Books Of The Bible

Different religious groups include different books in their biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books. The Jewish Tanakh (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible) contains 24 books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah (“teaching”); the eight books of the Nevi’im (“prophets”); and the eleven books of Ketuvim (“writings”). It is composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew, and its Septuagint is the main textual source for the Christian Greek Old Testament.

Christian Bibles range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, the 66 books of the canon of some denominations or the 80 books of the canon of other denominations of the Protestant Church, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon. The first part of Christian Bibles is the Greek Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the above 24 books of the Tanakh but divided into 39 books and ordered differently. The second part is the Greek New Testament, containing 27 books; the four Canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation.

The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches hold that certain deuterocanonical books and passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Christian churches may have minor differences in their lists of accepted books. The list given here for these churches is the most inclusive: if at least one Eastern church accepts the book it is included here. The King James Bible—which has been called “the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language” and which in the United States is the most used translation, being still considered a standard among Protestant churches and being used liturgically in the Orthodox Church in America—contains 80 books: 39 in its Old Testament, 14 in its Apocrypha, and 27 in its New Testament.

Tanakh

See also: Development of the Hebrew Bible canon and Hebrew Bible

Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the 24 books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, as authoritative. There is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed: some scholars argue that it was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty (140-40 BCE), while others argue it was not fixed until the second century CE or even later. Most conservative scholars believe that the Torah was canonized c. 400 BCE, the Prophets c. 200 BCE, and the Writings c. 100 CE, perhaps at a Council of Jamnia as concluded by Heinrich Graetz in 1871. The Council of Jamnia theory is increasingly rejected by most liberal scholars.

Christian Bibles

Old Testament

Protocanonical books of the Old Testament

Main articles: Development of the Old Testament canon and Christian biblical canons

Protestants and Catholics use the Masoretic Text of the Jewish Tanakh as the textual basis for their translations of the protocanonical books (those accepted as canonical by both Jews and all Christians), with various changes derived from a multiplicity of other ancient sources (such as the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.), while generally using the Septuagint and Vulgate, now supplemented by the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, as the textual basis for the deuterocanonical books.

The Eastern Orthodox use the Septuagint (translated in the 3rd century BCE) as the textual basis for the entire Old Testament in both protocanonical and deuteroncanonical books—to use both in the Greek for liturgical purposes, and as the basis for translations into the vernacular. Most of the quotations (300 of 400) of the Old Testament in the New Testament, while differing more or less from the version presented by the Masoretic text, align with that of the Septuagint.

Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament

Main articles: Deuterocanonical books, Biblical apocrypha, and Pseudepigraph

These books, which were largely written during the intertestamental period, are called the Biblical apocrypha (“hidden things”) by Protestants, the deuterocanon (“second canon”) by Catholics, and the deuterocanon or anagignoskomena (“worthy of reading”) by Orthodox. These are works recognized by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches as being part of scripture (and thus deuterocanonical rather than apocryphal), but Protestants do not recognize them as divinely inspired. Orthodox differentiate scriptural books by omitting these (and others) from corporate worship and from use as a sole basis for doctrine.

Many recognize them as good, but not on the level of the other books of the Bible. Anglicanism considers the apocrypha worthy of being “read for example of life” but not to be used “to establish any doctrine.” Luther made a parallel statement in calling them: “not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, but…useful and good to read.”

The difference in canons derives from the difference in the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. Books found in both the Hebrew and the Greek are accepted by all denominations, and by Jews, these are the protocanonical books. Catholics and Orthodox also accept those books present in manuscripts of the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament with great currency among the Jews of the ancient world, with the coda that Catholics consider 3 Esdras and 3 Maccabees apocryphal.

Most quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament, differing by varying degrees from the Masoretic Text, are taken from the Septuagint. Daniel was written several hundred years after the time of Ezra, and since that time several books of the Septuagint have been found in the original Hebrew, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Cairo Geniza, and at Masada, including a Hebrew text of Sirach (Qumran, Masada) and an Aramaic text of Tobit (Qumran); the additions to Esther and Daniel are also in their respective Semitic languages.

The unanimous consensus of modern (and ancient) scholars consider several other books, including 1 Maccabees and Judith, to have been composed in Hebrew or Aramaic. Opinion is divided on the book of Baruch, while it is acknowledged that the Letter of Jeremiah, the Wisdom of Solomon, and 2 Maccabees are originally Greek compositions.

