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The Tanakh is also called [מקרא], Mikra or Miqra.
The threefold division reflected in the acronym Tanakh is well attested to in documents from the Second Temple period and in Rabbinic literature. During that period, however, the acronym Tanakh was not used; rather, the proper term was Mikra ("Reading"). The term Mikra continues to be used to this day alongside Tanakh to refer to the Hebrew scriptures. (In modern spoken Hebrew, Mikra has a more formal flavor than Tanakh.)
Because the books included in the Tanakh were largely written in Hebrew, it may also be called the Hebrew Bible. (Parts of Daniel and Ezra, as well as a sentence in Jeremiah and a two-word toponym in Genesis, are in Aramaic - but even these are written in the same Hebrew script.)
Main Article: Biblical canon
According to the Jewish tradition, the Tanakh consists of twenty-four books (enumerated below). The Torah has five books, Nevi'im contains eight books, and Ketuvim has eleven.
These twenty-four books are the same books found in the Protestant Old TestamentThe Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures constitutes the first major part of the Christian Bible, usually divided into the categories law, history, poetry (or wisdom books) and prophecy. All of those books were written before the birth of Jesus. Canon o, but the order of the books is different. The enumeration differs as well: Christians count these books as thirty-nine, not twenty-four. This is because Jews often count as a single book what Christians count as several.
As such, one may draw a technical distinction between the Jewish Tanakh and the similar, but non-identical, corpus which Christians call the Old TestamentThe Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures constitutes the first major part of the Christian Bible, usually divided into the categories law, history, poetry (or wisdom books) and prophecy. All of those books were written before the birth of Jesus. Canon o. Thus, some scholars prefer Hebrew Bible as a term that covers the commonality of Tanakh and the Old Testament while avoiding sectarian bias.
The Catholic and OrthodoxEastern Orthodox Christianity (Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox) is the modern name primarily applied to the Christian church that claims to be the original historical church started by Christ Jesus and his Apostles 2000 years ago. They claim unbroken apo Old Testaments contain six books not included in the Tanakh. They are therefore called deuterocanonicalThe deuterocanonical books are the books that Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Oriental Orthodoxy include in the Old Testament that were not part of the Jewish Tanakh. Their acceptance among at least some early Christians is generally well-testified, a books.
In Christian Bibles, Daniel and the Book of Esther sometimes include extra material that is not accepted as canonical by Judaism (the material is deuterocanonical, so it is also not accepted by most Protestants).
