Some blog readers have requested more posts on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. I’m happy to comply! We begin with the foundational issue of which books are in each, in which order, and why are they so very different but also in some senses just the same.
In my textbook The Bible: A Literary and Historical Introduction (Oxford University Press; a new edition of which will appear in about a year, co-authored this time with Hebrew Bible scholar Joel Baden) I explain it all and lay it out in charts. Here it is, in compact form:
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| The Bible in Hebrew and in English have the same books, but they are numbered differently (e.g., the twelve minor prophets in the English Bible are counted as just one book in Hebrew). They are also organized differently. Different Christian denominations have different books included in their “Old Testament,” as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches include books that Protestants consider to be the “Apocrypha.” These books are excluded not only from the Protestant Bible but from the Hebrew Bible as well. The following charts show the organization and books of the Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Old Testament.
First, the more familiar (though not overly familiar to most readers!) organization of the 39 books found in the English Bible.
THE ENGLISH BIBLE |
||
| The Historical Books (17 books) | Poetic Books (5 Books) | Prophets (17 books) |
| Pentateuch (5 books) | Job | Major Prophets (5 books) |
| Genesis | Psalms | Isaiah |
| Exodus | Proverbs | Jeremiah |
| Leviticus | Ecclesiastes | Lamentations |
| Numbers | Song of Songs | Ezekiel |
| Deuteronomy | Daniel | |
| Other Historical Books | Minor Prophets (12 books) | |
| (12 books) | Hosea | |
| Joshua | Joel | |
| Judges | Amos | |
| Ruth | Obadiah | |
| 1 and 2 Samuel | Jonah | |
| 1 and 2 Kings | Micah | |
| Ezra | Nahum | |
| Nehemiah | Habakkuk | |
| Esther | Zephaniah | |
| 1 and 2 Chronicles | Haggai
Zechariah Malachi |
|
And so it is relatively easy to remember the structure of the Jewish Scriptures in the English Bible. There are three major divisions: 17 historical books; 5 poetic books, and 17 prophetic books. And each of the groups of 17 are divided into subgroups of 5 and 12. SO, there are
- Seventeen Historical Books
- Five books of Torah
- Twelve other historical books;
- Five Poetic Books
- Seventeen Prophetic Books
- Five major prophets
- Twelve minor prophets.
Now onto the Bible as found in the original Hebrew. The Hebrew Bible has the same books as the English Bible, but they are numbered differently—the same thirty-nine books are now only twenty-four in number—and arranged in a different order, according to Hebrew names.
| 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 |
| Latter Prophets (4 books) | Ecclesiastes | |
| Isaiah | Lamentations | |
| Jeremiah | Esther | |
| Ezekiel | Daniel | |
| The Twelve (count as one book) | Ezra-Nehemiah (1 book) | |
| Hosea | Chronicles (1 book) | |
| Joel | ||
| Amos | ||
| Obadiah | ||
| Jonah | ||
| Micah | ||
| Nahum | ||
| Habakkuk | ||
| Zephaniah | ||
| Haggai | ||
| Zechariah | ||
| Malachi | ||
The Torah. As already mentioned, there are five books in the Torah, the Law of Moses. This is the first and most important section of the Hebrew Bible.
The Nevi’im. The Hebrew word “Nevi’im” means “prophets,” but the word does not refer only to spokespersons of God who predict what is going to happen in the future. It also refers to anyone who speaks forth the word of God. In the Hebrew Bible, there are two groups of Nevi’im: the “Former Prophets” and the “Latter Prophets.”
The Former Prophets make up four books that are considered the “historical books” in the English Bible (See Box 1.2): Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel (counted as just one book), and 1 and 2 Kings (counted as one book).
The Latter Prophets are more or less the books that are considered Prophets in the English Bible, and also are now four in number: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and “the twelve” (this is the twelve Minor Prophets, considered now to be just one book).
The Kethuvim. The Hebrew word “Kethuvim” means “writings.” This consists of the remaining eleven books of the Jewish Scriptures.
Because the three parts of the Hebrew Bible are Torah, Nevi’im, and Kethuvim, this canon is sometimes called the Tanakh (taking the first letter from each division—T, N, K—and adding vowels). And so Tanakh is simply another designation for the Jewish Scriptures, as found in the original Hebrew.
BUT there is more, since, as you probably know, some Christian denominations have additional books in the Old Testament that are not included in the Hebrew Bible or in the Protestant Old Testament. Protestants consider these books to be the “Apocrypha”; the churches that include them consider them “deuterocanonical.”
