Tanakh is an acronym. Three Hebrew letters: tav, nun, kaf. The tav stands for Torah, the five books of Moshe. The nun stands for Nevi'im, the prophets. The kaf stands for Ketuvim, the writings. The three sections are the canonical divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures as the Jewish tradition has received and ordered them. Luke 24:44 records Yeshua using the same three-fold division: "the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms," Torah, Nevi'im, and the opening book of the Ketuvim standing for the whole.

What the Christian tradition calls the Old Testament, the Jewish tradition calls the Tanakh. The texts are the same texts. The ordering is different, and the ordering carries theological weight. The Hebrew order ends with Second Chronicles, which closes on the call to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the house of HaShem. The Christian order ends with Malachi, which closes on Elijah's coming and a warning of judgment. Same books, different final word. Reading the Hebrew in the Hebrew order changes which note the collection rings on as you close the last page.

The Scholar's Table uses Tanakh rather than Old Testament because the texts were written, collected, ordered, and read as Tanakh for more than a thousand years before a single Christian codex bound them differently. The word "old" in Old Testament is a claim about the texts that the Jewish tradition does not make and that the texts themselves do not make. The texts are not old. They are the Tanakh, the Scriptures Yeshua Himself read, quoted, and fulfilled.