The Tanach or Tanakh is the Hebrew language acronym for the Jewish Bible, taking its name from the initial letters of its three main sections, the Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim. The Tanach is mostly written in Hebrew; some parts are in Aramaic.
The Christian Old Testament contains the same contents as the Tanach, but with a different arrangement of books and some difference in text. For example, the Old Testament include some books that have extra paragraphs that do not exist in the Jewish version.
The Tanach consists of 24 books, while the Christian Old Testament (excluding the deuterocanon/apocrypha) has 39 books; they both contain the same text but divide it into books differently: Jews often count as a single book what Christians count as several.
As such, academic scholars draw a technical distinction between the text used within Judaism, the Tanakh, and the similar but non-identical text used within Christianity, the Old Testament. These scholars generally prefer to use Hebrew Bible as a term that covers the commonality of the Tanach and the Old Testament while avoiding sectarian bias.
Sections of the Tanach
The Tanach is divided into three sections: The Torah (Hebrew for "Teaching"), Neviim (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings, also hagiographa).
In the first century A.D., Masoretes[?] recorded the traditional pronunciation of the text by using vowel pointings. Until then the pronunciation could only be learnt from a teacher.
The books of the Torah have generally-used names which are based on the first prominent word in each book. The English names are not translations of the Hebrew; they are based on the Greek names created for the Septuagint which in turn werebased on Rabbinic names describing the thematic content of each of the Books.
(It should be noted that the terms Torah, Chumash, Pentateuch and "five books of Moses" refer to the same works.)
The Torah consists of:
- 1. Genesis (בראשית)
- 2. Exodus (שמות)
- 3. Leviticus (ויקרא)
- 4. Numbers(במדבר)
- 5. Deuteronomy (דברים)
The books of Neviim (The Prophets) are:
- 6. Joshua(יהושע)
- 7. Judges(שופטים)
- 8. Books of Samuel
- I Samuel I
- II Samuel II
- 9. Books of Kings
- I Kings
- II Kings
- 10. Isaiah
- 11. Jeremiah
- 12. Ezekiel
- 13. The Minor Prophets
The Ketuvim (The Writings) are:
- 14. Psalms
- 15. Proverbs
- 16. Book of Job
- 17. Song of Songs
- 18. Ruth
- 19. Lamentations
- 20. Ecclesiastes
- 21. Book of Esther
- 22. Daniel
- 23. Ezra-Nehemiah
- 24. Books of Chronicles
- 1 Chronicles
- 2 Chronicles
- In Christian Bibles, Daniel sometimes includes extra material that isn't accepted as canonical by Judaism (the material is part of the Apocrypha, so also not accepted by most Protestants).
- The breaking of Samuel (Shmuel), Kings (Melachim), and Chronicles (Divrei hayamim) into two parts is strictly an artifact of the printers who first issued the books. They were simply too big to be issued as single volumes.
The Torah is fairly clear that it was transmitted side by side with some sort of oral tradition. Many terms and definitions used in the written law are totally undefined; the reader is assumed to be familiar with the context and details. Many fundamental concepts such as shekhita (slaughtering of animals in a kosher fashion), divorce and the rights of the firstborn are all assumed as common knowledge by text, and are not elaborated on. There are literally dozens of cases throughout the Torah where it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the details - from an unwritten (oral) tradition. According to classical Judaism, many of the details of this oral tradition were accurately transmitted, and eventually recorded in a collection of rabbinic works collectively known as "the oral law". These works include the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the two Talmuds (Babylonian and Jerusalem), and the early Midrash compilations.
Common misspelling and questions (FAQ)
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