Formation of the Old Testaments Quiz

Answer: During the Babylonian Exile

While conservative scholars believe the Pentateuch was written in the time of Moses with a few additions made after his death, liberal scholars believe it was a compilation of a variety of sources and that it did not take its final from until the Exile.

Answer: True

By 70 AD the Septuagint came to contain all of the books of the Hebrew Bible, as well as additional books written in Greek, which most Protestants term the "Apocrypha." The Old Testaments of the Catholic, Greek, Slavonic, Armenian, and Ethiopian traditions are based on the Septuagint.

Answer: All of these

These books are included in an appendix, but not in the Old Testament proper.

Answer: 1 Enoch

The Ethiopian Old Testament canon contains additional Pseudepigraphal books (books not in the Septuagint, and not in Jewish, Protestant, or Catholic canons). These include 1 Enoch and Jubilees. The Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic Gospel and it is not part of the New Testament.

Answer: The Catholic Old Testament only

The Protestant Old Testament contains the same books as the modern Jewish Bible. The Catholic Old Testament, however, contains seven books not found in the Jewish Bible, including I and II Macabees. These additional books were in the Septuagint.

Answer: deuterocanonical

Both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches accept these seven books as part of the Old Testament canon, and they often refer to them as "deuterocanonical."

Answer: 1st century AD

This occurred in about 90 AD. No official Greek canon had been defined, although in practice the Greek-speaking Jews and the early Christians had already been using the books in the Septuagint. Some of these books were originally written in Greek, not Hebrew.

The Palestinian rabbis excluded all of the non-Hebrew books from the canon. The canon they selected consisted of 24 books, and it is the same canon Protestants use, though Protestants subdivide the books into 39.

Answer: Jerome

Jerome coined this term, which means "hidden," when making his Latin translation of The Bible (The Vulgate). He had been using the Septuagint and the old Hebrew text. In doing so, he noticed that some of the books in the Septuagint were not in the Hebrew texts.

Answer: Song of Solomon

The reason was probably its sexual imagery and its lack of focus on God. Christians have tended to interpret the Song as being symbolic of Christ's love for His Church. The only other books meeting any real opposition were Esther and Ecclesiastes, but all were included.

Answer: 200 BC - 1 AD

Before this discovery, the oldest surviving Hebrew manuscripts dated from the 9th century AD.