Tanakh

Or Ta·nach

[tah-nahkh]

noun

Hebrew.

1. the Jewish Scripture, comprising the Law or Torah, the Prophets or Neviim, and the Writings or Ketuvim.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Tanakh¹

First recorded in 1830–40; vocalization of Hebrew TNK, abbreviation of Tôrāh Torah ( def. ) + Nĕvî'îm Neviim ( def. ) + Kĕthûvîm Ketuvim ( def. )

Example Sentences

In the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, Amalek is a nation whose soldiers ambushed the Israelites as they made their way to the Promised Land.

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These documents — versions of what Jews call the Tanakh, or what Christians would call the Old Testament — are mostly in Hebrew, although some were written in Aramaic, Greek and Nabataean-Aramaic.

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Even so, “Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible, which the old Tolstoy taught himself to read in the original; Homer; Dante; Chaucer; Cervantes; above all Shakespeare: These stand with ‘War and Peace.’

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By that time, the Egyptian faith had changed remarkably little for nearly a millennium, despite the lack of a central religious text – no Qur’an, no Bible, no Tanakh.

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For religious Jews, it forms one half of the Revelation on Sinai, along with the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh.

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