 So good evening everybody. Tonight we are starting a presentation about the Bible, about the Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures. And I want to start out tonight with a quote from Rabbi Yisrael Haim Blumenthal who has a blog called 1000 Verses. And on that blog he wrote an article called Guilt of Books. And in it there's a very very important paragraph which I've quoted for you tonight. It's the first of your sources on the source sheet. So it says as follows, a book is not a product of an individual, it is a product of a community. Yes, individuals write books but without the community the books would disappear into oblivion. If the community does not find in the book something that speaks to its heart or if the community finds the book distasteful then the book will never be copied and the future generations will never know that it existed. Anybody trying to get a book on Amazon knows that some books are really hard to get. Other books are very easy to get and usually it's based on supply and demand. And so if people really want it then people would go out and publish the book again and again reprinting it over and over. And so what's important to understand is the reason why we have the Bible today is because there was a community of people who felt that these writings were extremely important and therefore it was worth copying them and preserving them for future generations. We know that the Bible is one of the most influential books in the development of the Western civilization and so therefore it's worthy of discussion. We know that about 2.2 billion Christians look to the Bible and they hold it in revere. And the Tanakh, the Jewish Scriptures, is the most sacred of the Jewish writings in Judaism. So what we want to discuss tonight is what is the Bible? How did we get the Bible? And then do we share the same Bible with the Christians? And that's what I hope to discuss with you tonight. So first we'll look at the composition of the Jewish Scriptures. Then we'll have a look at the composition of the Christian Scriptures. And in upcoming lectures we will touch on important theological issues and differences. And these texts will play a role in understanding these positions and the differences that exist between Judaism and Christianity. Now on your sheets you'll find a list of the books of the Jewish Scriptures of the Tanakh. Now before we go and look at that, it's important to understand that the Bible, the Tanakh, the Jewish Scriptures, is a set of writings, a set of books that were written over the course of many hundreds of years by multiple authors who were writing under different conditions in different locations. It's important you understand that. The five books of Moses, for example, according to Jewish tradition, was written by Moses and given to the Jewish people before they went into the land of Israel. That book, or those five books of Moses as we know them, were sealed before the Jewish people went into the land of Israel. The book of Joshua and the prophets that come after that and the writings, the Ketuvim, are from a later date. That's just one example of how the Tanakh that we have today wasn't just handed to us one day as one final book, but rather there was a long process of writing it, of sealing it and of giving it special status, giving it special holy and authoritative authority. One of the things that should be obvious is that the Jewish Scriptures was written in Hebrew with some Aramaic. You won't find any Greek in our Scriptures and you won't find any English there either. If you're reading English, you know that it's a translation, it's not the original. In your sheets, what you'll see in the second source, or the third source, is a section from the Talmud. I want to read through that section together with you before we go and look at the first source, or the second source, which goes through the list of all the books and who authored them. Now, the Talmud is basically a record of conversations that were happening around the third to fifth century. These are records of discussions in a Talmudic academy where rabbis were discussing things, they were remembering things that were taught to them by their teachers, traditions that go all the way back, but ultimately the Talmud is basically a record of those discussions. What we're going to be reading from is from a tractate in the Talmud. Baba Bhattra, page 14b, follow your 14b, in the Talmud each page has two sides. So it's Amud alif, page one, Amud base is the second side. So this is 14b. And in this part of the Talmud, the Talmud has a discussion about the canonization of the Jewish scriptures. If you can call it that, the canonization, but we'll get to it. Let's read it together. The sages taught, the order of the Jewish, the order of the books of the prophets when they are attached together is as follows. Joshua and judges, Samuel and Kings, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah and the 12 prophets. Now, let me just explain that the printing press is a relatively new invention if you think about history. It's only about 400 years old. So when we speak about books of the Bible in ancient history, we're talking about scrolls. Scrolls that were written by hand and were copied by scribes. That's what we're speaking about. And when the Talmud speaks about books that when they're put together, it means that people were writing down on papyrus or on parchment and then they were stitching these things together and they were making them into one scroll. One of the reasons why they would do that is because it would be easier to preserve and that's how they would store these books, the books of the Bible, the books of the prophets. And so the Talmud is telling us that when they're put together, this would be the order. First Joshua and judges, Samuel and Kings, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah and then the 12 prophets. We'll get to the 12 prophets soon. The Talmud continues. The order of the writings. And it's important to