Bible

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A Latin Bible handwritten in 1407 AD.
A Latin Bible handwritten in 1407 AD.

The Bible is a collection of short books recording the history of the world, the Jewish people, the life of Jesus, and the early Christian Church. It is unique in that it contains 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament written by 40 different authors over 1500 years. [1] No other book in history is as popular, or as revered, nor as diverse in context as the lives of those who wrote it.

Creationists hold a number of views regarding the reliability of the Bible, ranging from strict inerrancy to substantive accuracy. However, all creationists agree that the Bible is history, not mythology or allegory, because the text itself is so obviously historical in style and content unless otherwise implied within the text through a historical-grammatical exegesis.

Due to its being prized as the coveted word of God, the Bible has been better preserved, and translated into more languages, than any other book in history. Original manuscripts can be found in the oldest written languages on Earth, and it also contains one of the longest running genealogical sequence known to exist, spanning approximately 4000 years. There is simply no other book in existence that offers a better chronological record of the early history of the Earth.

Contents

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in an ancient Phoenician seaport called Byblos, which was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of writing material based on the papyrus or byblos reed, used extensively in antiquity for making scrolls and books. The Greek word biblos was based upon this, and it came to be the word for book (a small book was termed biblion), and by the 2nd century, A.D. Greek Christians had called the Scriptures ta Biblia (τα βιβλία the books), which was transferred to Latin by dropping the ta; the word made its way to Old French where the plural was dropped in favor of the singular, hence becoming the English word Bible.[2][3][4]

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum.
11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum.

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, known as the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangement 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, beginning with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojourn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finally 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. The Minor Prophets are considered a single book in the Nevi'um; in Christianity they have been split into twelve separate books and named for their authors.

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 is named as the author of many 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 continuance of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection. Of the authors, only Matthew and John had met Jesus; they were among His disciples during His earthly ministry. Mark was a companion of Peter, and his gospel was the first to be written down, about A.D. 50. Luke is considered the author of both his gospel and the Acts.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to various early Christian communities by the Apostle Paul.

Paul has been attributed by many as the author of Epistle to the Hebrews due to internal evidence within the work, but several others, such as Barnabas, Luke, and Apollos are also claimed to be the author. The controversy, however, does not affect the genuiness of the epistle.[5]

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation, also called The Apocalypse, 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

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In I_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; this is variously thought to have taken place in 961 BC or 1015 BC, making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1446 BC or 1491 BC. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1406 BC or 1451 BC. 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.[6]

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 BC. 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 BC to AD 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 BC

Around 200 BC 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[7] 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:

There is a great deal of overlap between the Apocrypha section of the 1611 King James Bible and the Catholic deuterocanon, but the two are distinct. The Apocrypha section of the King James Bible includes, in addition to the deuterocanonical books, the following three books, which were not declared canonical by Trent:

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]

Early New Testament history

In I_Timothy 5:8 Paul quoted as scripture

“ The laborer is worthy of his hire. ”

This line is found nowhere else in the Bible except Matthew 10:10 and Luke 5:7 . In 2_Peter 3:15-16 , Peter classes Paul's letters with "other scriptures". Both lines are indicative of the writing down and general use of the New Testament prior to A.D. 60.[10] Spurious "gospels" which are known to have appeared by A.D. 100, make references to the New Testament. Clement of Rome, writing in his own letter to the Corinthians in A.D. 95, refers to Matthew, Luke, Corinthians, Hebrews, 1st Timothy, and 1st Peter.[11]

The oldest surviving New Testament fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52) 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, Euripides, 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.

The Vulgate

Jerome, a Latin scholar deeply interested in the study of the Scriptures, completed the second edition of the Bible in the Latin language. The Vulgate was meant to replace the inaccuracies of the earlier Vetus Latina, the standard Bible of the early Catholic Church. Jerome had moved to Jerusalem in 382, and set to work on what eventually became a fresh translation of the Bible from the Greek of the Septuagint to translating the New Testament into Latin; from 390-405 he decided to re-translate his Old Testament directly from the Hebrew then in use by the Jewish community. The Vulgate had a marked influence in church history, and remained the standard Latin Bible in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries; such was the length of time in use that it was finally replaced by the Nova Vulgata in 1979.

Gutenberg's Bible

Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany invented the first mechanical printing press in 1448. His machine consisted of a large press which when cranked down, pressed a sheet of paper upon a platform in which were set thousands of inked metal letter typefaces (called "movable type"), set in place to read for a particular page. The first book in history printed by this method was the Gutenberg Bible, in the Vulgate version, of which 180 were printed, and approximately 50 survive today in varying conditions around the world. The Gutenberg Bible marked another first: Bibles could be mass produced to get into the hands of many more people at a lower cost than if they were printed by hand.

Wyclif's Bible

The first translation of the Bible into English was made under the supervision of the English cleric John Wyclif in the 1380's, with the assistance of Nicholas Hereford and John Purvey. Wyclif held that the Bible should be placed directly in the hands of the people, but was this was opposed by the English Church hierarchy of his day; indeed, one of Wyclif's opponents, Henry Knighton, compared giving the Bible to the people in English to "casting pearls before swine". Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury promulgated a ban on all English Bibles in 1407, and possession of one was considered evidence of heresy.

Wyclif's was a scholarly translation, based on the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts, but was found to be unweildy due to its adherence to Latin grammar (in which, for instance, verbs tend to be at the end of sentences). A second Wycliffite translation was prepared late in this period, which avoided this problem, but due to the fact that it could only be distributed in manuscript form, it was an expensive volume. Outside of the nobility and gentry, it was more common to see only a single Gospel, or a copy of the Psalms, than an entire Bible, which cost more than the average working person could earn in a year.

Over the next century, its form of English gradually became antiquated, leading English Protestants such as William Tyndale to feel that an entirely new translation was needed.

Tyndale

During the middle of the 16th century there was a renewed sense of the need to get the Bible directly into the hands of the common man; prior to that the Bible was restricted to readings in the Church alone. The Reformers were a group of people who were shocked at the differences between what the Roman Catholic Church was practicing as opposed to what the Bible stated can or cannot be done (this was one of the causes of the Reformation). At great cost to themselves, the Reformers began the work of translating the Bible in the various languages of Europe; the printing press would ensure the newly-translated Bibles would be mass-produced.

William Tyndale was committed to getting the Bible in the hands of his English countrymen. Expressing open defiance of the Pope, Tyndale declared that if God would spare his life he would make it possible for even an ordinary farmer to know more about the Scriptures than the Pope. [12] Tyndale's translation of the New Testament was completed by 1525, by April, 1526, 6,000 copies were printed and delivered to England. Official opposition led to the destruction of most of them. Nevertheless, the printing press rendered it impossible to completely suppress such a book, and new copies were printed and smuggled into England Tyndale was arrested and charged with heresy for his efforts on May 21, 1536, and was executed the following year.[13][14]

Tyndale's New Testament definitely influenced England's clergy and probably was the main impetus behind the Reformation in England.[14] Even in the year that Tyndale was executed, King Henry VIII began suppressing the Catholic monasteries in his realm.

Geneva Bible

In 1553, Queen Mary I, or "Bloody Mary," had 300 Reformers executed. Eight hundred more Reformers fled to Europe, and gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, then known as John Calvin's "Protestant Rome."[15] There they set about creating an English-language version of the entire Bible, and one that would have no ties to any monarch, whether in England or elsewhere in Europe. Among the men involved in this project were William Whittingham, Miles Coverdale, Christopher Goodman, Anthony Gilby, John Knox, and Thomas Sampson.[14]

The Geneva translators avoided the Latin Bible version, or Vulgate, and sought access to the oldest and most authentic Hebrew and Greek manuscripts they could find. Their research benefited, ironically, from the Fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, an event that had forced many Christian clerics to flee the fallen city of Constantinople with their manuscripts in hand.

First Edition

In 1557, Whittingham produced a revised edition of Tyndale's original New Testament. Then in 1560 the reformers produced the first edition of the Geneva Bible. This they dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, who by then had succeeded to the throne after the death of her sister, "Bloody Mary." Under Elizabeth's patronage, the Geneva Bible became the Bible of choice not merely for clergy but also for laity.[14]

Later Editions

From the beginning, the Geneva Bible was a study Bible, richly annotated and illustrated. The 1599 edition had the most extensive annotations of any of the Geneva Bibles, and a table of interpretations of (mainly Old Testament) proper names.

The Geneva Bible was highly popular in England, and indeed the Jamestown expeditionaries carried it to America in 1607. Likewise, the Pilgrims carried it with them to the Netherlands, where they had fled, and then to what later became their Plymouth colony (in modern Massachusetts) in 1620.

In 1604, shortly after his own accession to the throne, King James I commissioned his own version of the Bible, that would later come to be known as "The Bishop's Bible" or, more commonly, the Authorized Version. James' motive for promulgating his own version was simple: he did not want the people to have in hand a Bible with all the marginal notes that the Geneva Bible had. Nevertheless, ninety percent of the KJV text is in full accord with that of the Geneva Bible, as a side-by-side comparison will readily show. The Geneva Bible eventually fell out-of-print and has not been available until recently.[13]

King James Version

Main Article: King James Version

In 1604 King James I selected forty-seven of the ablest scholars in England to undertake the creation of a standard Bible in English, based upon careful translations of the Masoretic Text used by the Jewish community, and the best Greek translations (especially the Textus Receptus) then available. The scholars were divided into six committees in Oxford, Westminster, and Cambridge, with each scholar had dedicating himself to doing a portion of the Bible, often consulting each other to check the flow and harmony of the work in progress. The result was the 1611 King James, or Authorized, Version.

The effects of the King James Version were profound. Using less than 2,500 different words in it's vocabulary, this Bible was written in a poetic style matched by few. The work influenced the writings of Shakespeare. John Milton has numerous images taken from this Bible in his Paradise Lost. The direct style of writing caused it to be easily available to the common man. Poets and writers, such as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and many others were deeply inspired by it. It had altered the course of English history, with England growing to a world power since the book's publication; when asked by a visiting dignitary what made England great, Queen Victoria pulled out her copy of the Bible and declared "This is the secret of England's greatness."

Today, the Bible is available in many versions across the English-speaking world, and has been translated into nearly every language on Earth, including the current translation into a recently-created language from the fictional world of Star Trek, Klingon.[16] The past two decades saw the emergence of internet use; the creation of the Bible as a software program was inevitable, and several, such as E-Sword and Theophilos, are available at no cost with a wealth of Bible-study material as well.

The following table lists the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are linked to the searchable index at BibleGateway.com

Table of Books

Old Testament

New Testament

Bible Versions

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References Cited

  1. ↑ Slick, Matthew J. "The Bible." Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, 1995. Accessed January 8, 2008.
  2. ↑ Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Handbook, Moody Press, Chicago, IL, 1967, p. 143. See also Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL, 1966.
  3. ↑ Moulton, James H., and others. A Grammar of New Testament Greek (two volumes), edited by Wilbert Francis Howard, T&T Clark Publishers, Harrisburg, PA (1985); originally published 1920, Edinburgh, Scotland.
  4. ↑ Blass, Frederich, and others. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and other early Christian literature, translated by Robert W. Funk; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL (1961); German edition Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch Friedrich Rehkopf, editor, 14th edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976.
  5. ↑ Unger, op. cit., p. 748
  6. ↑ Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA, 1926, p. 11.
  7. ↑ Unger, op. cit., p. 70.
  8. ↑ An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Henry Barclay Swete, Cambridge University Press, 1914, Part II, Chapter III, Section 6, [1], "Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah were regarded by the Church as adjuncts of Jeremiah, much in the same way as Susanna and Bel were attached to Daniel. Baruch and the Epistle occur in lists which rigorously exclude the non-canonical books; they are cited as 'Jeremiah' (Iren. v. 35. I, Tert. scorp. 8, Clem. Alex. paed. i. 10, Cypr. testim. ii. 6); with Lamentations they form a kind of trilogy supplementary to the prophecy."; The Canon of Trent specifies "Ieremias cum Baruch" (Jeremiah with Baruch).
  9. ↑ Agard, Bill and Margaret. "History of the Bible." Accessed January 8, 2008.
  10. ↑ Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1965, pp. 741-742
  11. ↑ Halley, op. cit., p. 743
  12. ↑ Bynum, E. L. "The Story of William Tyndale." Lubbock, Texas: Tabernacle Baptist Church, n.d. Accessed January 8, 2008.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lillback, Peter A., DeMar, Gary D., Federer, William J., et al. 1599 Geneva Bible: The Holy Scriptures Contained in the Old and New Testaments. White Hall, WV, USA: Tolle Lege Press, 2006. 1400 pp., cloth. ISBN 0975484699. Also available in black (ISBN 0975484613) and calfskin (ISBN 0975484621) leather-bound editions.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Foster, Marshall. "The History and Impact of the Geneva Bible." 1599 Geneva Bible, op. cit., pp. xxiii to xxvi.
  15. ↑ Authors unknown. "John Calvin (1509-1564)" Switzerland Is Yours, Micheloud and Cie, 2006. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  16. ↑ Wilson, Kevin, co-ordinator. "Klingon Bible Translation Project." January 31, 2004. Accessed January 8, 2008.

Additional Reference

  • Bauer, Walter. Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Scriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Litteratur. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, editors; 6th edition. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, Germany (1988). Heading βιβλίον, columns 281-82.

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