Luke 24:44 · Book · Featured Study
The Tanakh
The Tanakh's order differs from the Christian Old Testament in its parts, its count of books and its last book.
Tanakh is an acronym: T for Torah, N for Nevi'im and K for Ketuvim.
- Date
- c. 132 BC to c. AD 95, from the prologue to Sirach to Josephus's Against Apion (probable)
- Written by
- Moses, the prophets after Moses, the writers of the psalms, the wisdom books and the later histories
- Occasion
- Israel read these books as Scripture in three parts, and the Talmud set down the order of the Prophets and the Writings.
- Edition
- The Masoretic Hebrew text
Gustave Doré, Baruch, 1866. Public domain.
Summary
The Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible, the Scriptures of Judaism, and its books are the books Christians read as the Old Testament.
- Its parts are the Torah (instruction), the Nevi'im (prophets) and the Ketuvim (writings), with five, eight and eleven books.
- Jewish tradition counts twenty-four books, Josephus counted twenty-two, and Protestant Bibles count thirty-nine.
- The prologue to Sirach named the three parts about 132 BC, more than a century before the Gospels.
- The printed Hebrew order ends with the decree of Cyrus in Chronicles, and the Christian order ends with Malachi.
- Scholars differ over whether the three parts were closed at three different times.
Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim
Josephus described the three groups near the end of the first century.
The three parts
- Torah, תּוֹרָה, instruction, holds five books.
- Nevi'im, נְבִיאִים, prophets, holds eight books.
- Ketuvim, כְּתוּבִים, writings, holds eleven books.
The Hebrew word torah means direction, instruction and law, as Brown, Driver and Briggs define it, so the name is wider than the English word law.
In his description the five books of Moses hold the laws and the history from the origin of mankind to the death of Moses. The prophets after Moses wrote down what was done in their own times, and the last four books hold hymns to God and precepts for life.
The books are those a Christian reads as the Old Testament, and the Talmud's list in Bava Batra 14b holds every one of them.
The Books in Order
The printed Hebrew Bible and the Babylonian Talmud set the Prophets and the Writings in two orders.
The Writings change most between the two orders, and Chronicles stands last in both.
| Part | Books | The printed order | The order of Bava Batra 14b |
|---|---|---|---|
| Torah | 5 | Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy | The list begins with the Prophets |
| Nevi'im, the Former Prophets | 4 | Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings | Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings |
| Nevi'im, the Latter Prophets | 4 | Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve | Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the Twelve |
| Ketuvim | 11 | Psalms, Proverbs, Job; Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther; Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Chronicles | Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Chronicles |
The Former Prophets tell Israel's history from Joshua to the fall of Jerusalem, and the Latter Prophets hold the words of the prophets themselves.
The printed order follows the German manuscripts, and its five scrolls follow the feasts at which the synagogue reads them. The Song of Songs is read at Passover, Ruth at the Feast of Weeks, Lamentations on the ninth of Av, Ecclesiastes at the Feast of Tabernacles and Esther at Purim.
The reasons the Talmud gives for its order2 paragraphs
The Gemara sets Jeremiah and Ezekiel before Isaiah to set destruction beside destruction and consolation beside consolation. Kings ends with the destruction of the Temple, Jeremiah speaks of the destruction, Ezekiel moves from destruction to consolation, and Isaiah speaks of consolation.
It does not open the Writings with Job, because they should not begin with suffering, and it opens them with Ruth, whose suffering has a future of hope, since David descended from her.
Three counts of the same books1 table or figure, 1 paragraph
The three counts differ only in how the books are joined or divided.
| Count | Who gives it | How the books are counted |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | Later Jewish tradition | Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are one book each, Ezra and Nehemiah are one book, and the twelve Minor Prophets are one book, the Twelve. |
| 22 | Josephus, Against Apion 1.8, about AD 95 | Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah, on H. E. Ryle's reading. |
| 39 | Protestant Bibles | Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra with Nehemiah are each two books, and the Twelve are twelve books. |
Origen and Jerome later counted twenty-two the same way, and Origen was the first to match the twenty-two books to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in a list Eusebius preserves (Church History 6.25).
The Law, the Prophets and the Psalms
Readers of Luke 24:44 differ over how much of the Writings the Psalms stand for.
Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”Jesus gives the Scriptures three names here, and readers differ over how much the third name covers.
The Law of Moses is the Torah and the Prophets are the Nevi'im. Adam Clarke (Commentary on the Bible, 1832) read the Psalms as the Psalter with Proverbs, Job and the Song of Songs, following Josephus.
H. E. Ryle read the words another way: Jesus singled out the Psalter from the Writings because its Messianic content was plain and it was the best known of them. Ryle also held that the verse shows the three divisions without proving that the canon was complete in Jesus's day.
The Psalms, with one hundred and fifty psalms the longest book of the Writings, stand first among them in the printed Hebrew Bible and in the commonest order of the manuscripts.
John Wesley noted that the prophecies and types of the Messiah stand in the books of Moses, the Psalms and the prophets, and that the historical books say little directly of him.
The prologue to Sirach, about 132 BC3 paragraphs
The grandson of Jesus son of Sirach translated his grandfather's book into Greek after coming into Egypt, and his prologue is dated about 132 BC.
He writes of “the law and the prophets, and ... others that have followed their steps”. Later he writes of “the law itself, and the prophets, and the rest of the books”, so the three parts had names before the Gospels were written.
Sirach is a book of the Apocrypha, outside the Hebrew canon, and its prologue is read here as a witness of history.
From Abel to Zechariah
Matthew 23:35 names Abel and Zechariah, and readers differ over which Zechariah Jesus meant.
And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.Ryle held that the two names Jesus gives here mark the bounds of the canon, from Genesis to Chronicles, and no span of time.
But they conspired against Zechariah, and by order of the king, they stoned him in the courtyard of the house of the LORD.This Zechariah is killed for speaking God's word to the people, the kind of death Jesus charges to his hearers.
Matthew calls Zechariah the son of Berechiah, and Chronicles calls its Zechariah the son of Jehoiada. Adam Clarke (Commentary on the Bible, 1832) took Jesus to mean the Zechariah of 2 Chronicles 24:20, since many Jews were known by two names. Origen, as the Catena Aurea of Thomas Aquinas preserves him, reported a tradition that he was Zechariah the father of John the Baptist, killed in the temple. Jerome set out the question in his commentary on Matthew.
“Concerning the Abel here spoken of, there is no doubt that it is he whom his brother Cain murdered. He is proved to have been righteous, not only by this judgment of the Lord, but by the passage in Genesis, which says that his offerings were accepted by God. But we must enquire who is this Zacharias, son of Barachias, because we read of many Zachariases; and that we might not mistake, here it is added, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.”
Jerome · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Matthew 23:35Patristic
Where Chronicles stands in the manuscripts3 paragraphs
The Masoretes laid down no rule for the order of the Writings, and many manuscripts, most of them Spanish, open the Writings with Chronicles.
The Leningrad Codex, the whole Hebrew Bible copied in AD 1008 and kept at St Petersburg, is one of those manuscripts.
The Aleppo Codex also places Chronicles first among the Writings.
The Hebrew Order and the Christian Order
Judaism reads the books in three parts, and the Christian lists, from the Fathers on, follow the order of the Greek Bible.
Three differences between the two orders, row by row.
| What differs | The Tanakh | The Christian Old Testament |
|---|---|---|
| Parts | Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim | Law, history, poetry, prophets |
| Ruth and Daniel | Among the Writings | Ruth after Judges, and Daniel after Ezekiel |
| Where Chronicles stands | Last, in Bava Batra 14b and in the German manuscripts | After 2 Kings |
Two Orders, Two Last Words
Each order closes on words that look ahead.
“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah. Whoever among you belongs to His people, may the LORD his God be with him, and may he go up.’”Cyrus's decree is the last word of the printed Hebrew order.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome Day of the LORD.Elijah's coming is the last promise of the Christian order, and Luke 1:17 applies it to John the Baptist.
The same verses open Ezra, and Matthew Henry compared their two places in Scripture.
