In what ways does the Protestant Old Testament differ from the Jewish books?

Answer 1

1) The order of the books is different.

2) In the Jewish Tanakh (Bible), 1&2 Samuel is one book, 1&2 Kings is one book, 1&2 Chronicles is one book, Ezra& Nehemiah is one book, and the twelve Minor Prophets (Hosea to Malachi) are one book.

3) The main difference is that the Jewish books are in the original language (Biblical Hebrew, with a few chapters of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic). Translations are by definition unauthorized and insufficient, since they cannot begin to convey the emotions which are alluded to by the cantillation-notes of the Hebrew text, or its multi-layered meanings.

Answer 2

1) The order of the books is different.
2) In the Jewish Tanakh (Bible), 1&2 Samuel is one book, 1&2 Kings is one book, 1&2 Chronicles is one book, Ezra& Nehemiah is one book, and the twelve Minor Prophets (Hosea to Malachi) are one book.
3) The main difference is that the Jewish books are in the original language (Biblical Hebrew, with a few chapters of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic). Translations are by definition unauthorized and insufficient, since they cannot begin to convey the emotions which are alluded to by the cantillation-notes of the Hebrew text, or its multi-layered meanings. See also the Related Links.

Link: More about the Hebrew Bible

Link: Jewish history timeline

Answer 3

In addition to what my colleague Dan Galilee notes, I would like to simply add that some of the contents of the Protestant Bibles are mistranslations that have accumulated over time and have retained theological significance. The most commonly referenced is the mistranslation of the Hebrew word "almah" in Isaiah 7:14 as "virgin" due to the Greek intermediary "parthenos" being used. "Almah" refers to a young woman without making a claim as to her sexual activity and the Isaiah prophecy refers to a particular young woman in his vicinity. However, this mistranslation has served to buttress the claim of Jesus' parthenogenic birth being prophesied and has therefore remained, regardless of strong scholarly evidence that this is a bad translation.