Why a New Testament Pentateuch?
The Jews of the 1st century acknowledged the profound authority of the Law of Moses above all other writings. There was nothing that could remotely compare with that Law in matters of importance or prestige. That Law was found in the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, When it came time to canonize the New Testament, it must have occurred to the apostles that the New Testament Law would most naturally be composed of five books. There would have been nothing odd about this because many parts of the Old Testament were constructed around the symbolic number five It was the number of Law, For example, the 150 psalms which made up the Book of Psalms were arranged by the Old Testament canonizers into five divisions, and they paralleled the five books of the Law. 4 Even the basic law itself, the Ten Commandments, was reckoned in the Jewish manner as being five laws relating to God (the first five, including the fifth dealing with parents
