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About 250 BCE, Greek-speaking Jewish inhabitants of Alexandria in Egypt took the bold step of translating their Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The Letter of Aristeas (written around 120 BCE)8 offers a defense for the evolution of the Greek translation that came to be known as the Septuagint (a Latin expression for “seventy”). This name and its customary abbreviation, LXX (the Roman numerals for 70), stem from the sacred legend, recorded in the Letter of Aristeas, that seventy Jewish scholars produced the translation independently of one another under the inspiration of God and without any error or confusion. Although scholars today provide a more nuanced theory for the growth of the Septuagint as a long-term process, the existence of this Greek translation facilitated the popular acceptance of other inspirational Jewish books written in Greek rather than in Hebrew. These include the Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 1–2 Maccabees, and some short Greek additions to Esther and Daniel. (Today these books are included in some Christian Bibles, but not in the Jewish Bible; see the tables in figs. 1.2–5 below and the discussion in chs. 3 and 6.) In addition to what we call the Septuagint, other translations of the OT into Greek were made. Jesus read from the Hebrew Scriptures in the synagogue of Nazareth, but soon after his death and resurrection disciples like Paul of Tarsus evangelized Jews, converts to Judaism (proselytes), and non-Jews in many Greek-speaking cities of the Mediterranean world. The Christian church was born with a Bible in its cradle—namely, the Greek Septuagint. The twenty-seven Christian documents that came out of that period of growth of the early church are treasured today as the New Testament. They were originally written in Greek, and when those documents quote from the Jewish Scriptures, they clearly demonstrate a preference for the LXX version, the wording of which sometimes differs from the original Hebrew text. Old Testament, New Testament The Christian Bible has two divisions, or Testaments. As noted above, Christian tradition designates the books of the Tanak with the term “Old Testament” in light of the customary name of its own collection of twenty-seven documents: the “New Testament,” from a Latin word, testamentum, that can mean “covenant.”9 The literary and theological relationship between the Jewish and Christian collections—the two parts of the Christian Bible—explains both the origin and the significance of these related titles. “Covenant” (Hebrew berît; Greek diathēkē) is one of the most significant concepts in the experience of Jewish and Christian faith. This important term links together the salvation stories associated with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. Indeed, the collections of Jewish and Christian writings arose over centuries as the respective communities described, commented upon, and propagated the realities of successive covenants. When Jeremiah 31:31 speaks of God establishing a “new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” the foundation was laid in the minds of later generations for some new revelation that would add to what was not yet present in the former experiences of covenant. Thus, the Christian writings characteristically refer to the “Scripture(s)” (Tanak) as being “fulfilled”—that is, brought to completion in some new way by Jesus or by a person or event in Christian experience (e.g., John 19:24, 36; cf. Luke 24:27, 44–45). As if to echo the words of Jeremiah, in the Gospel tradition Jesus explicitly refers to the “new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; cf. 1 Cor. 11:25). Paul speaks of old and new covenants (2 Cor. 3:6, 14). Even more explicitly alluding to Jeremiah 31:31, the Letter to the Hebrews contrasts the former covenant with Israel with the Christian experience of Jesus as mediator of a “better” (7:22; 8:6), and “new” (9:15) covenant. So as to address a perceived disparaging tone in the comparison of “old” and “new” covenants, various scholars, as well as some lay Christians concerned about Jewish-Christian relations, have suggested more neutral terms such as Two Testaments, though this still involves speaking of the First Testament and the Second Testament. In reality, the Christian Bible shares the Tanak (the first of the two Christian Testaments) with the continuing religious community of Judaism today. For Christians, then, the Scriptures of Israel are also Christian Scripture. (It is therefore erroneous, factually and theologically, to refer to the NT alone as “the Christian Scriptures.”) Even Augustine’s assertion, centuries ago, that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old is made manifest in the New, supports this shared understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. One Christian scholar, Philip Cunningham, suggests rewording Augustine’s formula in this way: “In the Shared Testament, the rabbinic texts and the Christian Testament find their perpetual foundations; in the Christian Testament, the Shared Testament is intensely read anew in Christ” (Sharing the Scriptures, 18). Perhaps sensitivity is best exercised by taking into account the religious context of discussion. Differing Jewish and Christian titles such as Tanak, Old Testament, and New Testament make eminent sense within their respective faith communities. These terms do have a biblical basis for their origin and usage. The use of these tradition-specific terms, even in scholarly discussion, acknowledges how the diverse faith groups have traditionally thought of their own documents. In this book we will use terms such as “New Testament” and “the writings of the New Covenant” interchangeably, as we will also do with terms such as “the Old Testament,” “the Hebrew Bible,” and “the Scriptures of Israel.” Canons A collection of sacred texts forms a standard or norm for a particular religious community. The Jewish and Christian communities use the term “canon” (Greek kanōn) for their respective official lists of individual books they consider inspired and sacred. The root meaning of this term is “measuring stick”; hence, the canon is the standard, or norm, that guides a tradition’s belief and behavior. (Though a canon of biblical books is quite different from a cannon used in military combat, biblical canons have led to a lot of heated debate over the centuries.) Chapter 6 of this book considers the formation of the biblical canons.