Encyclopedia > Old Testament

  Article Content

Old Testament

The Old Testament constitutes the first major part of the Christian Bible, usually divided into the categories law, history, poetry and prophecy. All of those books were written before the birth of Christ.

The exact number of the Old Testament books depends on whether certain disputed books are included, of which all Christian groups agree on 39 books. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox include an additional 15 books, called the Deuterocanon, which Protestants exclude as apocryphal.

The Old Testament text used by the earliest Greek-speaking, Christians was the Septuagint, a Greek translation that was widely held by Jews in the first century to be authoritative and which included the Deuterocanon.

The major difference between the Old Testament and the Jewish scripture, the Tanach, is in the order of the books. The order of the books of the Old Testament is:

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Leviticus
4. Numbers
5. Deuteronomy
6. Joshua
7. Judges
8. Ruth
9. 1 Samuel
10. 2 Samuel
11. 1 Kings
12. 2 Kings
13. 1 Chronicles
14. 2 Chronicles
15. Ezra
16. Nehemiah
17. Tobit *
18. Judith[?] *
19. Esther **
20. First Book of Maccabees[?] *
21. Second Book of Maccabees[?] *
22. Job
23. Psalms
24. Proverbs
25. Ecclesiastes
26. Song of Songs
27. Wisdom[?] *
28. Sirach *
29. Isaiah
30. Jeremiah
31. Lamentations
32. Baruch[?] *
33. Ezekiel
34. Daniel **
35. Hosea
36. Joel
37. Amos
38. Obadiah
39. Jonah
40. Micah
41. Nahum
42. Habakkuk
43. Zephaniah
44. Haggai
45. Zechariah
46. Malachi

* Deuterocanonical book not included with some editions of the Bible, or included separately as Apocrypha.

** Some editions include deuterocanonical passages in this book that are omitted from other editions, or included separately as Apocrypha.

The naming of the Old Testament

Christians call this group of books the Old Testament, because of a belief (taught in the Epistle to the Hebrews) that there is a new covenant or testament between God and mankind, after the coming of Jesus. Jews themselves do not accept the New Testament or the characterization of the Tanach as the Old Testament (although many Jews accept Jesus as a historical figure and even as a student of a Tannaitic Sage). There is some debate among Protestant scholars over the issue of whether the New Testament applies to Jewish people, but there is very little debate over its applicability to Gentiles. Similarly, the degree to which the Old Testament and its laws applies to Christians is a debated point.

The New Testament text however does contain many references to the Old Testament, especially in relation to the fulfillment of prophecies concerning the promised messiah, whom Christians believe to be Jesus. In Christian theological views this expectation, present fulfillment and eschatological fulfillment of the divine, eternal kingdom under the headship of Christ are the thread running through both Testaments.


See also: Biblical canon; books of the Bible; biblical figures; Bible; Septuagint



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Class Warfare

... Introduction Looking Ahead: Tenth Anniversary Interview (an interview conducted ten years since Barsamian first interviewed Chomsky) Rollback: The Return of ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.6 ms