TanakhTanakh [תנ״ך] (also spelt Tanach or Tenach) is an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible, based upon the initial Hebrew letters of each part:
The Tanakh is also called [מקרא], Mikra or Miqra.
TerminologyThe threefold division reflected in the acronym Tanakh is well attested to in documents from the Second Temple period and in Rabbinic literature. During that period, however, the acronym Tanakh was not used; rather, the proper term was Mikra ("Reading"). The term Mikra continues to be used to this day alongside Tanakh to refer to the Hebrew scriptures. (In modern spoken Hebrew, Mikra has a more formal flavor than Tanakh.) Because the books included in the Tanakh were largely written in Hebrew, it may also be called the Hebrew Bible. (Parts of Daniel and Ezra are in Aramaic, but even these are written in the same Hebrew script.) The CanonMain Article: Biblical canon According to the Jewish tradition, the Tanakh consists of twenty-four books (enumerated below). The Torah has five books, Nevi'im contains eight books, and Ketuvim has eleven. These twenty-four books are the same books found in the Protestant Old Testament, but the order of the books is different. The enumeration differs as well: Christians count these books as thirty-nine, not twenty-four. This is because Jews often count as a single book what Christians count as several. As such, one may draw a technical distinction between the Jewish Tanakh and the similar, but non-identical, corpus which Christians call the Old Testament. Thus, some scholars prefer Hebrew Bible as a term that covers the commonality of Tanakh and the Old Testament while avoiding sectarian bias. The Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain six books not included in the Tanakh. They are therefore called deuterocanonical books. Books of the TanakhThe Hebrew text originally consisted only of consonants, together with some inconsistently applied letters used as vowels (matres lectionis). During the early middle ages, the Masoretes codified the oral tradition for reading the Tanakh by adding two special kinds of symbols to the text: niqqud (vowel points) and cantillation signs. The latter indicate syntax, stress (accentuation), and the melody for reading. The books of the Torah have generally-used names which are based on the first prominent word in each book. The English names are not translations of the Hebrew; they are based on the Greek names created for the Septuagint which in turn were based on Rabbinic names describing the thematic content of each of the Books. The Torah consists of:
The Ketuvim are:
In Christian Bibles, Daniel and the Book of Esther sometimes include extra material that is not accepted as canonical by Judaism (the material is deuterocanonical, so it is also not accepted by most Protestants). The breaking of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles into two parts has its origins in the Septuagint, but does not exist in the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint divided them, apparently, because of their length, but no such thing occurred in the Jewish tradition. (Some say that for Samuel and Kings, the point of division interrupts the narrative at inappropriate places.) Thus in the Jewish tradition, for instance, one may speak of The Book of Samuel, but not The Books of Samuel. Jewish editions of the Tanakh in Hebrew eventually included the division of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles along with the chapter divisions and verse numbers. Some scholars consider this division technical since its original intention was to facilitate interreligious theological discussion. However, nowadays they are the de-facto standard. Rabbinical Judaism believes that the Torah was transmitted side by side with some sort of oral tradition. Other groups, such as Karaite Judaism, the ancient Saducees, and Christianity do not accept this claim. Indeed, many terms and definitions used in the written law are undefined within the Torah itself; and the reader is assumed to be familiar with the context and details. This fact is presented as evidence to the antiquity of the oral tradition. An opposing argument is that only a small portion of the vast rabbinic works on the oral tradition can be described as mere clarifications and context. These rabbinic works, collectively known as "the oral law" [תורה שבעל פה], include the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the two Talmuds (Babylonian and Jerusalem), and the early Midrash compilations. See alsoExternal links
de:Tanach et:Tanah es:Tanaj fr:Tanakh id:Tanakh [[he:תנ"ך]] nl:Tenach no:Tanakh nn:Tanįkh sv:Tanach tokipona:lipu sona TaNaKa
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