Hebrew Canon - True Order of the Books of the Old Testament

The Hebrew Canon
from: britannica.com

The Hebrew Bible is often known among Jews as TaNaKh, an acronym derived from the names of its three divisions: Torah (Instruction, or Law, also called the Pentateuch), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings).

The Torah contains five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Nevi'im comprise eight books subdivided into the Former Prophets, containing the four historical works, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the Latter Prophets, the oracular discourses of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (Minor--i.e., smaller) Prophets--Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The Twelve were all formerly written on a single scroll and thus reckoned as one book. The Ketuvim consist of religious poetry and wisdom literature--Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, a collection known as the "Five Megillot" ("scrolls"; i.e., Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, which have been grouped together according to the annual cycle of their public reading in the synagogue)--and the books of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles.

The Number of the Books

The number of books in the Hebrew canon is thus 24, referring to the sum of the separate scrolls on which these works were traditionally written in ancient times. This figure is first cited in II Esdras in a passage usually dated c. 100 CE and is frequently mentioned in rabbinic (postbiblical) literature, but no authentic tradition exists to explain it. Josephus, a 1st century CE Jewish historian, and some of the Church Fathers, such as Origen (the great 3rd-century Alexandrian theologian), appear to have had a 22-book canon.

English Bibles list 39 books for the Old Testament because of the practice of bisecting Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, and of counting Ezra, Nehemiah, and the 12 Minor Prophets as separate books.