and Christian Bibles are collections of books. As a general rule,

each individual book in biblical codices begins on a new page. In a scroll,

there is usually only one book to each scroll. On scrolls with several books,

such as Torah scrolls or scrolls containing the book of the twelve Minor

Prophets, the original conguration is oen hard to determine because of the

fragmentary state of preservation, though it may be assumed that each new

book began with a new column. In Jewish Bibles each book concludes with

a nal masorah: notes written in the margins or at the end of codices that

provide statistical lexical information such as the number of verses in a book,

or the identity of the middle verse, middle word, or middle letter of the book.

is was important for monitoring purposes, making it easy to check whether

a copyist had le anything out.

In ancient codices containing complete Christian Bibles, there is no spe-

cial marking to indicate the start of the New Testament. Instead, the Gospel

according to Matthew begins directly aer the nal book of the Old Testa-

ment (which varies depending on the codex). Even in the Zurich Bible of 1531,

the book compositors did not place a prominent break at this point. e New

Testament does not even begin on a new page. Although the heading “Das

neüw Testament” does appear aer the book of Malachi, it is set in the same

type size as all the other book titles, while the heading “Das Evangelion Sanc

Matthes” is, uniquely, set in smaller type. e break between the Old and the

New Testament is marked much more clearly in modern editions of the Bible,

usually by means of one or more blank pages at the end of the Old Testa-

ment and a subheading.

One important aid to orientation within the books of the Bible is their di-

vision into chapters and verses. In 1205, the English archbishop Stephen

Langton introduced the division into numbered chapters, while the num-

bering of verses was an innovation of the French book printer Robert Esti-

enne (Stephanus), in a Greek-Latin 1551 edition of the New Testament. Ac-

cordingly, the Bibles of the Reformation period still did not have numbered

verses. e system of numbering chapters and verses varies between Bible

18     

editions. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the numberings of certain books and

parts of books of the Old Testament dier from one another (as for instance

at the end of the books of Joel and Malachi). e rst Luther Bible to be of-

cially reviewed by the church authorities, which appeared in 1892, and the

Zurich Bible of 1931 are numbered dierently than most Bibles are nowa-

days. e numberings in present-day German editions of the Old Testament

result from a conscious eort to take into account the supposed original He-

brew numbering. However, this system dates back no further than a He-

brew Bible printed by Joseph Athias in 1667; there is no evidence of such a

numbering system in rabbinical Bibles of the sixteenth century.



e most

signicant system of organization in those Bibles is the subdivision of the

text into paragraphs and verses. e ends of paragraphs are marked with

typographic nal characters (called “alineas” or “pilcrows”), while the ends

of the verses are marked with the Soph pasuq or the Silluq. e Soph pasuq

takes the form of a colon, while the Silluq is a small vertical stroke beneath

the nal stressed syllable of a verse. e Soph pasuq and the Silluq were in-

serted by the Masoretes, scholarly transmitters of the Bible in late antiquity.

Working between the h and eighth centuries, these scribes furnished the

Bible text with its ancient Hebrew consonant script and vowel notations.

ey also commented in marginal notes on unusual word forms and combi-

nations and recorded how frequently these occurred within a book.

Because textual evidence for the Hebrew Bible from biblical times does

not exist, we can only indirectly deduce how the books were organized inter-

nally. e best indication is provided by the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the

large Isaiah scroll. is scroll contains not only various elements of text

structuring—blank lines, free line endings, indentation of the rst word at

the beginning of each new paragraph, spaces (larger gaps within a line)—but

also special characters written in the margin.



Considering the period of their presumed creation, we may assume that

the texts of the Bible composed in Hebrew were not written—or at least not

exclusively so—in scriptio continua, a style of writing without any word

breaks, punctuation marks, or other forms of division. In the Dead Sea Scrolls,

the words are clearly separated from one another by gaps.

