# Tanakh vs Old Testament: The Same Books in a Different Order

Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/difference-old-testament-tanakh/
Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/)
Published: 2025-01-11
Updated: 2026-10-26

The Tanakh holds the same books as a Protestant Bible. Jews count them as 24 and Protestants as 39, and the two arrange them in a different order. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments hold them all and add several more from the Greek Septuagint, such as Tobit and Judith.

These are the Scriptures Jesus himself read aloud. In the synagogue at Nazareth, "as his custom was," he stood up to read, "and there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias" (Luke 4:16–17). Jews and Christians still read that same book of Isaiah, in two different houses of prayer.

| Topic | Tanakh | Protestant Old Testament | Catholic and Orthodox |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Name | Tanakh, or Mikra, "what is read" | Old Testament | Old Testament |
| Books counted | 24 | 39 | 46 (Catholic); more in Orthodox Bibles |
| Contents | The Hebrew Scriptures | The same books | The same books, plus Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch |
| Sections | Torah, Prophets, Writings | Law, history, poetry and wisdom, prophets | Catholic Bibles: as Protestant, with the added books among them |
| Samuel, Kings, Chronicles | One book each | Two books each | Two books each |
| Twelve minor prophets | One book, "the Twelve" | Twelve books | Twelve books |
| Daniel | Among the Writings | Among the Prophets | Among the Prophets |
| Last book | Chronicles | Malachi | Malachi in modern Catholic Bibles; 2 Maccabees in the Douay-Rheims |
| Read with | The rabbis' teaching and commentary | The New Testament | The New Testament and the Church's Tradition |

## Are the books of the Tanakh and the Old Testament the same?

Book for book, yes. The difference is in how they are counted. The Orthodox Union, describing the Tanakh for Jewish readers, says it "consists of twenty-four 'Books,' where first and second volumes of one work are counted as one, and where all the twelve 'Books' of the 'Trei Asar,' the Twelve Prophets, are also considered as one." So Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are one book each in the Tanakh and two each in a Protestant Bible. Ezra and Nehemiah are one book, and Hosea to Malachi are one book, the Twelve. Split those apart and the 24 become 39, with not a verse of text added or lost.

The name says how Jews hold these books together. Tanakh is an acronym, as Reform Judaism's glossary puts it, "constructed from the first letters of its three sections": Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim, the Teaching, the Prophets and the Writings. The Torah is the five books of Moses. The Prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, then Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve. The Writings hold the rest: Psalms, Proverbs and Job, the five scrolls of Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther, and finally Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles. The Orthodox Union calls the whole "the compendium of the teachings of G-d to human beings in document form."

A Christian Old Testament gathers the same books by kind: the five books of the Law, the histories from Joshua to Esther, the poetry and wisdom from Job to the Song of Solomon, and the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. That is why Ruth sits beside Judges, and Daniel beside Ezekiel, in our Bibles.

## Why are the books in a different order?

The Jewish order is old, and the rabbis had reasons for it. The Babylonian Talmud records: "The order of the Prophets is, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets." Why Jeremiah before Isaiah, who lived earlier? Because Kings ends in destruction, Jeremiah "speaks throughout of destruction," and Isaiah "is full of consolation," so "we put destruction next to destruction and consolation next to consolation" (Bava Batra 14b). The order itself is a kind of comfort.

In the order the Talmud gives, and in the Orthodox Union's list, the Tanakh closes with Chronicles and the decree of Cyrus sending the exiles home: "Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up" (2 Chronicles 36:23). The Protestant Old Testament, and modern Catholic Bibles such as the New American Bible, close with Malachi and a promise: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD" (Malachi 4:5). One ends with the road home to Jerusalem, the other with a voice still to come, and in the Gospels Jesus says of John the Baptist, "this is Elias, which was for to come" (Matthew 11:14). Both endings are hope. The older Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible ends instead with the two books of Maccabees.

Even the verse numbers can differ. Malachi has three chapters in Jewish Bibles, so the promise of Elijah is Malachi 3:23 in the Jewish Publication Society's translation and Malachi 4:5 in the King James Version. The promise is the same: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD."

