A Comparison Of The Tanach And Bible - 1380 Words

A Comparison of the Tanach and Bible Each religion has a sacred text which is used to understand their worldview and their religion better. A sacred text is what a religion believes is holy and authoritative. Religious texts show its followers what to do in worship, daily living and conduct. While Christianity and Judaism have numerous similarities because of the mother-daughter link, differences still exist. The sacred text for Judaism is the Tanach while for Christianity the Bible is used. This essay will explore the structure of each sacred text, the type of literature is in each canon, authorship of the text and how it is used in daily practice such as food, interpretation of the commandments and how a Torah is used in a synagogue. STRUCTURE OF EACH CANON The Bible is known as ‘authoritative written source’ (Bowley, 1999) and is a library of 66 books and is made of two parts: Old Testament (39 books) and New Testament (27 books). The Bible was only officially put together around the third century. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic while the New Testament was written in Greek. During the Reformation, scholars wanted to allow everyone to read the Bible in their own languages (Beck et al, 2000). Now, the Bible is written in over 1600 languages. However, Jewish people only read the Torah in Hebrew. The Old Testament is similar to the Torah where the books are exactly the same. The New Testament is made up of the gospels and letters. The word