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The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Contents

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [1]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[2] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [3]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[4] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [5]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[6] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [7]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[8] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [9]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[10] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [11]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[12] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [13]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[14] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [15]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[16] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [17]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[18] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [19]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[20] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [21]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[22] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [23]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[24] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [25]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[26] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [27]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[28] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [29]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[30] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [31]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[32] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [33]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[34] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [35]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[36] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [37]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[38] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [39]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[40] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [41]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[42] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [43]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[44] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [45]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[46] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [47]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[48] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [49]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[50] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [51]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[52] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [53]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[54] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [55]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[56] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [57]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[58] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [59]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[60] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [61]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[62] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [63]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[64] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages worldwide, and it remains the most-widely distributed book in history; in terms of sales it has gone beyond calculation. The influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is enormous as well.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangment of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, begining with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojurn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finaly enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuence of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to the Christian community by the Apostle Paul.

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenburg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [65]

New Testament history

The New Testament was largely completed by A.D. 60. The oldest fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[66] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripedes, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).

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