## Which books do Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments add?

The Catholic canon has "46 books for the Old Testament," the Catechism says (paragraph 120). Beside the 39 it lists Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) and Baruch, and Catholic Bibles also print the longer Greek forms of Esther and Daniel. The Orthodox Church in America names the same books, with "more chapters of Esther and Daniel" and "the Prayer of Manasseh," and calls them the "longer canon" rather than the Apocrypha. "These particular books are found only in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament," it explains, "but not in the Hebrew texts of the rabbis," and the Orthodox receive them because they belong to the canon "accepted from the beginning by the early Church."

Protestant churches keep to the books of the Hebrew Bible. The Westminster Confession says the books "commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture." The Church of England takes a gentler line: it reads them "for example of life and instruction of manners," but does not "apply them to establish any doctrine." How the two Christian Bibles came to differ is told in [Catholic vs Protestant Bible](https://christianpure.com/learn/catholic-protestant-bible-comparison/).

## Why do Christians call it the Old Testament?

Testament here means covenant. Through Jeremiah God promised, "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah" (Jeremiah 31:31), and at the Last Supper Jesus took the cup and said, "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20). Jesus' new testament is the new covenant Jeremiah promised. So Christians came to call the apostles' writings the New Testament and the Scriptures of Israel the Old.

Jews do not use that name, and it is good to know why. For Jewish readers the Tanakh is not the first half of anything. It is the Bible, "what is read," and My Jewish Learning calls it "the founding document of the people of Israel." Christians, for our part, do not call these books old because they have worn out. The Catechism says plainly that the Old Testament books "are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked" (paragraph 121).

## Do Jews and Christians read these books the same way?

They read the same words in different company. Jews read the Tanakh with the teaching of the rabbis and centuries of commentary; My Jewish Learning names Rashi, Radak and Ibn Ezra among the classical commentators, and quotes the sage Ben Bag Bag on the Torah: "Turn it, and turn it, for everything is found within it." The two faiths' wider differences are set out in [Judaism vs Christianity](https://christianpure.com/learn/christianity-vs-judaism/).

Christians read the same books beside the New Testament and, as the Catechism says, "in the light of Christ crucified and risen," while it warns that the Old Testament "retains its own intrinsic value as Revelation" (paragraph 129). The Church also "has always vigorously opposed the idea of rejecting the Old Testament under the pretext that the New has rendered it void" (paragraph 123).

We received these books as a gift. Paul says it of his own people, that "unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2). Every time a Christian opens the Psalms, we are praying words that Israel sang, and Jewish scribes copied and kept, long before there were Christians to read them.

## Did Jesus read the same Scriptures?

Yes. He read them in the synagogue, quoted them in the wilderness and taught from them after he rose. On the evening of Easter he told his disciples that "all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me," and "then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures" (Luke 24:44–45). The law, the prophets and the psalms: many Christians hear in that sentence the three parts of the Hebrew Bible.

His Bible had no "Old" on its cover. It was the Scriptures, and it is ours still, shared across two tables. As Isaiah, the prophet he read in Nazareth, says, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever" (Isaiah 40:8).

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## Related reading

- [Torah vs Bible: What Is the Difference?](https://christianpure.com/learn/torah-vs-bible-differences-similarities/)
- [How and when was the canon of the Bible put together?](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-canon-creation/)
- [Catholic vs Protestant Bible: Why Catholics Have 73 Books and Protestants 66](https://christianpure.com/learn/catholic-protestant-bible-comparison/)
- [Old Testament vs New Testament](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-analysis-old-testament-vs-new-testament-contrast-and-comparison/)
- [The Council of Trent, Session IV: The Canonical Scriptures](https://christianpure.com/learn/council-of-trent-session-4-canonical-scriptures/)
- [Did Jesus Take the Old Testament Literally?](https://christianpure.com/learn/jesus-old-testament-literally-bible-mystery/)

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