The Jewish Bible: A JPS Guide

What Is the Bible?

1 What Is the Bible? T he word “Bible” derives from the Greek biblia, meaning “books.” 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 the Jewish Bible from the Christian Bible, people have suggested a variety of names for it. Christians typically call it the Old Testament, where “testament” is an archaic 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 tradition understood this passage as a prophecy about a new covenant, centered around Jesus, which replaces the old Mosaic one. This led to the terms “New Testament” and “Old Testament.” 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. 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 term is slightly imprecise, because some passages of the Bible are not in Hebrew but rather in Aramaic, a related Semitic language. Other Jewish Names: A Historical Review In the texts written during the biblical period itself—which lasted more than a thousand years—we know of no name given 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 1st century C.E., Josephus (the great Jewish historian who wrote in Greek) knew of these texts. He called them Ta Hiera Grammata (The Holy Writings). He The Jewish Bible 2 also called them grammasi (that which is written)—often translated as “Scripture,” but better rendered uncapitalized, as “scripture.” In classical Rabbinic literature, the two most common terms for the Bible are miqra (literally “that which is read or recited aloud”) and Kitvei Hakodesh (The Holy Writings). Sometimes, the Rabbis referred to the Bible as “Torah, Nevi’im, Kethuvim” (the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings). In the Middle Ages, perhaps in the late first millennium C.E., scribes shortened “Torah, Nevi’im, Kethuvim” into the acronym “TANAKH,” and Jews today still commonly use that name for their Bible. As the title of The Jewish Publication Society’s 1985 translation, the “TANAKH” makes a point that other names (“the Bible” or “Holy Scriptures,”) do not. Namely, it underscores that the translators rendered directly from the Hebrew (not from an ancient Greek version, like some Christians translations) and drew on Jewish interpretive tradition. Making an issue out of what to call these texts might seem pedantic, but it is not. The “Hebrew Bible” and the “Old Testament” differ in more than name only. They contain the same texts, but they are organized and ordered differently. (The ordering matters because it alters the context in which we understand the text; a book’s meaning can shift depending on which books we read before and after it.) More significantly, the term “Hebrew Bible” suggests a corpus that is self-standing, whereas the “Old Testament” does not. (Using the word “old” implies that there is something “new” with which to contrast it.) The meaning of many passages in the “Old Testament” changes when one views them as part of a larger whole that includes the New Testament. How the Bible Is Organized The name “TANAKH” reflects a three-part (tripartite) organization of the Bible; for Jews, this is the standard division of the Bible. The name of each of its parts, however , warrants some explanation. The name of the first part, as we have said, is “Torah.” Christians have often translated the term as “Law,” but...