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    cause any suspicion attached to the books contained in the third part of the Jewish canon , but because , for reasons to be assigned when we come to treat of the Septuagint , " the law and the prophets" only were publicly read and expounded in the Jewish synagogues in the time of our Lord . We read that Paul and his companions were called upon by the rulers of a Jewish synagogue at Antioch , in Pisidia , " after the reading of the law and

    the prophets" ( Acts xiii . 15 , ) to comment upon the passages which had been read ; and , in the course of his exhortation , the apostle incidentally alludes to the existence of the same practice at Jerusalem . ( Ver . 27 . ) Luke also informs us , that " the book of the prophet Isaiah" was delivered to Jesus at a synagogue in Nazareth , ( Luke iv . 17—19 , ) that he might read and expound it ; and the passage which our Lord selected on this occasion is preserved by the Evangelist , and corresponds with what we now find m Isaiah lxi . 1 , 2 .

    Such , then , are the general proofs furnished by the New Testament concerning the existence of certain books , called the books of the prophets , which formed the second part of the Jewish canon so far back as the beginning of the Christian era , and which were at that time publicly read in the Jewish synagogues , and treasured up by the Jewish people as invaluable bequests transmitted to them by their forefathers . * But it will be of little avail to have shewn that these books existed at a

    period so remote , unless we also prove that they were essentially the same as those which still form a part of the Jewish Scriptures . Of this , however , we are happily in possession of evidence sufficient to satisfy the demands of the most scrupulous inquirer . The following are selected from a multitude of examples which crowd upon the reader in almost every page of the New

    Testament . Mark i . 2 : " As it is written in the prophets , Behold I send my messenger before thy face , which shall prepare thy way before thee : ' 3 . The voice of one crying in the wilderness , * Prepare ye the way of the Lord , make his paths straight . ' " The former of these passages is a quotation from Malacht iii . 1 , and the latter from Isaiah xl . 3 ; and it is said of both that they are

    thus " written in the prophets . " It appears reasonable , therefore , to infer that the books of Isaiah and Malachi were received as sacred by the Jews at the time in which the Evangelist Mark wrote . John vi . 45 : " It is written in the prophets , * And they shall be all taught of God . ' " This passage appears to have been quoted by memory from Isaiah liv . 13 , and affords a strong presumption that the book of Isaiah was known to the Evangelist John , who cites it as constituting a part of that collection of writings to which the Jews of that time applied the name of " the prophets . "

    Acts vii . 42 : ** As it is written m the book of the prophets , * O ye house of Israel , have ye offeyed to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness ? ' " Here the protomartyr Stephen is represented as citing a passage from " the book of the prophets , " the very name by which Josephus distinguishes the volume containing the writings of the twelve minor prophets ; and that passage we now find in Amos v . 25 , whence it obviously follows that the writings of the twelve minor prophets were deemed canonical by the Jews in the age of the apostles . The preceding passages have been selected on account of the general allusions to the prophets and the book of the prophets by which they are

    intro-? Acts iii . 18 , xxviii . 25 .

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    Canofttcal Authority of the Boohs of the Prophets . 499

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 499, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/27/