Names given to the Bible
Date
200CE
third and fourth centuries CEapproximate date
'Old Testament' is a Christian term that Jews reject because it defines their Bible by reference to the New Testament; 'people of the book' was a name given to them by Muslims.
Sourced narrative
Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.
6 statements
01What 'Old Testament' means
The expression 'Old Testament' is Christian in origin. It goes back to Jeremiah, who foresaw God someday making a 'new covenant', which Christians believed Jesus had brought about. Once Christians had their own canon, in the 200s and 300s CE, the portion on Jesus (the Gospels and the rest) was labeled the New Testament as the document of that covenant, and the remainder, standing for the Sinai covenant, became the Old Testament. In early Christian eyes the Sinai covenant applied only to Israel and had been superseded by Jesus's covenant, open to every nation. The Old Testament is not identical to the Jewish Bible in other respects either: the books come in another order, and most Christians read it in Greek, Latin or some other translation instead of Hebrew. Still, the chief objection Jews have to the name is that it defines the Hebrew Bible by reference to the New Testament, a work they do not regard as part of scripture.
02Why Jews have no New Testament
Jews reject the New Testament because they do not take Jesus to be the messiah or God's son. In his day some Jews were hoping for a messiah, a deliverer descended from David, but to many Jesus did not match the profile, since he died without rescuing his people from their rulers. Early Christianity further taught that Jesus released Jews from obeying Moses's laws, which clashed with what Jews saw as the heart of their covenant duties; some Jews of the time would accept death before breaking those laws. The authors add that, around this period, certain Jews may have been waiting for a pair of messianic figures, the earlier one destined to suffer or die before the later one arrived, and that Jesus's suffering and death could have been compatible with that expectation.
03'People of the book'
'People of the book' was originally a name Muslims gave to Jews, and to others as well: Christians and a group called Sabians qualified too, since all were defined by devotion to a scripture. For Jews the 'Book' is the Torah, whose figures and events Muslims also treat as part of sacred history, although they held that Jewish transmitters had distorted its written form. Under Islamic rule such groups counted as non-Muslims who could be urged to convert; those who declined had a lower legal standing that carried a special levy, the jizyah. Anyone who accepted these conditions was to be protected, so 'people of the book' was comparatively better than being labeled a pagan. Jews eventually adopted the phrase as their own and lost sight of its negative undertone in Islam, and nowadays it is sometimes used to mean a Jewish devotion to books generally and not just the Torah.
§ 01Geography
Where it happened
§ 04Network
Connections
§ 05Bibliography
Further reading
Benjamin Sommer, Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2012).
How Jews have understood the Bible across different historical moments · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 61
§ 06Apparatus
Sources on this page
- 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60inspect
- 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60inspect
- 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60inspect
- 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60inspect
- 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60inspect
- 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 60; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 61inspect
- Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
- Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
- Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
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