The Cambridge Companion to the Bible (Classic Reprint) [Paperback]

Song of Songs. The books Proverbs andE ccle.siastes cannot strictly be called Poetical. They belong to theS apiential or Didactic class of writing. iv. ProjjhetK oi Books These are divided into the tour Ma.ior and the twelve Minor Prophets. () The Major Prophets are the four largest books of prophecy arranged in the chronological order of the names which they bear. Strictly speaking, the book Daniel is Apocalypse rather than Projihecy. (b) The order of the twelve Minor Prophets is approximately chronological. The book Jonah differs by its narrative character from the writings with which it is classed. The arrangement of the books in the MSS. of the Greek and Latin Bibles varies very much. The A pocrypha) books are most commonly introduced as follows: Tobit and Judith after Esther, Wisdom andE cclesiasticus afterS ong of Songs, Baruch and theE pistle of Jeremy after Lamentations, and 1, 2M accabees after Malachi. The books of our Old Testament are 39 in number. Bat this figure is considerably in excess of the number of independent writings included in the collection. The subdivision of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-N ehemiah, as well as of the Pentateuch, is artificial. More accurately we should speak of 31 books, or, if Joshua be really inseparable in structure from the Pentateuch, and Chronicles fromE zraN ehemiah, of 29 books of the O. T. In the Hebrew Bible the books are divided into the three groups. Law, Prophets, and Writings or Hagiographa. The arrangement of the books within the separate groups has differed from time to time. Modern editions give the traditional (M assoretic) order adopted by the great Jewish Biblical scholars of theM iddle A ges, which is rejjroduced in the following scheme: (A) The Law or Torah, the five books of the Pentateuch, each receiving its name from its opening word or words. (B) The Prophets or Nebiim. 1. The former Prop
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)