Judaism Scripture and Sacred Text
The Hebrew Bible is known to be the Judaism sacred scripture/text. The Hebrew is published as a single volume, it is made up of individual "books", which were once separate written scrolls. The word Bible, in fact, comes from the Greek term biblia, which means"books".
The individual books were originally oral material that was subsequently written down in some form perhaps as early as 900 BCE, although the final form was not achieved until about 200 BCE. It was once thought that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible the Torah but this is no longer commonly held. Instead, scholars see the Torah as composed of four stands of material, which arose in different periods but have been skillfully intertwined by later biblical editors |
It introduces Moses, the great liberator and lawgiver, and his brother Aaron, the founder of the priesthood.
|
The Hebrew Bible is divided into three sections:
The Torah (the Teachings) Nevi'im (the Prophets), Ketuvium (the Writings). Considered as a whole, it is often called Tanakh which is acronym made up of the first letters of the Hebrew names for the three sections: t,n,k. The Torah is the sacred core of the Hebrew Bible, with its stories of the creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, and the Hebrew patriarchs and matriarchs the early ancestors of the Hebrew people. |
It includes laws about daily conduct and religious ritual material that would be of great importance to the later development of Judaism.
The second part of the Tanakh, called the Prophets, is named for those individuals who spoke in God's name to the Jewish people. The books that concentrate on the history of the Israelite kingdom are called the Former Prophets. The third part of the Tanakh, called the Writings, is closer to what we think of as imaginative literature. Although it includes some late historical books, it contains primarily short stories, proverbs, reflections on life, hymn (psalm) lyrics/poetry. |
Sources Derived:
World religions Text book pages 285-86
World religions Text book pages 285-86