t important rabbinic writings include the following:
Caution: The DSS contain both biblical and non-biblical texts, but neither the Pseudepigrapha, nor the writings of Philo, Josephus, the Rabbis, or any other "Intertestamental Literature" is considered "biblical" by anyone, although some of this literature contains "biblical commentaries."
Old Testament (OT) - A collection of 53, or 49, or 46, or only 39 ancient Jewish books (depending on which Bible you have), including the history of God's interactions with the people of Israel and related literary works from ancient Judaism. Although Jesus, his disciples, and the first few generations of Jewish Christians spoke Aramaic and used the Hebrew Bible (HB), the vast majority of early Christians spoke Greek (including the four Evangelists, Paul, and all other NT authors); thus, they read and quoted from the Septuagint (LXX) version of the ancient Jewish Scriptures. Some 2nd-century Christians thought that the God of the OT was so different from the God and Father of Jesus that they wanted to throw away the HB and replace it with the Gospels and writings of the Apostles. Most early Christians, however, used the newer Christian writings (eventually called "New Testament") in addition to the Jewish Scriptures (which were contrasted as the "Old Testament"). Some modern scholars refer to the OT as the "First Testament," in contrast to the NT as the "Second Testament." Just like the LXX version of the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian OT is divided into four categories:
Orthodox vs. Catholic vs. Protestant Versions of the OT - Some of the Eastern Orthodox Churches today include up to 53 books in their Old Testament, based on the largest version of the Septuagint. By the late Middle Ages, however, the Western Church (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church, but before the Protestant Reformation), had accepted only 46 books in its Old Testament (including the "Deuterocanonical" books of Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, and Baruch, but omitting such books as 1 & 2 Esdras, 3 & 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151, etc.). In the early 16th century, however, Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers noticed that their Bibles contained several books that were not in the Hebrew Bibles used by their Jewish neighbors ("the Synagogue down the street," so to speak). Since they knew the OT was originally the Bible of the Jewish people, Luther decided to remove those extra books from his Bible (calling them "Apocrypha"), thus reducing the number of OT books to 39. The Protestant Reformers did not, however, go back to the arrangement of the HB, but retained the same order and categorization of the OT books as found also in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, based on the LXX version of the ancient Jewish scriptures (see my Comparative Chart of Jewish and Christian Bibles). Thus, it is totally wrong to say that the Catholic Church (and/or the Eastern Orthodox Churches) added some extra books to the Bible. Exactly the opposite is true: the Protestant reformers were the ones who removed several books that were part of the OT from the very beginnings of Christianity (recall that the LXX was composed around 250 BCE!).
New Testament (NT) - A collection of 27 early Christian writings composed by various authors from the middle of the 1st to very early 2nd centuries CE; it is sometimes called the "Second Testament," especially by Jewish scholars, in contrast to the "First Testament" (the HB).
Book of Revelation (not plural!) - also called "The Apocalypse." A book containing seven short letters addressed to the "Churches of Asia," and a long series of highly symbolic "visions" attributed to a certain man named "John," culminating in the destruction of all evil and the establishment of "a new heaven and a new earth," and "the new Jerusalem."
Non-Canonical Early Christian Literature:
NT Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha - refers broadly to other early Christian writings of various genres that were not accepted into the New Testament, even though many are attributed (falsely) to an apostolic figure; some (but far fr