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Engaging Discussions about Early Christianity

Charts Showing the Organization of the English Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is a big book.  Well, OK, a big collection of books.  In my previous post I discussed its basic contents, organization, and structure, both as found in English translations (which 99% of the Bible readers you know use!) and in the original Hebrew itself. In this post I will provide two charts to clarify the matter.  AFTER that I will give some additional lists that show how different Christian denominations actually have more extended canons of the Old Testament because they accept works that are called the “Apocrypha” by Protestants, but known as “The Deuterocanonical” books by Catholics and others. (Again, all this taken from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, Oxford University Press)   CHARTS OF HEBREW AND ENGLISH BIBLES THE HEBREW BIBLE The Torah (5 books) Nevi’im (= The Prophets) (8 books) Kethuvim (= The Writings) (11 books) Genesis Former Prophets (4 books) Job Exodus Joshua Psalms Leviticus Judges Proverbs Numbers Samuel (count as one book) Ruth Deuteronomy Kings (count as one book) Song of Songs [...]

2026-01-04T16:39:32-05:00January 6th, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|
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Getting the Hebrew Bible: A Primer (What is the Old Testament…)

 How did we get the Bible, these 66 books in particular? Over the next couple of years I’m planning on reading massively on the Canon Part 2 (the New Testament), in particular on what we know about why certain books came to be included and yet others were left out, as the topic of my next book.  And I’ll be talking a good bit about what I’m thinking about that here on the blog. The topics that I’ll need to be covering  are so wildly varied that I’m guessing that about two-thirds of time it won’t even be obvious to blog readers that a post is even related to questions of canon.  We’ll almost certainly have to be dealing with such widespread issues as Roman imperial efforts to obliterate Christianity; teachings of universalist salvation in the early church; The Arian Controversy (think: the Council of Nicea); Paul’s confrontation with a talking lion he had earlier baptized; letters allegedly written by Jesus himself and…. and oh, there is so much to cover! I’ve decided that here [...]

2026-01-04T16:25:52-05:00January 4th, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|
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Rarely Asked Questions About Why THESE Letters of Paul Are in the Canon

Now that the semester is over and, well, I’m retired from teaching (!), I am able to start in seriously on doing research for my next book project, on how we got the canon of the New Testament.  There are 27  books in the canon.  Why these 27 in particular?  Why were others excluded – other Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Apocalypses, etc.?  Who decided?  On what grounds? And when? I’ve blogged about the book in recent months (back when I thought I’d be able to do some serious research in it during the fall semester!  Oh well…); if you’re interested, here are two posts: My Next Book: Creating the Bible — How We Got the Canon of the New Testament My First Scholarly Encounter with the Canon of the New Testament   Here I can explain how I’m starting to approach the issue. There are tons of books about the formation of the canon that are almost entirely focused on the issues of names and dates – based on our surviving evidence which books [...]

2026-01-01T15:36:55-05:00January 3rd, 2026|Paul and His Letters|
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