What Are the Books of the Old Testament? Order & Overview

The term “Old Testament” is a loaded one since it assumes the existence of a “new” testament — an idea Christians and religious Jews do not share. For this reason, many Christians prefer using the neutral term “Hebrew Bible” to refer to the same collection of writings, while Jews call it simply the “Bible.” While learning the order of the books in this collection may seem as simple as glancing over a table of contents, the picture is complicated when Bibles of various religious traditions are opened side by side.

Speaking of a “Hebrew Bible” assumes its original language. But ancient Jewish communities felt free to translate the Bible into Greek and Aramaic as well, languages they adopted under foreign rule. Branches of Christianity later adopted these translations officially as holy scripture. Language, however, is only one aspect of variation between these Old Testaments.

When discussing the origins of the collection of books that make up the Bible, it is important to remember that the codex—a book with pages and a spine—was not invented until long after the Bible was completed. Because long compositions in scroll form were heavy and unwieldy, scribes copied the works that eventually entered the modern volume we refer to as the “Bible”—meaning simply, “book”—onto separate scrolls. This fact should immediately color any conversation about how the biblical books were ordered “originally,” since individual scrolls could be laid out on a table or stored in a cabinet in any order desired.

In the case of the Torah (also called the Pentateuch), the order of the books is clear, since its five books were traditionally copied onto a single scroll. However, regarding the rest of the Old Testament, various religious traditions ordered the books differently.

The Protestant Old Testament shares the same collection of books with the Jewish Bible. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, however, include additional books that came to be called the “Apocrypha,” some of which were not written in Hebrew originally. Protestants tend to see the Hebrew text as authoritative in matters of faith, while Orthodox churches see the Old Greek translation called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX) as authoritative.

Due to its favoring of the Latin Vulgate Bible, the Roman Catholic Church maintains close ties to both the ancient Hebrew and Old Greek texts of the Old Testament. Jerome, the celebrated 4th-century scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, worked from the Septuagint to create what would be known later as the Latin Vulgate Bible. But he was also dedicated to the Hebrew text, revising and “correcting” his translations accordingly as his own proficiency in both Hebrew and Aramaic developed.

All Christians understand that the Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew. This causes some to wonder why not all Christians prefer the Hebrew over the Old Greek text. There are several key reasons.

First, the Hebrew Bible that is available today—called the “Masoretic text” after the scribes who created it—was not established until the 9th century CE. The text of the Old Greek, meanwhile, dates to between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. Some argue this makes the Old Greek more reliable since it may be preserving an older or “more original” Hebrew text.

Second, because the Old Greek was translated originally by Greek-speaking Jews living outside the land of Israel, it was the Old Greek translation that was used by both Jewish and non-Jewish participants in the Jesus movement as it first began to spread beyond Palestine. Within a short period, this movement broke away from Judaism and became the religion now called “Christianity.” Thus, an argument can be made that the Septuagint should more properly be considered the “original” Christian Old Testament.

Third, because the New Testament was written in Greek, it refers to the Old Greek translation often, speaking of it as holy scripture. Thus, some Christians reason that using the Septuagint follows established biblical precedent.

Order of Books in the Jewish Bible

In the year 70 CE, the Roman general Titus brutally destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in response to the first Jewish revolt against Rome. It was in the wake of Rome’s crushing response to the Jewish struggle for independence that Rabbinic Judaism began to formally set aside the Old Greek translation in favor of the Hebrew Bible and to establish the boundaries of the collection of books that would be included. This left the preservation of the Septuagint in the hands of the early Christian church. Indeed, some scholars speculate that the Septuagint might not have been preserved without Christian involvement.

Protestants would eventually follow Rabbinic Judaism in prioritizing the Hebrew text more than a millennium later. However, Protestants retained the order of the books that had been established in Christian Bibles based on the Septuagint. The order of books in Jewish Bibles today is, thus, unique among groups that recognize the Bible as holy scripture.

Jews have traditionally thought of the Bible as having three major sections: The Torah (instruction or “Law”), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The first letters of these Hebrew words are put together, with vowels inserted, to form the acronym “Tanakh.” Jewish Bibles, while containing exactly the same collection of books as the Protestant Old Testament, order the books according to the logic of these three sections.

The Torah is simply the first five books of all Bibles, known traditionally as the “Books of Moses.” This section contains what scholars refer to as the “Primeval History,” the story of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel), the story of Israel’s exodus from slavery in Egypt, and God’s giving of a corpus of legal material to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Torah, thus, contains several genres of literature. While the word “Torah” is often referred to simply as the “Law,” scholars often note the inadequacy of this rendering of the term since this entire section of the Bible includes much more than legal codes. Yet, it is all equally Torah.

2. The Nevi’im

This section contains two collections of books — the “Former” and “Latter” Prophets. The Former Prophets contains Joshua, Judges, Samuel (First and Second), and Kings (First and Second). These are almost entirely narrative, telling the story of the conquest of Canaan, the era of the Judges, the establishment of the monarchy in Israel, and narratives about all the kings leading up to the Babylonian Exile of Judah.

While the storyline in these narratives tends to follow Israelite rulers, prophets never cease to play a crucial role along the way — a fact that helps to explain this section’s inclusion in the “Nevi’im.”

The Latter Prophets is made up of most of the Bible’s prophetic writings. The long books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and are followed by twelve shorter prophetic books, often referred to simply as the “Twelve.” These are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These are a diverse group of writings from prophets who were active in Israel either during the period of the monarchy or after the exile. They contain colorful, imaginative, often apocalyptic prophetic poetry. While most address Israel, some address other nations as well.

