This post contains a Claude.ai summary of the transcript of the Ross Nichol’s Sunday School on 10/11/2026 titled What Was Jesus’ Bible? What the Gospels Reveal. In this Sunday School session, Ross K. Nichols explores the Scriptures of the late Second Temple period and then conducts a different kind of Gospel survey. Setting aside the other New Testament voices, we listen only to Jesus as portrayed in the canonical Gospels and ask a simple question: Which Scriptures does he quote, cite, or allude to, and which ones never appear? The results provide a fascinating glimpse into Jesus’ Scriptures and lead to an even bigger question: What did Jesus actually teach from the texts he used?
Summary: Ross Nichols, What Was Jesus’ Bible? What the Gospels Reveal (Horeb Institute, “Sunday School”)
Thesis
Nichols treats the Gospels as a case study in what the Hebrew Scriptures looked like in the late Second Temple period. He says Jesus had a Bible and also didn’t; i.e. he had no codex, only scrolls. But a limited set of works was treated as authoritative and even divine. By isolating which of those works Jesus quotes, the talk asks which scrolls mattered to him and how he read them.
1. How many books? The “22” tradition
- Josephus (Against Apion 1.37–42, c. 93–95 CE) says Jews hold 22 divinely inspired books. He lists 5 books of Moses, 13 prophetic books and 4 books of hymns and precepts. He adds that no one has dared to add, remove or alter them.
- Origen (c. 210) and Jerome (c. 410) both report 22 books, matching the 22 Hebrew letters. Nichols says Jubilees 2:23 also draws this link.
- The count differs from the Jewish 24 and the Protestant 39 because of how books are grouped, not because the content differs. The Twelve Minor Prophets count as one scroll, and Ezra–Nehemiah count as one.
2. A three-part collection
- Josephus gives three divisions: Moses, the prophets, and a vaguer remainder.
- Luke 24:44 names the “law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms” (NRSV).
- 4QMMT (Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd century BCE) refers to “the book of Moses and the books of the prophets and David.”
- Nichols concludes that these were the three groups of scrolls that later became the Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim.
3. Literacy and hearing the Scriptures
- Nichols rejects the minimalist view that Jesus was an illiterate peasant. [“does not believe it for one second”] He cites Mark 12:10 and Matthew 21:42, where Jesus asks, “Have you not read…?” He concedes that Jesus addresses elites there.
- Even if literacy was low, people knew these texts by hearing them in the synagogue.
- He mentions the later annual (Babylonian) and triennial (Palestinian) reading cycles. He suggests they may be adaptations of the septennial public reading commanded in Deuteronomy 31:10–11.
4. Luke–Acts as evidence for synagogue practice
- In Luke 16:29–31 (Lazarus and the rich man), the point is that if they won’t hear “Moses and the prophets,” even a resurrection won’t persuade them.
- Acts 13:14–15 and 13:27 show the law and prophets read on the Sabbath, and Acts 15:21 says Moses is read in every city every Sabbath.
- In Luke 4:16–20, Jesus reads Isaiah 61 from a scroll, “as was his custom.”
- Nichols doesn’t know which scrolls the Nazareth synagogue held [link provided by Ross] . He guesses a Moses scroll and perhaps a Psalms scroll. He notes that Jesus taught in many synagogues across Galilee and Judea (Matt 4:23, 9:35; Mark 1:39; Luke 4:15, 4:44; John 18:20).
5. Method for tabulating Jesus’ use of Scripture
- He counts only the words of Jesus as the Gospel writers report them. He excludes the narrator’s fulfillment formulas and the words of other characters.
- He counts direct quotations, unmarked quotations, allusions and mentions of characters. For example, “Remember Lot’s wife” is counted as a reference to Genesis 19. He cross-checked against other academic studies.
6. Findings (using the Protestant 39-book count)
- Quoted or alluded to (19 books): Genesis through Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Micah, Zechariah, Malachi, Psalms, Daniel, 2 Chronicles.
- Not cited (20 books): Joshua, Judges, 2 Samuel, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Chronicles. He cautions that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
- Total: 69 references.
- Most frequent: Psalms and Deuteronomy tie, followed closely by Isaiah. The top nine are Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Genesis, Leviticus, Exodus, Daniel, Micah and Numbers.
- Dead Sea Scrolls parallel: The top four (Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Genesis) match the four most represented works among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
7. Setup for the next installment
He closes by promising a follow-up on three questions. Which verse Jesus used most, how Jesus interpreted these texts, and how he viewed them.
Critical notes
- The 69-reference total and the book-by-book tallies are Nichols’s own count, and the talk doesn’t show the underlying table. The criteria for “allusion” are subjective, so the totals would be hard to reproduce exactly.
- He grants that the Gospels are not verbatim records of Jesus’ speech and that Luke may have been written later than its setting. The study therefore shows how the Gospel writers portray Jesus’ use of Scripture, not necessarily what Jesus himself said.
- Inference from silence is limited. Jesus’ topics, audiences and the Gospels’ selectivity could explain why some books go uncited, which Nichols acknowledges.
- Josephus’s “22” is a late first-century witness (c. 93–95). It shouldn’t be assumed to describe a fixed canon in Jesus’ day.
- His own words flag a slip. He says “Genesis chapter 9” for the Lot’s wife reference but corrects to Genesis 19. The transcript also has some TurboScribe artifacts, such as a garbled sentence near the end.
Sources: Ross Nichols, “What Was Jesus’ Bible? What the Gospels Reveal” (Horeb Institute), as transcribed in the attached TurboScribe document, https://youtu.be/PDHf7GQTbfY
References list provided with Video.
- 1. Josephus, Against Apion 1:37-43
- 2. Luke 24:44
- 3. 4QMMT
- CHAT – Mark 12:10; Matthew 21:42
- 4. Luke 16:29-31
- 5. Acts 13:14-15, 27
- 6. Acts 15:21
- 7. Luke 4:16-20
- 8. Matthew 4:23; 9:35; Mark 1:39; Luke 4:15, 44
- 9. John 18:20
