Old Testament

The Old Testament is the first and larger portion of the Christian Bible, consisting of the Jewish scriptures received from Israel's covenant history. The Hebrew canon comprises 39 books (in the Protestant reckoning) organized into the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim) — together called the Tanakh. The Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation made from the 3rd century B.C. onward, includes additional books accepted as canonical in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions but classified as Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical in Protestant usage.

The original text of the OT was written on skins in scroll form, in biblical Hebrew (with some Aramaic sections in Ezra, Daniel, and Jeremiah). The Masoretes standardized the consonantal text and added vowel pointing between A.D. 600–1000, producing the Masoretic Text (MT) that underlies most modern OT translations. The OT functions in Christian theology as the foundation and preparation for the NT: its covenants, prophecies, types, and institutions are fulfilled and reinterpreted in Christ (Matt. 5:17; Luke 24:44; 2 Cor. 1:20).