Talk:Hebrew Bible

Such as the history of the bible itself, its physical history. Where did the scripts come from? What are the oldest surviving pieces of it? etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.82.51.145 (talk) 17:59, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

The physical history of the bible, if not completely taboo, is always shrouded in mist, because the biblical scholars are believers, and they want to hide the fact that we have no certified "original" version the sacred text. In another wikipedia article you can find the statement that the Leningrad codex, most ancient complete version of the Hebrew text, dates from around 1000 CE, but "was composed" 100 BCE. How do they know? 2A01:E34:EC0C:8370:1418:831F:CF13:A733 (talk) 22:48, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Anyone is welcome to delete my previous comment. It contains a typo ("version OF the previous text"). And it is a general remark, which I indulged in, but cannot be used to improve the article. 2A01:E34:EC0C:8370:1418:831F:CF13:A733 (talk) 22:52, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that notation regarding the nature of the remark. I'll suggest that the folks who study archeological origins of such things might be the best-informed sources on dates and composition speculation, as they'll have already studied comparative literature (such as it is?) of the subject time period. Jetpower (talk) 07:01, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Sinclairian responding to your recent edit changing תַּנַ״ךְ to תָּנָ״ךְ. Tagging @Sartma who did the same on Wiktionary. I reverted a similar edit a few months ago so let's discuss.

• Hebrew acronyms are customarily pronounced with "ah" between every letter except when one of the letters can be pronounced as a vowel, in which case it is utilized as such. So tanakh, Rambam, Maharashdam are pronounced ah-ah, Rashi and Maharil reuse the yodh as an "i' sound, etc. Exceptions commonly cited, but which actually conform, are Besht (in which the ayin of "baal" is reused as a Yiddish "eh" vowel) and Yayvetz (which uses the typical ashkenazic diphthong replacement of patah-ayin-patah). Although there are no orthographic rules which strictly apply, because acronyms are not words, Hebrew users generally spell the "ah" with patah because patah is the only vowel which is pronounced as "ah" across all accents. Note that pronunciations like Yayvetz are only possible with assumed patah.
• In medieval Hebrew a word-initial "ah" sound in an acronym was sometimes represented with schwa (then pronounced as a short patah) which editions of classical texts will preserve: דְּצַ"ךְ עֲדַ"שׁ בַּאֲחַ"ב. "Tanakh" is exclusively a modern term, but this is still the approach taken by the Ben-Yehuda Dictionary vol. XVI p. 7825, which has תְּנַ״ךְ.
• The Academy of the Hebrew Language insists here that all modern acronyms be vocalized in imitation of Hebrew nouns with a default of qametz, and patah used only when the following consonant is guttural, needs to be silent, or needs dagesh qal: רָמַטְכָּ"ל, חַבָּ"ד, צַהַ"ל. This indeed leads to תָּנָ"ךְ.
• However, the Academy has not succeeded in propagating this rule and both the Alcalay and Even-Shoshan (=popular default) dictionaries list תַּנַ״ךְ in accordance with the colloquial pattern described above.

I don't know of a general policy on here regulating language academies versus dictionaries versus common use, but תַּנַ״ךְ is the answer for both dictionaries and common use. Note that in Israeli Heberew qametz and patah are not distinguished in pronunciation, so this is a purely theoretical question for the Academy, but on English Wiki תָּנָ״ךְ may lead readers to pronounce the word in a new, unprecedented way. GordonGlottal (talk) 15:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, damn. Admittedly, I only based the change on the Wiktionary entry. I will not argue that it should remain as kamatz, the uncertainty surrounding "official" transcription is not worth the headache, but I will say that I find the notion that displaying it with the kamatz "may lead readers to pronounce the word in a new, unprecedented way." is worded a bit melodramatically. Kamatz and patach are, as you said, the same vowel value in Modern Hebrew. I imagine anyone who is aware of the pre-Modern vocalizations are learned enough to see Tawnawkh is not the standard pronunciation. Sinclairian (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

