What on earth is the “Tanakh”?
It’s a Hebrew word. Specifically, the Hebrew word for the Books of The Old Testament. Another way to translate it would be “the Hebrew Bible”.
But, where did the word come from originally? Well, it’s actually an acronym. Hebrew words didn’t have vowels, so the original word in Hebrew was TNK. Each of those letters comes from the name of a section of The Old Testament. When brought together, they spell TNK, which eventually became pronounced and spelled as “Tanakh”.
The first letter, “T” ,came from the Torah. Torah is the name for the first five Books of the Bible. It literally means “instruction” or “teaching”.
Next, we have the letter “N”. This came from the Nevi’im. The Nevi’im is the section of The Old Testament containing most of the prophetic and historical Books. Nevi’im literally means “the prophets”.
And finally, we’ve got “K”. We get this letter of the acronym from the Ketuvim, which just means “the writings”. Basically, the Ketuvim are just the “other” category of Books in the Hebrew Bible. It’s got some poetry Books, some songs, some wisdom, some prophets, and some history.
Torah (T) + Nevi’im (N) + Ketuvim (K) = TNK = TaNaKh
So, that all adds up to give us the whole of The Old Testament. But, the Hebrews also had another word to refer to the Tanakh.
Miqra literally means “that which is called out”. However, you have to remember that until relatively recently, most people could not read and write. Because of this, the Hebrew Bible would have to be read aloud to an audience. So, it can also be translated “that which is read”. In either case, the word Miqra is another common word to refer to the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament.