The Hebrew Bible is a collection of 24 different
books of history, poetry, stories, and moral instruction,
compiled toward the end of the first millennium
B.C. It is the most sacred book of the
Jewish religion and also forms the largest part of
the Christian Bible. As such, it is one of the most
widely read and influential books ever written.
Standard printed editions of the Hebrew Bible
divide the books into three sections: Five Books of
Moses (Pentateuch in Latin, Torah in Hebrew); the
Prophets (Nevi’im in Hebrew); and the Writings
(Ketuvim in Hebrew). The initials of the three Hebrew
titles form the acronym Tanach, which is how
the Bible is known in Hebrew.
Critical Analysis
The Torah part of the Hebrew Bible consists of five
books. Genesis begins with a majestic account of
the creation of the universe. Out of chaos, God creates
light, fashions the heavenly bodies and the
physical world, makes plants and animals, and finally
shapes man and woman.
Compared with the florid creation myths of
other ancient cultures, this work is a tightly written
poetic account of the making of the world. God
creates human beings as stewards of his work, and
they are expected to abide by moral laws or face the
consequences.
The book continues with a history of the first
humans, leading to the gradual emergence of the
different nations after a great flood. Most of the
book is devoted to the life stories of the first Hebrews—
Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants,
especially their son Isaac, grandson Jacob (also
known as Israel), and great-grandson Joseph.
God leads Abraham to the land of Canaan and
promises to give it to his descendants, who are expected
to obey God’s laws in return. The Jews of
ancient times, who compiled the Bible and claimed
to live by its laws, considered this promise as their
deed to the land of Israel.
The book of Exodus recounts the tribulations
of the Children of Israel in Egypt, their liberation
from slavery under the leadership of Moses, and
their receiving of the Ten Commandments at
Mount Sinai. Scholars disagree as to whether the
story has factual basis.
The rest of the Torah is largely devoted to a discussion
of God’s laws—criminal, economic,
moral, and ritual. These passages eventually
formed the basis of the laws in the TALMUD and of
all subsequent Jewish ethical and legal thought.
Prophets, despite its name, starts off with six
history books. Joshua describes the conquest of the
Land of Canaan by the Children of Israel. Judges
is a collection of stories about heroes and heroines,
both military and spiritual, who lived in the era
following Joshua; they include such famous figures
as Samson, Gideon, and Deborah.
Samuel I and II tell of the first kings of Israel—
Saul, David, and Solomon—describing their victories,
defeats, family struggles, and moral challenges.
Kings I and II take the story from the death of
Solomon, through the breakup into two kingdoms—
Israel in the north and Judah in the
south—to the final conquest and destruction of
both kingdoms.
More than a century of archeological research
has confirmed the overall historical accuracy of
Kings I and II. Of course, God’s role in the events
and their moral significance are questions of faith
rather than history. In the Bible’s viewpoint, good
kings and law-abiding citizens ensure prosperity,
success, and peace, while injustice and idol-worship
bring about national disaster and suffering.
The rest of Prophets is devoted to the words of
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 “minor”
prophets, so called because of the brevity of their
statements. Each book records the visions and inspired
sermons of a different holy man, all of them
active in the era of the kingdoms and their immediate
aftermath.
The prophets explore the purpose of life, for humans
in general and the Hebrews in particular. In
very powerful language, they chastise wrongdoers
and mourn the calamities God has inflicted on the
nation. They call on individuals and society to return
to the ways of righteousness, promising God’s
pardon if they do. In Jonah, this message is explicitly
aimed at all the peoples of the world.But even in despair,
the prophets keep faith with their inspiring vision
of eventual redemption and peace, when “The
wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid” (Isaiah 11:6).
The Writings section of the Bible begins with
the book of Psalms, a collection of 150 religious
poems said to have been written by King David.
Some of the psalms were apparently sung by the
Levites at the Temple in Jerusalem. Others are
more personal in tone, heartfelt missives to God
from an individual, often in trouble, expressing
faith in God’s ultimate justice and mercy.
The Writings contain two examples of ancient
Near Eastern “wisdom literature,”Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
They are full of worldly advice written in
a tone of disillusion, at least concerning human behavior.