They're pronounced the same way in Israeli Hebrew but they are not in Ashkenazi Hebrew, and no traditional Ashkenazi speaker is pronouncing the acronym as "tawnawkh" (or Rambam as "rawmbawm"), etc. The treatment of these acronyms long predates the modern Israeli state and Israeli Hebrew. Patach is correct. Largoplazo (talk) 19:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, this is what I meant. Almost always outside of Israel, and within Israel by about half of speakers when using religious dialect, qametz is pronounced "uh" or "oh", not "ah". GordonGlottal (talk) 00:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

@Largoplazo, @GordonGlottal: Rambam is spelled רַמְבָּ״ם, so it would never be "rawmbawm" anyway, even when following proper vocalisation rules. Sartma (talk) 23:52, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

As I explained in my original comment, the Akademia vocalizations are post-hoc attempts to phonetically transcribe colloquial pronunciation, with qametz used by default to represent the "ah" vowel and following ordinary orthographic rules. The reason why the Akademia recommends רַמְבָּ״ם is that רָמְבָּ״ם violates those rules. The qametz gadol under the resh forces the schwa under the mem to become voiced, which conflicts with the dagesh qal in the bet. But in the typical acronym it would affect multiple vowels; in Maharashdam it would change 3 (מָהָרַשְדָּ״ם). In any case as you say "proper rules" I'm interested in the normative case—why should we follow the Akademia instead of popular practice and dictionaries? The default use of qametz seems totally arbitrary to me and obviously has not caught on. GordonGlottal (talk) 00:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@GordonGlottal: The Even-Shoshan on my mac has תָּנָ״ךְ. I only know Classical Hebrew, nothing really about Neo-Hebrew, and vocalising תַּנַ״ךְ would move the accent to the first syllable (so "tánaḵ"). From a phonological point of view, the only possible vocalisation is תָּנָ״ךְ, so unfortunately I can't agree with your reasoning. Sartma (talk) 23:46, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I have an older print copy—thanks. When you say Classical you mean Biblical? To mean it reads as "Rabbinic" but of course the phonetic rules of Rabbinic are obscure. Assuming, I don't agree that תַּנַ״ךְ would necessarily have a penultimate stress in Biblical Hebrew. Not all nouns are segolates and some are spelled patah-patah with an ultimate stress. But it is definitely the norm. However, Modern Hebrew does not follow the Tiberian stress system. Words are almost uniformly pronounced with an ultimate stress, and the Akademia system doesn't respond to that concern: Rashi is spelled רָשִׁ"י even though it is pronounced with a penultimate stress even in Modern Hebrew. GordonGlottal (talk) 00:49, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@GordonGlottal: I use the Classical/Neo classification when talking about Hebrew. I consider "Classical" anything before the revival based on Biblical and Post Biblical Hebrew. The phonetic rules of Rabbinic are not at all obscure. There are ambiguous exceptions, but nothing that could justify calling it "obscure". Linear A is obscure, Rabbinic phonetic rules are not. While it's true that there are extremely rare exceptions of nouns vocalised with patha-patha stressed on the last syllable, as you also admitt, accent on the second-to-last is the norm. I would argue that newly made-up words like "Tanakh" would follow the general rule, exceptions being found in actual native Hebrew words (like it's the case for all languages). As for the position of the accent, it's always been phonemic in Hebrew, so there were always words stressed in the penultimate even when they could have been stressed otherwise, like in תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tóhu wɔ-ḇóhu).

I am aware that Neo-Hebrew as a spoken language doesn't follow the Tiberian phonetic system, but it does follow the Tiberian vocalisation rules. Until they'll officially decide to abandon them and develop an equally modern vocalisation system that better reflects the needs of the new language, I don't see why we should make exceptions for individual words on a case-to-case basis. "Tanakh"'s only correct vocalisation is תָּנָ״ךְ, and it couldn't be anything else. Sartma (talk) 08:47, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Note in passing that Taanak is spelled both patah-patah and patah-qametz in the MT, but always with an ultimate stress.

