Testimony of Josephus

Part Two
Bibliology: 13 THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE
A DISPENSATIONAL THEOLOGY
By Charles F Baker

Josephus, the Jewish historian, writing about 100 A.D., stated:

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another (as the Greeks have), but only 22 books, which contain the record of all time; which are justly believed to be divine .... It is true our history has been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but has not been esteemed of like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there has not been an exact succession of prophets since that time. And how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation, it is evident by what we do; for, during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them.³

3            Josephus, Against Apion, I. 8, quoted by H. S. Miller, General Biblical Introduction (Houghton, N.Y.: The Word Bearer Press, 1947), p. 104.

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