Tanakh

The Tanakh (Hebrew: תָּנָ״ךְ) or Mikra or Hebrew Bible is the canonical collection of Jewish texts, which is also a textual source for the Christian Old Testament.

Torah ~ Law

Bereishit ~ Genesis

• And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
  • Genesis 1:6 KJV

• And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron.
  • Genesis 4:22 KJV

Shemot ~ Exodus

• You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
  • Exodus 22:21 NASB

• Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.
  • Exodus 23:2 KJV

• Keep thee far from a false matter.
  • Exodus 23:7 KJV

• Thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
  • Exodus 23:8 KJV

Vayikra ~ Leviticus

• Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
  • Leviticus 19:18 NIV

• The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
  • Leviticus 19:34 NIV

Devarim ~ Deuteronomy

• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
  • Deuteronomy 6:5-9 NRSV

• Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.
  • Deuteronomy 18:13 KJV

Nevi'im ~ Prophets

Divrei Hayamim ~ 1 Chronicles

• Thine, O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name.
  • 1 Chronicles 29:11-13 KJV

Ketuvim ~ Writings

Iyov ~ Job

• The mirth of the wicked is brief.
  • Job 20:5 NIV

Tehellim ~ Psalms

• Commune with your own heart
  • Psalms 4:4 KJV

Mishlei ~ Proverbs

• When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee.
  • Proverbs 2:10 KJV

• Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart.
  • Proverbs 3:3 KJV

• Be not wise in thine own eyes.
  • Proverbs 3:7 KJV

• Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
  • Proverbs 3:13-15 KJV

• Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.
  • Proverbs 3:31 KJV

• With all thy getting get understanding.
  • Proverbs 4:7 KJV

• Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge.
  • Proverbs 12:1 NRSV

• Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of feasting with strife.
  • Proverbs 17:1 ASV

• A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.
  • Proverbs 17:10 KJV

• Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.
  • Proverbs 17:24 KJV

• A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.
  • Proverbs 17:24 NIV

• He that hath knowledge spareth his words.
  • Proverbs 17:27 KJV

• Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
  • Proverbs 17:28 KJV

Qoheleth ~ Ecclesiastes

• Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.
  • Ecclesiastes 2:15 KJV

Nevi'im ~ Latter Prophets

Yeshayahu ~ Isaiah

• When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers,

I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

Wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;

stop doing wrong.

Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.

• Isaiah 1:15-17 NIV

Yirmeyahu ~ Jeremiah

• They cling to deceit;

they refuse to return.

I have listened attentively,

but they do not say what is right.

None of them repent of their wickedness,

saying, “What have I done?”

Each pursues their own course

like a horse charging into battle.

• Jeremiah 8:5-6 NIV

Quotes about the Tanakh

• In the Old Testament stories, … the sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the everyday that the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated but basically inseparable.
  • Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 22

• The Christians wrested the Old Testament out of the hands of the Jews and used it as a weapon against them. The belief in their own selection by God was turned into an expression of the absolute and exclusive position of Christianity, and Jewish Messianism was twisted into the doctrine of Christ's return.
  • Karlheinz Deschner. Abermals krähte der Hahn, btb-Taschenbücher im Goldmann Verlag 1996, ISBN 3-442-72025-7, S. 505

• Biblical scholars maintain that the vast majority of the written materials that comprise the Hebrew Bible began as traditions communicated from generation to generation by word of mouth and by the example of how people lived daily. Only gradually were these stories, ideas, and practices committed to writing in what we know as the Hebrew Bible.
  • Elliot N Dorff, “Moses, the prophets, and the Rabbis”, “Christianity and Family Law: An Introduction”, edited by John Witte, Jr, Gary S. Hauk, (2017), Cambridge University, p.16

• Although Orthodox Jews believe that the whole Torah was revealed by God to Moses at Mount Sinai, Conservative and Reform Jews accept the conclusions of biblical scholarship that the Torah consists of documents originating in oral traditions and committed to writing between the eleventh and sixth centuries BCE, and edited together by the time of Ezra (mid-fifth century BCE). Some later strands of the Torah interpret earlier strands, and this process of creating new interpretations and applications of earlier materials and new traditions altogether in the latter centuries of the biblical period and after the close of the biblical canon constitutes what we know as Rabbinic literature.
  • Elliot N Dorff, “Moses, the prophets, and the Rabbis”, “Christianity and Family Law: An Introduction”, edited by John Witte, Jr, Gary S. Hauk, (2017), Cambridge University, p.18

• Whenever it is a question of the eternal truths of reason, it does not say believe, but understand and know.
  • Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783), as translated by Allan Arkush (1983), p. 100