canon

A literary corpus, e.g. the Shakespearean canon means all the works attributed to W. Shakespeare.

In the more restricted theological sense, a canon is a list of works which are authoritative for a religious community, thus Jews, Catholics and Protestants each have their biblical canon - for Jews the Hebrew Bible, for Protestants - OT and NT, and for Catholics - OT, Deuterocanonical texts (cf. Apocrypha) and NT.

For the OT the situation is even more complicated. Two different versions of the canon have been handed down to us. The MT preserved one scheme for ordering the works, the LXX another. Christian Bibles (of whatever tradition) have usually followed the Greek ordering.

The Hebrew Bible is divided into three main sections:

"Law" torah
Gen Ex Lev Num Dt
Prophets nebi'im
Former Prophets Later Prophets
Josh Jdg Sam Kgs | Is Jer Ez The Twelve
Writings kethubim
Five Scrolls megillot
Ps Job Pr | Rt Song Ecc Lam Est | Dan Esra Neh Chron

This page is part of the Hypertext Bible Commentary - Amos , if you have reached it as a standalone page, to view it in context, go to www.bible.gen.nz
© Tim Bulkeley, 1996-2005, Tim Bulkeley. All rights reserved.