The Old Testament has been translated and canonized five separate times in history. Who is responsible for the Old Testament we have today -and is it reliable? These are important questions because we must know that the OT Scriptures have been faithfully preserved. There have been critics who have suggested that certain books which were left out of the canonization should have been included. And there are critics who claim that the current translation has been compromised because the vowel pointers needed to distinctly pronounce God’s name were not added, and instead the vowel pointers for adonia which simply means "Lord" were added. As a result, wherever the name "YHWH" is written "Lord" is read aloud. At face value this itself seems quite nefarious and the cries of "lying Scribes!" seem justified. But we should always be careful to not have knee-jerk reactions, and gather all the facts needed to make an educated search for the truth. When a task is needed God provides -and those whom He chooses for that task has His authority to complete it.

The first five books -the books of Moses (Torah) have never been in question. A casual reading of the Torah reveals that Israel’s religious worship centered around the Tabernacle and later the Temple with the Priesthoods of Aaron and Levi entrusted with the administration. The Old Testament is essentially a Levitical document which was canonized under the authority of the Aaronic Priesthood. To canonize means to fix a "rule or measuring rod" and is a process by which a collection of writings are established as being authoritative, difinitive, and fixed by an ordained religious authority. A canonical book is one that conforms to the canon,-that is, it passes the test of authenticity. The current Old Testament is the same one that the Apostle Paul was referring to when he wrote, -"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." (2Timothy 3:16) The word "inspired" in this verse means "God breathed."

The Jews were conquered by Babylon in about 586 BC and many were carried to Babylon to live in exile. Jeremiah had prophesied that this would occur and told the people to make their homes in Babylon until the seventy year judgment was completed. Afterwards the people would be allowed to return, and 42,000 did. The Ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom were conquered earlier in 721 BC by the Assyrians and were carried away as slaves. The Assyrians placed people of non-Israel descent in their land. These people learned to speak Hebrew from the scattered Israelites who had remained. They also added Israel’s God to the gods they were already worshiping.

In The Jewish Canon and the Christian Canon, Dr. Kip L. Wheeler points out that the idea of a finalized Hebrew canon first began to emerge shortly after the Babylonian exile. He notes that it was the Jews’ fear of religious "contamination" that motivated them to create an "official version of the various Scriptures and gather them into one organic collection." Indeed, the primary reason for the final compilation of the sacred Aaronic writings into an authentic, authoritative canon of Scripture was to combat an insidious counterfeit system of worship arising out of Samaria during the post-exilic period.

From "The Canonization of the Old Testament" by Carl Franklin, -"Historically, a counterfeit form of Judaic worship emerged from Samaria, north of Jerusalem, in the fifth century BC led by the apostate high priest Manassah. (Recall that Samaria and the area previously occupied by the northern tribes of Israel had long been repopulated by Gentiles following Israel’s exile—II Kings 17.) After marrying the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, Manassah was confronted by Ezra the priest, who demanded that Manassah and his fellow priests put away their foreign wives. Manassah refused, and he and his rebel priests defected to Samaria where Sanballat had built a Jerusalem-like temple for Manassah and his apostate priests. Astonishingly, Manassah’s new apostate religion incorporated all of the rituals described in the Law, the only portion of the Hebrew texts accepted by the rogue priests."

"Ezra and the Great Assembly of 120 priests—as well as the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea—found themselves confronted with a counterfeit form of temple worship that professed to uphold the laws of Moses. Its counterfeit temple stood on Mount Gerizim, the Mount of Blessing, near Jacob’s Well. Ezra perceived that this false religion was a real threat to the pure worship of the true God which he and others had worked to restore to the post-exilic Jews. Something drastic had to be done to protect the true worship of God from being corrupted by this new Samaritan-Jewish apostasy.

To accomplish this, Ezra and the Great Assembly began to exercise firm authority over every aspect of worship at the temple of God in Jerusalem and in the numerous Jewish synagogues scattered throughout the Persian empire. The Great Assembly supervised and regulated the temple rites and sacrifices, priestly laws, synagogue rituals and everything associated with the worship of God under the Old Covenant. Every act of worship had to be thoroughly and completely scriptural, centered at the temple in Jerusalem—and approved by Ezra and the Great Assembly."

