The three major parts of the Hebrew scriptures that form the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible—the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings—are all based, in one way or another, upon prophetic utterances. That’s the central truth affirmed by 2 Peter 1:19–21: “We have the prophetic word made more sure.... First of all, you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” When we get to the New Testament period, however, prophecy had been absent from the land for hundreds of years. Jewish writers in this period, therefore, as well as the authors of the New Testament books and Jesus himself, routinely refer to the written Hebrew holy books as expressing God’s will or even his words. The Jewish historian Josephus, a near-contemporary of Jesus writing in about 90 AD, describes the Hebrew scriptures this way: For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine, and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind until his death.... The prophets wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. That was written two thousand years ago and is a pretty good summary of what the Jewish Testament is. Excerpt From: Robert J. Hutchinson. “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible.” Perseus, 2010-05-03. iBooks.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 03:34:03 +0000
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