Program / Course 4: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics / Lesson 1.2
What you will learn
- Name the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures and the kinds of books in each.
- Explain why Jewish and Christian Bibles arrange the same books in different orders.
- Summarize the evidence for how and when the three divisions came to be recognized.
- Describe why the old theory of a closing of the canon at Jamnia is now widely doubted.
The big idea
The Scriptures of Israel were gathered in stages. The five books of the Law were recognized first, then the Prophets, and then a looser third group called the Writings. By the time of Jesus, people spoke of the Law, the Prophets and other books, but the evidence does not show a single fixed list that every Jewish group used. Jewish counting and Christian counting also arrange the books differently. Reading the evidence carefully means holding together what is well attested and what scholars still debate.
Key terms
- Tanakh
- The Jewish name for the Hebrew Scriptures. It is formed from the first letters of Torah (Law), Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings).
- Torah
- A Hebrew word meaning teaching or instruction. It names the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, also called the Pentateuch.
- Nevi’im (Prophets)
- The second division. The Former Prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The Latter Prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve.
- Ketuvim (Writings)
- The third division, which includes Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the five scrolls such as Ruth and Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles.
- Pentateuch
- A Greek word meaning five scrolls. Another name for the Torah.
- Jamnia (Yavneh)
- A town in the land of Israel where Jewish teachers gathered after the destruction of the temple in the year 70. An older theory said they closed the canon there.
- Old Testament
- The Christian name for the Scriptures of Israel, taken together with the claim that the New Testament completes them. Jewish readers usually prefer Hebrew Bible or Tanakh.
Background
The Hebrew Scriptures are divided into three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. The Law is the five books that tell of creation, the call of Abraham, the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the covenant at Sinai. The Prophets include the historical books from Joshua to Kings, which Jewish tradition counts as prophetic, and the books of the prophets who spoke to Israel and Judah. The Writings are a mixed group: songs and prayers, wisdom, stories and later histories.
In Jewish counting the whole collection numbers twenty-four books, because several short books are grouped together. The Twelve, from Hosea to Malachi, are one book. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are each counted as one, and Ezra with Nehemiah as one. A Christian Old Testament that follows the same books counts thirty-nine, because it separates them. The content is the same. The count and the order differ, and the Christian order puts the Prophets last, leading toward the New Testament.
How the three parts were gathered is a matter of history, and the evidence is partial. There are reasons to think that the Law was treated as a unit first, that the Prophets followed, and that the Writings were settled last. But historians do not agree on the dates, and the evidence for the final stage is thin.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Look at the Law
The Law holds the highest place in Jewish tradition and was the first part to have a fixed form. The book of Nehemiah describes the people gathering to hear “the book of the law of Moses” read and explained (Nehemiah 8:1-8). Scholars disagree about when the five books reached their final shape, and many place it in the period after the exile in Babylon, in the fifth century BC or later. Those who hold to Mosaic authorship, and those who see a long process of composition, agree that by the time of the later Persian period the five books were authoritative for Israel.
Step 2: Look at the Prophets
The Prophets were next. They are read aloud in synagogues alongside the Law in a custom that goes back to the time of the New Testament, as the book of Acts reports (Acts 13:15). A book such as Isaiah or Jeremiah must have been treated as authoritative in some communities well before the final collection was complete. The Book of the Twelve was likely gathered into a single scroll by the second century BC.
A helpful piece of evidence is the prologue to the Greek book of Sirach, written by the author’s grandson around 132 BC. He speaks of the law, the prophets and other books that followed them. Two things stand out: he already knows a threefold pattern, and he does not name the third group exactly.
Step 3: Look at the Writings
Jesus speaks in Luke 24:44 of “the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms.” Psalms may stand here for the whole third group, or it may name its leading book. The wording shows that a threefold pattern was familiar, but it does not by itself give a list. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century, writes that the Jews have twenty-two books accepted as divine. He does not give his list in full, so scholars have to reconstruct it. A Jewish text from around the end of the first century, called 2 Esdras or 4 Ezra, speaks of twenty-four books.
These numbers fit the pattern known later, but they do not settle everything. Some books of the Writings, such as Esther, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, were discussed by Jewish teachers well into the following centuries. The discussion was about their standing and their meaning, and the books remained in use.
Step 4: Weigh the theory of Jamnia
For much of the twentieth century, textbooks said that Jewish teachers met at Jamnia around the year 90 and formally closed the canon. Most scholars now doubt this. The surviving reports describe debates among teachers about whether certain books, such as Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, rendered the hands unclean, a way of saying whether they were holy. They do not describe a council with a list. The idea of a decisive council is better treated as a theory that the evidence does not support well.
What the evidence does support is a gradual process. Different Jewish groups at the time of Jesus, including the community that kept the Dead Sea Scrolls, valued some writings that did not end up in the later Hebrew list. That is one reason Christians and Jews came to differ, as the next lessons show.
- Which of the three divisions does this passage or source belong to?
- Is the evidence about when a book was written, when it was used, or when it was counted as Scripture?
- Does the source give a list, or only mention a pattern?
- Is this a claim about Jewish practice, Christian practice, or both?
- What does this evidence show, and what does it merely allow?
