The Book of Malachi (Hebrew: מַלְאָכִ֔י, ) is the last book of the Neviim contained in the Tanakh, canonically the last of the Twelve Minor Prophets. In most Christian orderings, the grouping of the prophetic books is the last section of the Old Testament, making Malachi the last book before the New Testament.
Most scholars consider the Book of Malachi to be the work of a single author who may or may not have been identified by the title Malachi. Its title has frequently been understood as a proper name, although its Hebrew meaning is simply "My Messenger" (the Septuagint reads "his messenger") and would not have been a proper name at the time of its writing. "Malachi" is often assumed to be a pseudonym used by the real writer so he would not face retribution for his prophecies. Jewish tradition states that the book was written by Ezra the scribe.
Little is known of the biography of the author of the Book of Malachi, although it has been suggested that he may have been Levitical. Due to the similarities between Malachi and Ezra's emphasis on forbidding marriage to foreign pagan women, the Talmud and certain Targums, such as Targum Jonathan, identify Ezra as the author of Malachi. This is the traditional view held by most Jews and some Christians. The Catholic priest and historian Jerome suggests that this may be because Ezra is seen as an intermediary between the prophets and the "great synagogue." According to Josephus, Ezra died and was buried "in a magnificent manner in Jerusalem." If the tradition that Ezra wrote under the name "Malachi" is correct, then he was probably buried in the Tomb of the Prophets, the traditional resting place of Malachi, Haggai, and Zechariah.
The name "Malachi" occurs in the superscription at 1:1 and in 3:1, although most consider it unlikely that the word refers to the same character in both of these references. According to the editors of the 1897 Easton's Bible Dictionary, some scholars believe the name "Malachi" is not a proper noun but rather an abbreviation of "messenger of Yah".
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A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible. The English word canon comes from the Greek κανών kanōn, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick". The use of the word "canon" to refer to a set of religious scriptures was first used by David Ruhnken, in the 18th century. Various biblical canons have developed through debate and agreement on the part of the religious authorities of their respective faiths and denominations.
The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in the Koine Greek language. The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over a period of centuries.
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (tɑːˈnɑːx; Hebrew: Tānāḵ), also known in Hebrew as Miqra (miːˈkrɑː; Hebrew: Mīqrāʾ), is the canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures, including the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. Different branches of Judaism and Samaritanism have maintained different versions of the canon, including the 3rd-century Septuagint text used in Second Temple Judaism, the Syriac Peshitta, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and most recently the 10th-century medieval Masoretic Text compiled by the Masoretes, currently used in Rabbinic Judaism.