Inscriptions on pottery from the period before the Babylonian Exile of the

Jews—that is, from the tenth to the sixth century BCE—reveal a mixed pic-

General Index

Aaronites, 119

Abdi-Heba, 66, 67

Abimelek, 86

Abraham, 12, 106–107, 122, 161, 176, 206,

217–218, 321–323, 345n59

According to Mary Magdalene (Fredriksson),

330

Acts of the Apostles: combined with Catholic

Letters, 10, 273–274; in the Diatessaron, 11;

listed in Muratorian Fragment, 269; overview

of, 235; in Papyrus 45, 31, 33, 259; Pentecost

story in, 246; phrases from Greek and Roman

authors in, 185–186; reference to Antioch

in, 203, 204; reference to Hellenists in,

203; reference to psalms in, 184; reference

to reading aloud from Scriptures in,

187; references to scriptures of Israel in,

214–215

Adam, 321, 322

Adversus Marcionem (Tertullian), 268

Africa, Christian Bible translations in, 305

Against Apion (Josephus), 287

Against Flaccus (Philo), 180

Against Heresies (Irenaeus), 14, 256–257, 275,

366n35

Aggadah, 307

Ahab (king), 79, 91

Ahaziah (king), 64

Akhenaten (pharaoh), 66, 67

Akiva, Rabbi, 305

Aleppo Codex, 284, 341n50

Alexander the Great, 141, 143, 166, 167

Alexandria, Egypt, 9, 142; and creation of

Septuagint, 165–167, 301. See also Philo of

Alexandria

Allegorical Commentary (Philo), 175–178

Al Yahudu, 109

Amarna Letters, 66, 67

America, Christian Bible translations

in, 305

Amidah (Shemoneh Esreh), 228

Ammon, 108, 345n59

Amos, 88, 92, 130–131

Amos, book of, 73, 88–90, 214

amulets, 29–30, 34, 36

Anglican Church, 303

animals, sacrice of, 50

Annals of Solomon, 52

Annals of the Kings of Israel, 52

Annals of the Kings of Judah, 52

Anthony, Saint, 327

Antioch, 183, 203–205, 225

Antioch of Pisidia, 187

Antiochus III, 151

Antiochus IV, 143, 145

Apocalypse of Abraham, 39, 236

Apocalypse of Baruch, 39, 144, 236

Apocalypse of John. See Revelation

Apocalypse of Peter, 269

apocalyptic literature / apocalypticism, 127,

143–146, 235–236

Apocrypha, 7–8, 10–11, 39–40, 160, 237, 239–240,

339n15, 340n17. See also specic books

apocryphal texts, 37–42

apostles. See disciples

Apostolic Council, 365n28

Apostolic Creed, 274–276

Apostolic Decree, 225, 365–366n28

Apostolic Fathers, 237–239, 248

Aquila of Sinope, 168, 169, 231

Arad, 19, 48, 69

Aram, 63, 74, 75

428 General Index

Aramaic, 54, 57, 64, 101, 120, 190–192, 203;

in Christian texts, 190–191, 241; in Jewish

texts, 19, 22, 75, 158, 160, 161, 164, 168, 291,

351n47; Targumim, 162, 169, 314

Aratos of Soloi, 185

Aristobulus of Alexandria, 166

Ark of the Covenant, 154, 208

Armenian, translation of Christian Bible into, 302

art, Bible themes in, 321–330

Artaxerxes (Persian king), 130, 372n15

Ascension of Isaiah, 227

Asherah (goddess), 47–48

Asia, Christian Bible translations in, 305

Assumption of Moses, 38, 39

Assyria / Assyrians, 73, 78–79, 85, 100–102,

171–172

Assyriology, 54

Athanasius, Bishop, 9, 14, 37–38

Aulus Avilius Flaccus, 180, 359n103

Ba‘al, temple to, 75

Ba‘al inscription, 60, 62

Babylon, 106, 111, 112–113

Babylonian Exile, 50, 81, 106–107, 108–109,

111–115

Babylonian Laws of Hammurabi, 96–98

Babylonian Talmud, 44, 291, 292, 296, 305,

307–308, 354n27, 358n86. See also Talmud

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 312

Balaam inscription, 63–64

Bar Kochba rebellion, 223, 230

Barnabas, 187, 205, 270

Barnabas, Letter of: accepted by Clement, 272;

in Apostolic Fathers, 237; in Codex Sinaiticus,

239, 278; covenant theme in, 14, 16, 192, 228;

