The Old Testament

The Christian Old Testament, while having most or all books in common with the Jewish Tanakh, varies from Judaism in the emphasis it places and the interpretations it gives them. The books come in a slightly different order. In addition, some Christian groups recognize additional books as canonical members of the Old Testament, and they may use a different text as the canonical basis for translations.

Differing Christian usages of the Old Testament

The Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandria in Egypt under the Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages from Martin Luther's Protestant Bible to the present day; already Jerome's Vulgate was based on the Hebrew. In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in texts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of books which are part of the Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e., deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Evangelicals and those of the Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them until around the 1820s. However, the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament. The Catholic Church recognizes seven such books (Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch), as well as some passages in Esther and Daniel. Various Orthodox Churches include a few others, typically 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, 1 Esdras, Odes, Psalms of Solomon, and the Prayer of Manasseh. The Anglican Church uses the Apocryphal books liturgically, but not to establish doctrine. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include these books, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.