HEBREW BIBLE

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The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh. It defines the books of the Jewish canon, and also the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and accentuation.


The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE, and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century.


The name Tanakh (Hebrew: תנ"ך‎) reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures:

1. Torah ("Teaching"), 

2. Nevi'im ("Prophets")

3. Ketuvim (“Writings"). 


I. The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is also known as the "Five Books of Moses" or the Pentateuch, meaning "five scroll-cases".


The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books:

  • Genesis, Beresheeth (בראשית)
  • Exodus, Shemot (שמות)
  • Leviticus, Vayikra (ויקרא)
  • Numbers, Bamidbar (במדבר)
  • Deuteronomy, Devarim (דברים)


The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. 


The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel) and Jacob's children, the "Children of Israel", especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. 


The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in Ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.


The Torah contains the commandments of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate among traditional scholars as to whether these were all written down at one time, or over a period of time during the 40 years of the wanderings in the desert, while several modern Jewish movements reject the idea of a literal revelation, and critical scholars believe that many of these laws developed later in Jewish history). These commandments provide the basis for Jewish religious law. 

Tradition states that there are 613 commandments (taryag mitzvot).



II. Nevi'im (Hebrew: נְבִיאִים Nəḇî'îm‎‎, "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. 


It contains two sub-groups, the Former Prophets (Nevi'im Rishonim נביאים ראשונים, the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings)  and the Latter Prophets (Nevi'im Aharonim נביאים אחרונים, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets).


The Nevi'im tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, ancient Israel and Judah, focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the LORD GOD" and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behaviour of Israelite elites and rulers; in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians followed by the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.


Former Prophets

The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. 


They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and end with the release from imprisonment of the last king of Judah. Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover:

  • Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan (in the Book of Joshua),
  • the struggle of the people to possess the land (in the Book of Judges),
  • the people's request to God to give them a king so that they can occupy the land in the face of their enemies (in the Books of Samuel)
  • the possession of the land under the divinely appointed kings of the House of David, ending in conquest and foreign exile (Books of Kings)


Latter Prophets

The Latter Prophets are divided into two groups, namely:


  1. Major prophets
  • Isaiah
  • Jeremiah
  • Ezekiel
  • Daniel

  1. Twelve Minor Prophets, collected into a single book. The collection is broken up to form twelve individual books in the Christian Old Testament, one for each of the prophets:
  • Hosea, Hoshea (הושע)
  • Joel, Yoel (יואל)
  • Amos, Amos (עמוס)
  • Obadiah, Ovadyah (עבדיה)
  • Jonah, Yonah (יונה)
  • Micah, Mikhah (מיכה)
  • Nahum, Nahum (נחום)
  • Habakkuk, Havakuk (חבקוק)
  • Zephaniah, Tsefanya (צפניה)
  • Haggai, Khagay (חגי)
  • Zechariah, Zekharyah (זכריה)
  • Malachi, Malakhi (מלאכי)


III. Ketuvim or Kəṯûḇîm (in Biblical Hebrew: כְּתוּבִים‎‎ "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. 


The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy.


The poetic books


In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stichs in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth").


These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stichs within verses. However, the beginning and end of the book of Job are in the normal prose system.


The five scrolls (Hamesh Megillot)

The five relatively short books of 

  • Song of Songs
  • Book of Ruth
  • Book of Lamentations
  • Ecclesiastes 
  • Book of Esther 


They are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot (Five Megillot). These are the latest books collected and designated as "authoritative" in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the 2nd century CE.


Other Books

Besides the three poetic books and the five scrolls, the remaining books in Ketuvim are:

  • Daniel, 
  • Ezra–Nehemiah 
  • Chronicles. 


Although there is no formal grouping for these books in the Jewish tradition, they nevertheless share a number of distinguishing characteristics:

  • Their narratives all openly describe relatively late events (i.e., the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of Zion).
  • The Talmudic tradition ascribes late authorship to all of them.
  • Two of them (Daniel and Ezra) are the only books in the Tanakh with significant portions in Aramaic.


Order of the Books

The following list presents the books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most printed editions. It also divides them into three subgroups based on the distinctiveness of Sifrei Emet and Hamesh Megillot.


