Hebrew Bible

This article is about Hebrew and Aramaic texts that constitute Jewish scripture. For the Jewish canon, see Tanakh. For the major textual tradition, see Masoretic Text. For their use in the Christian Bible, see Old Testament. For the series of modern critical editions, see Biblia Hebraica.

Page from an 11th-century Aramaic Targum manuscript of the Hebrew Bible.

Hebrew Bible or Hebrew Scriptures (Latin: Biblia Hebraica) is the term used by biblical scholars to refer to the Tanakh (Hebrew: תנ"ך‎), the canonical collection of Jewish texts, which is the common textual source of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament. These texts are composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew, with some passages in Biblical Aramaic (in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few others).

The content, to which the Protestant Old Testament closely corresponds, does not act as source to the deuterocanonical portions of the Roman Catholic, nor to the Anagignoskomena portions of the Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments. The term does not comment upon the naming, numbering or ordering of books, which varies with later Christian biblical canons.

The term Hebrew Bible is an attempt to provide specificity with respect to contents, while avoiding allusion to any particular interpretative tradition or theological school of thought. It is widely used in academic writing and interfaith discussion in relatively neutral contexts meant to include dialogue among all religious traditions, but not widely in the inner discourse of the religions which use its text.

Usage

Hebrew Bible refers to the Jewish biblical canon. In its Latin form, Biblia Hebraica, it traditionally serves as a title for printed editions of the Masoretic Text. Many biblical studies scholars advocate use of the term "Hebrew Bible" (or "Hebrew Scriptures") as a neutral substitute to terms with religious connotations (e.g., the non-neutral term "Old Testament"). The Society of Biblical Literature's Handbook of Style, which is the standard for major academic journals like the Harvard Theological Review and conservative Protestant journals like the Bibliotheca Sacra and the Westminster Theological Journal, suggests that authors "be aware of the connotations of alternative expressions such as... Hebrew Bible [and] Old Testament" without prescribing the use of either.

Additional difficulties

In terms of theology, Christianity has struggled with the relationship between "Old" and "New" Testaments from its very beginnings. Modern Christian formulations of this tension include Supersessionism, Covenant Theology, New Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism and Dual-covenant theology. All of these formulations, except some forms of Dual-covenant theology, are objectionable to mainstream Judaism and to many Jewish scholars and writers, for whom there is one eternal covenant between God and the Israelites, and who therefore reject the term "Old Testament" as a form of antinomianism.

In terms of canon, Christian usage of "Old Testament" does not refer to a universally agreed upon set of books but, rather, varies depending on denomination. Lutheranism and Protestant denominations that follow the Westminster Confession of Faith accept the entire Jewish canon as the Old Testament without additions, however in translation they sometimes give preference to the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text; for example, see Isaiah 7:14.

In terms of language, "Hebrew" refers to the original language of the books, but it may also be taken as referring to the Jews of the Second Temple era and Jewish diaspora, and their descendants, who preserved the transmission of the Masoretic Text up to the present day. The Hebrew Bible includes small portions in Aramaic (mostly in the books of Daniel and Ezra), written and printed in Aramaic square-script, which was adopted as the Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian exile.

Origins of the Hebrew Bible and its components

Main articles: Dating the Bible and Development of the Hebrew Bible canon

The books that constitute the Hebrew Bible developed over roughly a millennium. The oldest texts seem to come from the eleventh or tenth centuries BCE, whilst most of the other texts are somewhat later. They are edited works, being collections of various sources intricately and carefully woven together.

Since the nineteenth century, most scholars have agreed that the Pentateuch (the first five books of Scriptures) consists of four sources which have been woven together. These four sources were combined to form the Pentateuch sometime in the sixth century BCE. This theory is now known as the documentary hypothesis, and has been the dominant theory for the past two hundred years. The Deuteronomist credited with the Pentateuch's book of Deuteronomy is also said to be the source of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (the Deuteronomistic history, or DtrH) and also in the book of Jeremiah.

Scholarly editions

Several editions, all titled Biblia Hebraica, have been produced by various German publishers since 1906.

• Between 1906 and 1955, Rudolf Kittel published nine editions of it.
• 1966, the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft published the renamed Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in six editions until 1997.
• Since 2004 the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft has published the Biblia Hebraica Quinta, including all variants of the Qumran manuscripts as well as the Masorah Magna.

Other projects include:

• Hebrew University Bible Project
• Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition

See also

• Biblical canon
• Books of the Bible
• Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
• Torah

Further reading

• Brueggemann, Walter. An introduction to the Old Testament: the canon and Christian imagination (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).
• Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. (2 vols.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1985).
• Kugel, James. The Bible as It Was. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
• Kugel, James. In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).
• Kuntz, John Kenneth. The People of Ancient Israel: an introduction to Old Testament Literature, History, and Thought, Harper and Row, 1974. ISBN 0-06-043822-3
• Leiman, Sid. The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture. (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1976).
• Levenson, Jon. Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1985).
• Noth, Martin. A History of Pentateuchal Traditions. (1948; trans. by Bernhard Anderson; Atlanta: Scholars, 1981).
• Schmid, Konrad. The Old Testament: A Literary History. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012).
• Vermes, Geza, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. (3d ed.; New York: Penguin, 1987).

External links

• Works by or about Hebrew Bible at Internet Archive
• Works by Hebrew Bible at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• (English) (Hebrew) Hebrew Bible from around 1300 CE
• (English) (Hebrew) Hebrew-English Bible Mechon-Mamre online edition, from 1917 Jewish Publication Society edition and the Masoretic Text.