Damien the Leper Posted February 22, 2013 Posted February 22, 2013 This question has been on my mind. I understand why the Hebrew Bible is called Tanakh. However, I'm not aware of why the Old Testament is ordered differently. Can someone answer this for me?
Ahab Posted February 22, 2013 Posted February 22, 2013 This question has been on my mind. I understand why the Hebrew Bible is called Tanakh. However, I'm not aware of why the Old Testament is ordered differently. Can someone answer this for me?< thinking someone in (what is usually referred to as) the Catholic church had something to do with that >< Council of Nicea, maybe, or one of their other counsels where they got together to determine what should be in what they then called the Holy Bible, and how they should organize it >take a look at wiki. wiki will give you a pretty good idea of what happened
MormonMason Posted February 23, 2013 Posted February 23, 2013 (edited) The Jewish way was to put the Law first for obvious reasons, followed by the prophets. This, of course, included several of the historical books such as Samuel and Kings because many prophets are mentioned in these books. The Law and the Prophets were regarded as the most important to life and faith in the Jewish community, which set up readings of texts in the Prophets to match up with readings in the Law. These readings are called Haftoroth. Anything lesser in authority than the Law and the Prophets or which were disputed or regarded as inferior in any way to the Law and the Prophets by some went into the writings.If they had argued over these for a longer period and the other side had won the day, we also would have had Tobit and Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) in the Hebrew Bible. But, alas! The Rabbanim debated them out of the canon at the end. The Hebrew Bible was then reorganized to make the number of books match the number of Hebrew letters in the Aleph-Beth, which itself expanded from 22 to 24 over time.For instance, both books of Samuel, both books of Kings, and Ezra and Nehemiah, were combined into single scrolls or books. They simply became Samuel, Kings, and Ezra-Nehemiah. So, instead of having 39 books, there were afterward only 24. It's a mystical/sacred thing.The Jews did it one way and the Christians instead followed the general order of texts in various manuscripts of the Septuagint.That's how I remember it.... Edited February 23, 2013 by MormonMason 2
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