Books Jesus Read

Introduction

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doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” 5 The Apocrypha were also included in early printed editions of the King James Bible! To summarize, the thirty-nine books we call the Old Testament, translated into Greek and interspersed with various books now known collectively as the Apocrypha, became the Bible of Greek-speaking Christianity. 6 When translated into Latin, they became the Bible of Western, medieval Christianity, and continue to this day as the Bible of Roman Catholicism. The History of Second Temple Judaism With the turn of a single page, readers of the Protestant Bible move from Malachi to Matthew’s Gospel. But what happened to God’s people during the several hundred years between the final Old Testament prophet and John the Baptist? The name of this historical period lumps together everything under the banner of the Second Temple. That is, from the completion of Zerubbabel’s temple (Ezra 3:8; Hag 1:1), in 515 BC until its destruction in AD 70. This crucial era included several world-changing events, including (1) Alexander the Great’s conquest and subsequent transformation (specifically, the “Hellenization”) 7 of world culture; (2) the rise of Israel as an independent nation for only the second time since the reign of David; (3) the development of several Jewish sects, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes; and, finally, (4) the rise of Rome as the most powerful empire the world had yet seen. If Old Testament history is important for 5 Article 6 on the Sufficiency of Scripture, of the Thirty-Nine Articles available online at http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/articles/articles.html#6. 6 Greek-speaking Christianity – ancient, Eastern Christianity. 7 Hellenization – the Greek cultural transformation initiated by Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Mediterranean world.