Old Testament Major Literary Divisions
The Old Testament was not organized into its major literary divisions by one single person or at one single moment. The arrangement developed gradually within Jewish and later Christian tradition.
In the Hebrew Bible, the traditional division is the Tanakh, an acronym for its three major sections: Torah (Law), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). This three-part structure emerged within ancient Judaism over time rather than through a known individual editor. By the time of the Second Temple period, these categories were already substantially recognizable, although the exact boundaries and order of some books developed gradually.
The Torah consists of Genesis through Deuteronomy and was regarded as the foundational section. The Prophets include what Jewish tradition calls the Former Prophets—Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings—and the Latter Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve. The Writings include books such as Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Five Scrolls, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
The familiar Christian divisions you are using for the Berean site—Pentateuch, Historical Books, Wisdom Literature, Major Prophets, Minor Prophets—come primarily from the Greek Septuagint and later Christian Bible tradition, rather than from the Hebrew Bible’s threefold arrangement.
The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures produced over several centuries beginning roughly in the third century BC, rearranged many books according to literary type and historical sequence. That organization strongly influenced later Christian Old Testaments. From this tradition developed the familiar grouping into Law, History, Poetry/Wisdom, and Prophecy.
The specific distinction between Major Prophets and Minor Prophets is also Christian terminology based mainly on book length, not importance. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were grouped as “major” because their books are longer, while the Twelve shorter prophetic books were grouped together as the “Minor Prophets.” In Jewish tradition, those twelve books were treated collectively as The Twelve.
So, for your Berean Bible Study structure, the categories you have just been building are best described as the traditional Christian literary divisions of the Old Testament, largely inherited from the Septuagint and subsequent Christian canonical ordering, rather than divisions created by Moses, Ezra, or a single council.
The important distinction is:
Hebrew/Jewish arrangement: Torah → Prophets → Writings
Traditional Christian literary arrangement: Pentateuch → Historical Books → Wisdom/Poetry → Major Prophets → Minor Prophets
Both contain essentially the same core Hebrew Scriptures in the Protestant Old Testament, but they arrange them differently and therefore subtly shape how the reader perceives the biblical story.