- Which part of the story do scholars still debate?
Examples
Two ways to count
The books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra with Nehemiah are single books in the Jewish count. In the Christian Old Testament, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles each appear as two books, and Ezra and Nehemiah as two. The books and their words are the same. Only the way of counting and arranging them differs.
Where Daniel sits
In the Hebrew Bible, Daniel is in the Writings, not among the Prophets. In Christian Bibles it stands after Ezekiel with the prophets. This is a small example of how the same book can be placed in a different division, and how the arrangement can shape the way the book is read.
A debate about holiness
The Jewish teachers who discussed Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs were asking whether the books were holy, and the discussion shows that the third division was not entirely settled in their time. It also shows that the books were already known and read. The debate was about how to understand them, not whether to throw them away.
Different perspectives
Jewish
Jewish tradition holds that the Law was given at Sinai and that the Prophets and Writings are inspired witnesses to the same covenant. The twenty-four books are received as a unit, and the Torah holds the first place in worship and study.
Protestant
Protestant churches received the Hebrew list as the Old Testament, thirty-nine books by their count. Reformers such as Luther and Calvin argued that the books the Jews had received were the right ones, and that the church should follow the Hebrew Scriptures that Christ and the apostles had read.
Catholic
The Catholic Church receives the books of the Hebrew list and also seven further books, treated as deuterocanonical. In this view the church did not accept the Jewish list as final, because Christians were using a wider collection in Greek long before the rabbinic Jewish list was fixed. Lesson 1.4 sets out the details.
Orthodox
Orthodox churches also receive a wider Old Testament than the Hebrew list, following the Greek Scriptures used in the early church. They read the Law, the Prophets and the Writings as one witness that points to Christ.
Scholarly
Historians of Israelite religion usually describe the Hebrew canon as the result of a long and uneven process. They differ about how early the Writings were recognized as a division, and many are cautious about describing any fixed boundary before the first or second century of the Christian era.
Why it matters
The Old Testament is the Bible of Jesus, and its shape affects how its books were read from the beginning. Knowing the three divisions helps with every later topic: why the Septuagint arranges books differently, why Christians and Jews disagree on the order, and why a quotation in the New Testament may refer to the Law, the Prophets or the Psalms. It also teaches caution about tidy stories of a council that closed a list.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The Jewish canon was closed at the Council of Jamnia in about the year 90.
Correction: Most scholars now think there was no such council. The reports describe teachers’ discussions about particular books and do not describe a decision on a list.
Misunderstanding: The Jewish Bible is a different set of books from the Protestant Old Testament.
Correction: The books are the same. The count and the order differ, and the Hebrew Bible is arranged in Law, Prophets and Writings.
Misunderstanding: Jesus quoted from a single fixed list of books.
Correction: He and his hearers knew the threefold pattern, but the evidence does not show a fixed list that all Jews used. Different groups had somewhat different collections.
Misunderstanding: The Writings were added late because they are less important.
Correction: The Writings include the Psalms, which were central in Jewish and Christian worship from early times. Their later settling concerns the process of collection, not the weight of the books.
Knowledge check
Name the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures and give one book from each.
The Law (for example Genesis), the Prophets (for example Isaiah or Samuel), and the Writings (for example Psalms or Proverbs). The Jewish name Tanakh comes from the first letters of the Hebrew names of the three parts.
Why is the Jewish count twenty-four books and the Christian count thirty-nine?
The books are the same. The Jewish count joins books that Christians separate, such as the Twelve minor prophets, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra with Nehemiah. The Christian arrangement also differs in order.
What does the prologue of Sirach show about the threefold pattern?
It shows that around 132 BC a writer already spoke of the law, the prophets and other books that followed them. It shows the pattern was familiar by then, but it does not list the third group.
Why do most scholars now doubt the theory of a canon closed at Jamnia?
The surviving reports describe teachers debating whether certain books were holy, not a council deciding a list. Also, the evidence suggests Jewish groups kept somewhat different collections for some time, so a single decisive moment is hard to support.
Think it through
- Why might it matter to a Christian reader that Jesus read the Scriptures of Israel in Law, Prophets and Writings?
- How could the order of books shape the way a reader understands them?
- What kinds of evidence would you want in order to say that a division of Scripture was fixed?
- Why might a tidy story such as a closing council be attractive even when the evidence is thin?
Independent assignment
Map the three divisions
In your notebook, make a table with three columns for the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Place every book of the Old Testament in the column where the Hebrew Bible puts it, using a printed table of contents of a Jewish translation if you can. Beside it, note where each book stands in your own Christian Bible. Then write 150 to 250 words on two books that sit in different places in the two arrangements, and what difference that might make. Keep it in your notebook.
Further study
- Jewish Publication Society, The Hebrew Bible in English (JPS translation) Look at the table of contents to see the Jewish order of the books.
- Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament Read the early chapters for a summary of the Old Testament background.
- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church Read the section on the Old Testament and its books.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Read Book 1, chapters 6 to 9, for a Reformed account of Scripture.
- Luke 24:44 The Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.
- Nehemiah 8:8 The Law read aloud and explained.
- Acts 13:15 The reading of the Law and the Prophets in the synagogue.