I don't want to get too sidetracked but when I say that the vocalization of Rabbinic is obscure what I mean is that no work attempts to comprehensively explain its divergences from Biblical Hebrew. If you open Parma B or one of the fragments that mark stress in classical Rabbinic Hebrew, you'll notice that they diverge considerably from Biblical stress, and moreover that they come closer when quoting Biblical verses. Beyond stress, open MS Vat. 66, or Kaufmann, or Parma A, or what Olszowy-Schlanger calls "MS A" (not at all endorsing her proposed date, just the fragmentology); there are many other features not explained by the history of Biblical vocalization. This is also true of much later works like Montefiore 134 (which has been lightly studied) that are still early and coherent enough to resist the charge of error. Only recently, any tradition for vocalizing contemporary texts having died centuries past, post-Zoharic ideas of the diacritics' theological importance spreading, were the Masoretic vowels enthroned as standard for all purposes (except Aramaic, for whatever reason all Aramaic is vocalized by Rabbinic rules instead).

The idea that written Hebrew from 800 BCE to 1890 CE is relatively consistent compared to Hebrew from 1890 CE to 2024 CE, such that a bifurcation into "Classical Hebrew" and "Neo-Hebrew" makes sense, is a belief (apologies) necessarily conditioned by gross ignorance. No one who read a representative sample of Hebrew prose from each of those centuries could possibly agree. Reading only books from 800-400 BCE and 2024 CE, you imagine that a sudden transition occurred in 1889. Not true. Pick up a book from 200 CE! You'll be shocked how different from Biblical it is. One from 1750! Startlingly modern. From 1350! It'll be halfway between.

Modern Hebrew does not follow the Tiberian vocalization rules. It does not use dagesh hazaq, it has only one length of qametz and one of hiriq, etc. It follows the result of an evolution from medieval liturgical vowels > early-modern religious printers > Orthodox-Maskilic grammarians > Modern Hebrew. This mostly represents simplification, but it covers a long period of almost universal penultimate stress, followed by a long period of almost universal ultimate stress. Note that pre-Tiberian Biblical Hebrew (like Classical Arabic) was also uniformly penultimately stressed.

I am very confused by the argument you're making. How can it possibly be bad that תַּנַ״ךְ suggests a penultimate stress, when colloquial pronunciation is ultimate stress, but not bad that רַמְבָּ״ם and רָשִׁ"י suggest ultimate stress and are pronounced penultimately? Or: what principle demands that a word like תנ״ך be vocalized so as to specifically suggest ultimate stress, if we are to disregard colloquial pronunciation? GordonGlottal (talk) 17:55, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@GordonGlottal I'm not sure why you give Taanak as an example. The syllabic structure is completely different from Tanakh. תַּעֲנָךְ has two closed syllables תַּעֲ, /taʕ/ and /naχ/, and those are regularly spelled with patah. The version with final qametz is in its – again, regular – pausal form. Nothing strange there.

On the other hand, תָּנָ״ךְ is formed by an open syllable (/tɔ/) and a closed one (/nɔχ/), following the extremely regular קָטָל nominal pattern (i.e. words like נָהָר). Unaccented open syllables do not regularly have a patah. When they do, it's because they are followed by a guttural, and they only appear to be open syllables (the guttural was originally a geminate, so phonemically they count as closed syllables). The first syllable of תָּנָ״ךְ is not followed by a guttural, so there is no reason to use patah. Extremely rare exceptions to the general rules do exist, but they are, indeed, exceptions.

Since Even-Shoshan has תָּנָ״ךְ, I don't see any reason to do differently here. 213.86.124.2 (talk) 11:04, 13 December 2024 (UTC) [I wasn't logged in, but it's me, Sartma (talk) 11:08, 13 December 2024 (UTC)]

@GordonGlottal – Also check the web page of the Israel Institute of Biblical Studies. If you don't trust me, surely you can trust them. Sartma (talk) 12:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

The first syllable of תָּנָ״ךְ is not followed by a guttural, so there is no reason to use patah.. This is absolutely correct. There is no fundamental syntactical reason for Hebrew acronyms to begin with patah even where it isn't stressed. But, as you surely know as an English speaker, language spelling is often not internally consistent.

