Bible Review

For a discussion of this and related problems in the book of Esther, see my “Eight Questions Most frequently Asked About the Book of Esther,” BR 03:01.

By contrast, the Protestants’ acceptance of Esther and their rejection of Judith is not puzzling, for Protestants include in their Old Testament only those books found in the Hebrew Bible.

Judith’s canonical status, like that of other deuterocanonical books, was established by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1546.

Gunneweg, Understanding the Old Testament, p. 2.

Terence Fretheim, “The Old Testament in Christian Proclamation,” Word and World 3 (1983), p. 227.

Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), p. 60.

Alfred Jepsen, “The Scientific Study of the Old Testament,” in Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics, ed. C. Westermann, p. 250. See also Hartmut Gese, “Erwagungen zur Einheit der Biblischen Theologie,” in Von Sinai zum Zion (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1974), pp. 11–30. Gese continues Jepsen’s line of argument by arguing that the Old Testament has its integrity only in relation to the New Testament.

See in particular Wilhelm Vischer, The Witness of the Old Testament in Christ (London: Lutterworth, 1949). Vischer goes entirely in the opposite direction when he says, “Strictly speaking only the Old Testament is Scripture, while the New Testament brings the good news that now the content of Scripture—the meaning of all her words, her Lord and her fulfiller—has appeared bodily” (p. 8).

Bultmann, “Significance of the Old Testament,” p. 31.

Bultmann, “Significance of the Old Testament,” p. 17.