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INTRODUCTION

TO THE

SACRED BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

§ 1. Names of the books of the Old Testament.[a]

THE books which the Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews, have long venerated as divine, are usually called THE OLD Testament, in order to distinguish them from the sacred books of the Christian religion, which are called THE NEW Testament. This appellation is taken from II Cor. iii. 6. 14. comp. Mat. xxvi. 28. Gal. iii. 17. Heb. viii. 8. ix. 15-20, where the ancient Latin translators have rendered Siaonan (which signifies both a covenant and a testament, but in the Bible always answers to the Hebrew, a covenant) TESTAMENTUM, a testament, because, as Jerome remarks, Comm. in Malach. c. ii. 2., they by a Graecism attributed to this word the sense of FOEDUS, a covenant.[b] The expression waλaia diαŋŋ old covenant, II Cor. iii. 14., signifies the ancient divine instructions promises, and threats, and the whole scheme of the Mosaic religion; but as all these, with an account of their effects in the course of time, and of the furtherances and obstructions with which they met, are contained in the books under consideration, the name was by a metonymy transferred to the books, so that, VETUS FOEDUS, old covenant, stands for the books of the old covenant or testament, just as, with a more occurs Ex. xxiv. 7., and ov Sadnens I Macc. i. 57.—The appellation p the reading book,

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