As I explained in my original comment, the reason that most vocalizers of Hebrew (those who are not engaged in a campaign to change the norm) use patah-patah by default for acronyms is that the medievals used schwa-patah, which we can all agree is a normal form for an ultimately stressed word to have. Aside from the many thousands of primary sources for this practice, Solomon ibn Adret describes it in his responsa, vol. 1 #230. This would imply תְּנַ״ךְ (tanakh specifically is a modern coining), which would have been pronounced in the same way Moderns pronounce תַּנַ״ךְ, because a schwa was by default pronounced similarly to patah. This is maintained in Ben-Yehuda's dictionary, as I said above. But in practice it proved too much of an archaism, because schwa is pronounced as a short-i vowel in modern Hebrew dialects and Hebrew readers expect phonetic spellings. The solution was to change the first vowel to patah, which is what the schwa was intended to represent in its original dialect: תַּנַ״ךְ.

This held stable for the 20th century. However, the Academy of the Hebrew Language has launched a campaign to change the norm, and spell acronyms with qamatz. This theoretically "rationalizes" the spelling of acronyms which are ultimately stressed, as you say. But it does precisely the opposite to acronyms which are penultimately stressed, such as "rambam" and "rashi", now spelled רַמְבָּ״ם and רָשִׁ"י. So it doesn't make much sense to me as a rule. And as I said above, it relies absolutely on readers not distinguishing between patah and qametz, because the pronunciation it wants to indicate is a long "ah" vowel, but most English wiki readers will distinguish, and pronounce qametz as an "uh" vowel.

But the key is that the Academy is innovating. תָּנָ״ךְ has made it into some dictionaries, and may eventually become a popular form of the word. But for right now, it only exists in publications that are actively trying to popularize it. I do not think Wikipedia owes any loyalty to language academies, to the point that we change our pages before the reforms they propose are popularly adopted. GordonGlottal (talk) 04:51, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

@GordonGlottal Tiberian vocalization was much more consistent than not. The acronym תָּנָ״ךְ is first recorded in the Masora magna, which was written in Aramaic. That's why you find the aramaic noun vocalization in shwa/patha: תְּנַ״ךְ. Those who came later on just kept that vocalization. Now, the shwa/patha pattern correspond to Hebrew qameṣ/qameṣ. Here are some examples:

• Aramaic מְטַר (məṭar, "rain") = Hebrew מָטָר (māṭār)
• Aramaic נְהַר (nəhar, "river") = Hebrew נָהָר (nāhār)
• Aramaic בְּשַׂר (bəśar, "flesh") = Hebrew בָּשָׂר (bāśār)

etc.

I don't know at what point in history the Aramaic vocalization shwa/patha was turned into patha/patha, and by whom, but that's definitely a wrong vocalization. I see why the Accademy of the Hebrew Language is pushing to correct it (I didn't know they were, but I couldn't agree more with them).

As for רַמְבָּ״ם and רָשִׁ"י, I don't see why you think they are problematic, or for that matter pertinent to what we are discussing. They are regularly vocalized as they should. Moreover, as I wrote already above, accent in Hebrew is phonemic and can always be on the penult, so that's also not an issue. I'm confused by why you are giving these examples... Sartma (talk) 11:26, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Tiberian vocalization was consistent. In its consistency, it would have used תְּנַ״ךְ and מְטַר and pronounced them "tanakh" and "matar". However, the pronunciation of shewa in all regular words shifted over time to a short 'i", resulting in "metar" today, and the pronunciation of acronyms did not shift. It remained the same. This created an orthographic irregularity, because תְּנַ״ךְ was pronounced "tanakh" but מְטַר "metar". If you search on GBooks you can actually find a lot of people using "tenach" or "tenakh" as a transliteration, but it doesn't reflect pronunciation.