Jesus’s words in, 247–248; as pseudepigraphic,

39; quote from Enoch in, 189; and relation-

ship between Jews and Christians, 228–229;

writing of, 229

Baruch, books of, 39, 142, 144, 145, 236

Beard, Richard, 330

Bede, Venerable, 303

Behistun inscription, 120

Bel and the Dragon, 7

Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), 317

Berakhot (tractate), 293

Bernstein, Leonard, 330

Bethel, 48, 73–74, 76, 106–107

Bible: dened, 1–3; dissemination of, 298–299;

editions of, 312–316; historical criticism of,

316–318, 319–321; modern approaches to,

319–330; translations of, 165, 299, 301–304,

310; transmission of ancient manuscripts,

21–36. See also Christian Bible; Hebrew

Bible; scriptures of Israel; Septuagint; Vulgate

Birkat Haminim, 228

blood, signicance of, 13–14, 208

Boccaccini, Gabriele, 295–296

Böcklin, Arnold, 327–330

Bomberg, Daniel, 21, 292

Bronze Age, 68

bull gures, 48, 49

bulls. See oxen

Calvin, John, 304

Canaan, 68, 76

canon, concept of, 37–42, 146–147, 163,

170–171, 277, 294

canonical formula, 147, 354n22

Caravaggio, 321–323

Catholic Church. See Roman Catholic

Church / Catholicism

Catholic Letters, 10, 234, 271–272, 273, 285–286

“Chaldeans,” 138. See also Neo-Babylonians

Chemosh (Moabite god), 108

Christ. See Jesus

Christian Bible: content and conguration of,

8, 10–11; dissemination of, 298–299;emer-

gence of, 222–223; evolution of, 297;for-

mation of, 273–279; vs. Jewish Bible, 7–8;

overview of, 3–11; text structure in, 17–20;

translations of, 301–304. See also specic books

Christianity: canonical texts in, 170–171;

conversion to, 186, 214, 232; doublecom-

mandment of love, 197–198; essence of

faith in, 274; exegetical tradition, 187–188;

vs. Judaism, 9–10, 228–232, 295–297;

language use of, 190–192; literary world

of, 232–240; Marcion and, 267; mission of,

246; monotheism of, 183; noncanonical

texts of, 237–240; origin of, 182; promotion

by Romans, 278; salvation message in, 127;

and scriptures of Israel, 183–184, 226–228;

