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The Tanakh (also spelt Tanach) is the Hebrew acronym for the Jewish Bible, based upon the initial letters of its three parts:
Because the books included in Tanakh were mainly written in Hebrew it may also be called the Hebrew Bible. (Parts of Daniel and Ezra are in Aramaic, but even these are written in the same Hebrew script.)The Tanakh consists of the same books as the Protestant Old Testament, but the order of the books is different. The Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain six books not included in the Tanakh; see apocrypha and deuterocanonical books.
According to the Jewish tradition, Tanakh consists of no more than twenty-four books. The Christian Old Testament (excluding the deuterocanonical books/apocrypha) counts them as thirty-nine books. This is because Jews often count as a single book what Christians count as several.
As such, one may 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. Thus, some scholars prefer Hebrew Bible as a term that covers the commonality of the Tanakh and the Old Testament while avoiding sectarian bias.
The Tanakh is divided into three sections: The Torah (Hebrew for "Teaching"), Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings, also hagiographa).
The Hebrew text originally consisted only of consonants, together with some inconsistently applied letters used as vowels (matres lectionis).
Around the Sixth Century A.D, the Masoretes added vowel points to the text to indicate the pronunciation. 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 were based 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:
Sections of the Tanakh
The books of Nevi'im (The Prophets) are:
- 6. Joshua(יהושע)
- 7. Judges(שופטים)
- 8. Books of Samuel (שמואל)
- I Samuel I
- II Samuel II
- 9. Books of Kings (מלכים)
- I Kings
- II Kings
- 10. Isaiah (ישעיה)
- 11. Jeremiah
- 12. Ezekiel
- 13. The Minor Prophets
- 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 is not 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.
External links
- Mechon Mamre - The Hebrew text of the Tanakh based on the Aleppo codex, edited according to the system of Rabbi Mordecai Breuer. Hebrew text comes in four convenient versions (including one with cantillation marks) and may be downloaded. English text from the JPS 1917 translation is included as well (including a parallel translation).
- Guide Sheets for Reading Nevi'im and Ketuvim - Detailed outlines of the biblical books based on the natural flow of the text (rather than the chapter divisions). The outlines include a daily study-cycle.