Both תַּנַ״ךְ and תָּנָ״ךְ are changes in spelling designed to reflect colloquial speech. תַּנַ״ךְ was the first attempt, and dates to a period when the overwhelming majority of Hebrew readers distinguished between qametz and patah. Qametz was not an option because it did not represent colloquial pronunciation, which was the entire reason for the change. Now, the Academy is only interested in secular Israeli pronunciation, which uses qametz as well as patah for that vowel, so they feel comfortable swapping it in. But there are a lot of other Hebrew users!

You don't understand the issue with רַמְבָּ״ם and רָשִׁ"י because you don't know how they are pronounced. The spelling רָשִׁ״י is /wrong/ for "RAHshi" in the same way that תַּנַ״ךְ is /wrong/ for "taNAKH".

Anyway that's a creative argument, but incorrect. The term "תנ״ך" is not Aramaic. The word תורה is not Aramaic, and the (late) Massorah uses it specifically as a Hebrew equivalent of Aramaic אנ"ך, where the aleph stood for אורייתא. The earliest acronyms in Jewish literature are all Hebrew, including the plagues vocalized דְּצַ״ךְ עֲדַ״שׁ בַּאֲחַ״ב. I don't know of any source for how Aramaic acronyms were pronounced. GordonGlottal (talk) 16:05, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

@GordonGlottal: To avoid going on forever on this thread, since it's clear we can't agree on the details, I just added all vocalizations I could find, no matter what language the source was written in (Aramaic/Hebrew) or at what time in history (older or more recent). Sartma (talk) 09:38, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

So I'm well aware of the fact that if you search most databases for "Tanakh," not a lot of results come up. Maybe 1-2 million tops. Same for the alternative Romanization, "Tanach." However, I think that actually, the most common name for the Hebrew bible is actually the "Torah." Most people think of the Pentateuch being the entirety of the Hebrew bible, although we know that the Hebrew books of scripture consist of several other things, but this is not commonly known, therefore, when referring to the analogous set of text to Bible or Quran, people usually say "Torah," referring to the Tanakh itself. Therefore, I would submit that we should not use the WP:GOOGLETEST at all to determine what is the most common name. I think a dedicated source survey with this in mind might actually find the most common name for the Hebrew Bible is the "Torah," considerably more so. If you consider "Pentateuch" and other synonymous references such as "5 books of Moses," etc, Christianized naming of "Hebrew Bible" or "Hebrew canon" are actually rather outdated. Therefore, I submit that the most common name for this article might actually be Torah (Tanakh) or Torah/Tanakh. I recognize this is probably well-trod and would require some RFC to ever change, but I am floating this idea having not actually reviewed whatever prior discussions have concluded on this that caused the article to remain at this name. Andre🚐 23:52, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't find this argument particularly convincing for COMMONNAME unless I see the data, but even so it bears repeating that WP:COMMONNAME is not the only section contained in WP:NC:

• WP:NPOVNAME: Notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often avoids a common name for lacking neutrality include [...] colloquialisms where far more encyclopedic alternatives are obvious
• Torah/Tanakh would be a very basic violation, as we must decide on a single name we should use to refer to something, instead of committing crimes of diction, style, and semantics by gluing two synonyms together into something no one else uses.

Remsense ‥ 论 00:04, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

So before I do the data part, does the logic work if I can show that "Torah" predominates and generally refers to "Hebrew Bible" and not strictly 5-books? If not, then no point in me exhaustively breaking down probably hundreds of papers. Andre🚐 00:11, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I mentioned WP:NPOVNAME above because I think it applies here, yes. Remsense ‥ 论 00:13, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

You mentioned it applying to the / construction, but Torah (Tanakh) would be disambiguation. A la, there's already a Torah article, and this is the broad article but redirected. I don't see why that's lacking neutrality, if anything, that would be more neutral. Andre🚐 00:33, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Torah used to refer to the Tanakh would be an unencyclopedic colloquialism. NPOV would behoove us to to name concepts with particular attention to what expert reliable sources have in mind. Remsense ‥ 论 00:39, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Can reliable sourcing be produced supporting the assertion that the topic of this article is frequently referred to as the "Torah"? Because I haven't been exposed to any such sources to date. Newimpartial (talk) 00:43, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

