in the NT times there was no agreed OT, you have a number of different traditions of both Torah and prophets and Psalms, without any way for us to know which was the ‘original’ the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to various versions of Jeremiah, some with more aspects, and different, one with a Psalter in a different order from either the Masoretic or the LXX we have and contains to additional Psalms previously only referenced in the Syrian Christian tradition, and witnesses to both Masoretic (the most popular) tradition and the LXX Hebrew tradition and non-aligned, and then there are the Samaritans with their own version of the Pentateuch who saw themselves as from the lost ten tribes and having the original forms of worship (and probably do contain a thread of non-Temple practices. And then there are the apocryphile works, some of which are sited authoritatively in NT works (there is Jude and Paul referring to the names of the Egyptian magicians for instance). There just wasn’t an agreed set of writings, the NT shows a preference of the LXX tradition, though Judea itself it seems the Masoretic was at the time of Jesus and into the destruction of the Temple coming into the ascendance. But it wouldn’t be till centuries latter both Christians and Jews would agree to a canon, at the time competing groups had different authoritative writings, and the most conservative Sadducees denied all but the Torah itself (and we don’t know if they had one preferred type of tradition). The same problem also to the NT, all documents are first century, yes, but so are others, and none of it was ever all together for the first few centuries, 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache were also regarded as authoritative by a number of Christians, the West was suspicious of Hebrews while the East was suspicious of Revelation, both agreeing to accept them in the end. Most Christian groups would only have one gospel or an epistle, or none at all, this was before printing, all the ancient world were fundamentally oral societies, it was a long time before an agreed canon of OT and NT writing were accepted as authoritative and others in the end left out, and with no clear idea on who wrote Hebrews, suspicions over the authorship on some Pauline letters, why accept them over others, it was the Church who accepted or rejected them, which reveals problems in suggesting as hinted above ideas that the Church fell away or deviated (suggesting the Holy Spirit went to sleep, and then woke up again and found everything wrong). If we trust the Christians of the 2-4th centuries (and later on some issues) on decisions on such things as the canon, why in the same place where they made such decisions there do some reject other decisions made, and why, why accept arbitrarily one bit, and reject the other bits they might not like and don’t fit their own theology. And if it is responded that scholarship has made our trust in the reliably of accepting the NT documents more confident, this was not an option of earlier Christians, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern or Oriental Orthodox, but further, if we say that scholarship validated the methodology (that of the tradition and liturgical worship and the consciousness and witness of the Church as a whole, as St Irenaeus sights in facing the Gnostics the tradition of apostles handed down through Christian communities represented by named bishops, and says that without this basis of interpretation anyone can make anything they wish out of the Scriptures, sighting an example of a mosaic of a king, which someone takes apart and remakes into an image of a fox, and declares that is what it always represented), then why is the same methodology not trusted on other matters and wider practices, and why, if the methodology is so flawed, and the Holy Spirit so limited His work? This seems more than a little arbitrary to me, and is one of a number reasons as an aside as to why I had to leave Protestantism behind, even if someone rejects them as Orthodox or Catholics, the early Christians were not proto-Protestants (they didn’t possess for a long time a single Bible to be so, and affirmed ecclesiastical structures and practices from the end of the first century onwards that nearly all Protestantism largely refutes or regards as non-essential but was so for them, and fundamentally different views on Eucharist and so on, and how different Protestantism seems to either this or NT studied at the background of 2nd Temple Judaism and their world-view and ideas).
…
… for the early Christians the OT was about Jesus Christ and the Church, and was always read in that light, it was the hypothesis, the starting point for all things, and all interpretation about OT Scripture, drawing on incidents as the Emmaus road where the Messiah opened their eyes to see everything in the Law/Instructions, Prophets and Psalms that were written about Him, and with the disciples. It is in the earliest Christian creed repeated by Paul to the Corinthians, that Christ died ‘according to the Scriptures’ repeating this phrase, and He died, buried and rose according to the whole Scripture, for the Christians of the first centuries, the first millenium, it was all about Christ, even bit was to be interpreted through Him, about Him and the gospel. Paul does this in his letters, it’s woven in the Gospels where Scripture is sighted that read in context seems to have no immediate Messianic or even prophetic meaning, but that is because neither the early Christians or Jews engaged Scripture as many do today, and Paul refers to veil of Moses, that without the illumination of Christ you will not truly understand the OT. Each book of Scripture in that sense in not equal, it’s not a case of putting some OT next to NT, the OT for early Christians was a commentary on the Gospel, on Jesus Himself and the Church and what happened there, not a strict record and equal texts, just to comple (when they did final agree to the canon that is). The prophets and apostles both testified to Christ Jesus and were founded on Him, their corner stone, and what they really meant only made sense through Him, through the Church which was the pillar and foundation of truth. The text was part of the community, and came from them, inspiration being the act of it being read by and in the church as much as it’s original writing and transmission, it was a whole, with the Holy Spirit the guardian and teaching through the Body, in all the various arguments, conflicts and divisions present from the beginning. This perhaps also indicates some of the differences between those in this argument, different foundational understanding of authority and where it founded, and what this role play in the wider understanding of the Christian community and witness which read it, but in some respects this a false idea, since all different communities read the Scripture within the witness and understanding of their own inherited tradition (or rejecting that, bring than the context of their age and part of the culture to it). The Scriptures do not explain themselves, their are interpreted, and it is that interpretation system and context, not the Scripture itself that is the highest authority for Christians (or anyone else, for that matter) no matter their deepest assertion that Scripture is their highest authority (as if it explained itself, it doesn’t), which brings the question, as St Irenaeus put it above, the context we place, read and interact with the Scriptures through determines utterly how we read them, and live with them, one person sees a king, another a fox and someone something completely different.
