preserved by the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple. To touch these holy writings was to defile one’s hands; to break them was to defile one’s life. The Hebrew canon, then, was that collection of writings which, because they possessed divine inspiration and authority, were the norm or rule for the believer’s faith and conduct. Many other titles were ascribed to the Old Testament canon by the first century A.D. Beckwith lists twenty-eight of these names as a minimum rather than