For example, in the Wiley-Blackwell History of Judaism, while it does use "Hebrew Bible" and "Jewish Bible" quite a bit as well, pages like this starting with the paragraph that begins "Schechter," clearly mean Torah to mean both the whole Hebrew Bible canon text as well as Oral Torah, right? Basically the entirety of Jewish teachings, as in Torah study. The Torah had been interpreted and reinterpreted by Jews throughout the ages, and how the Torah was understood was the determining factor in setting communal religious standards. Andre🚐 01:01, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Why do you believe that passage to refer to the entire Tanakh, rather than the Torah?

Also, Torah study does not support your proposed title, either, because it includes Talmud, religious law, and other Rabbinic teachings that are not part of the Tanakh - the scope of Torah study is much wider than the scope of this article. Newimpartial (talk) 01:17, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

From the context, but I get that it's not unequivocal. I'll look for an example that's very clear. For example, this random K-12 Manitoba educational guide (I know, I'll need something more authoritative) explains it fairly well: The term Torah means instruction and can refer to many aspects of Jewish scriptures, practice, and history. Usually, the term Torah refers to the central religious texts of Judaism. ...Sometimes, the term Torah is narrowly used to refer to the first 5 books (Pentateuch) of the 24 books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) or Jewish Written Law. Andre🚐 01:43, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

There's a statement under the "Fixing the canon" section, located at the last paragraph that mentions about the twenty-four book canon being fixed by Ezra using Legends of the Jews as definitive source. I wanted to note that it is a fictional collection focusing on extensive or imagined retellings/expansions of biblical stories, and not a full on treatise; more folklore or mythological than being a factual historical account. SenselessRumble (talk) 23:22, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh --- Current text

The Hebrew Bible or Jewish Bible or Tanakh --- Recommended text

Referred here by Feline Hymnic, who had reverted the addition I made. I'm disputing his reversion.

Jewish Bible should be added to the set of names, because a) the term is used more often than Hebrew Bible. The Google count shows about 177,000,000 for Hebrew bible and about 215,000,000 for Jewish bible. In other words, Jewish bible had 38 million more occurrences. b) No one calls the New Testament the Greek Bible unless they are talking about the version written in Greek. OTOH, those who use Hebrew Bible use it even for translations into English and other languages. A strange lack of parallelism, imo. They should see that there is another name for it. c) The Jewish Bible is not entirely written in Hebrew. Some is in Aramaic. d) Christian Bible is a common term and no one disputes it. Similarly, Jewish Bible is commonly used for the same text for which Hebrew Bible and Tanakh are used. It should be included.

Please let me know if this is not sufficient. Accuracy33 (talk) 13:50, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Plain Google searches are awful for this because Google indexes junk as well as decent, reliable material. A better (not necessarily the best, but better) choice of measure is Google Ngrams, which shows that since 1987 the number of books in Google's corpus of books in English that have "Hebrew Bible" have, year to year, outnumbered those that have "Jewish Bible" by more than 10 to 1. More recently, the margin has been nearly 20 to 1. See . Also worth looking at are Google Scholar results showing "Hebrew Bible" (426,000 hits) leading "Jewish Bible" (19,700 hits) by more than 20 to 1. Largoplazo (talk) 14:45, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

1) In this case, we're not concerned with the decency or reliability of what people say, only what words they use when they say it. Even junk is written by someone. So I think the google numbers are valid in this case. Maybe more valid because they include the usage by the ignorant proletariat.

2) Even if the ratio there is 10 or 20 to 1, those 10 or 5% of writers use Jewish Bible and that warrants it being listed as one of the alternatives. Being in the list is not a recommendation; it's so that when people see the term, they will know it's equivalent or almost so to the other terms listed.