"In order to preserve the true worship of God, it was essential to differentiate between the sacred Hebrew texts of the Jerusalem Jews and the Hebrew writings utilized by the apostate Samaritan Jews. The key step was to organize the sacred Levitical documents into a final, closed canon of Scripture. Then, accurate copies of the entire canonized text were made and distributed to Jewish synagogues throughout the Persian empire. Once canonized, the Scriptures could be preserved without fear of corruption."

The men of the Great Assembly, also known as the Great Synagogue, or Synod, was an assembly of 120 scribes, sages, and prophets, in the period from the end of the Biblical prophets since the early Second Temple period to the early Hellenistic period. It comprised such prophets as Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, Nehemiah, , Mordechai, Zerubabel, Shaaltiel, among others and was headed by Ezra. Sometimes, the Great Assembly is simply designated as "Ezra and his court of law." Among the developments in Judaism that are attributed to them are the fixing of the Jewish Biblical canon, including the Book of Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, and the Twelve Minor Prophets; the introduction of the Feast of Purim. These extraordinary sages preserved God’s Word and defined the essence of Judaism for the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora. Obviously, God had given these great scholars the authority and surely directed their work by His Spirit.

In "Getting Acquainted with the Bible", Martin Hegland writes: "There is much evidence to indicate that the canon of the Old Testament was fixed by about the year 400 BC largely as a result of the work of Ezra and Nehemiah and a council of Jews known as the Great Synagogue… Long before that time, however, many of the books we now have in the Old Testament had been agreed upon as inspired"

From "The Canonization of the Old Testament" by Carl Franklin, -"Indeed, Ezra—a priest of the Aaronic line—returned to Jerusalem from Babylon in 458 BC with "the Law of God" in his hands (Ezra 7:14), and boldly proclaimed the Law before the post-exilic congregation of Judah (Neh. 8-9). Ezra undoubtedly had in his possession numerous additional texts regarded as canonical—such as writings by the prophets, as well as those that make up the "Writings" of the Old Testament."

"While the preceding periods of canonization are significant, scholars generally consider them to be primarily of historical interest. Martin, for example, writes that the canonization efforts prior to Ezra "do not involve what books belong in the Old Testament canon for us today. The question of exactly which books represent the complete Old Testament for us can only be answered by understanding the canonization of Ezra and those one hundred and twenty priests who comprised the Great Assembly. It is Ezra’s final work which is most important to us and to later Judaism… it was Ezra who gave to the Jewish world the official (and final) Old Testament to be read in the Temple and synagogues. This makes the canonization by Ezra the most important of all" (Restoring the Original Bible, ch. 12)."

"Like Moses, Ezra’s edits consisted largely of updating ancient geographical names with newer names. Where older names were retained, explanatory phrases were sometimes added to identify them. Other edits provide additional information. Genesis 36:31–39, for example, records the names of Edomite kings down to the time of King Saul. Moses could not have written this section because he would hardly have known the names of Edomite kings living three hundred years after his death."

"Another example which could not have been penned by Moses occurs in Deuteronomy 34:5-6: "And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab … [but] no man knows of his grave to this day." Again, Moses could hardly have written: "And there has not arisen a prophet like Moses since then in Israel, whom the LORD knew face-to-face" (verse 10). Other edits provide the reader with an updated timeline—such as in Judges 18:30, which records events occurring hundreds of years after the Judges ruled. Edits made by Ezra as a part of the final canonization were obviously designed to update the text and make it more understandable to the people of his day. Ezra must have felt that the texts needed editing in order to provide the Jews with the complete revelation of God."

IN CONCLUSION: Jesus made a number of claims supporting the reliability of the Old Testament. Jesus affirmed seven key points in relation to the Old Testament, as explained by Christian systematic theologian Norman Geisler: "Jesus affirmed its divine authority … its imperishability … its unbreakability … its ultimate supremacy … its factual inerrancy … its historical reliability … and its scientific accuracy." Matthew 5:17-18 sums up the approach Jesus took in confirming the reliability of the Old Testament: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." This means, that not only was every single book that God wanted included has been, but that every "single stroke of the pen" and "smallest letter" has been preserved -including the inspired vowel pointers. (Which is why Jesus read aloud "Lord" in Luke 4:17-19 for YHWH) Jesus found no fault with Ezra’s translation and canonization.