Columbus and "44 books of the Old Testament"?

[Mangalore]

Christopher Columbus refers to “44 books of the Old Testament”. What were those books?
He quotes from the Vulgate also. Was the Vulgate arranged into 44 books? Are 1 and 2 Chronicles for instance counted as one book?

Thank you.

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

While I do not specifically know what arrangement of the Old Testament Columbus was referring to I will postulate a reasonable “educated guess.”
Traditionally the Book of Lamentations was included in the Book of Jeremiah. Other combinations of books that sometimes occurred were: Esther and Ezra; Nehemiah and Ezra; Ruth and Lamentations; Ruth and Judges.

St. Jerome, in fact, refers to the Jewish Scripture containing 22 or 24 books thus many of today’s separated books would have been considered the same book by Jerome. By the time of Columbus there would have been changes to the arrangements and combinations since the time of St. Jerome and these would have also varied by region.

While the Bible that Columbus would have used would have had all the books we use today, it would have combined some of them.