Gathering the Collection

The Old Testament collection was written over many centuries as we have noted. Scholars observe that there were oral traditions as well as written accounts. Stories were told over and over, detail by detail, when the covenant people gathered around their campfires. And the stories were preserved on parchment, or animal skins, so the account of God's dealing with his people would never be forgotten. The parchments were rolled up into scrolls. Over the centuries more scrolls were written and added to the collection. Some were recognized as having special importance and came to be regarded as sacred text or holy scripture.

Of course, none of the original scroll writings has been preserved. Scrolls would wear out and were given an honored burial. But before they wore out, copies would be made and then copies of copies.

Inasmuch as the books were written over at least a thousand-year period, there was an ongoing process to gather the collection. The early books of the law were stored in the ark of the tabernacle (Deuteronomy 31:26). The nation reconsecrated its devotion to the sacred writings at different times (II Kings 23:1-3, Nehemiah 8:1ff).

By the time of Jesus it seems that there was general agreement on what constituted the recognized collection of sacred scrolls for the Jewish people. They are summed up in Jesus' reference to the three main sections of the Hebrew scriptures when He noted that "Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." Luke 24:44

A major tragedy in the life of the Jewish nation occurred in 70 AD when the Jewish temple, the center of Jewish religious life, was destroyed by the Romans under Titus Livy. It is commonly thought that at a gathering of rabbis in the city of Jamnia in 90 AD there was a re-affirmation and confirmation of what fully and finally constituted the Hebrew scriptures. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the early 90's AD in his Against Apion, observed: For we have not countless books among us, disagreeing and contradicting one another but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divinexand how firmly we have given credit to these books of our nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one hath been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them, but it has become natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and if occasion be, willingly to die for them.