Tanakh is used in not many more books than Jewish Bible, but it is in your list.

3) You've only attempted to refute point a from my previous post. Aren't points b, c, and d sufficient to make my case.

• • I'd appreciate it if you'd explain Ngram to me. I don't see any numbers, just strange percentages, that show iiuc HEBREW BIBLE at about 120% and JEWISH BIBLE at about 50%, or Hebrew Bible at 160% and Jewish Bible at 700%. I suppose if "bible" were not capitalized, that would yield 2 more numbers, so should we add up both sets with 3 numbers each?

I followed your footnote and see that you can compare in one window, though I still only see percentages. Accuracy33 (talk) 16:19, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Why do you think we aren't concerned with the reliability of the sources? Have you never noticed that some Google hits are just absolute garbage—machine-generated ooze, or pages where the search term only matches hidden SEO-driven lists of words?

I'm not disagreeing with the reasonability of your second point. My main concern with dissuading you from the notion that raw Google search results are of value for this purpose. But, especially because Jewish Bible redirects to this article, it should appear, at the very least in the Terminology section if not the lead.

I clicked the "Case-insensitive" button on the Ngrams result and got

The percentages on Ngrams are the percentages of the works in their corpus that include the respective phrases. Largoplazo (talk) 17:15, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed reply.  My reply is to your points in reverse order.

1)  I did not notice the Case-insensitive button in Ngram.  Thanks for pointing that out.

2)  I very much appreciate your lack of disagreement with the reasonableness of my point 2, that even use by 5 or 10% warrants being listed.

3)  Yes, I see what you mean about the several problems with using Google counts, but  a) why do authors of books get the only vote on what words are commonly used?  These days there is a tremendous amount of good, literate, sensible material written in mainstream newspapers and magazines (and visible on the web), organizations' and individuals' webpages, serious discussions in blogs, even Facebook and its subgroups and other serious forums I'm not well acquainted with, plus there are not-especially-serious forums that still reflect how English-speaking people refer to this bible.   If the usage of Jewish bible were only a little higher in Google counts than in Ngram, one could attribute it to garbage and SEO-driven lists, but the number in google who use Jewish Bible is not 5 or 10% of the occurrences of Hebrew bible, but is 125% of the rate of Hebrew bible, 25% *higher*.  I don't think that can be accounted for by garbage, etc.    PLUS, how many of the hits on Hebrew bible are not also garbage or SEO lists?   As far as we know, a similar percentage.

  b) Even the presence of "Jewish bible" in a SEO-driven lists of words means that whoever  or whatever designed, compiled, or implemented that list thought that other people would be searching on "Jewish bible".

4)  in addition, Wikipedia does not limit itself to the words scholars use.  For example, there are loads of Wikipedia pages discussing and even named after colloquialisms.

5)  Further down in the article it says "Many biblical studies scholars advocate use of the term Hebrew Bible (or Hebrew Scriptures) as a substitute for less-neutral terms with Jewish or Christian connotations ", but i) again, why are many but seemingly not all biblical studies scholars given a vote on this but the 100's of millions of English speaking people who are not scholars (or have not written a book) are given no vote. and

     ii) What about those who don't want a neutral term?  Who recognize that the Hebrew bible was in part dictated by God and transcribed by Jews and the rest was written by Jews.  And that it remains the Bible used by Jews whether they can read and/or understand Hebrew or not. . 

6)  In fact, I would argue that Hebrew bible is not a neutral term at all, as those scholars suggest, because it deJudifies the Jewish bible.   It is something like the rebranding of the Baltimore Orioles to the Orioles, wiping out their relationship to Baltimore, at least in their advertising if not in legal documents. (People outside of Maryland may not be aware of this change.) I don't know if the Baltimore fans object to this change or not, but that is up to them.   Or how about if people tried to rename the Great Wall of China to the Great Wall of Asia?   or the country of Colombia to Vespucciland?   or Bolivia to Castronia or Guevaraland?   None of these new names would be neutral uses, because they would erase an important part of the history of the item renamed.

