The Old Testament includes the words of at least 16 prophets.  That is quite a few prophets!  What would be enough?  200 prophets?   I would imagine that the number of prophetic speeches given to Israel were in the many thousands at the least, and perhaps even more than that.  What possible purpose could have been met by recording all 50,000,000 words of these speeches (assuming a mere 5,000 words per sermon and ten thousand prophetic sermons, which is a typical sermon length).  The Old Testament would then be about 100,000 pages long (of course, they had scrolls back then, but you get the point).  I have no idea where anyone came up with the idea that the Jews ought to have recorded a complete record of the prophetic speeches.  This would be a nonsensical proposal.  What would be the ideal number of speeches and words from the prophets?  I do not know, but the amount of material in the Old Testament, which amounts to about 1,000 pages seems about right to me.  For a document which had to be copied by hand, that is a rather long canon!  If the number of words in the Old Testament were to increase by ten-fold, I doubt that anyone would be convinced to believe in Jesus by that, if they are not convinced by the 1000 pages we already have.   Like Jesus said in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:31), “If they do not listen to Moses, and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead.”  Well put, Jesus.  This criticism, which is coming from a Muslim source I am sure, is an absurd proposal, which only works in Muslim-only settings.

John Oakes