point out before it says the books of the prophets. Now it speaks about the books of the order of the writings. So it says what are the writings? The Ketuvim, Ruth and the Book of Psalms and Job and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Lamentations, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther and Ezra and Chronicles. So here what we have is a discussion in the Talmud which tells us that these are the books of our scriptures. That's what we're told. We're told that the first group belong in the Book of the Prophets and the second group belong in the category called Ketuvim. And there's a difference between those two. Then it continues into a discussion about who wrote them. Who are the authors of these books? So it says and who wrote the books of the Bible? So it says Moses wrote his own book, i.e. the Torah, the five books of Moses and the portion of Balaam in the Torah. Now we know this is an interesting point. There's a belief that the scriptures are written with divine inspiration. The authors of the Bible wrote their books with divine inspiration. Now many of the things, if not all the things, in the scripture, in the five books of Moses could have been received by Moses by those who came before him. So for example, all the stories of Genesis could be something that was passed down to Moses by those that came before him. And then obviously all the things that he discusses about the time during the desert those are things that he records based on his memory, etc. There's one specific part of the Bible that he could not have witnessed or heard from anybody else. And that's the story of Balaam. Balaam was a non-Jewish prophet who was hired by one of the enemies of the Jews by Balak and he was told, please come and curse the Jewish people. And we hear or we read in the Bible, in the book of Numbers, a whole story about how they came and how they asked him to come and he refused and God came to Billam in a dream at night and so on and so forth and backwards and forwards and then God spoke to him and told him all these different things and Billam came and he said all these prophecies. Nobody from the Jewish community witnessed any of this. Billam didn't come to the Jewish community. He was standing on a mountain and he was making these proclamations. The Talmud comes and tells us that Moses was the one that included that in our scriptures because he was divinely inspired and God was the one who gave him this information. That's why it seems the Talmud felt it important to mention that Moses was the author of the story of Balaam. It goes on to say as follows. He also, Moses wrote the book of Job. Then he continues to say, Joshua wrote his own book and the eight verses in the Torah which describe the death of Moses. It's an interesting dispute in the Talmud right over here where there's a discussion about who wrote the last eight verses in the Torah because the last eight verses in the Torah describe the death of Moses. How can Moses be writing about his own death? How he went up to the mountain and so on and so forth? If he's writing about how he went up to the mountain, so how do we have that? The Talmud says that the last eight verses was written by Joshua, not by Moses. Then he continues and says as follows. It says that Samuel wrote his own book, the book of Judges and the book of Ruth. That's the prophet Samuel. David wrote the book of Psalms by mean of ten elders and Samuel goes on to mention who those ten contributors to the book of Psalms were. Then it says as follows. Jeremiah wrote his own book and the book of Kings and Lamentations. Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote the following. And to remember which books they wrote is Yud, Mem, Shin, Kuf, Isaiah, Ishael, Proverbs, Mishle, Song of Songs which is Shirah, Shirim and Ecclesiastes which is Kohalat. The members of the Great Assembly wrote the following. And it gives a nomic to remember it. It's Kuf, Nun, Dalit, Gimel refers to Yechesco, the Twelve Prophets which is the Schnee Maasar and Daniel in the School of Esther and Ezra wrote his own book and the genealogy of the book of Chronicles until his period. So that's what we have over here from the Talmud telling us who the authors of the Scripture were. The Talmud continues. It doesn't go much longer. The Talmud continues. And Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there. This is a passage in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 34 verse 5. And the Talmud asks, is it possible that after Moses died he himself wrote and Moses died there? Rather, Moses wrote the entire Torah until this point. And Joshua wrote from this point forward, this is the statement of Rabbi Yehuda. Okay, so that's the opinion of one of the Talmudic sages. That what? That it must have been Joshua who came and wrote the last eight verses. But as the Talmud does, it raises an objection by another rabbi. What do you mean? Rabbi Shimon said to him, is it possible that the Torah scroll was missing a single letter? But it is written, take this Torah scroll, Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 26 indicating that the Torah was complete as is and that nothing further would be added to it. Rather, according to Rabbi Shimon, rather, until this point the Holy One blessed be He dictated and Moses repeated after him and wrote the text. From this point forward, with respect to Moses' death, the Holy One blessed be He dictated and Moses wrote with tears. In other words, Moses did write about his own death and it was dictated to him by God and Moses wrote these words with tears. So we have a dispute here. Who wrote the last eight verses? One opinion is that it was Moses himself. Another opinion is that it was Joshua. The same problem repeats itself with the book of Joshua and the book of Samuel. It's stated in the Brisa that Joshua wrote his own book. The Gomorrah asks, but isn't it written towards the end of the book in Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of the Lord died? This is in Joshua