Hebrew Bible (term)

This article is about collected Hebrew and Aramaic texts. For the Jewish canon, see Tanakh. For the various Christian canons, see Old Testament.

11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Aramaic Targum

The Hebrew Bible (also Hebrew Scriptures, Latin Biblia Hebraica) is a term referring to the texts of the Jewish Bible (Template:Lang-he Tanakh) composed in Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic (the Book of Daniel, some parts of the Book of Ezra and a few other passages).

The content closely corresponds to the Jewish Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament does not include the deuterocanonical portions of the Roman Catholic or the Anagignoskomena portions of the Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments. The term does not imply naming, numbering or ordering of books, which varies with Biblical canon.

The term 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

Template:Books of the Hebrew Bible Hebrew Bible is a term that refers to the common/shared portions of the Tanakh (Jewish canon) and the Christian biblical canons. In its Latin form, Biblia Hebraica, it traditionally serves as a title for printed editions of the Masoretic Text.

Many scholars advocate use of the term Hebrew Bible when discussing these books in academic writing, 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 Harvard Theological Review and conservative Protestant journals like Bibliotheca Sacra and 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 include:

• 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, sometimes building upon ancient and medieval ideas, include supersessionism, covenant theology, dispensationalism, and dual covenant theology. However, 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 Israel, and who therefore reject the very term "Old Testament".
• 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.
• The term Old Testament is a Christian term used to identify the Hebrew Bible as a portion of the Christian scriptures and so can sometimes imply an unintended Christian frame of reference for it.

Coin from Bar-Kokhba Revolt demonstrating Paleo-Hebrew

Hebrew in the term Hebrew Bible 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 the Diaspora, and their descendants, who preserved the transmission of the Masoretic Text up to the present day. The Hebrew Bible includes some small portions in Aramaic (mostly in the books of Daniel and Ezra), which are nonetheless written and printed in the Hebrew alphabet and script, which is the same as Aramaic square-script.

Some Qumran Hebrew biblical manuscripts are written using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet of the classical era of Solomon's Temple. The famous examples of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet are the Siloam inscription (8th century BCE), the Lachish ostraca (6th century BCE), and the Bar Kokhba coin shown above (circa 132 CE).

Biblia Hebraica

The Biblia Hebraica is edited by various German publishers.

• Between 1906 and 1955 Rudolf Kittel published 9 editions of it.
• 1966, the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft published the renamed Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in six editions until 1997.
• Since 2004 the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft publishes the Biblia Hebraica Quinta including all variants of the Qumran manuscripts as well as the Masorah Magna.

See also

• Biblical canon
• Books of the Bible
• Christianity and Judaism
• Development of the Jewish Bible canon
• Judeo-Christian
• Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
• Torah

Further reading

• Johnson, Paul (1987). A History of the Jews (First, hardback ed.). London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-79091-9.
• 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
• Searching for the Better Text: How errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them Biblical Archaeology Review