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January 31, 2006
What's in a Name?
Several biblioblogs have been discussing how best to refer to two of the three major collections of writings of the western monotheistic tradition. I guess everyone calls the Koran the Qoran even if there is no agreement on how to spell it.
I tend to use "Hebrew Bible" for what Jews tend call Tanakh, not because it is my first choice, but because about 75% of the people I talk with don't have the slightest idea what Tanakh means and explaining it often gets one well beyond the subject at hand. Of course, in a classroom setting I might have a different approach. The main problem with "Hebrew Bible" is that it is not all in Hebrew, but that issue also causes confusion among most of my friends and acquaintances unless the topic at hand is the fact that the Hebrew Bible also contains substantial chucks of Aramaic. Calling it the Old Testament is just too theologically loaded for my taste. It is also ambiguous as to exact canon. First Testament is every bit as bad, perhaps worse.
For the canonical Christian writing I tend to use "Christian New Testament." Again, I find simply saying "New Testament" to be too theologically loaded. Sometimes I will use "Greek New Testament" but I'm not sure that that is all that good and Greek Bible is definitely no good. It can, and often does, mean the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible plus some additional writings that is more properly called the Septuagint.
My own interests in this naming discussion is to use a naming convention with the minimum theological baggage that still indicates what it is I am talking about. Perhaps it would be best to not even use a naming convention for these collections and just call each book by its name, B'resheet, Shemot, V'yakra Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and so on (or their sources) except when one must speak of the whole collection.
I am not really a biblioblogger. However, I have accumulated enough posts on the Hebrew Bible that I suppose I should add a Hebrew Bible category to my Abnormal Categories list.
Posted by Duane Smith at January 31, 2006 4:31 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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