There are three categories of these other books. Ten of them are included in all Bibles of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. But the Greek Orthodox Bible and the Slavonic Orthodox Bible have several additional books as well (not in the Roman Catholic canon). These various books are not included at the end in an appendix at the end of the Bible but are interspersed in appropriate places among the books found in the Hebrew Bible.
BOX 1.3 CHARTS OF PROTESTANT, ROMAN CATHOLIC, AND ORTHODOX OLD TESTAMENTS
Additional Books in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments
Tobit
Judith
Additions to Esther
Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus (also called the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach)
Baruch
Letter of Jeremiah
Additions to Daniel (three additional stories: Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon)
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Still Other Books in Greek Orthodox Old Testament
Prayer of Manasseh Psalm 151
1 Esdras
3 Maccabees
4 Maccabees (in an appendix)
Other Books in Slavonic Orthodox Old Testament
Prayer of Manasseh Psalm 151
2 Esdras
3 Esdras
3 Maccabees
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I enjoyed today’s podcast episode very much. Tu. Aug. 26. You mentioned science and also pondering consciousness. Being mentioned back to back, it brought to mind the work of Dr. Joseph Ledoux. You may enjoy checking it out.
Thanks.
If you haven’t already you should mention that Prof Biden is now posting regular vids on your YouTube channel. “Misquoting Moses” Good move!
You are to be congratulated for providing a platform for so many interesting scholars. (Even some I note that have views that conflict with yours.)
Thanks!
Dear Dr Ehrman-This is a fascinating post. If I may ask a subsidiary question regarding gnosticism, which scholars in particular contributed to your understanding of Basilides view of the Crucifixion (a divine Christ incapable of suffering) and that portrayed in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth (a divine Christ who abandons his human vessel on the Cross)?
I didn’t get these views from scholars. The view of Basilides is stated by Irenaeus (it’s impossible to know if he represented the view correctly or not). And the Second Treatise of the Great Seth is widely available now (since its discovery in 1945). A clearer statement of the view is in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter.
I suspect many people will have questions about these topics, and I am one of them.
I have three related questions about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.
First, Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabean revolt and the rededication of the Temple, yet the books describing these events were not included in the Jewish canon. Why not? Was the period simply too recent to acquire scriptural status—or, provocatively, too recent to be sufficiently theologized or “sacralized”?
Second, since many New Testament quotations follow the Septuagint, did distinctively Christian interpretations sometimes arise because the Greek differed from what became the Masoretic Text? More fundamentally, how often do New Testament authors use an Old Testament passage in a way that corresponds to its original historical meaning, rather than rereading it typologically or Christologically?
Finally, in Matthew 22:40, Jesus says that “all the Law and the Prophets” hang on the two great commandments. Why are the Writings not mentioned? Is this simply shorthand for all Scripture, or could it reflect a time when the Writings had a less clearly defined canonical status? Since Mark lacks this formulation, might it reflect Matthew’s theology more than Jesus’ wording?
1. Jews didn’t include every book they had in the Bible, and most thought that the “biblical period” ended well before the Maccabean period. (Daniel comes from the period, but it was believed to have been written in the 6th c BCE) 2 Maccabees would not have qualified in any event, since it was originally written in Greek.
2. Yes, many of hte debates over interpretation between Jews and Christians were over the forms of their text. The Greek was the basis of much of what Xns claimed (for example, whether Isa 7:14 was predicting a virgin birth)
3. The canon hadn’t been finalized yet and the “writings” were not a solid block or everywhere accepted as Scripture. But yes, “Law and Prophets” = Scripture.
Hey Bart,
Thanks for the informative post. Speaking of the Hebrew Bible when Jesus refers to the “Law and the Prophets” throughout the gospels, such as in Matthew 5:17 or Matthew 22:40, is he using the term as a shorthand for the entirety of the Hebrew Bible? Or is he specifically talking only about the five books of the Torah and the prophetic books like Isaiah, and excluding the other Hebrew scriptures like Job, Psalms, Proverbs etc.? Cheers.
Good questoin: the “Hebrew Bible” didn’t exist yet as a set canon of Scripture, and so Law and Prophets simply were a way of saying “the books we consider Scripture” The “writings” — the final part of the later canon — were not agreed on yet. But Jesus certaily quotes Psalms, and so apepars to have seen them as authoritative; it may be that he included them under the umbrella term “law and prophets”
Has any scholar compared the Torah to rule books from other ancient cultures around the same time, e.g. Code of Hammurabi? It would be interesting to see how the Torah was similar and different from these other rule books.
Oh yes, it’s been a thriving field of study among Hebrew Bible scholars. The discovery of older law codes really shook people up at first ,esp. given their similarities.