Overview of the Hebrew Bible
Image by Tom Gordon from Pixabay The Hebrew Bible, for Christians, forms the first and largest part of T he Holy Bible . For Jews, the Hebrew Bible is the complete and timeless revelation of God for their lives and the substance of their faith and practice. Very different from the Christian New Testament, the Hebrew Bible was compiled in stages over hundreds of years — beginning with the five books of Moses, followed by the prophets, and concluding with the writings. There is a very important reason behind this three-fold division of the books, and that is that they represent three distinct kinds of divine revelation: Torah/Five Books of Moses God spoke directly to Moses in front of the entire nation of Israel at Mt. Sinai and Moses wrote down everything that God told him to write. The Torah is considered the "gold standard" as far as authority in Scripture. Prophets God spoke to individuals directly but not in the hearing of the nation. These prophets were confi...