Compare and Contrast Essay

Comparison of the Tanakh and the Bible

by: Thomas Seay
Hong Kong Academy
Teacher-Andrew Birch
Tuesday January 12th 2010
! Christians believe Jesus is the son of God, and Hebrews believe that

Jesus was just a good man and do not believe he is the son of God. The

Tanakh which is Jewish and the Bible which is from Christianity both share

some of the same elements but there are still plenty of differences

between them. The Bible and the Tanakh also known as Tenakh or Tanach

have some of the same books and some that are different. There are a lot

of things that are the same and some things that are very different.

! The Tanakh and the Bible both have the “Old Testament” but there is

no old or new testament in the Tanakh, in the Tanakh there are three parts,

the Torah, Neviʼim and the Ketuvim. These three parts have the same

contents as the Old Testament in the Bible but some are in a different

order. The Torah holds the first five books of the Bible which are referred to

as the books of Moses. The Neviʼim and the Ketuvim contain the rest of

the old testament but some are in a different order as I said before. The

Bible has 66 books and the Tanakh only has 24. There for the Tanakh has

only about half of the the Bible.

Moses is believed to have written the first five books of the Bible which is

the Torah, but some people believe that there were a number of

anonymous people who wrote these books. There were a ton of people
who wrote different books of the Bible but some of them wrote more than

one such as Moses who wrote the whole first five books of the Bible.

The word Bible comes from the word Egyptian word byblos which means

parchment also from the word biblios which means holy book, as for the

Tanakh it is actually an acronym, look at it like this TaNaKh. The capital

letters T, N and K stand for the 3 parts of the Tanakh which are the Torah

the Neviʼim and the Ketuvim. These three individual parts of the Tanakh

also have meanings which are... The Torah means law or instruction, the

Neviʼim means prophets and last but not least Ketuvim means writings.

These Bible and the Tanakh are both around estimated over 3500 years

old. The Bible was written around 95 CE or AD, the Tanakh was finished

being written around 450 BCE or BC. There are 8 main Bibles used in many

churches which are... Septuagint which was written in the year 250 C.E,

Vulgate- which was written in 400 C.E. Luther's German Bible- Which was

written in 1534 C.E. King James Version- Which was written in 1611 C.E.

Revised Standard Version- Which was written in 1952 C.E.

New International Version- Which was written in 1960's & 70's C.E.

Jerusalem Bible- Which was written in 1966 C.E.

New Revised Standard Version- Which was written in 1990 C.E. There are a

ton more but these are the most used in churches today. The Tanakh does

not have any different versions.

! These two books both take history in the holy land but are completely

different when it comes to beliefs and point of view. These religions are some

of the most similar religions but still have differences.