Jewish Old Testament Vs. Christian Old Testament

Q

I’ve been giving a Jewish woman at work some of the questions and prophecy studies from your site and a question came up that I couldn’t answer. Is our Old Testament the same as theirs?

A

Since the Torah is only the first 5 books of the Bible, I assume you meant the entire Old Testament. Although the content is pretty much the same, the number of books differs. The Jews don’t divide Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah and the Minor Prophets giving them a total of only 24 books.

The Christian Old Testament consists of 39 books because we do divide these books. Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are divided into first and second of each, Ezra and Nehemiah are separated, and the book called Minor Prophets by the Jews becomes Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi in the Christian Old Testament.