The Tanach consists of 24 books, while the Christian Old Testament (excluding the deuterocanon/apocrypha) has 39 books; they both contain the same text but divide it into books differently: Jews often count as a single book what Christians count as several.
The Tanach is traditionally broken down into the Torah (The Law), Neviim (The Prophets) and Ketuvim (The Writings). A Haftorah is a selection from the Prophets which has traditionally been associated with a particular passage in the Torah. In the first century A.D., Masoretes? added vowel pointings to the text of the Tanach.
The Books of the Torah (the Law) are named after the first word in each book. The Torah consists of:
The books of Neviim? (The Prophets) are:
The Ketuvim (The Writings) are:
Even a cursory reading of the Torah makes it clear that it was being transmitted side by side with an oral tradition. Many terms and definitions used in the written law are totally undefined. Many fundamental concepts such as shekhita (slaughtering of animals in a kosher fashion), divorce and the rights of the firstborn are all assumed as common knowledge by text, and are not elaborated on. There are literally dozens of cases throughout the Torah where it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the details - from an unwritten (oral) tradition. In short, the Oral Law describes how to fulfill the Torah's commandments. It is explicated in a collection of rabbinic works collectively known as "the oral law". These works include the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the two Talmuds (Babylonian and Jerusalem), and the early Midrash compilations.
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