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Apologetics


24. Questions about the Content of the Old Testament

(Why and how you can read it)

    

A series that helps consider the foundations for faith

Contents:

   

Introductory Comments

•  The scope of the page  

1. What is the History Covered by the Old Testament?

•  The events covered.

2. Was this Genuine History of was it Made-Up Myth?

•  Reasons we can be sure of its history.

3. Is the Old Testament to be Taken Literally?

•  What this means and doesn't mean.

4. How does this happen in the case of Narrative History?

•  Guidance for reading the O.T. as history.

5. How does this apply to Law or Teaching?

•  Guidance for reading.

6. Should Prophecy be considered Literally?

•  Guidelines for reading.

7. What Additional Rules are there to help with Prophecy?

•  Guidelines for understanding.

8. Can you recap what is in the Old Testament?

•  An overview and more detailed panorama.

     

     

    

      

Introductory Comments

   

      

      

    

On this page we now come to look to see

  •  what is in the Old Testament and
  •  how we may read it.

We will consider

  •  whether we can trust it as history and
  •  whether we should take it literally.

            

     

    

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1. What is the History covered by the Old Testament?

  

     

  

Answer:

 

In order to understand the Old Testament, it is useful for the student to get an overview of the events covered within it.

A Summary of the Chronology of the Old Testament as seen in the Historical Books is as below.

 

 

a) Summary Overview

 

Events:

Books:

 

Creation to Abram

 

Genesis 1-11

Abram to Joseph

Gen 12-50

 

 

Moses & the Exodus

Exodus

Moses' Law

Lev, Num, Deut

 

 

Taking the Promised Land

Joshua

Period of the judges

Judges & 1 Samuel

 

 

Early Kings – Saul, David, Solomon

1 & 2 Samuel & 1 Kings (+ 1 Chron)

 

 

Divided Kingdom to the Exile

1 & 2 Kings (+ 2 Chron)

(Destruction of the northern kingdom

2 Kings

(Destruction of southern kingdom

2 Kings (+2 Chron)

 

 

Return from Exile to rebuild Temple

Ezra

Return from Exile to rebuild Walls

Nehemiah

 

 

b) Detailed Breakdown

NB. Some dates are simply approx. or rounded up – indicated by *.

All are taken from the New Bible Dictionary

Person/Event

Date

Reference

 

 

 

Early days & the Patriarchs

 

GENESIS

Creation

 

Gen 1 & 2

The Fall

 

Gen 3

Early years

 

Gen 4-11

Abraham – the first man called to have a living relationship with God

*2000-1850

Gen 11:27 - 25:11

Isaac – Abraham's son

*1900-1750

Gen 21:1 - 28:5, 35:27-29

Jacob – Isaac's younger son, twin of Esau, became Israel , father of the 12 tribes

*1800-1700

Gen 25:26-34, 27:1 - 35:26, 45:25 – 49:33

Joseph – Israel 's eleventh son, sold into slavery, & made Prime Minister of Egypt

*1750- 1650

37:1 - 50:26

 

 

 

Exodus, Journey to Sinai & the Law

?1280

EXODUS

Moses & the Exodus

 

Ex 1-12

Journey to Sinai

 

Ex 12-19

At Sinai - Law given, Tabernacle Built

 

Ex 20-40

 

 

 

Laws of worship & the priesthood

 

LEVITICUS

Law of the Offerings given

 

Lev 1-7

Priests, Rules & Regulations

 

Lev 8-27

 

 

 

Mixture of law & narrative in wilderness

 

NUMBERS

The census

 

Num 1-4

Rules & regulations

 

Num 5-9

Journeying from Sinai to Kadesh

 

Num 10-12

At Kadesh – the rebellion

 

Num 13-20

Journey from Kadesh to Plains of Moab

 

Num 20-22

On the Plains of Moab

 

Num 23-32

Misc. Matters

 

Num 33-36

 

 

 

Moses recaps the past & the Law

 

DEUTERONOMY

Historical Prologue – given by Moses

 

Deut 1-4

Stipulations of the Covenant reiterated

 

Deut 4 -26

Curses & Blessings

 

Deut 27 – 30

Ongoing Leadership

 

Deut 31 - 34

 

 

 

Taking the Land and early years

 

JOSHUA

Entrance to the Land

?1280

Josh 1-5

Conquest of the Land

 

Josh 5-12

Distribution of the Land

 

Josh 13-21

Unity & Loyalty

 

Josh 22-24

 

 

 

Rises & falls of Israel in the Land

 

Judges

Incomplete conquest & apostasy

 

Judg 1-3

Oppression & Deliverance

 

Judg 3-16

Religious & Moral Disorder

 

Judg 17-21

 

 

 

How Ruth became part of the Messianic family tree

 

RUTH

 

 

 

Samuel & Saul's reign

 

1 SAMUEL

Samuel – last of the judges, a prophet

?1075-

1 Sam 1-7

Setting Saul as king

?1050-

1 Sam 8-12

Saul's failures

 

1 Sam 13-15

David anointed as king

 

1 Sam 16

David with Saul

 

1 Sam 16-19

David on the run

 

1 Sam 20-30

Saul's death

 

1 Sam 31

 

 

 

Ups & downs of David's reign

 

2 SAMUEL

David as king over Judah

1011

2 Sam 1-4

David as king of all Israel

 

