The Bible in Jesus Day

Before the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. there was no one list of sacred books that was considered authoritative. At that time there was, as yet, no clear order between Biblical books and non-biblical books. Even though all Jews accepted the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, as the scriptural underpinning of Jewish ritual and daily life, the scrolls show that numerous variants of even these key books existed among different Jewish communities of the day.


The Hebrew text were written on loose scrolls and not in any particular order. It would take until the fifth century AD before the biblical cannon was set.