chapter 24 verse 29. Is it possible that Joshua wrote this? So the Gomorrah answers that no, it was actually Aaron's son, Alazza, completed it. The Gomorrah asks, but isn't it also written that Alazza son of Aaron died? Again, in Joshua 24 verse 33, not only do we have prior to that, Joshua died but we have Alazza. The one who we just said was the one who completed the book. We have him dying as well. So the Gomorrah answers, Pinchas, who was the son of Alazza, he completed it. The same thing happens with Samuel. It was also stated in the Brisa that Samuel wrote his own book. The Gomorrah asks, but isn't it written that Samuel died? This is in the first book of Samuel chapter 28 verse 3. So the Gomorrah answers, God the seer and Nathan the prophet finished it. So what do we see from here? What we see from here is that according to our tradition, the authors of the Bible were the ones mentioned over here. And even though there's some discussion as to who completed which book, but nevertheless there's no dispute as to their holiness and their authority. Let's go back to the first source and now plug them all in. Meaning to say, let's see who wrote what. So we have the first category, which are the first five books of Moses and the author was Moses. Joshua, well we said the author was Joshua, judges. The author was Samuel. The book of Samuel was only divided into two books at a later stage. You see, it's very interesting that we consider our scriptures to be consisting of 24 books, but if you count them there's actually 39. And that's because many of the books eventually were divided into two. So for example, Samuel was divided into two, Kings was divided into two. Then it goes on to say Isaiah, the author of Isaiah was Hezekiah, King Hezekiah and his companions. He put together some kind of editorial board that helped him to complete the book of Isaiah. You have Jeremiah who was the author of his own book and Hezekiah was redacted and completed by the men of the Great Assembly. Now the twelve minor prophets are not called minor prophets because they're of small stature. They're called minor because the books are relatively small and it was going to be very difficult for them to be preserved so they put them all into one scroll. And that's why they're called the twelve minor prophets, but not because they were small people at all. You have over here the list of the twelve books of the prophets. Then you have the Xun, the writings. The author of Psalms was David. The author of Proverbs was Hezekiah and his colleagues. Now remember when we say that the Proverbs were Hezekiah, etc., we still have a tradition that these originated with King Solomon. But who were the people that redacted the book and wrote it down and preserved it and made sure that they were there and included in the scripture it was the men of the Great Assembly. And you can read on the list the rest of the people that were authoring these books. What we see from this section of the Talmud is that there are three groups, the Torah, the Neviim and the Ketuvim. The Torah is only the five books of Moses. What qualified to get in? The only qualification is that Moses wrote it. Moses was the one that handed it to the Jewish people and that's the only thing that made it into the five books of Moses. Nothing else made it into the five books of Moses. But then what made it into the group of the Neviim? What made it into the group of the prophets? So there's an interesting section in the Talmud and that's the next source that I want to go through with you. It says as follows in the Tractate of Megillah page 14A I have the original here but I'm going to read from the English. It says as follows, Many prophets arose for the Jewish people numbering double the number of Israelites who left Egypt. That's a lot. We had a lot of prophets. And if you read through the scriptures, if you read through the Tanakh you will see one prophet after another prophet many of them who remain nameless that come and speak to the kings and speak to this one, speak to that one. It's incredible how many prophets there are. And yet we only have 24 books. So why is it? Why is it that not all of them made it in to the Jewish scriptures? So it's however only a portion of the prophecies were recorded. And it says it gives the reason because only prophecy that was needed for future generations was written down in the Bible for posterity. But that which was not needed as it was not pertinent to later generations was not written. And what that means is that there may have been many prophets who came and addressed the people of their time. However, the sages and the prophets of that time the leaders of the Jewish community at that time determined that it was only relevant to the people at that time. And it was not relevant to future generations and therefore those prophecies and those writings were not preserved. And when it says they were not written I assume that to mean that they weren't copied. It's possible that they were written down and circulated among the Israelites of that time but they weren't copied over and over as the other books were. There are about 22 books that are mentioned in the Tanakh that are not included in the Tanakh. There are the names of 22 books that are mentioned in our Tanakh but they don't appear in our Tanakh at all. We don't have them as part of the books. What we can see from the Talmud is that the group called the Niveim and the Ketuvim were accepted as having a certain elevated status as holy scripture by the members of the Great Assembly which was comprised of about 120 of the greatest Jewish leaders of this early Second Temple period which included some of the prophets like Haggai, Zechariah, Zechariah and Malachi who were part of the Anche Kinesis Agedola, the members of the Great Assembly. Mordechai, you'll know from the story of Purim was also part of the Anche Kinesis Agedola and they're the ones that really closed the prophets. Our last prophet was Malachi, Malachi. We don't have any prophets