The Writings and the Prophets

After the book of Nehemiah the rest of the Old Testament falls under the headings "The Writings" and "The prophets". These form a fairly eclectic mix of sayings and pronouncements with some real gems which people go back to and savour time and again. But these gems are indeed that - gems. And gems are usually located after hard work mining away deep underground or maybe long searching in difficult terrain. Reading the Bible can feel a bit like that when ploughing through Chronicles or Isaiah.

The prophetic books follow their own paths. WIthin them there are some random verses which Christians take as referring to Jesus. I am convinces that those who wrote them did not think of most of these sayings as having a Messianic aspect, but that does not detract from their value to today's reader. Prophecy was mostly shrewd discernment of the near future and comment on the behaviour of the nation, or its ruling classes.

It is important to read the Old Testament as a book of its time, and to understand the political situation and cultural context of the writers, otherwise there can be tendency for even some committed Christians to view what they portray as unacceptably bloodthirsty and vengeful, and then to jump to the conclusion that this attitude was condoned or even worse, commanded by God. The writers were human and their feelings and reactions were intensely human and emotional at times. If they were hurting, it was usually on behalf of the poor and oppressed or because of the godless times they were living through, (the two often go hand in hand).

These various Scriptures were assembled at different times and sometimes took a while to reach their final form, going through more than one scribal editor's hands. We cannot for sure determine when the book that we call the "Old Testament" gained its final form and status as Holy Scripture. It may be that not all of it was available in Jesus' time, although the New Testament writers seem to know a version that chimes with the version we know today. It may also be the case that many of the books became authorative along the way, perhaps soon after they were written. So the corpus of texts grew as the works were produced. It seems that by the 2nd Century A.D. the list was closed to new additions and we have the Old Testament more or less that we know today.

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