THE BOOKS OF THE
HEBREW BIBLE

The books of the Hebrew Bible are divided into three sections, Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim, the initial letters of which form the acronym Tanak, the word by which the Bible is known in Jewish tradition. Here is the canon, or official list, of the Hebrew scriptures, which is universally accepted. It was established by Palestinian Jews in the early centuries of our era, though there was probably essential agreement on the list of included books by the last centuries B.C. Besides these books, there are a number of others, generally called apocryphal (by Jews and Protestants) or deuterocanonical (by Catholics and most Orthodox Christians), which lie at the margins of the canon, sometimes included, sometimes rejected. For some of these more marginal texts, we no longer possess a (complete) Hebrew version. Their appearance in some Bibles may be traced to their inclusion in manuscript copies of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, made for Jews of the diaspora in the last centuries B.C.

TORAH OR TEACHING (SOMETIMES TRANSLATED LAW)
(also called the Pentateuch, that is, the Five Books

The stories of the Torah are largely contained within the first two books: Genesis, covering the period from the Creation through Avraham to the death of Joseph in Egypt; and Exodus, covering the period from the Egyptian slavery of the Children of Israel through their escape under Moshe to the encounter with God in Sinai. Exodus concludes with a list of ordinances. Leviticus contains the ordinances of the priests of the tribe of Levi. Numbers is so called because it begins with a census of the desert tribes; it continues the narrative of the wanderings of the Israelites in Sinai, though interspersed with groups of supplementary ordinances, and concludes with the first Israelite settlements in Transjordan. Deuteronomy is a code of civil and religious laws, framed as a long discourse by Moshe and concluding with his death.

NEVIIM (OR PROPHETS)

FORMER PROPHETS

This sequence presents the continuous story of Israel from the settlement of Canaan to the fall of Judea and the Babylonian exile. These books are histories, not “prophetic” works (as we would normally think of them), though in the course of their narratives prophets like Samuel are introduced. These books are given the name Prophets because all the great Israelite figures, starting with Moshe and Joshua, were deemed to be prophets in later nomenclature. In most English Bibles, Samuel and Kings are broken up into 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings and 2 Kings.

LATTER PROPHETS

The Twelve
(also called the Minor Prophets, because these books are brief)

The latter prophets comprise all the books of actual prophecy from Isaiah to Malachi. The last twelve were customarily contained on one scroll.

KETUVIM (OR WRITINGS)

The Torah is unquestionably the scripture of Jewish tradition, though the oft-repeated phrase “the Torah (or the Law) and the Prophets” alerts us that these two parts of scripture are viewed as virtually inseparable. But the third part of the Hebrew Bible enjoys less importance, being a diverse collection of texts not easily characterizable by any category other than “Writings.” In this collection, Psalms is meant to have pride of place. The five short books from the Song of Songs to Esther, known as the Five Scrolls, are read in synagogues on feast days. Chronicles (usually broken into 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles in English Bibles) is a summary of Jewish salvation history, even employing word-for-word passages borrowed from Samuel and Kings. It begins with Adam; its ending, narrating the return of Babylonian Jews to the Promised Land, allows the Hebrew Bible to close with the consolation that the prophets foresaw and to offer hope to oppressed Jews of later periods.

Since the twelve minor prophets count as one scroll (or book), the Hebrew Bible contains twenty-four books, pointing up the importance in Jewish tradition of the number twelve and its multiples as signifying completeness or fulfillment. In addition to the twenty-four books, the apocryphal or deuterocanonical books, contained in the Greek Septuagint and accepted as scripture by Catholics and many Orthodox Christians, are Judith, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sira (or Ecclesiasticus), Baruch (who was Jeremiah’s secretary), and the Greek additions to Daniel, namely Daniel 3:24–90 and Chapters 13 (the story of Susanna) and 14 (Bel and the Dragon). Besides these, many Orthodox Christians accept as scripture one or more of the following: 1 Esdras (in the Septuagint Ezra-Nehemiah is called 2 Esdras), 3 and 4 Maccabees, the Psalms of Solomon, and, in some cases, a few other minor works and additions. The order of books in Christian Bibles differs from the order of the Hebrew Bible.