after that, books of prophets after that and these were books that were accepted widely by the Jewish community in the Second Temple period maybe very early on. Some outside sources, outside of the Talmud. We have for example the work of Ben-Sira who was somebody who lived in Alexandria in the Second Century BCE before the Common Era and he has a book of aphorisms which indicate that by his time there were a well-accepted group of writings that were considered to be holy and that group of books resemble what we have in Artanach. We have Josephus, everybody's heard of the famous historian Josephus who writes in his book against Apion who was a pagan priest so Josephus was writing some kind of defense of Judaism and over there in Book 1, Section 8 he claims to have known about 22 books. Just to conclude this part my understanding based on the research that I've done is that it's safe to say that by the time of Rabbi Akiva the book of our scriptures as we have it today was given that final status of being Holy Scripture that they were accepted Shir HaShirim, Song of Songs which was somewhat in question and Ecclesiastes was somewhat in question whether or not they should be given the same status as the others and whether they should be included in the Scripture or whether they should be hidden whether they should be buried that all was finalized at the end by the time of Rabbi Akiva that's when our scriptures the way we have them today were finalized. What's important? 136 of the Common Era he lived from about the year 50 of the Common Era to the year 136 of the Common Era and by the time of his death it was already finalized. What I really want people to understand from this whole discussion up to this point is we tend to think that the Tanakh just landed as a book finished as a finished product and that's not the case. We consider it the Word of God but we really need to appreciate how many people were involved in the writing, the copying and the preservation and ultimately the decision making and the redacting of our scriptures and that we really heavily depend if not solely depend on those great leaders those great sages and prophets who were part of the process of ultimately writing and redacting and deciding those scriptures for us. Those people were very holy people those people were people that were trusted by our nation and it's for that reason that we revered these scriptures today. Enough about our scriptures let's move on to the Christian scriptures. I just want to mention that I'm not mentioning any of the apocrypha books that didn't make it into the Bible like the book of Maccabees and other books. The Catholic Church have about 73 books in their canon and it's beyond the scope of today's discussion to deal with those. In your sources you will see a list of 27 books which make up the second half of the Christian scriptures. The first 39 books that the Christian scriptures have are the our books of the Tanakh and although they're somewhat different order but nevertheless they are pretty much the same as our books up to Malachi. We finish with Second Chronicles we have it in a different order they finish with the book of Malachi. Let's have a look at that list. We have the four gospels. Now the four gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We don't know who the authors of those books are. None of the authors of the gospels sign their book to say signed Matthew, signed Mark. Luke is the only one who it's assumed that there was this physician who went around gathering information and wrote it all down in the book of Luke and the book of Acts is also attributed to him but apart from that the books are really anonymous. Scholars give the dating of these gospels Mark being the earliest around 70, Matthew in the year 80 and Luke around the year 90 and John around the year 100 CE. Now again these are approximate don't hold me to it these are rough numbers that scholars throw around there's arguments some want to make a bit earlier some people want to make a bit later but that's roughly the dating of these scriptures these Christian scriptures. We then have the Acts of the Apostle. Again the author doesn't make himself known but it's assumed that it's Luke and this is basically well the full gospels are pretty much about the life ministry of Jesus and a lot of the things that he taught and said and about his death and his alleged resurrection and so on. Then you have the epistles which are the letters written by Paul and some of the other apostles. Now again it's very important to understand that many of these books today are in question as to who actually wrote them. Paul is attributed with writing 13 letters but of those letters only 7 are undisputed in the sense that it's undisputed that he was the author. All the other books are actually disputed as to who actually wrote them and I'm not going to go through all of them you can see them over here I've given the names and the rough dates that are thrown around about when they were written and so on. What's important to understand is that just like I mentioned about the Tanah the Jewish scriptures it didn't just land in a book and it was handed out to everybody free in Israel there was a process and the New Testament wasn't decided upon just a few weeks after Jesus died or after Paul finished writing them this was an ongoing debate not for decades for centuries it was a debate that went on for centuries there wasn't just one gospel going around there were many gospels around and as you can imagine and appreciate there weren't just one or two or thirteen letters going around there were hundreds of letters going around and which book made it in which letter, which epistle made it into the scripture and which didn't is something that took a very long time to be finalized. The first person who actually came up with a canon of scripture when I say the first person the first person we know of the canon of scripture for Christians was a person who was later branded as one of the heretics his name was