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2. What Is the Bible, Anyway?
- Jewish Publication Society
- Chapter
- Additional Information
2 What Is the Bible, Anyway? The Bible can be an intimidating book. Its size alone is overwhelming—1574 pages in the Hebrew edition that is standard among Bible scholars (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia), 1624 pages in The Jewish Publication Society’s translation (see below), 2023 pages in the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, and 2181 pages in The Jewish Study Bible (including notes and essays). A significant amount of the biblical text is poetry, which is daunting to many, and certainly does not make for quick reading. For such a book, an orientation would surely be helpful. This chapter covers the fundamentals: basic terminology for the Bible, its basic structure, and why such things matter. It also defines what I mean by “the Bible” for the purposes of this book. Basic Terminology The Name in English The word “Bible” derives from the Greek biblia, meaning “books.”1 By its very name, “the Bible” refers to “the collection of books”—that is, the one that is deemed to be authoritative or canonical. Different communities have different Bibles. For Christians, the Bible includes the New Testament; for Jews it does not. To distinguish it from the Christians’ Bible, people have suggested a variety of names for the Jews’ Bible (besides simply “the Bible”). Christians typically call it the Old Testament, where “testament” is an old way of referring to a contract (“covenant”). This name is based on a prophecy in Jeremiah that states: “See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, though I espoused them—declares the LORD” (31:31–32). Early Christian 7 tradition understood this passage to refer to a new covenant, centered around Jesus, which replaces the old Mosaic one.2 This led to the terms “New Testament ” and “Old Testament”—in which “old” connotes obsolescence.3 Jews, however, view the original covenant as still operative. For this reason, Jews have tended to reject the term “Old Testament.” Many simply call this body of literature “the Bible.” For religious Jews, this name is by definition appropriate : these are “the books” that are authoritative for this group. Academic scholars, meanwhile, generally prefer not to take sides in the debate as to which covenant with God is in force. Therefore, in scholarly circles, the more neutral terms “Hebrew Bible” or “Jewish Scripture(s)” have gained currency . Admittedly the first name is slightly imprecise, because some passages of the Bible are not in Hebrew but rather in Aramaic, a related Semitic language.4 Other Jewish Names: A Historical Review In extant texts composed during the biblical period itself—which lasted more than a thousand years—no term at all appears for this set of books. The Bible was then still in formation as an authoritative collection. It received its title only after it came into being—signaling the start of the postbiblical period. In the first century C.E., Josephus (the great Jewish historian who wrote in Greek) knew of the Bible.5 He called it ta hiera grammata (“The Holy Writings”).6 He also called it grammasi (“that which is written”)—often translated as “Scripture ”7 but better rendered uncapitalized, as “scripture.” In classical rabbinic literature, the two most common terms for the Bible were mikra (ar+q4m1, literally “that which is read or recited aloud”) and kitvei hakodesh (Dd#Oq