Hi, I'm Jeffrey, and right now we are going to look at the books of the Tanakh. Now, the Tanakh is another word for the Hebrew Bible, and it covers the same sort of ground that the Old Testament covers in the Christian Bible. Now, this is really important because anytime in the New Testament when you hear Jesus or Paul or Peter talking about the scriptures, they're not talking about...
the Bible as we know it today. Because the Bible as we know it today hadn't been written yet for most of these folks, and it certainly wasn't all pulled together into one collection. That took a long time.
Instead, they were referring to the scriptures of the Jewish faith of their time. Now that's roughly our Old Testament today, but it was arranged in a way that we call the Tanakh. So let's look at the Tanakh. because it's really cool to see how the people of Jesus' time viewed the scriptures and how they were arranged. They tell a really interesting story and a very important story.
In fact, when Jesus rises from the dead, Luke tells us that he tells the disciples, this is what I was talking about. Everything must be fulfilled that was written about me in the law of Moses, in the prophets, and the Psalms. and the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms roughly refers to the Tanakh, which is the Hebrew Bible.
So let's look at that Tanakh. Now, the word Tanakh is really an acrostic. It comes from the first letters of the three major sections of this work. You have the Torah, the Law of Moses. You have the Nevi'im, the Prophets.
And then you have the Ketuvim, the writings. And so you have T-N-K, Tanakh. That's how it gets its name.
So let's look at these individual groups. You have the Torah. And the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are the same as the first five books of the Christian Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Some people call them the Pentateuch because there are five of them.
It means five-fold book. They're called the Law of Moses because this is where we get the origin story of God and Israel's relationship. You've probably heard the story of how Moses leads Israel out of Egypt, and then they meet with God at a mountain in the wilderness, and then they get the Ten Commandments. Well, when that's going on, God is setting up a very special relationship between him and Israel.
He says, I'm going to be your God. You're going to be my people. And as my people, this is how you need to behave.
Now, if you behave in these ways, if you keep these laws, then I will bless you and protect you. If you break these laws, then I will discipline you. And so these books explore what God's expectations for Israel are.
And so they're called the law, the Torah. After the Torah, we have the books of the prophets. And the books of the prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then the Twelve. Now, if you're really familiar with the Christian books of the Old Testament, then you're going to see some differences here.
Because we're not looking at 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, we're just looking at Samuel and Kings. And there's no book called the 12 in the Christian Bible, because we just split out the 12 into those 12 minor prophets. But they're generally considered one work.
It's this multi-volume work called the 12. And the group of prophets is split into two halves. You have the former and the latter. The former prophets are interesting, because in the Christian Bible, We would consider these books, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, as history.
But they're prophets in the Tanakh because these are books of prophetic history. That means that the people writing the story of the nation of Israel are doing so to make a theological point. They are prophetic.
They're speaking into how this relationship that God established with Israel when he gave them the law played out over time. And it didn't play out all that well. Next, we have the writings, the Ketubim.
And these are where you... Find the books of poetry in the Christian Bible. So you have Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes. You also have some of the books that Christians would call history.
Books like Esther and Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. You also have some new combinations as well. So Chronicles is one work, and Ezra and Nehemiah are considered one work as well. So it's pretty interesting. And then, of course, the order is rearranged for some pretty good reasons.
You have Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. These are big poetic books, and they're called the emet because in Hebrew, if you take the first letter of Psalms, the first letter of Proverbs, and the first letter of Job, you get the Hebrew word truth or the Hebrew word for truth. Emet means truth.
So these are the books of truth. It's Pretty clever way that they fit together. And then you have this group of five, the five scrolls.
And these five scrolls are significant because Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther are all read during important Jewish feasts. And so those are saved as scripture. Then you have some other books, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, that also tell some of the story of... Israel's history with God and whatnot there. Also, I mean, Daniel has some really cool and often bizarre things to say about world empires and the like.
So these are the books of the Tanakh. And I want to show you something really interesting about how they all fit together. When you get to the end of the Torah, you have Moses dying. Moses dies on the mountainside.
And then the person who's finishing up Deuteronomy says, Since that time, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses. And then, where does the Tanakh go? But to the prophets. So there's this natural progression. You have the law, and then the law anticipates the prophets.
No prophet like Moses. And here are all those inferior prophets. Sorry, guys.
And then the prophets does this too. It's really fascinating. When you get to the end of the 12, you have the book of Malachi. You can find this in the Christian Bibles too. And Malachi ends with this promise that a day will come when the people of Israel will once again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked.
They're going to see how things play out for those who serve God and those who do not serve God. And it tells them to remember the law of Moses, remember the Torah. It's this sign-off that tells people to look back at the Torah, and then also says you're going to see how God deals with the righteous and the wicked.
And that's very interesting because that makes... a direct link to the first book of the writings. The first book of the writings is Psalms.
And the first Psalm opens by saying, how blessed is the person or how blessed is the person who doesn't walk in step with the sinners, but in the law of the Lord is his delight. And so you have this mirroring of the end of the book of the book of the 12. So the prophets and saying you're going to see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked. And remember the law of Moses. Psalms says there are blessings for the righteous. Doesn't go so well for the wicked and for the righteous.
They are remembering the law of Moses. And then it leads on into here. Very interesting thing for Christians to consider is the scriptures end with almost a cliffhanger. In Jesus' time, assuming that Chronicles was canonized at the time of Jesus, then it would have ended with this decree in which The king of the world, Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor, says, God has appointed me to build a temple for him in Jerusalem, because the old temple had been torn down. And he says, anyone who worships the Lord, anyone who is of the Lord's people can go there, let them go up, and then it ends.
And it's very interesting because that decree, is recorded in full in another part of the Bible, but it just cuts off right in the middle and leaves some stuff out. And so it anticipates completion. There's still more to come.
Which makes sense of what Jesus was saying. He says, everything must be fulfilled that was written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. The Psalms being the first of the writings. It's really cool to see how the ancient scriptures tied together in a way that helps us appreciate the person of Jesus and how he fulfilled the scriptures.
So there you have it, the books of the Tanakh and how they fit together. If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and hit subscribe. That way, YouTube will notify you when I make another cool video like this.
I really appreciate you watching, and I hope it was helpful.