Marcian Marcian lived in the second century over 120 years after the death of Jesus and this Marcian was somebody who accepted Paul as an apostle par excellence Paul was the man to go to and so therefore he accepted Paul's epistles the ones that he had ten of those epistles ten of Paul's writings he rejected all things that were Jewish as not Christian he rejected the Old Testament completely and in fact he said it's not possible that the God of the Old Testament could be the same as the God of Jesus and he wrote a book actually called the antithesis and basically he does a comparison between stories that you read in the Old Testament which seem to have God telling the Jews to go and wipe out their Malachites and then you have Jesus telling people to love your enemy and turn the other cheek and he says obviously it's not the same God you know Jesus is not of that God and therefore he discarded the whole Old Testament actually is a heavenly being that comes from somewhere else and he's coming to save us from this wrathful God that was Marcian's that was Marcian's idea and in the second century his views were very popular many people adopted those ideas however he didn't win out and there was strong pushback eventually against these ideas and the Old Testament was included in the Christian scriptures the first time that any of the church of record indicated that there was 27 books in the New Testament was in the year 367 of the Common Era that's over 300 years after the death of Jesus that was the first time that somebody of repute within the Christian I guess hierarchy whatever you want to call it that tells us that there are 27 books and his name was Athanasius he was an influential bishop from Alexandria Egypt and he was the one that tells us about these 27 books the 27 books that we have today now we understand that when we look back at the history of Christianity it started out as a Jewish group in the land of Israel and the older apostles were Jewish and according to many of the records within the Christian scriptures themselves they were all Torah observant Jews in fact it surprises many Christians that Jesus in the book of Matthew tells his disciples in order to enter in order to enter heaven you have to be more righteous than the Pharisees you have to keep all the commandments and whoever does or teaches others to not keep the commandments they'll be the least in the kingdom to come however what happened is that Jesus's message and the Christian religion didn't really take root in the land of Israel many Jewish people threw Paul out of their synagogues as is recorded in the book of Acts chapter 13 and so he decided to take his message to the Gentiles and the Gentiles were the ones who ultimately ended up embracing the message of Paul and the message of Paul moved away it moved away from placing a focus on one's relationship with God by keeping the commandments and doing what God tells us to do and keeping the covenant and moves more towards this sacrifice that comes to save you from hell and so what happens is the pagans of that time are the ones that start accepting Paul's message and they are the ones who become the keepers of the authority church and so even though there were some like the ebonites who continued to practice circumcision on their children to try and keep kosher, to keep Shabbat they did not believe in the deity of Jesus they did not believe in the virgin birth but nevertheless they were ultimately persecuted by the Pauline church they were branded as heretics and ultimately they were not given any authority to decide about the future and the path that the church would take and so when we talk about the books that ultimately ultimately made it in to the Christian scriptures scholars today believe that there were basically four criteria that were used by the Pauline church the ones that ultimately determined the canon of the Christian scriptures and I have that in your soul sheet the criteria for the inclusion into the New Testament so the first thing is antiquity and what that means is that the books had to be around for a long time you cannot in the third century or the second century just come with a book that you wrote yesterday and ask for it to be included it didn't work like that it doesn't matter how profound your writing was if it didn't trace itself back and it wasn't in circulation for a while it was not going to be accepted by those who deciding on the canon of the Christian scriptures the second thing was the apostolicity what that means is you had to be an apostle one of the disciples of Jesus or their close companions or disciples to be able to that to be able to be included into the gospels many of the at least some of the books that are in the New Testament were accepted into the New Testament because it was thought that they were authored by Paul so for example the book of Hebrews it was thought that Paul was the author and that's one of the reasons why it was accepted into the canon however today most scholars not all do not believe that Hebrews was authored by Paul but again it just shows that it carried weight if it was believed that it was written by an apostle number three is universality only the books that were used universally used throughout the church could be accepted as part of the canon what that means is that a couple of churches that happened to like one particular gospel or one particular letter if that wasn't universally accepted by other churches around the known world at that time then it wasn't going to be accepted as being part of the canon and that's why these debates went on for a while sometimes it was in, sometimes it was out certain books were taken out certain books were put back in revelations was in and out the fourth one is orthodoxy and this might be the most important of all because for the church fathers a book to be included in the Christian scriptures had to be teaching right doctrine if it wasn't teaching right doctrine that itself was enough proof that it wasn't written by an