The Writings also include Song of Songs, a
series of lyrical love poems set in idyllic natural settings;
Job, a tale that explores the question of why
good people suffer; Lamentations, a sad dirge about
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians;
Esther, about a Jewish queen of Persia who saves
her people from the threat of genocide; Ruth, about
a Moabite woman who refuses to abandon her bereaved
mother-in-law, throws in her lot with the
Hebrew people, and becomes the ancestor of King
David; and Daniel, a series of miracle tales and
strange prophesies set during the Babylonian exile.
Finally, the last two books of the Writings, and
thus of the Hebrew Bible, are Ezra-Nehemiah,
which describes the return of the Jews to Judea
under the Persians; and Chronicles, a retelling of the
royal histories first recounted in Samuel and Kings.
Nearly all the Bible is written in ancient Hebrew,
a West Semitic language, though some sections
of Daniel are written in Aramaic, a related
tongue. The narrative sections, if not the poetry,
are easily read and understood by modern Hebrew
speakers in Israel, though there are some obscure
words and short passages that even scholars do not
understand.
The first translation of the Bible was the Septuagint,
a Greek rendition composed in Alexandria,
Egypt, in the second century B.C. by a committee of
70 scholars; this became the basis of the texts used
by Christians. Together with two ancient translations
into Aramaic (the spoken language of Judea
in Roman times), the Septuagint is often used to
illuminate unclear passages in the Hebrew and to
resolve minor differences that exist in the earliest
existing Hebrew manuscripts.
Printed versions of the Hebrew Bible have been
around for hundreds of years, but the traditional
format is still in use in synagogues. One long
parchment scroll contains the Pentateuch, handwritten
in ancient calligraphy. There are no titles
and no chapter-and-verse indications, which were
a later addition.
Printed Hebrew Bibles traditionally include
commentaries from various medieval or modern
sages. They also include musical notation marks
above and below each line of text, as a guide for
those who chant the text during worship services.
Each week on the Sabbath, a portion of the Torah
is read; the entire volume is read in the course of a
year (or three years, in some communities), as are
sections of Prophets and several entire books of
the Writings.
Traditionally, Jews believed that Moses wrote
the entire Torah at one time, although they always
knew of small variations in the text. But most
scholars now believe, on the basis of textual analysis,
that the Torah was gradually assembled by different
editors from written and oral fragments
over the course of hundreds of years.
Modern archeology has discovered parallels in
ancient Egyptian,Mesopotamian, and Syrian writings
to certain elements of the Hebrew Bible. They
include poetic imagery, stories in Genesis, legal
provisions, and even some pronouncements of the
prophets. But the discovery of the DEAD SEA SCROLLS
in the mid-20th century demonstrated that whatever
the ultimate sources, the overall text had been
largely standardized by Roman days, around the
first century B.C.
In addition to the 24 books of the Hebrew
Bible, several other “apocryphal” books, in Hebrew
and Aramaic, were also considered sacred by many
ancient Jews but were not included in the “canon,”
or standard collection. Some of them, like Maccabees,
Judith, and Ecclesiasticus, are included in
various Christian Bibles.
Once Christianity began to spread in the western
Roman Empire, it became necessary to translate
the Bible, including the Greek books of the
New Testament, into Latin. Since that time, the Hebrew
Bible has been translated into several hundred
languages. It has inspired thousands of books
of commentary and interpretation, as well as a
wealth of poetry, music, plays, and films. Its
themes have influenced the culture and religion of
nations around the world, becoming part of the
cultural heritage of all humankind.
English Versions of the Hebrew Bible
JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Pocket Edition. Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society, 2003.
Tanach: The Torah/Prophets/Writings. Edited by
Nossn Sherman. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah Publications,
1996.
The Jewish Study Bible, College Edition: Tanakh Translation.
Edited by Marc Zvi Brettler. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Works about the Hebrew Bible
Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York:
Basic Books, 1985.
Collins, John F. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible with
CD-ROM.Minneapolis,Minn.: Augsburg Fortress
Publishers, 2004.
Davies, Eryl W. The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches
to the Hebrew Bible. Aldershot, Hampshire,
U.K.: Ashgate Publishing, 2003.
Exum, J. Cheryl and H. G. M.Williamson, eds. Reading
from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in
Honor of David J. A. Clines. London: Continuum
International Publishing Group, 2003.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. Who Wrote the Bible? San
Francisco: Harper, 1997.