Commenting on the value and importance of
the Bible we now currently possess, Oscar McConkie wrote the following about
its reliability, historically and spiritually:
The Old
and New Testaments are the most complete sources available [of the Jews], and
are the most reliable . . . The Lord disappointed crafty men, who would have
destroyed the Scriptures, and he destroyed their devices, that the word of the
Lord might be preserved. In the light of what we have said, errors are
understandable, although God led the keepers of the Scriptures to preserve them
. . . [the New Testament] is our most authentic record of the people of the
Meridian of Time, and of their beliefs and doctrines, and the life and the
trial of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, Biblical writers surpass all others in
accuracy, detail and clarity. The Old and the New Testaments are without rival.
A knowledge of their parts is more understandable if one has a knowledge of the
whole. The Old Testament is wonderfully written, and is the literature of a
great people. The New Testament, from the “center to every side,” discloses far
more accurate and intimate knowledge about the Meridian of Time than all other
records combined. (Oscar W. McConkie, A Dialogue at Golgotha: An Analysis of
Judaism and Christianity, and of the Laws, Government and Institutions of the
Jews, and of the Jewish and Roman Trials of Jesus of Nazareth [Salt Lake
City: Deseret News Press, 1945], 17, 24, 26, comments in square brackets added
for clarification)
Interestingly, McConkie spoke of
Hellenistic Jews canonising certain books of the Apocrypha (“Deutero-canon”):
Hellenistic
Jews canonized more than twenty-four books, and the Church accepted them as a
part of the Greek Bible. Judith, Tobit, First and Second Maccabees, Baruch,
the Epistles of Jeremy, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom of Solomon were among them.
The Greek Scriptures contained many other works, as the Psalter of Solomon, the
Translation of Moses, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the
Apocalypses of Enoch, Baruch and Ezra. Most of these were originally in
Hebrew or Aramaic, although some were written in Greek. As Christianity spread
they were translated into Latin and into many other languages. (Ibid., 19)
While McConkie was speaking of Hellenistic
Jews, what he said, to some degree, has been further vindicated. With the
discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, we have found Aramaic fragments of
Sirach and Tobit, showing that some Jews (not simply those within the Diaspora)
accepted, to some degree, the book of the Apocrypha as authoritative. I just found
that interesting.