apostle a true apostle and it wasn't of God but what's important to understand is what did they believe what did the people who were in authority believe which they used as the measure to determine whether the book goes in or not did they believe what the men of the great assembly believed did they believe what Jews today believe do they believe what the Pharisees of the first century believed well we'll see next week clearly not but just for tonight's purpose I've included over here two quotes from somebody named Ignatius who was actually quite an early quite an early church father if you could call him that he was he was Ignatius of Antioch he was an early church writer and he was a bishop of Antioch he lived around the year 35 of the common era until the year 107 of the common era and he was somebody who actually is known to have taught about the deity of Jesus in other words he believed that Jesus was somehow divine and let's read what he writes in terms of his view of the Torah and the observance of the Mitzvah he says as follows be not seduced by strange doctrines or by antiquated fables which are profitless for if even unto this day we live after the manner of Judaism we avow that we have not received grace this is something similar to what it says in the book of Galatians that we believe that you can be righteous through your deeds then Jesus ultimately died in vain because then you don't need Jesus to get to heaven right and so this is what Ignatius is really saying he's saying that listen if we're going to follow these doctrines then ultimately we're basically saying that we have not received grace if then those who had walked in ancient practices attained unto newness of hope no longer observing Sabbaths but fashioning their lives after the Lord's day on which life also arose through him how well how shall we be able to live apart from him in other words he's advocating over here to move away from Shabbos observance to start focusing more about the resurrection of Jesus and thereby gaining a new hope and gaining salvation the next source that I have over here again this is from the letter to the Magnesians let us therefore no longer see the Sabbath after the Jewish manner and rejoice in days of idleness but let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner rejoicing in meditation on the law not in realisation of the body and not eating things prepared the day before nor using lukewarm drinks and walking within a prescribed space and after the observance of the Sabbath let every friend of Christ keep the Lord's day as a festival the resurrection day the queen and chief of all the days of the week looking forward to this the prophet declared to the end for the eight days on which our life both sprang up again and the victory over death was obtained in Christ again this section is again advocating that one should not follow the commandments as Jews are following them should not keep Shabbos as it was being followed by them because ultimately it's of no prophet now that was early that was again in the first and second century this is the first century but as time passed it got progressively worse they moved further and further and further away what Jews had believed in the first century and what the Anchekneth Sagdala the members of the great assembly and the prophets all taught and so ultimately when we want to understand whether or not we share the same scriptures we have to understand that there was a different community that were involved in the canonization process of the scriptures we have one question left and that question is if Marcian taught that you should not include the Old Testament the Jews had it all wrong and it was only by following Jesus that you were able to obtain salvation so why did the Christians keep the Old Testament why did they keep it because the reality is that already from the second century there was a very strong move away from observance of Torah keeping circumcision and so on and so forth in the Old Testament why didn't they just take the 27 books that they have and that's it and move on one of the answers that I find compelling is that it goes to the issue that Christians in the first centuries had to deal with they were being oppressed challenged and ridiculed by pagan neighbors by Roman rulers why? because in the ancient Roman Greco world in order for something to have any kind of substance or worth or respect it had to be of antiquity in the ancient world if something wasn't of antiquity then it wasn't respected at all if you came up with a philosophy yesterday no one's going to give you any time if you come up with a religion that's brand new everybody will look at you as a laughing stock and so therefore they needed to be able to claim that their religion isn't a new religion but it goes all the way back to Moses and so therefore by holding on to the New Testament and actually usurping the New Testament claiming that they are the real Israel and that the scriptures really belong to them that was the only way they could get around this and retain their status as an old antiquated religion and therefore Jesus now becomes the person who fulfilled everything that Moses said everything points the way to Jesus and then ultimately they could keep that however what is blatantly obvious is that the Old Testament doesn't really carry nearly as much weight with the Christian the church fathers as the writings of the New Testament do and the fact of the matter is the proof is in the pudding the church moved away from Torah observance for over a thousand years and even though today we have many Missianic Jews who are trying whatever in whichever way they can to hold on to some of the Torah observances but nevertheless it's very clear that the community that produced the New Testament the Christian church fathers who ultimately decided on the canonization of the Christian scriptures did not believe and did not hold to the same things that the Jewish community have held to all the way back to Moses thank you very much