The Three Poetic Books (Sifrei Emet)

  • Tehillim (Psalms) תְהִלִּים
  • Mishlei (Book of Proverbs) מִשְלֵי
  • Iyyôbh (Book of Job) אִיּוֹב


The Five Megillot (Hamesh Megillot)

  • Shīr Hashshīrīm (Song of Songs) or (Song of Solomon) שִׁיר הַשׁשִׁירִים (Passover)
  • Rūth (Book of Ruth) רוּת (Shābhû‘ôth)
  • Eikhah (Lamentations) איכה (Ninth of Av) [Also called Kinnot in Hebrew.]
  • Qōheleth (Ecclesiastes) קהלת (Sukkôth)
  • Estēr (Book of Esther) אֶסְתֵר (Pûrîm)


Other Books

  • Dānî’ēl (Book of Daniel) דָּנִיֵּאל
  • ‘Ezrā (Book of Ezra-Book of Nehemiah) עזרא
  • Divrei ha-Yamim (Chronicles) דברי הימים

The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. 


The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14b-15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles.


In Tiberian Masoretic codices, including the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, and often in old Spanish manuscripts as well, the order is Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel, Ezra.



CANONIZATION

The Ketuvim is the last of the three portions of the Tanakh to have been accepted as biblical canon. While the Torah may have been considered canon by Israel as early as the 5th century BCE and the Former and Latter Prophets were canonized by the 2nd century BCE, the Ketuvim was not a fixed canon until the 2nd century of the Common Era.


Evidence suggests, however, that the people of Israel were adding what would become the Ketuvim to their holy literature shortly after the canonization of the prophets. As early as 132 BCE references suggest that the Ketuvim was starting to take shape, although it lacked a formal title. References in the four Gospels as well as other books of the New Testament indicate that many of these texts were both commonly known and counted as having some degree of religious authority early in the 1st century CE.


Many scholars believe that the limits of the Ketuvim as canonized scripture were determined by the Council of Jamnia c. 90 CE. Against Apion, the writing of Josephus in 95 CE, treated the text of the Hebrew Bible as a closed canon to which "... no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable..." For a long time following this date the divine inspiration of Esther, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes was often under scrutiny.



Original languages

The Tanakh was mainly written in biblical HEBREW, with some small portions (Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4–7:28) written in biblical ARAMAIC, a sister language which became the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world.


The Septuagint, or the LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and some related texts into Koine Greek, begun in the late 3rd century BCE and completed by 132 BCE, initially in Alexandria, but in time it was completed elsewhere as well. It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised.

As the work of translation progressed, the canon of the Greek Bible expanded. The Torah always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Nevi'im, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it. 


In addition, some newer books were included in the Septuagint, among these are the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. However, the book of Sirach, is now known to have existed in a Hebrew version, since ancient Hebrew manuscripts of it were rediscovered in modern times. The Septuagint version of some Biblical books, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Jewish canon.


Some of these deuterocanonical books (e.g. the Wisdom of Solomon, and the second book of Maccabees) were not translated, but composed directly in Greek.


Since Late Antiquity, once attributed to a hypothetical late 1st-century Council of Jamnia, mainstream Rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint as valid Jewish scriptural texts. 


Several reasons have been given for this. 

  • First, some mistranslations were claimed. 
  • Second, the Hebrew source texts used for the Septuagint differed from the Masoretic tradition of Hebrew texts, which was chosen as canonical by the Jewish rabbis.
  • Third, the rabbis wanted to distinguish their tradition from the newly emerging tradition of Christianity.


Finally, the rabbis claimed a divine authority for the Hebrew language, in contrast to Aramaic or Greek – even though these languages were the lingua franca of Jews during this period (and Aramaic would eventually be given a holy language status comparable to Hebrew).


The Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.


The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches use most of the books of the Septuagint, while Protestant churches usually do not. 


After the Protestant Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts, which came to be called Biblical apocrypha. 


The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James Version of the Bible, the basis for the Revised Standard Version.



Incorporations from Theodotion

In most ancient copies of the Bible which contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel is not the original Septuagint version, but instead is a copy of Theodotion's translation from the Hebrew, which more closely resembles the Masoretic Text.

The Septuagint version was discarded in favour of Theodotion's version in the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE. 

In Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the 2nd century, and in Latin-speaking areas (at least in North Africa), it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. History does not record the reason for this, and St. Jerome reports, in the preface to the Vulgate version of Daniel, "This thing 'just' happened."


One of two Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel has been recently rediscovered and work is ongoing in reconstructing the original form of the book.