    OTOH,  AFAIK, *no one* objects to the use of Christian bible, and no one says it should be named the Greek bible except when it is the version written in the Greek language.  Yet some people would omit or demote use of "the Jewish bible" and replace it with the Hebrew bible, even when it's a translation into English, French, Spanish, or 100 other languages.  Why do they call it Hebrew?  IMO because they don't want to call it Jewish.  For this book, they prefer a less sectarian term, even though for Christian bible, they use a clearly sectarian term. .   But Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be based on preferences like this, but should be presenting a full range of information.

I had hoped by waiting a few days that more people would join this discussion.  Is this really to be decided by only 4 people?

Let me point out one more thing:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Revert_only_when_necessary which includes among other good things, "Do not revert a change simply because you find it "unnecessary". This is a violation of the Wikipedia:Ownership of content policy. Revert a change only if you believe the change made the article worse. "

And also the entire section under "Good reasons to revert" and parts of "Bad reasons to revert". 

I hope I've convinced you all that Jewish Bible is at least on a par with Hebrew Bible and it should be listed in the first line, where I had put it, words 4 to 6, "or Jewish Bible", in the first line. Accuracy33 (talk) 15:48, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Ngram matches my own experience—Hebrew Bible is much more common in real life. It's usually not productive to police etymologies that way. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:51, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

On the other hand, Gordon, with all due respect, Ngram does not at all match my own experience. In my real life, unless they are quoting someone or something else, no one I know (and very little that I read) uses Hebrew Bible. They all say and write Jewish Bible or Tanach/Tanakh. Somehow, Jewish bible gets 215 million hits in Google. Those-using it may not be able to publish entire books -- how many among us has published a book? -- but in my opinion, most of the 215 million hits represent real people who choose to us that term.

If a substantial number of the hits on "Jewish Bible" are garbage, then why shouldn't we think that a similar fraction of the hits on "Hebrew Bible" are also garbage and that the ratio of valid hits remains the same, 5 to 4 in favor of Jewish Bible.

I firmly believe all this entitles "Jewish Bible" to be listed as an alternative and in the first line, since its use far exceeds the use of Tanakh. Accuracy33 (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I meant the ordinary Google search results for both "Jewish Bible" and "Hebrew Bible" include garbage. That's why I discarded ordinary Google searches altogether as a useful measure for this purpose.

Your opinion about what most of the 215 millions hits represent is, just that, an opinion, but you aren't basing it on anything. My opinion, at least, is based on searches I've conducted over many years where results include bad readings by optical scanners and jumbles of words oriented toward search engine optimization—as well as results that don't actually match my query.

Did you include double quotes around the phrases you searched for? If you didn't, you'd have gotten every hit that has both "Jewish" and "Bible" in it regardless of whether they're together. For multi-word queries without double quotes, it often returns results with just one of them, which you know if you've ever seen a result displayed with the note that a particular word from your query isn't found on that page, and asking you if you want to include only results that have that word? In addition, I've found that even I do use double quotes, Google, trying so hard to be useful, does the opposite by finding results it thinks match what I really want at a deeper level, though it does give the exact matches first.

Did you page through the results you got? For "Jewish Bible", in my desktop browser, I got to page 35 of ten hits per page, at which point it said "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 349 already displayed." At least part of what this indicates is that there are often numerous copies of a given page out there or that a given page can be accessed through numerous URLs, which might differ from each other in such ways as social media referral parameters, page numbers, redirections, and so forth. Anyway, for "Hebrew Bible", I get as far as 379 hits before it tells me it's run out of distinct results.

Are these figures reliable? If so, then "Hebrew Bible" is more frequently found even by ordinary Google. If you believe not, then it means you too are skeptical of the results returned by ordinary Google searches.

I have to repeat, though, I'm still debating with you only which is in greater use, which would be relevant if we were talking about the title of the article. I already stated my agreement with you that it would make sense to include "Jewish Bible" as an alternate name. Largoplazo (talk) 16:01, 19 February 2026 (UTC)