2 Sam 5-10

David's failure

 

2 Sam 11,12

Absalom's rebellion, David on the run

 

2 Sam 13-18

David's latter years as king

 

2 Sam 19-24

 

 

 

Solomon's reign, fall & divided land

 

1 KINGS

David establishes Solomon to be king

 

1 Kings 1,2

Solomon's reign

1071

1 Kings 3-11

The divided kingdom

931

1 Kings 12-22

 

 

 

The divided kingdoms until Exile

 

2 Kings

NB. Northern Kingdom destroyed

722

2 Kings 17

NB. Southern kingdom exiled

587

2 Kings 25

 

 

 

An Historic recap

 

1 CHRONICLES

Genealogies

 

1 Chron 1-9

David's reign

 

1 Chron 10-29

An Historic recap

 

2 CHRONICLES

Solomon's reign

 

2 Chron 1-9

Divided kingdom to Exile

 

2 Chron 10-36

 

 

 

Exilic Return to Rebuild the Temple

 

EZRA

First exiles return & rebuilding of Temple

538

Ezra 1-6

Ezra's return & reforms

458

Ezra 7-10

 

 

 

Exilic Return to Rebuild the Walls

 

NEHEMIAH

Nehemiah's return to Jerusalem

445

Neh 1,2

Rebuilding the Walls

 

Neh 3-6

The exiles who returned

 

Neh 7

Ezra's preaching & revival

 

Neh 8-10

New residents

 

Neh 11

Priests & dedicating the walls

 

Neh 12

 

 

 

How Esther was made Queen during the Exile & saved the Jews

?460

ESTHER

 

 

 

The trials of Job

undated

JOB

Job's testing

 

Job 1,2

Job's discussions with 3 friends

 

Job 3-31

Elihu speaks

 

Job 32-37

God speaks

 

Job 38-41

Job restored

 

Job 42

 

The Major Prophets

 

Isaiah – from 740BC (also Amos, Hosea & Micah about his time) – prophesied against apostasy of Israel and Judah .

Jeremiah – from 626BC (also Zephaniah & Habakkuk about his time) – prophesied from Jerusalem about its impending fall.

Ezekiel – exiled to Babylon in 597BC where he prophesied among the exiles about Jerusalem 's fall and of surrounding nations, then of hope for the future.

Daniel – exiled to Babylon in 605BC where he prophesied in the court through several reigns, largely using word of knowledge, but later prophecies about the end times.

      

           

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2. Was this Genuine History or was it Made-Up Myth?

      

      

  

     Answer: 

        

a) Uniformity

 

The first thing to note is the uniform approach and flow of the Old Testament.
     
Each book follows on from previous ones and treats what it is saying as factual history, i.e. actually what took place in time-space history.
     
As has been noted on previous pages, subsequent writers clearly understood prior characters as literal figures who appeared in their history.
     
Indeed we can go further and say that their certain belief in these figures helped form and sustain their belief in God and their calling as His people.

   

    

b) Conforming to Known Secular Facts

 

The danger in this heading is that we separate out the Old Testament writings and put them on a different footing than other historical written evidence – this should not be.
    
The difficulty of identifying times in history from within the Old Testament itself, is that the references don't tend to be in specific dates, but rather specific incidents or specific rulers, e.g., :

  

“In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years.” 2 Kings 12:1

       

and

  

“And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.”   

     

What Biblical historians try to due is marry up Biblical statements with known historical data.
    
One major historical source is the Canon of Ptolemy, otherwise known as the Canon of the Kings, used by astronomers and preserved by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek living in Roman Egypt in the second century AD.    

    

It originated from Babylonian sources, then Persian kings, after which it was taken up by Greek astronomers covering a period from about 700BC through to 160AD and although it only deals in whole years (and thus omits kings who reigned for lees than a year) it is generally considered by historians and archaeologists to be very accurate.

      
Good dates from about 1400BC onwards are based on Mesopotamian data

  

Good dates from about 1200BC back to about 2100BC can be obtained from Egyptian sources.

   

   

c) Example of Dating the Patriarchs

 

References to Abram, Isaac etc. are checked against historical data using:

     

•  mention of external events during their time,

  

•  statements about elapsed time between them and later events in history,

  

•  evidence of social conditions in their time.

          

In respect of external events, the New Bible Dictionary states that “The only two striking external events recorded are the raid of the four kings against the five (Gen 14) and the destruction of the cities of the plain (Gen 19)”

          

In respect of elapsed time periods, the primary statements linking Abraham's period with later events are within the following verses:

    

"Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure (Gen 15:13-16)

    

In respect of social conditions, the New Bible Dictionary states that “the social customs of adoption and inheritance in Genesis 15,16 & 21 etc. show close affinity with those observable in cuneiform documents from Ur and Nuzi, ranging in date from the 18th to 15th centuries BC.”
      

Similar processes can be used for other parts of the Old Testament.

  

      

     

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3. Is the Old Testament to be Taken Literally?

       

      

    

Answer:

   

A better question is, ‘Is it true?' – and the answer is yes.

   

To ask, is it to be taken literally, is an indication that the questioner has little knowledge of the Old Testament.

     

To start at the simple level, there are a number of different sorts of writing and even some of the sorts are mixed, and there are a variety of issues to be considered in each case.
      

        

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4. How do