“They are there the introduction to a pleasant story; here they are the conclusion of a very melancholy one; and so we learn from them that, though God's church be cast down, it is not cast off, though his people be corrected, they are not abandoned, though thrown into the furnace, yet not lost there, nor left there any longer than till the dross be separated.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on 2 Chronicles 36:22Puritan
John Wesley recorded the observation that the Old Testament's last word is a curse, while the New Testament ends with a blessing, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints” (Revelation 22:21).
When the Canon Closed
Two readings answer whether the three parts were closed at three different times.
The three parts were closed in three stagesH. E. Ryle, 1892 · Tier A
H. E. Ryle (The Canon of the Old Testament, 1892) held that the three parts record three stages of collection. On his dates the Law was closed before about 432 BC, the Prophets by about 200 BC, and the Writings by about AD 100.
Ryle held that the Writings were closed at the gathering of rabbis at Jamnia about AD 90, or at one like it about that time.
The case, as W. H. Green set it out for its holders, is that books in the third part that match the second would have been placed in the second had it not already been closed.
Against it stands Josephus, who wrote about AD 95 that for many ages no one had dared add to the books, take from them or change them.
The three parts order one canon received earlierW. H. Green, 1898; Roger Beckwith, 1985 · Tier A
William Henry Green (General Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon, 1898) placed each book by the standing of its writer. Books written by prophets stand among the Prophets, and books by inspired men who held no prophet's office stand among the Writings.
Green called the idea of three grades of inspiration a figment of later times.
Roger Beckwith (The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 1985) argues for a canon settled earlier than Ryle's dates.
Its objectors point to the rabbis at Jamnia, who were still debating Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs about AD 90, as Ryle (1892) and Green (1898) both record.
Books to Read Next
Three studies of the Old Testament canon, from 1892 to 1985.
The Canon of the Old Testament
H. E. Ryle · 1892
It sets out the three stages of the canon and the order of the books in the manuscripts.
Read it at the Internet ArchiveGeneral Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon
William Henry Green · 1898
It answers the three-stage reading, and it cites Ryle by page.
Read it at the Internet ArchiveThe Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church
Roger T. Beckwith · 1985
It argues from the Jewish sources for an early, settled Hebrew canon.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
Written About Him
Luke 24 shows the risen Jesus opening the Scriptures to his disciples twice, on the road to Emmaus and in Jerusalem.
In whichever order the books are read, the Tanakh asks to be read as Jesus read it, as the Scriptures written about him.
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.Jesus taught the two disciples from the Scriptures before they recognized him, so his own teaching sets the pattern for reading them.
The Seams Between the Parts
Readers of the final shape of the canon find its parts joined at seams: Deuteronomy 34 to Joshua 1, and Malachi to Psalm 1.
Since that time, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face—The last chapter of the Torah sets Moses above every prophet after him, just before the Prophets open with his successor.
This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in all you do.The first book of the Prophets charges Joshua to keep the Book of the Law, the Torah that has just closed.
But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.The first psalm speaks of meditating on the law day and night, the charge of Joshua 1:8, at the opening of the printed Writings.
Brevard Childs (Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 1979) held that the heart of the Old Testament is understood by taking seriously the canonical shape of its books. John Sailhamer (The Messiah and the Hebrew Bible, 2001) held that these seams join the parts of the canon and are motivated by hope in the coming of the promised Messiah.
The join of Joshua 1:8 with Psalm 1:2 holds in the printed order, while the Talmud's order puts Ruth at the head of the third part.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Flavius Josephus, Against Apion 1.8, tr. William Whiston (1737)
- Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b, William Davidson edition.
- The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, King James Version Apocrypha.
- H. E. Ryle, The Canon of the Old Testament (Macmillan, 1892)
- William Henry Green, General Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon (1898)
- Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Eerdmans, 1985)
- Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), the entry תּוֹרָה.
- Sara Japhet and S. David Sperling, “Chronicles, Book of,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition (the Gale Group, 2008), at the Jewish Virtual Library.
- Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Fortress, 1979)
- John H. Sailhamer, “The Messiah and the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44.1 (2001), pages 5 to 23.
- Robert L. Hubbard Jr., review of Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, Themelios 6.1.
- David Gooding, review of Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, Irish Biblical Studies 8.4 (1986), pages 207 to 211.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Luke 24:44.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Matthew 23:35.
- Origen on Matthew 23:35, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Luke 24:44.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on Malachi 4:6.
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