Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles. Episode 1.2. What is the Bible?

Set aside the New Testament for the moment. I'll cover that in series 2 of this podcast.

So at least to begin with, what is the Old Testament?

That depends on who you ask.

Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and the Church of the East all include different books in their canons.

A Catholic Bible has more books than a Protestant Bible.

A Greek Orthodox Bible has yet more books.

The Russian Orthodox throw in a few extras,

and the Bible of the Church of the East is a veritable IKEA catalogue.

There's really no such thing as the Bible.

The concept only makes sense if you ask,

whose Bible?

Each faith has its own definition of the canon of books.

How each arrived at its canon is a process lost to time,

although we often know when each faith locked down its sacred books.

Not only do the faiths disagree about the books to be included,

but they also argue about the content of those books,

about which is the legitimate textual tradition.

The Jews call the Old Testament the Tanakh, which is an acronym of its three divisions,

Torah, Nevim, and Ketuvim.

There is no good English equivalent for Torah, although at a stretch you could use law or instruction.

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