The Doctrine of the Books Referred to in the Old Testament and Now Are Lost

See ZPEB vol. 1, p. 639. See hidden summary. Short note in I Chron. 29:29 in Scofield.

I.     Introduction: These are books which are mentioned in Scripture as documents which existed at the time of the writing of Scripture. Some of these books are not actually lost, but are portions of the Bible which we have today. Some of these books were authored by writers of Scripture. We do not know the authors of some of these books and for several of them, we barely know anything at all except for the odd quote or mention which the book is given. However, just because these books are ancient, this does not mean that they were inspired in any way by the Holy Spirit. What we have today is the completed canon of Scripture.

II.    Books by Particular Authors

       A.   The Book of Samuel the Seer, The Book of Nathan the Prophet and The Book of Gad the Seer

              1.    Now, the acts of King David, from first to last, are written in The Chronicles of Samuel the Seer, in The Chronicles of Nathan the Prophet, and in The Chronicles of Gad the Seer (I Chron. 29:29).

              2.    Obviously these are three different books written by three different authors, all of whom were prophets during the time of David. Samuel plays a prominent place in the Book(s) of Samuel, which I believe to be equivalent to The Chronicles of Samuel the Seer. Samuel was the one to go out on God’s behalf and choose David from the children of Jesse. His book, which were arbitrarily split into I Samuel and II Samuel, begins with the first king of Israel, Saul (I Sam. 8) and finishes almost at the end of David’s life. David is an old man and he commits his last major sin by numbering the people (this is a sin because David was checking to see if the number of people in Israel were as the sand of the sea or the stars in the heavens) (II Sam. 24).

              3.    Samuel did not write all of The Book of Samuel. He is mentioned as being old in I Sam. 8:1, which is prior to the beginning of the reign of Saul. Samuel also dies prior to the end of I Samuel (I Sam. 25:1 28:3), in fact, eliminating him as the author for all of The Book of Samuel.

              4.    Seer was a one-time name for a prophet (I Sam. 9:9). Samuel is called a seer in I Sam. 9:9–19. In fact, Samuel answered Saul and said, “I am the seer.” (I Sam. 9:9a). The Book of Chronicles chronicles the history of man from Adam (I Chron. 1:1) of Judah (II Chron. 36:17–21). For these reasons, it is not a major leap in logic to assume that the first portion of the Book of Samuel was written by Samuel.

              5.    It was common in the book of Genesis, for one author would pick up where another author left off. It is not unlikely that such a thing occurred with the Book of Samuel.

              6.    The prophet Nathan is mentioned several times throughout the books of Samuel and Kings (II Sam. 5:14 7:2–4, 17 12:1, 5, 7, 13, 15, 25 23:36 I Kings 8:10, 11, 22–24, 32, 34, 38, 44, 45 4:5; I have probably mentioned some other Nathan’s in here!!). It is not unlikely the Nathan picked up where Samuel left off in chronicling the life and reign of David.

              7.    The Book of Nathan is also mentioned in I Chron. 29:29 II Chron. 9:29)

              8.    Gad the Seer is mentioned in II Sam. 24:11: When David arose in the morning, the word of Jehovah came to the prophet Gad, David’s Seer. It would be very likely that he finished writing the book of Samuel. Gad the prophet is mentioned very few times in the Old Testament. He is called David’s prophet in I Sam. 22:5 II Sam. 24:11, 13–14, 18–19 I Chron. 21:9, 11, 13, 18–19. Unless there are two prphet called Gad from the same period of time, the ministry of Nathan and Gad overlap. This would mean that all three of these prophets wrote on the same manuscript, Nathan adding to what Gad wrote and vice versa, both adding to what Samuel wrote; or they wrote separate manuscripts which one of them (or someone else) later edited into the book of Samuel. The latter seems to be the most likely, as all books are mentioned together in I Chron. 29:29, but only the book of Nathan is mentioned in II Chron. 9:29. My thinking is that Gad would be the likely peson to later edit these together, if not a post-exilic prophet.

       B.   The Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite (II Chron. 9:29).

       C.   The History of Iddo the Seer (II Chron. 9:29 12:15).

       D.   The History of Jehu ben Hanani (II Chron. 20:34).

III.   Books which do not refer to a particular author

       A.   The Book of the Wars of Jehovah. Therefore it stands written in the Book of the Wars of Jehovah: “Waheb in Suphah, and the wadis of the Arnon, and the slope of the wadis that extends to the site of Ar and leans to the border of Moab.” (Num. 21:14–15). You may recall that this passage caused us no little consternation when we first examined it in the book of Numbers. We know next to nothing about this book, its content revealed to us at best by its title.

       B.   A Book of Chronicles (Neh. 12:23).

       C.   The Book of the Kings of Israel (I Chron. 9:1 II Chron. 20:34).

       D.   There are many references to the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (I Kings 14:29 15:7, 23 22:45 II Kings 8:23 12:19 14:18 15:6, 36 16:19 20:20 21:17, 25 23:28 24:5). See more of these in ZPEB p. 639 vol. 1.

IV.  Books where this is debatable

       A.   The Book of Jashar or The Book of the Upright [One].

              1.    The Book of Jashar is mentioned in both Joshua 10:13 (circa 1420 b.c.) and in II Sam. 1:18 (circa 1025 b.c.). There is no single author who could give an eyewitness account during those two periods of time as they were separated by roughly 300 years. For several generations after the flood, we have men living for a long period of time, but that time had come and gone a millennium prior to this. Therefore, (1) we are either speaking of two different books, or (2) we are speaking of the same book written by several different authors, much in the way Genesis was written. (3) The third possibility is that the reference to the book of Jashar in Joshua 10 is a bogus reference.

              2.    The word Jashar is the masculine singular adjective yâshâr (ר ָשָי ) [pronounced yaw-SHAWR] and it means right, correct, upright, straight, uniform, even. When teaching non-Euclidian geometry to my students, I taught them the concept of internal uniformity—that is, there could be no internal contradictions. When used of God, yâshâr means no internal contradictions. When describing man, it refers to moral stability and stable, correct behavior and thinking. As is often the case with the Hebrew, an adjective can be used as a substantive when it is found by itself or following a construct. Strong’s #3477 BDB #449. Since it is very common to have an adjective used as a noun, and since this adjective is found primarily as an adjective throughout Scripture, it would be more likely to identify this book not by a proper name but by the noun the Upright One, which would refer to God.

              3.    Given the quotes that we find, this was either all or mostly a poetical book, as both quotes which we have in the Old Testament are poetical. NIV Study Bible: an early account of Israel’s wars (perhaps all in poetic form...commemorate a national victory with songs...), but never a part of canonical Scripture.

              4.    Barnes: This book was probably a collection of national odes celebrating the heroes of the theocracy and their achievements, and is referred to again...as containing the dirge composed by David over Saul and Jonathan.

       B.   The Chronicles of the Seer II Chron. 33:19).