The Jewish Study Bible (TANAKH Translation)

"Do you know about the TANAKH translation? I tend to call it the Hebrew Bible, but it’s the same thing. TANAKH is an acronym. It’s what the Jewish Publication Society calls its translation of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. TANAKH stands for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible as laid out in the contents of Jewish scriptures. The ‘T’ stands for Torah and comprises the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. They are in the same order as in Christian Bibles. The ‘N’ stands for Nevi’im . This means ‘prophets’ and refers not only to Jeremiah and Isaiah but also to the ‘historical books’, as the Christian Bible calls them. These are Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings. The last letter, ‘K’, stands for Ketuvim , meaning ‘writings’. These are the remaining books in the English Old Testament. That’s the basic Jewish structure of the canon – those three parts. The table of contents is different but the actual books are the same. It’s a puzzle. Although they followed the Hebrew text, Christian Bibles took the table of contents from the Septuagint , which assembled things in a different way. It offers an alternative perspective to Christian-oriented Bibles. The translation is very different, beginning with the very first verse. The NSRV says: ‘In the beginning’. The TANAKH says: ‘When God began to create’. They have two very different meanings and it makes you consider there is no single version of the Bible. The TANAKH is also different in terms of the ordering of the books and the fact that there’s no New Testament or Apocrypha. Yes, I would rather use the word ‘scriptures’. I think it’s a better term."