Ordering of the Old Testament Books of Sacred Scripture

• Catholic Church Charts • Church History

There are 46 books in the Catholic Old Testament canon, 39 books in the Jewish Tanakh and 39 books in the Protestant Old Testament canon.  In the Middle Ages when the Massorites (Jewish scholars) reset the Jewish canon, they dropped seven Old Testament books and parts of Daniel and Esther that were in the Catholic canon. They reset the Jewish canon to those books in which copies still existed that were written in Hebrew or Aramaic when the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (6^th century BC).

After the Protestant Reformation, the Protestants adopted the Jewish Old Testament canon, dropping the same seven books and parts of Daniel and Esther and calling them Old Testament Apocrypha, a term used to denote the various Jewish writings that were composed from 250 BC to 200 AD (those books dropped from the Catholic canon were written between 250 BC and 2/1 BC and were included in the Greek Old Testament translation of the Septuagint that was in common use during Jesus’ earthly ministry and quoted by Jesus in the Gospels). The Catholic New Testament (Eastern and Western Rites) has 27 books, bringing the books of the total number of books in the Catholic Bible to 73 books.  The Protestants have 66 total Bible books.  The Eastern Rite Catholics have the additional Old Testament books of 3 & 4 Esdras (1 & 2 Esdras are the books of Ezra and Nehemiah), 3 & 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151.  Additional books accepted by the Syrian Orthodox include 2 Baruch and Psalms 152-55 (non-canonical).

Michal Hunt, Copyright © 2006 Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved.