The Tanach (or Tanakh) is the Hebrew term for the Jewish Bible, also called the Hebrew Bible; Christians refer to it as the Old Testament. The text of the Tanach is identical to the Protestant Canon of the Christian Old Testament, except that some parts are printed in a slightly different order.
The Tanach consists of 24 books, while the Christian Old Testament (excluding the deuterocanon/apocrypha) has 39 books; they both contain the same text but divide it into books differently: Jews often count as a single book what Christians count as several.
The Tanach is traditionally broken down into the Torah (usually called "The Law," but literally meaning "The Teaching"), Neviim (The Prophets) and Ketuvim (The Writings). A Haftarah is a selection from the Prophets which has traditionally been associated with a particular passage in the Torah. In the first century A.D., Masoretes added vowel pointings to the text of the Tanach, which in its original form contains only consonants.
The Books of the Torah (the Law/Teaching) are named after the first prominent word in each book. The Torah consists of:
- 1. Genesis (בראשית)
- 2. Exodus (שמות)
- 3. Leviticus (ויקרא)
- 4. Numbers(במדבר)
- 5 Deuteronomy (דברים)
The books of Neviim (The Prophets) are:
- 6. Joshua(יהושע)
- 7. Judges(שופטים)
- 8. Books of Samuel
- I Samuel I
- II Samuel II
- 9. Books of Kings
- I Kings
- II Kings
- 10. Isaiah
- 11. Jeremiah
- 12. Ezekiel
- 13. The Minor Prophets
The Ketuvim (The Writings) are:
- 14. Psalms
- 15. Proverbs
- 16. Book of Job
- 17. Song of Songs
- 18. Ruth
- 19. Lamentations
- 20. Ecclesiastes
- 21. Book of Esther
- 22. Daniel
- 23. Ezra-Nehemiah
- 24. Books of Chronicles
- I Chronicles
- II Chronicles
- The Christian Bible's version of Daniel includes extra material that is not accepted as canonical by Judaism.
- The breaking of Samuel (Shmuel), Kings (Melachim), and Chronicles (Divrei hayamim) into two parts is strictly an artifact of the printers who first issued the books. They were simply too big to be issued as single volumes.
The Torah is fairly clear that it was transmitted side by side with some sort of oral tradition. Many terms and definitions used in the written law are totally undefined; the reader is assumed to be familiar with the context and details. Many fundamental concepts such as shekhita (slaughtering of animals in a kosher fashion), divorce and the rights of the firstborn are all assumed as common knowledge by text, and are not elaborated on. There are literally dozens of cases throughout the Torah where it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the details - from an unwritten (oral) tradition. According to classical Judaism, many of the details of this oral tradition were accurately transmitted, and eventually recorded in a collection of rabbinic works collectively known as "the oral law". These works include the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the two Talmuds (Babylonian and Jerusalem), and the early Midrash compilations.