“Old Testament or Hebrew Bible?” asks Claude Mariottini, reacting to an op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune. Apparently, Tribune reader Dick Nugent complained about the paper’s use of the term “Old Testament” in reports and stories related to Judaism.

Timothy J. McNulty, author of the op-ed piece and public editor of the Tribune, declared at the end of the column that he prefers the term “Old Testament”—get this—”for its clarity”!

What?

The term “Old Testament” is anything but “clear.” In order to be “clear,” one must add an adjective to the phrase: Protestant Old Testament, Catholic Old Testament, Greek Orthodox Old Testament, Slavonic Old Testament, Ethiopic Orthodox Old Testament … and perhaps I’ve missed one or more that are floating around out there. Unless we make the dramatically unwarranted assumption of canonical homogeneity among Christians, we actually muddy the waters when we use the phrase “Old Testament” without qualification. In my home church, I do use the term “Old Testament,” because I can assume that everyone knows what I mean. Outside of that context, however, I need a term that is more specific.

Some people have suggested the term “First Testament,” but if clarity is our desideratum, “First Testament” is surely no improvement. And if one is worried about Christian supercessionism, “First” inherently demands a “Second” counterpart (if it were an “only child,” it wouldn’t be called “first”) no less than “Old” inherently demands a “New” counterpart. And it’s not just the adjectives—the very use of the word “Testament” for a body of literature is both historically and theologically Christian, making any “[Adjective] Testament” phrase ideologically loaded and essentially inappropriate for use in contexts where one is trying to describe Jewish scriptures.

In general, I think that ideological motives lie behind the common acceptance of the term “Hebrew Bible,” rather than a desire for clarity. I appreciate those ideological motives and agree with them, but as McNulty noted in his op-ed piece, “Hebrew Bible” is not quite accurate because parts of the “Hebrew” Bible are written in Aramaic.

Personally, I prefer the term “Tanakh.” For those who don’t know, the name “Tanakh” derives from an acronym built from the three large divisions of the scriptures in traditional Judaism: the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), the Nevi’im or Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of Twelve Prophets [known to Christians as the "minor prophets"]), and the Kethuvim or Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Qoheleth [Ecclesiastes], Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles). Admittedly, this term suffers from the fact that its less familiar than most of the others in circulation. However—to go back to McNulty’s op-ed—if clarity is the goal, then “Tanakh” is the hands-down winner; since the name is just an abbreviation of the table of contents, broadly speaking, there’s no question as to which books are included. The Tanakh’s table of contents is not variable among the different strands of Judaism in the same way that the Old Testament’s table of contents is variable among the different strands of Christianity. There are indeed different traditions about the order of the books in the Tanakh, but the identification of those books and their groupings into Torah, Nevi’im, and Kethuvim are stable. Also, “Tanakh” does not rely on a linguistic designator, and thus avoids confusion when someone learns that there are Aramaic sections in the so-called “Hebrew Bible” (it’s a bit like thinking you’re reading a Spanish Bible and finding a book and a half in Portuguese).

For these reasons, I am a tireless advocate for the term “Tanakh.” Claude wrote that he prefers “Old Testament” for theological reasons, and that’s his privilege. But if clarity is the goal, no term is better than “Tanakh.”