The “Writings” are poetry, a few narratives, some historical works, and books belonging to the genre known as “Wisdom Literature.” They appear in the order: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles (First and Second).

This is the most diverse of the three sections of the Tanakh and is considered by Jews to be less authoritative as scripture than the Torah and Prophets. It is, however, no less valued for that.

The Psalms are often associated with King David. However, they are actually an anthology of religious poetry from various authors across the ancient Israelite experience.

Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are a collection of wise musings, while Daniel and Esther are stories of Israelites in exile in Mesopotamia. Esther is memorialized annually by Jews in the festival of Purim, which celebrates Jewish survival in exile in Persia. Ruth, Ezra, and Nehemiah are historical writings from two very different periods in Israelite history. Chronicles is a redacted, shortened, and revised retelling of all the historical material from Genesis to Kings and beyond. Large portions of Chronicles are copied from Samuel and Kings. However, whereas Kings finishes with the Babylonian Exile, Chronicles ends during the Persian period when Jews were sponsored to return to Judah from exile.

Order of Books in the “Christian” Old Testament

While speaking of an “Old” Testament assumes a Christian point of view, speaking of a certain ordering of the books as “Christian” assumes a modern point of view. Certainly, today Jewish and Christian publishers print their Bibles with a distinct ordering of books. However, historically the distinction was not so clear. Rather, both of these orderings could be considered Jewish in origin. While today it makes sense to speak of a Christian versus a Jewish ordering of these books, historically speaking it is more accurate to contrast the Septuagint’s (a name given by Jews to the Old Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) ordering of books with that of the Hebrew Bible (specifically, the Masoretic Hebrew Text). The Septuagint’s ordering was preserved by Christians — but Christians cannot be credited with establishing it themselves.

As noted above, Protestants adopted the same collection of books for their Old Testament as that of religious Jews. However, they continued the tradition of their Christian predecessors in retaining the ordering of books long associated with the Septuagint by the time Protestantism was born. For this reason, comparing the Protestant and Jewish ordering of books is fairly straightforward. However, because of the inclusion of “additional” books in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments—or their “exclusion” by Protestants (depending on one’s perspective)—qualification and nuance are necessary.

Instead of the three-part logic of the Tanakh, Christian Bibles divide the Old Testament into five parts.

The Torah, or Pentateuch, is the same collection of five books in all Bibles and is always placed first. The following sections, however, differ considerably in their ordering from how they appear in the Jewish Tanakh.

2. Historical Books

The second part of the Christian Old Testament is known as the “Historical Books.” The adjective “historical” suggests a literary genre and, in a general—though not thoroughgoing—sense, the Septuagint’s ordering of Old Testament books is indeed guided by genre.

While the Historical Books Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel (First and Second), and Kings (First and Second) are followed by Chronicles (First and Second) in Christian Bibles, Chronicles is placed at the very end in Jewish Bibles. Also, Ruth finds itself among the Historical Books in the Christian Old Testament, while it appears along with Chronicles in the Ketuvim in Jewish Bibles. It is not difficult to see why these books, along with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther ended up in the Historical Books since their content is entirely narrative.

In Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments, the Book of Tobit (or Tobias) and Judith come before Esther. These books, which tell stories of heroism and divine provision among exiled Jews, are similar to Esther and the first part of Daniel. Esther is also longer in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles because it has an additional portion written originally in Greek. These are followed by First and Second Maccabees, which tell the story of the Jewish rebellion against the Seleucid Empire known as the Maccabean Revolt. Some Orthodox churches also include Third Maccabees, which tells the story of Jewish survival in Alexandria, Egypt, and Fourth Maccabees, another work in the Wisdom genre.

This section includes Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, which can all be described as poetical writings. Their content is quite eclectic. Job and Ecclesiastes could accurately be described as artistically philosophical, while Psalms is an anthology of religious poetry. Proverbs is classic “Wisdom Literature,” a genre not familiar to many today, while Song of Songs is a love poem.

In Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, the Book of Wisdom (also called Wisdom of Solomon) and Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes—also called Wisdom of Sirach, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, etc.) follow those listed above. They are Jewish works that follow the wisdom genre of Proverbs.

4. Major Prophets

The Major Prophets are called this simply because the books attributed to them are much longer than those attributed to other prophets. These are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations (also attributed to Jeremiah), Ezekiel, and Daniel. While these all contain narrative portions, their contents are mostly prophetic poetry with the exception of Daniel, which is around half narrative and half apocalyptic poetry. In Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, Daniel contains two chapters that are not in the Hebrew Bible. These are sometimes cited as the distinct works of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon (or Serpent). There is also an additional prayer included in Daniel 3, often referred to as the “Hymn of the Three,” and attributed to Azariah (Babylonian name Abednego).

Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include Baruch in this section, either before or after Lamentations. This book is named after Jeremiah’s scribe, who writes from the perspective of an exile in Babylon.

The Minor Prophets is comprised of works attributed to those writing prophets whose books are relatively short. Like the Major Prophets, they lived and were active at different points in Israel’s history. The ordering of their works in Christian Bibles is typically as follows: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The ordering of these can vary slightly between Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Bibles but the collection is the same.

Additional Books

The above lists cover nearly all Christian Old Testament collections with the exception of that of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which includes several other ancient writings. Among these are the ancient Jewish writings of Jubilees, Enoch, Ezra Sutuel, and Second Ezra. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has the largest Old Testament collection of any tradition, having 46 books in total compared to the 39 of the Hebrew Bible.