Septuagint’s role in, 169; spread of, 222, 298,

304; tenets of, 205–212; tripartite creed in, 183

Christians: communities of, 203–205, 212–213,

222, 224–226, 363–364n1; distinction from

Jewish communities, 227–228; as Hellenists,

203, 246; of Jewish origin, 203

Christian texts, quotations in, 184–190

429 General Index

Christmas Oratorio (Bach), 312

Chronicles, books of, 105, 120–123, 129,

153–156, 282, 284

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 324–325

circumcision, 106, 214, 217–218

Clement of Alexandria, 15, 166, 250, 257, 270,

272, 275

Codex Alexandrinus, 9, 23, 170, 239, 278

Codex Amiatinus, 3, 4

Codex Bezae, 248

Codex Bobbiensis, 262

Codex Leningradensis (Codex Patripolitanus,

Codex B 19A), 21, 23, 27–29, 284

Codex Sinaiticus, 9, 23, 24, 170, 229, 239, 262,

278, 316, 371n109

Codex Vaticanus, 9, 23, 25, 170, 239, 262,

371n109

Codex Washingtonianus, 262

codices, 5–6, 36. See also specic codices

Colonia Aelia Capitolina, 223–224

Colossians, Letter to the, 265, 266, 269

community law in Deuteronomy, 131

Community Rule (Qumran scroll), 158,

159, 280

community rule (Didache), 238

Complutensian Polyglot Bible, 312, 313, 314

Constantine I (emperor), 324–325, 371n109

Coptic, translation of the Christian Bible

into, 302

Corinth, 213, 216

Corpus Paulinum, 264–271. See also Paul

Cotelier, Jean-Baptiste, 237–238

Council of Laodicea, 38

Council of Trent, 299

Covenant Code, 43, 94, 98–99, 100, 132–133

covenants, 12, 122. See also new covenant; old

covenant

Creation (Haydn), 330

Creation of Adam (Michelangelo), 321, 322

creation story, 134, 136, 177–178

Crete, 185

Crucixion (Grünewald), 327, 328

crucixion of Jesus, 208, 210, 243, 246

cult religion, 46–52

Cutha (Kuta), 85, 171

Cutheans / Cuthites (Kutim), 85, 171

Cyrenaica, 223

Cyril of Jerusalem, 272

Cyrus (king), 84, 122, 123, 154; Edict of, 122,

153, 154, 155, 284

Damascus Document (Qumran scroll), 159,

352n59

Damasus (Pope), 301

Dan, 48, 73, 74–75, 76–77. See also Tel Dan

inscription

Daniel, 123, 145, 282

Daniel, book of: as apocalyptic text, 143, 145,

235–236; Greek additions to, 7, 9; and

Hellenistic period, 142; in the Ketuvim, 8,

282, 288; in the Old Testament, 9, 15, 282;

and prophetic canon, 151; from Qumran,

29, 163; and resurrection theme, 205; as

Rewritten Bible, 160; set during Babylonian

Exile and Persian periods, 105, 282

Danish, translation of the Christian Bible

into, 303

Darius (king), 122, 154

Darius I, 120

David (king): in Acts of the Apostles, 214, 215;

as author of psalms, 44, 162–163, 184; in the

Chronicles, 122, 154; dynasty/House of, 45,

64, 71, 244, 245; as prophet, 163, 184, 207, 281,

371n2; reign of, 44–45, 70–71; restoration of

House of, 125–126, 134; and resurrection,

207–208; and Tel Dan inscription, 45, 46

Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), 208, 209

day of judgment, 28, 121–122, 124, 127, 129,

144, 150, 188–189, 197, 205, 207

Dead Sea Scrolls/Qumran texts, 25–29, 57, 58,

158–165; apocryphal / pseudepigraphic

texts, 160; in Aramaic, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164;

Community Rule, 158, 159, 280; contents

of, 158, 160; Daniel, 29; dating of, 159–160;

discovery of, 25–29, 158; Enoch, 160, 164;

4QMMT, 161, 162–163, 175, 184, 280;

Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20), 157, 161; in

Greek, 158, 160, 162; in Hebrew, 27–29, 158,

160, 161; Isaiah Scroll, 18, 26–29; listing of

authoritative Jewish texts, 162–163;Mes-

sianic Apocalypse, 197; numbering of, 356n50;

Old Hebrew script in, 55, 58; Pesharim, 151,

161, 181, 357n63; “proto-Esther” (4Q550),

356n49; psalms, 44–45, 357n63, 371n2;

Reworked Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364–367),

161–162; Rule of the Congregation (1QSa),

158, 159; signicance of, 159–160, 163–164;

Temple Scroll (11Q19–21), 164–165; text

elements of, 18, 286–287; Torah regulations

in, 362n37; Twelve Prophets, 162

Decalogue. See Ten Commandments

430 General Index

Demetrius of Phalerum, 165, 167

Demetrius of Scepsis, 129

deportation of Jews: by Assyrians, 108,

171–172; by Babylonians, 108–198, 111, 115,

133. See also Babylonian Exile

derash, 308

Deutero-Isaiah, 84, 110, 112–113, 126

Deuteronomic Code, 43, 94, 123

Deuteronomism, 123

Deuteronomy, book of, 8, 99–104; authorship

of, 38, 43–44, 102; concept of God in, 100,

102–104, 136; dating of, 100; Greekfrag-

ments, 356n59; and the law, 94, 102–104,

123–125, 133, 136; origin in Judah, 174;

quoted in New Testament, 188; in Temple

Scroll, 164

De vita contemplativa (Philo), 175

diaspora, Jewish, 50, 85, 133, 191, 294–295.