Meshach Browning through the "western wilderness" became legendary. This wilderness was the Allegheny Mountains, especially in Garrett County, Maryland and the surrounding regions of what is now West Virginia. He was known as a profit hunter. Meshach Browning and his son-in-law, Dominick Mattingly, were selected to collect donations to build a church at Johnstown, Maryland. The result of their labors was St. James Church, dedicated in 1853 under the pastorate of Rev. William Lambert and prosperous for many years. Meshach Browning died on November 19, 1859 in Johnstown, Cambria County, Pennsylvania. In 1859, a book reviewer of Meschach Browning’s newly published book
Old Testament account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC Jews saw the five books of the Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC the Prophets