Bible

Bible The collection of books constituting sacred literature, which Christians refer to as the Old Testament to distinguish it from the New Testament. The Hebrew Bible is divided into three: 1. Torah (the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch); 2. Neviim (‘Prophets’, embracing the books of the literary prophets and the historical books); 3. Ketuvim (‘Writings’, the books of the Hagiographa). After the initial letters of these words, the Bible is called the Tanakh. Jewish tradition sees these three divisions as composed under different degrees of inspiration. The Torah, as the very word of God, is seen as possessing the highest degree of inspiration; the prophets as having the degree of prophecy, that is, the word of God mediated through the personality of the prophet; and the Hagiographa as composed under the lower degree of inspiration known as the Holy Spirit. But for all practical purposes no distinction is made between one part of the Bible and another so far as its authority is concerned.

The books of the Bible are:

Torah

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Prophets

Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings (known as the ‘early prophets’).

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets (the ‘later prophets’) (the Twelve are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi).

Hagiographa

Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Chronicles, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

In the later Jewish tradition there are said to be twenty-four books of the Bible. This number is arrived at by counting the Twelve as a single book and Ezra and Nehemiah as a single book, thus: 1. Genesis; 2. Exodus; 3. Leviticus; 4. Numbers; 5. Deuteronomy; 6. Joshua; 7. Judges; 8. Samuel; 9. Kings; 10. Isaiah; 11. Jeremiah; 12. Ezekiel; 13. The Twelve; 14. Psalms; 15. Proverbs; 16. Job; 17. Song of Songs; 18. Ruth; 19. Ecclesiastes; 20. Lamentations; 21. Esther; 22. Chronicles; 23. Daniel; 24. Ezra and Nehemiah.

From the historical point of view, there was no actual official body to determine which books of the Bible belonged there and which did not. The Pentateuch was accepted as the sacred Torah from the earliest times, the Prophets somewhat later, and the books of the Hagiographa later still. In effect it was by a kind of mysterious consensus among the Jewish people that these twenty-four books and no others came to be held as the Bible. The practical consequence is that, for Jews, the authority of the Bible depends on how the Bible has been interpreted by the sages of Israel. This is why a naked biblicism, in which the biblical text is examined for direct guidance, is foreign to the Jewish tradition.

Who wrote the various books of the Bible? A distinction has to be drawn between the claims of authorship made in the books themselves and the understanding of later generations. In the Pentateuch itself, for instance, there is no statement that all five books were written by Moses or in the book of Psalms that all the Psalms were written by David, yet the tradition developed that the five books are the books of Moses and the whole book of Psalms the Psalms of David. This question of authorship was only scientifically examined with the rise of biblical criticism. The ancient Rabbis made many references to the authors of the various books, yet in doing so they were not stating any dogma but simply referring to the general views of their day.