Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

Episode Episode 1.57. Modern debates. End of an era.

In the last episode of the history in the Bible, I covered the debates that scholars today have about the exile of the Judeans in Babylon.

How many marched and how many stayed behind?

I also discussed the last days of the prophet Jeremiah and the short and sad administration of Geddalaire, the native governor appointed by Babylon to rule

over the tiny province of Judah. And at that point, I will finish this series. Why end series

one at such an odd place? At the beginning of the exile. Why not finish my first series with the rest of the Old

Testament, the Jewish Tanakh? These last books contain the histories of Ezra and Nehemiah. They also

include the two major prophets of Ezekiel and Daniel, and a few minor ones.

Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, Job, Obadiah, and Jonah.

To round off the lot, we have the books of Job, Ruth and Esther.

And that's it for the Protestant Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh.

Catholics add the books of Baruch, Syrac, Tobit, Judith, and the first two books of Maccabees.

To that, the Orthodox add, First Esdras, and the third and fourth books of Maccabees.

The Ethiopian Orthodox throw in the books of Enoch, Jubilees, 2nd Ezra, and the three books of Maccabian.

Jews hold that the last holy text was the book that the prophet Malachi wrote in about

450 BC during the Persian period. No great work was then fashioned until the legal digest,

the Mishnah, around 200 AD, at the height of the Roman Empire 650 years later.

The Christian division into Old and New Testaments

pretends that nothing happened between Malachi and the letters of Paul,

a period of 500 years.

...