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:

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

1. Seventeen Historical Books
   1. Five books of Torah
   2. Twelve other historical books;
2. Five Poetic Books
3. Seventeen Prophetic Books
   1. Five major prophets
   2. 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