Article 3a - The Origin of the Bible – A Brief Timeline of the Old Testament
By Emmanuel Gomes Most people today don’t give it much thought on how the Bible came to be in its current form. How did we get the Bible? Where did it come from? And most importantly of all, who decided on which books should be included in the Bible? In this and subsequent article(s) we will try to dig into these questions further. The main objective of this article is to – Give a historical insight (a timeline) on the development of the Bible (specifically the OT). What did the various sects of ancient Jews think about the Scriptures. What was the Jewish Scripture during Jesus’s time. What is the meaning of the word canon? ‘Bible’ comes from the ancient word for ‘book’ or ‘scroll’ (Greek biblos). The Old Testament is a collection of books (a library) written by human beings over the course of many centuries. The answer to the questions mentioned above is what is known as the canon of Scripture. The word ‘canon’ comes from kanon (Greek) which itself comes from qaneh (Hebrew),