The canonical Ezra–Nehemiah is known in the Septuagint as "Esdras B", and 1 Esdras is "Esdras A". 1 Esdras is a very similar text to the books of Ezra–Nehemiah, and the two are widely thought by scholars to be derived from the same original text. It has been proposed, and is thought highly likely by scholars, that "Esdras B" – the canonical Ezra–Nehemiah – is Theodotion's version of this material, and "Esdras A" is the version which was previously in the Septuagint on its own.


Final form

Some texts are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. 

These additional books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah (which later became chapter 6 of Baruch in the Vulgate), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasseh, the Psalms of Solomon, and Psalm 151.


Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic Text are grouped together. 


For example, the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are in the LXX one book in four parts called Βασιλειῶν ("Of Reigns"). In LXX, the Books of Chronicles supplement Reigns and it is called Paralipomenon (Παραλειπομένων—things left out). The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve.



The Orthodox
Old Testament

Greek-based
name

Conventional
English name

Law

Γένεσις

Génesis

Genesis

Ἔξοδος

Éxodos

Exodus

Λευϊτικόν

Leuitikón

Leviticus

Ἀριθμοί

Arithmoí

Numbers

Δευτερονόμιον

Deuteronómion

Deuteronomy

History

Ἰησοῦς Nαυῆ

Iêsous Nauê

Joshua

Κριταί

Kritaí

Judges

Ῥούθ

Roúth

Ruth

Βασιλειῶν Αʹ[

I Reigns

I Samuel

Βασιλειῶν Βʹ

II Reigns

II Samuel

Βασιλειῶν Γʹ

III Reigns

I Kings

Βασιλειῶν Δʹ

IV Reigns

II Kings

Παραλειπομένων Αʹ

I Paralipomenon

I Chronicles

Παραλειπομένων Βʹ

II Paralipomenon

II Chronicles

Ἔσδρας Αʹ

I Esdras

1 Esdras

Ἔσδρας Βʹ

II Esdras

Ezra–Nehemiah

Τωβίτ[61]

Tobit

Tobit or Tobias

Ἰουδίθ

Ioudith

Judith

Ἐσθήρ

Esther

Esther with additions

Μακκαβαίων Αʹ

I Makkabaioi

1 Maccabees

Μακκαβαίων Βʹ

II Makkabaioi

2 Maccabees

Μακκαβαίων Γʹ

III Makkabaioi

3 Maccabees

Wisdom

Ψαλμοί

Psalms

Psalms

Ψαλμός ΡΝΑʹ

Psalm 151

Psalm 151

Προσευχὴ Μανάσση

Prayer of Manasseh

Prayer of Manasseh

Ἰώβ

Iōb

Job

Παροιμίαι

Proverbs

Proverbs

Ἐκκλησιαστής

Ekklesiastes

Ecclesiastes

Ἆσμα Ἀσμάτων

Song of Songs

Song of Solomon or Canticles

Σοφία Σαλoμῶντος

Wisdom of Solomon

Wisdom

Σοφία Ἰησοῦ Σειράχ

Wisdom of Jesus the son of Seirach

Sirach or Ecclesiasticus

Ψαλμοί Σαλoμῶντος

Psalms of Solomon

Psalms of Solomon

Prophets

Δώδεκα

The Twelve

Minor Prophets

Ὡσηέ Αʹ

I. Osëe

Hosea

Ἀμώς Βʹ

II. Amōs

Amos

Μιχαίας Γʹ

III. Michaias

Micah

Ἰωήλ Δʹ

IV. Ioël

Joel

Ὀβδίου Εʹ

V. Obdias

Obadiah

Ἰωνᾶς Ϛ'

VI. Ionas

Jonah

Ναούμ Ζʹ

VII. Naoum

Nahum

Ἀμβακούμ Ηʹ

VIII. Ambakum

Habakkuk

Σοφονίας Θʹ

IX. Sophonias

Zephaniah

Ἀγγαῖος Ιʹ

X. Angaios

Haggai

Ζαχαρίας ΙΑʹ

XI. Zacharias

Zachariah

Ἄγγελος ΙΒʹ

XII. Messenger

Malachi

Ἠσαΐας

Hesaias

Isaiah

Ἱερεμίας

Hieremias

Jeremiah

Βαρούχ

Baruch

Baruch

Θρῆνοι

Lamentations

Lamentations

Ἐπιστολή Ιερεμίου

Epistle of Jeremiah

Letter of Jeremiah

Ἰεζεκιήλ

Iezekiêl

Ezekiel

Δανιήλ

Daniêl

Daniel with additions

Appendix

Μακκαβαίων Δ' Παράρτημα

IV Makkabees

4 Maccabees



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