Different religious groups include different books in their Biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books. Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon.
The Tanakh (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible) contains 24 books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah ("teaching"); the Nevi'im ("prophets"); and the Ketuvim ("writings"). The first part of Christian Bibles is called the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the above 24 books but divided into 39 books and ordered differently.
The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches also hold that certain deuterocanonical books and passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The second part is the New Testament, containing 27 books; the four Canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation.
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.
Video Books of the Bible
Hebrew Bible and Old Testament
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.
Protocanonical books of the Old Testament
Protestants and Catholics use the Masoretic Text 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
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 Epistle of Jeremiah, the Wisdom of Solomon, and 2 Maccabees are originally Greek compositions.
- Tobit
- Judith
- Additions to Esther
- Wisdom of Solomon
- Ecclesiasticus (Sirach)
- Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah
- 1 Maccabees
- 2 Maccabees
- Additions to Daniel:
- The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children
- Story of Susanna
- Bel and the Dragon
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
- Jubilees
- 1 Meqabyan
- 2 Meqabyan
- 3 Meqabyan
- The Ethiopian broader Biblical Canon
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.
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.
Maps Books of the Bible
New Testament
In general, among Christian denominations, the New Testament canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books. The chart below shows the arrangement of the New Testament books regarded as the correct order in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. However, the Slavonic, Armenian, and Ethiopian traditions have different New Testament book orders.
Chart notes
Diagram of the development of the Old Testament
See also
- Authorship of the Bible
- Bible
- Bible citation
- Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
Notes
External links
- Old Testament Reading Room & New Testament Reading Room: Online resources referenced by Tyndale Seminary
- The Canon of Scripture - a Catholic perspective
- Table of Tanakh Books - includes Latin, English, Hebrew and abbreviated names (from Tel Aviv University).
- Judaica Press Translation - Online Jewish translation of the books of the Bible. The Tanakh and Rashi's entire commentary.
- (in Old Church Slavonic) Slavonic Bible
- Books of the Apocrypha (from the UMC)
- Western Armenian Bible (an essay, with full official canon at the end)
- H. Schumacher, The Canon of the New Testament (London 1923), pp. 84-94.
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