4.1 – Read Select Passages from the Old Testament

ASSIGNMENT:

1. Read Exodus 32:16, Deuteronomy 4:2, 31:22, 31:24-26, I Samuel 10:25, Jeremiah 30:2 and the included quotation from the historian Josephus.
2. Write a short essay or discuss with your instructor the following questions: How does the Old Testament attest to its own authority? How does Josephus attest to the authority of the Old Testament?

SELECTION: Exodus 32:16

The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

SELECTION: Deuteronomy 4:2, 31:22, 31:24-26

You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.

Duet 4:2

So Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the people of Israel.

Duet 31:22

When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to the very end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, “Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.

Duet 31:24-26

SELECTION: I Samuel 10:25

Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home.

SELECTION: Jeremiah 30:2

“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you.

SELECTION: Quotation from Against Apion by Titus Flavius Josephus.

“We do not possess myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with each other. Our books, those which are justly accredited, are but two and twenty, and contain the record of all time. Of these, five are the books of Moses, comprising the laws and the traditional history from the birth of man down to the death of the lawgiver. This period falls only a little short of three thousand years. From the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, who succeeded Xerxes as king of Persia, the prophets subsequent to Moses wrote the history of the events of their own times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. From Artaxerxes to our own time the complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records, because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets. We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them.”