(ca. 10th-first centuries b.c.)
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 (Nevfim 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.
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 topic 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 Ec-clesiastes. 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 Septu-agint, 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.
