Initially published in 1534-35 with Hebrew text, Latin translation, and annotations in a folio format, it was reissued the following year as a quarto with the Hebrew text only. In this edition the translation is unchanged but the annotations are enlarged and improved, and a greater number of Jewish sources are cited. The translation and glosses are largely based, as acknowledged in the introduction, on the works of Hebrew Bible commentators, among them R. Abraham ibn Ezra, David Kimhi (Radak), Moses ben Nahman (Ramban), Rashi, the Targumim, and Elijah Levita (Bahur), the latter whom Muenster knew personally. Most of Muenster's comments are grammatical.

Muenster provides a systematic defense of the use of Jewish sources, both by him and other Christian-Hebraists, from criticism in both Catholic and Protestant circles, writing:
Many places in Scriptures are, indeed, obscure and perplexing so that they cannot be easily understood without the Hebrew tradition-however smart people today may growl. ... If this were true, that the Jews could not interpret Scriptures in the days of Rashi and before his days, from whom, I ask, did Jerome learn the interpretation of the Law and the Prophets? Not from the Jews? ... This one thing I know; There are many points in the commentaries of Jerome, which he asserts to have learned from the Jews, and which I have also found in R. Saloman.

His non-dogmatic approach and defense of Jewish learning notwithstanding, this is unquestionably a Christian work, as can be seen from the first page of the introduction. The Torah portion with Megillot and Muenster's annotations, but not his name, was reprinted by the Giustiniani press in 1551, the omission due to it being a Protestant work reprinted in a Catholic country. The Muenster Bible strongly influenced Tyndall and the development of the English King James Bible.

Born in Ingelheim, Muenster entered the Franciscan order in 1505. Turning to the study of Hebrew, he became a pupil of Conrad Pellicanus in Basle from about 1510 and of Elijah Levita, whose major grammatical works he translated and edited from 1525. Next to Johann Reuchlin Muenster was the outstanding Christian Hebraist of the 16th century. He taught Hebrew at Heidelberg (1524–28) and, by the time he was appointed professor of Hebrew at Basle University (1528), had become a Protestant. Unlike Pellicanus, Muenster was a prolific author and translator. He reissued Reuchlin's De rudimentis Hebraicis and published about 40 works, including Epitome Hebraicae grammaticae (1520); Institutiones Grammaticae in Hebraeam Linguam (Basle, 1524); Chaldaica Grammatica (Basle, 1527), the first Aramaic grammar by a Christian, based on the Arukh of Nathan b. Jehiel of Rome; a list of the 613 Command ments (Basle, 1533) culled from the Sefer Mitzvot Katan of Isaac b. Joseph of Corbeil; translations of Josippon, and of works by David Kimhi and E. Levita; and a grammar of rabbinic Hebrew (Basle, 1542). His outstanding Hebraica Biblia (2 vols, Basle, 1534–35), which is provided with an original Latin text independent of the Vulgate, represents the first Protestant translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. Like Paulus Fagius, Muenster translated into Hebrew the Apocryphal Book of Tobit (Basle, 1542), which later reappeared in the London Polyglot Bible (1654–57). His Hebrew version (with annotations) of the Gospel of St. Matthew ("Torat ha-Mashi'ah," Basle, 1537), dedicated to Henry VIII of England, was the first Hebrew translation of any portion of the New Testament. Muenster's use of Jewish polemical literature in the preparation of his Hebrew edition of Matthew outraged Guillaume Postel, who bitterly attacked his fellow Hebraist in the concluding section of his De orbis terrae concordia.... Muenster was also a mathematician, cosmographer, and cartographer. He annotated the Latin version of Abraham b. Hiyya's astronomical and geographical work, Zurat ha-Arez (Basle, 1546).

על-פי באזל 1535-1534, עם השערים וההקדמות, כולל התאריך רצ"ד בסוף ההקדמה העברית. הפירוש הורחב. בראש כרך א נוספו שני מפתחות, בלאטינית ובעברית. בסוף התורה נוסף תרגום לאטיני ל"מעלת משה". בסוף מלכים נוסף: בסדר עולם [רבה. ליקוטים מתוך] פרק יג-כב.