Changes

[[Image:Old Testament.jpg|400px|right]]

[[Image:Old Testament.jpg|400px|right]]

The Canon of the Old Testament was fixed by the Jewish ''Anshei K'nesset HaGedolah'' (Men of the Great Assembly), also known as the [[Council of Jamnia]], established in [[Galilee]] in the 1st century [[Anno Domini|A.D.]] (''circa'' 90) after the destruction of the great [[Temple of Jerusalem]] A.D. 70.  Though some books have been given different names, this is the same Old Testament canon found in Protestant Bibles (except for ordering and naming conventions based on usage in the [[Catholic Church|Catholic Bible]]). The larger and more ancient [[Biblical Canon]] of Catholic and [[Orthodox Church|Orthodox]] Old Testaments originally in Greek predating the time of the Council of Jamnia contain different sets of books (retained and included by [[Jerome]] in the Latin [[Vulgate]] translation) but removed from the Christian Bible by Protestants during the 16th century A.D. [[Protestant Reformation]] as "additional" groups referred to as the [[Apocrypha]].  Most Old Testaments go back to the earliest Hebrew translations<ref>20th and 21st century Biblical archaeology has established beyond reasonable doubt that with the sole exception of the [[Book of Wisdom]] originally written in Greek all of the books rejected as Apocrypha were extant as Hebrew texts ''which predate'' the 1st century A.D.</ref>, but the Greek Orthodox church uses the earliest Greek versions commonly called the [[Septuagint]], traditionally ascribed to rabbinical authority as the authentic Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures as early as the 3rd century B.C..

The Palestinian Jewish Canon of the Old Testament ''Tanakh'' in Hebrew was fixed by the Jewish ''Anshei K'nesset HaGedolah'' (Men of the Great Assembly), also known as the [[Council of Jamnia]], established in [[Galilee]] in the 1st century [[Anno Domini|A.D.]] (''circa'' A.D. 90) after the destruction of the great [[Temple of Jerusalem]] A.D. 70.  Though some books have been given different names, this is the same Old Testament canon found in Protestant Bibles (except for ordering and naming conventions based on usage in the [[Catholic Church|Catholic Bible]]). The larger and more ancient [[Biblical Canon]] of Catholic and [[Orthodox Church|Orthodox]] Old Testaments originally in Greek predating the time of the Council of Jamnia contain different sets of books (retained and included by [[Jerome]] in the Latin [[Vulgate]] translation) but removed from the Christian Bible by Protestants during the 16th century A.D. [[Protestant Reformation]] as "additional" groups referred to as the [[Apocrypha]].  Most Old Testaments go back to the earliest Hebrew translations<ref>20th and 21st century Biblical archaeology has established beyond reasonable doubt that with the sole exception of the [[Book of Wisdom]] originally written in Greek all of the books rejected as Apocrypha were extant as Hebrew texts ''which predate'' the 1st century A.D.</ref>, but the Greek Orthodox church uses the earliest Greek versions commonly called the [[Septuagint]], traditionally ascribed to rabbinical authority as the authentic Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures as early as the 3rd century B.C.. The Jewish communities already established in Africa long before the time of Christ rejected the newer Palestinian canon attributed to the rabbis at Jamnia and retained almost all of the books included in the Septuagint, the one sole exception being the [[Book of Sirach]] called Ecclesiasticus.

The twenty-four books, in the Hebrew listing, are:

The twenty-four books, in the Hebrew listing, are: