Shoresh / Root	Tanach
Core Word	Torah, N’vi-im, K’tuvim
Translation	Transliteration	Hebrew
The Hebrew Bible, an abbreviation from the initial letters of the three sections of the Hebrew Bible.	Tanach
The Five Books of Moses, the first section of the Hebrew Bible	Torah
The Hebrew Prophets, whose books form the second section of the Hebrew Bible	N’vi-im
The Writings, the books in the third section of the Hebrew Bible	K’tuvim

While we Jews are the Am haSefer, the People of the Book, many modern Jews do not know the correct title of our Book. The “Bible,” the “Hebrew Bible,” or the “Holy Scriptures” will all do, but the proper name for Jews to use is the Tanach.

Where does that name originate? It is formed from the initial letters of the three sections of our Sefer haS’farim, Book of Books. The tav or letter T stands for the Torah, the first section. The nun or N stands for N’vi-im, the Prophets, whose books comprise the second section. The CH at the end, a form of the Hebrew letter chaf, stands for K’tuvim, the Writings, the third and last section of the Hebrew Bible. Put the consonants together and you get TaNaCH, our name for the Hebrew Bible. When writing in Hebrew, a quotation mark between the second and the third Hebrew letters shows us that the word is an abbreviation.

We never call the Tanach the “Old Testament.” That is a Christian term having implications that are unacceptable to Jews. The terms suggests: 1) that the “new” has supplanted the “old,” an idea which Jews reject; 2)that the “old” is no longer valid, a proposition to which cannot subscribe; and 3) that the “old” and the “new” are equally sanctified, an idea that Jews have denied for 2,000 years.

As the Am haSefer, all Jews should learn the name of our glorious sefer: Tanach. It should be remembered that the Tanach is the collection of twenty-four (or thirty-nine, depending on how you count) sacred Hebrew s’farim by which Jews have lived—and for which countless Jews have died—over the centuries. Learn it and teach it to your children: TANACH!

Adapted from Edith Samuel, Your Jewish Lexicon (New York: UAHC Press, 1982), 10-11.

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