“Take this book of the Torah and put it next to the ark with the covenant of Adonai your God, so that it can be there to witness against you.”-Deuteronomy 31:26
In verse 26, God instructs that the Levites are to place the Book of Deuteronomy (called “this book of the Torah”) and place it next to the Ark which contains the 10 Words of God.
This leads us to a very important subject.
I’m talking about the topic of how the canon of our Bible came to be.
What exactly does the word “canon” mean?
This term is simply referring to the collection of books that has been authorized to be in our Bibles by an established religious body or council.
Verse 26 is communicating to us the importance of understanding that there does indeed exist a kind of hierarchy among the various books and writings of Holy Scripture.
As I mentioned yesterday, by placing the Book of Deuteronomy outside of the Ark of the Covenant, this not only shows the connection between the 10 Words (aka Commandments) and the Book of Deuteronomy but also demonstrates a clear order of importance.
In other words, the Book of Deuteronomy is to be subservient to the 10 Words or “Commandments” of God.
And by the way, the gentile church has also done the same thing with their New Testament “Scriptures”.
For the gentile church, the gospels hold the highest position among all the books in the NT.
After the gospels, Paul’s writings are next up in order of importance followed by Peter’s and John’s writings.
It is debatable where Revelations falls in the NT hierarchical order of importance.
The next time we meet, we’re going to discuss how the contents of the Hebrew Bible (the book the gentiles refer to as the “Old” Testament) became canonized.
This should prove to be quite a fascinating discussion.
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