• Tobit – 200 BC
• Judith – 150 BC
• Additions to Esther – 140-130 BC
• Wisdom of Solomon – 30 BC
• Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah – 150-50 BC
• Sirach – 132 BC
• 1 Maccabees – 110 BC
• 2 Maccabees – 110-170 BC
• Additions to Daniel:
  • The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children
  • Story of Susanna – 200-0 BC
  • Bel and the Dragon – 100 BC

Eastern Orthodox

Additional books accepted by the Eastern Orthodox:

• 1 Esdras/3 Esdras
• 2 Esdras/4 Esdras (in an appendix to the Slavonic Bible)
• Prayer of Manasseh
• 3 Maccabees
• 4 Maccabees (in an appendix to the Greek Bible)
• Psalm 151 (in the Septuagint)
• Odes

Syriac Orthodox

Additional books accepted by the Syriac Orthodox Church (due to inclusion in the Peshitta):

• 2 Baruch with the Letter of Baruch (only the letter has achieved canonical status)
• Psalms 152–155 (not canonical)

Ethiopian Orthodox

The Ethiopian Tewahedo church accepts all of the deuterocanonical books of Catholicism and anagignoskomena of Eastern Orthodoxy except for the four Books of Maccabees. It accepts the 39 protocanonical books along with the following books, called the “narrow canon”. The enumeration of books in the Ethiopic Bible varies greatly between different authorities and printings.

• 4 Baruch or the Paralipomena of Jeremiah
• 1 Enoch
• Book of Jubilees
• First, Second and Third Books of Ethiopian Maccabees
• The Ethiopian broader Biblical Canon

Diagram of the development of the Old Testament

Table

The table uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Bible, such as the New American Bible Revised Edition, Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version. The spelling and names in both the 1609–1610 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament) and the 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions that derive from the Hebrew Masoretic text.

For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For the Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as “Esaias” (for Isaiah).

In the spirit of ecumenism more recent Catholic translations (e.g., the New American Bible, Jerusalem Bible, and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition) use the same “standardized” (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g., 1 Chronicles, as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings, instead of 1-4 Kings) in those books universally considered canonical—the protocanonicals.

The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b gives a different order for the books in Nevi’im and Ketuvim. This order is also quoted in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah are universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity.

The disputed books, included in one canon but not in others, are often called the Biblical apocrypha, a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe the books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672), use the traditional name of anagignoskomena, meaning “that which is to be read.” They are present in a few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version.

Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon.

Tanakh (Jewish Bible) (24 books)  Books in bold are part of the Ketuvim	Protestant Old Testament (39 books)	Catholic Old Testament (47 books)	Eastern Orthodox Old Testament (49 books)	Original language
Torah (Law)	Pentateuch or The Five Books of Moses
Bereishit	Genesis	Genesis	Genesis	Hebrew
Shemot	Exodus	Exodus	Exodus	Hebrew
Vayikra	Leviticus	Leviticus	Leviticus	Hebrew
Bamidbar	Numbers	Numbers	Numbers	Hebrew
Devarim	Deuteronomy	Deuteronomy	Deuteronomy	Hebrew
Nevi’im (Prophets)	Historical Books
Yehoshua	Joshua	Joshua (Josue)	Joshua (Iesous)	Hebrew
Shofetim	Judges	Judges	Judges	Hebrew
Rut (Ruth)	Ruth	Ruth	Ruth	Hebrew
Shemuel	1 Samuel	1 Samuel (1 Kings)	1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms)	Hebrew
	2 Samuel	2 Samuel (2 Kings)	2 Samuel (2 Kingdoms)	Hebrew
Melakhim	1 Kings	1 Kings (3 Kings)	1 Kings (3 Kingdoms)	Hebrew
	2 Kings	2 Kings (4 Kings)	2 Kings (4 Kingdoms)	Hebrew
Divrei Hayamim (Chronicles)	1 Chronicles	1 Chronicles (1 Paralipomenon)	1 Chronicles (1 Paralipomenon)	Hebrew
	2 Chronicles	2 Chronicles (2 Paralipomenon)	2 Chronicles (2 Paralipomenon)	Hebrew
			1 Esdras	Greek
Ezra-Nehemiah	Ezra	Ezra (1 Esdras)	Ezra (2 Esdras)	Hebrew and Aramaic
	Nehemiah	Nehemiah (2 Esdras)	Nehemiah (Neemias)	Hebrew
		Tobit (Tobias)	Tobit (Tobias)	Aramaic (and Hebrew?)
		Judith	Judith	Hebrew
Esther	Esther	Esther	Esther	Hebrew
		1 Maccabees (1 Machabees)	1 Maccabees	Hebrew
		2 Maccabees (2 Machabees)	2 Maccabees	Greek
			3 Maccabees	Greek
Ketuvim (Writings)	Wisdom Books
Iyov (Job)	Job	Job	Job	Hebrew
Tehillim (Psalms)	Psalms	Psalms	Psalms	Hebrew
Mishlei (Proverbs)	Proverbs	Proverbs	Proverbs	Hebrew
Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes)	Ecclesiastes	Ecclesiastes	Ecclesiastes	Hebrew
Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs)	Song of Solomon	Song of Songs (Canticle of Canticles)	Song of Songs (Aisma Aismaton)	Hebrew
		Wisdom	Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon)	Greek
		Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)	Sirach (Wisdom of Sirach)	Hebrew
Nevi’im (Latter Prophets)	Major Prophets
Yeshayahu	Isaiah	Isaiah (Isaias)	Isaiah	Hebrew
Yirmeyahu	Jeremiah	Jeremiah (Jeremias)	Jeremiah	Hebrew and Aramaic
Eikhah (Lamentations)	Lamentations	Lamentations	Lamentations	Hebrew
		Baruch with Letter of Jeremiah as the 6th Chapter	Baruch	Hebrew
			Letter of Jeremiah as standalone book	Greek (majority view)
Yekhezqel	Ezekiel	Ezekiel (Ezechiel)	Ezekiel	Hebrew
Daniel	Daniel	Daniel	Daniel	Hebrew and Aramaic
	Minor Prophets
The Twelve or Trei Asar	Hosea	Hosea (Osee)	Hosea	Hebrew
	Joel	Joel	Joel	Hebrew
	Amos	Amos	Amos	Hebrew
	Obadiah	Obadiah (Abdias)	Obadiah	Hebrew
	Jonah	Jonah (Jonas)	Jonah	Hebrew
	Micah	Micah (Micheas)	Micah	Hebrew
	Nahum	Nahum	Nahum	Hebrew
	Habakkuk	Habakkuk (Habacuc)	Habakkuk	Hebrew
	Zephaniah	Zephaniah (Sophonias)	Zephaniah	Hebrew
	Haggai	Haggai (Aggeus)	Haggai	Hebrew
	Zechariah	Zechariah (Zacharias)	Zechariah	Hebrew
	Malachi	Malachi (Malachias)	Malachi	Hebrew

Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate, formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

Books in the Appendix to the Vulgate Bible
Name in Vulgate	Name in Eastern Orthodox use
3 Esdras	1 Esdras
4 Esdras	Apocalypsis of Esdras
Prayer of Manasseh	Prayer of Manasseh
Psalm of David when he slew Goliath (Psalm 151)	Psalm 151

New Testament

See also: Christian biblical canons, Development of the New Testament canon, New Testament apocrypha, and Antilegomena

In general, among Christian denominations, the New Testament canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books, although book order can vary. The book order is the same in the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions.^{[N 1]} The Slavonic, Armenian and Ethiopian traditions have different New Testament book orders.

Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and most Oriental Orthodox	Original language (Koine Greek)
Canonical Gospels
Matthew	Greek (majority view: see note)[N 2]
Mark	Greek
Luke	Greek
John	Greek
Apostolic History
Acts	Greek
Pauline Epistles
Romans	Greek
1 Corinthians	Greek
2 Corinthians	Greek
Galatians	Greek
Ephesians	Greek
Philippians	Greek
Colossians	Greek
1 Thessalonians	Greek
2 Thessalonians	Greek
1 Timothy	Greek
2 Timothy	Greek
Titus	Greek
Philemon	Greek
Hebrews[N 1]	Greek
Catholic Epistles
James[N 1]	Greek
1 Peter	Greek
2 Peter[N 3]	Greek
1 John	Greek
2 John[N 3]	Greek
3 John[N 3]	Greek
Jude[N 1] [N 3]	Greek
Apocalypse
Revelation[N 1] [N 3]	Greek

Chart notes

[N 1] Four New Testament works were questioned or “spoken against” by Martin Luther, and he changed the order of his New Testament to reflect this, but he did not leave them out, nor has any Lutheran body since. Traditional German “Luther Bibles” are still printed with the New Testament in this changed “Luther Bible” order.

[N 2] See Rabbinical translations of Matthew. Most modern scholars consider the Gospel of Matthew to have been composed in Koine Greek, see Language of the New Testament. According to tradition as expressed by Papias of Hierapolis, writing in the late first or early second centuries, the Gospel was originally composed in the “Hebrew dialect” (which at the time was largely the related Aramaic) and then translated into Greek (Eusebius, “Ecclesiastical History”, 3.39.15-16; Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 30:3). According to Jerome, Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew were extant while he was translating the Vulgate: “Matthew … composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea, which Pamphilus so diligently gathered (St Jerome, “On Illustrious Men”, Chapter 3).

[N 3] The Peshitta, the traditional Syriac Bible, excludes 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, and Revelation, but Bibles of the modern Syriac Orthodox Church include later translations of those books. Still today the lectionary followed by the Syrian Orthodox Church, presents lessons from only the twenty-two books of Peshitta.

Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia