Group
The Bible's collections
A collection is a shelf of biblical books held together by the kind of writing they are, and the traditions do not all shelve the same books.
Summary
The Bible's books sit in ten collections, five in the Old Testament and five in the New. Every tradition here reads the same sixty-six books and differs over the shelf beside them.
- Five collections hold the Old Testament’s 39 books. Five more hold the New Testament’s 27.
- The Tanakh keeps the same Old Testament books in three parts of its own: Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim.
- Hebrews sits with Paul’s letters because canon order puts it there. The letter names no author.
- Catholic and Orthodox Bibles receive most of the apocrypha. The two lists are not the same.
- Protestant Bibles print the apocrypha as reading. Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles says the church builds no doctrine on it.
Which traditions receive which collections
A collection is a shelf, not a doctrine. Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles all carry the same sixty-six books. The argument between them is over the books that stand beside those sixty-six. Each row below is a collection and each column a tradition.
- Receivedthe tradition reads every book in this collection as Scripture
- Received in partthe tradition reads some of the collection's books as Scripture and not the rest
- Outside the canonthe tradition does not read these books as Scripture, whether or not it prints them
| Collection | Protestant | Roman Catholic | Eastern Orthodox | Tanakh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Torah5 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhTorah |
| History12 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNevi'im and Ketuvim |
| Wisdom5 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhKetuvim |
| Major Prophets5 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNevi'im and Ketuvim |
| Minor Prophets12 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNevi'im, as one book |
| Gospels4 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| Acts1 book | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| Pauline Epistles14 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| General Epistles7 books | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| Apocalyptic1 book | ProtestantCanon | Roman CatholicCanon | Eastern OrthodoxCanon | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| The Histories3 books | ProtestantPrinted as reading | Roman CatholicThe two books of Maccabees are received, 1 Esdras is not | Eastern OrthodoxAll three are received, and 3 Maccabees beside them | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| Tales of Faith5 books | ProtestantPrinted as reading | Roman CatholicAll five, listed at Trent | Eastern OrthodoxAll five | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| The Wisdom Books2 books | ProtestantPrinted as reading | Roman CatholicBoth, listed at Trent | Eastern OrthodoxBoth | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| Prophets & Prayers3 books | ProtestantPrinted as reading | Roman CatholicBaruch and the Song are received, the Prayer of Manasseh is not | Eastern OrthodoxAll three | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
| The Apocalypse1 book | ProtestantPrinted as reading | Roman CatholicIt stands in the Vulgate's appendix | Eastern OrthodoxThe Slavonic Bible carries it, the Greek does not | TanakhNot in the Tanakh |
Read more at Who decided the canon, the councils, the lists and the tests the church applied.
The divisions, shelf by shelf
The Old Testament’s 39 books fall into five collections and the New Testament’s 27 into five more. Every one of them has a page that lists its books and sets them in the movement they belong to.
The Old Testament39
The New Testament27
The apocrypha shelf14
- The Histories3 booksThe wars and kingdoms of the four hundred silent years: the world Jesus was born into.
- Tales of Faith5 booksStories told to teach: courage, prayer, and wit under foreign kings.
- The Wisdom Books2 booksProverbs' younger cousins: the wisdom tradition carried into Greek.
- Prophets & Prayers3 booksExile prayers, a furnace hymn, and a penitent king.
- The Apocalypse1 bookVisions after the ruin of Jerusalem: questions Job would recognize.
1 Enoch stands on this shelf and in none of the three canons above. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church receives it, and Jude 14 and 15 quote the words of 1 Enoch 1:9 and credit them to Enoch, the seventh from Adam.
Read more at The apocrypha shelf, where every book carries an introduction of its own.
How the divisions arose
The oldest arrangement is threefold. The prologue to Sirach, written about 132 BC, speaks of the Law, the Prophets and the books that came after them. Luke 24:44 has Jesus name the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. Bava Batra 14b in the Babylonian Talmud fixes the order of the Prophets and the Writings. Those three divisions are the Tanakh.
The Greek Bible sorted the same books a second way, by the kind of writing each one is. The law comes first, then the histories, then the poetry, then the prophets. Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus carry that order. The books the Hebrew canon does not count stand among the rest rather than on a shelf of their own. English Bibles inherited the Greek order, and that order is the reason History and Wisdom stand as collections here instead of parts of the Nevi’im and the Ketuvim.
Jerome learned Hebrew and translated from it. He wrote a preface to Samuel and Kings between about 391 and 404. In it he counted the Hebrew books and set the rest apart. The church reads them, he said, for the building up of the people and not to settle doctrine. Augustine received them as Scripture, and the two men wrote to each other about the difference.
Luther’s Wittenberg Bible of 1534 gathered those books into one place between the Testaments. He headed them Apocrypha and wrote that they are not held equal to the Scriptures and are useful and good to read. English Bibles printed them the same way for three hundred years. Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, agreed in 1571, put the same judgment in its own words.
The Council of Trent answered on 8 April 1546. Its decree on the canonical Scriptures listed the books the Roman Catholic Church receives and attached an anathema to any denial. The list leaves out the Prayer of Manasseh and the two books of Esdras. Later printings of the Vulgate carried those three in an appendix. The Orthodox churches kept the contents of the Greek Bible, and the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 named the books they read as Scripture.
Read more at How we got the Bible, from the first writing to the printed English page.
Read more at The intertestamental period, the four hundred years the shelf's histories report.
Sources9
- The prologue to Sirach, about 132 BC
- The translator's grandson describes a Hebrew Bible already in three parts.
- Luke 24:44
- Jesus names the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.
- Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b to 15a
- The rabbinic ordering, with the man credited with each scroll.
- Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus, fourth and fifth centuries
- Carry the Greek Bible's order, sorted by the kind of writing each book is.
- Jerome, the preface to Samuel and Kings, about 391 to 404
- Counts the Hebrew books and sets the rest apart as reading for the people.
- The Wittenberg Bible of 1534
- Gathers those books between the Testaments under Luther's heading, Apocrypha.
- The Council of Trent, decree on the canonical Scriptures, 8 April 1546
- Lists the books the Roman Catholic Church receives, with an anathema attached.
- The Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VI, 1571
- Reads the apocrypha for example of life, and not to establish any doctrine.
- The Synod of Jerusalem, 1672
- Names the books the Orthodox churches read as Scripture.
Where it leads
On this page