Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>]

Yitzhak et alii,

Personally, as a Christian myself, I prefer the term "Tanakh" or  
"Hebrew Bible," partially because it honors the prior and independent  
status of these books as Jewish scripture, but also because it  
clearly delineates which books I mean. Supercessionist connotations  
aside, "Old Testament" is a slippery term, because different  
Christian groups have different lists of "Old Testament" books: the  
Protestant Old Testament is not the same as the Roman Catholic Old  
Testament is not the same as the Eastern Orthodox Old Testament is  
not the same as the Ethiopian Orthodox Old Testament ... Thus I find  
"Tanakh" preferable for reasons of precision, quite apart from any  
religious or ideological considerations.

Best wishes to all.

Chris

On Aug 1, 2005, at 8:33 PM, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> Shoshanna Walker wrote:
>
> > The "Hebrew Bible" is the Torah, the whole collection including the
> > Prophets and Writings is the Tanach - Torah, Neviim, Ketubim
> >
> > Shoshanna
>
> If we're getting into vocabulary, I've always understood the  
> "Hebrew Bible"
> to be a translation of "Tanakh", but being free of the connotations  
> that
> the more Christian term "Old Testament" applies to it.
>
> ie: Pentateuch = Chumash or Torah, Hebrew Bible = Tanakh
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
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--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info