What Is THe Bible?
The Bible can be defined as “the collection of books recognized and used by the Christian church as the inspired record of God’s revelation of himself and of his will to mankind” (Douglas & Tenney, 2011). It has a long and complicated history, as it was written over a span of 1,400 years by several different authors and none of the original documents exist today. For Protestants (Christian non-Roman Catholics) this collection is usually further defined as 66 books, composed of the Old Testament (39 books) and New Testament (27 books). These 66 books are not the only books used by Christians, as other churches in other parts of the world include additional writings in their Bible canons. (A bible canon is “the corpus of scriptural writings that is considered authoritative and standard for defining and determining “orthodox” religious beliefs and practices”; [Freedman, 1992]). In fact, the narrowest canon exists in the Protestant tradition. (The Ethiopian Orthodox tradition has the widest [Berry, 2016]). Regardless, the Bible remains the best-selling book of all time ("Best-selling book", 2021).
A decent approach to understanding the Bible is to examine its history. It was originally written in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, then hand-copied and handed down to the next generation through the work of scribes. This dedicated, meticulous, and very time-consuming work was done by a group of people with varying copying abilities; thus mistakes abounded. Errors that resulted from accidentally omitted words, smudged ink, and misread letters were repeated by the next scribe. Furthermore, some words were intentionally changed—one would hope, with good intention. Therefore, no two copies of any particular book were ever identical. Still, this work was crucial as it was the only means of preserving and reproducing the ancient writings. Individual churches hired scribes for this important task, and whatever copy they were able to produce, whether good or bad, functioned as their Scripture (McDonald, 2011). It wasn’t until the invention of the printing press (1436) did this change, which was centuries after the closing of the New Testament canon (4th century). Therefore, the Bibles that we have today, thousands of years old with an unparalleled editorial history, must be read and studied in faith.
What Is The Old Testament?
The Old Testament is the first collection of the Protestant Bible (currently listed as Genesis - Malachi in modern editions). The Protestant Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible, which Jews refer to as the Tanak, though its arrangement is different from what Protestant Bible readers are used to.
The Tanak is divided into three catagories: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
The Law
The books that make up the Law are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are also referred to as the Pentateuch. Though it’s referred to as “The Law,” much of it includes narrative as it covers the time period from creation to the end of the life of Moses, the attributed author of these books.
The Prophets
The books that make up the Prophets are: Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel (single book), 1-2 Kings (single book), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahun, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The Writings
The books that make up the Writings are: Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra/Nehemiah (single book), and 1-2 Chronicles (single book).
Old Testament Canons
The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church include additional books in their canons besides the 39 listed above. These books are known as the Deuterocanon, or “second canon.” These books are not in the Hebrew Bible but are in the Septuagint (Hassler & Mangum, 2016), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible which was widely used and recognized by the early church. Protestants generally label these as the Apocrypha.
The Apocrypha
The list of books included in the Apocrypha vary.
Bible Translations
The need for Bible translations has been apparent since ancient times. To date, it has been translated, at least partially, into over 3,400 languages ("Our Impact | Wycliffe Bible Translators", 2022). Below is a list of Bible translations that were instrumental to the advancement of Christianity and played a major role in the history of the Church.
The Septuagint
The Septuagint (often referred to as the LXX) is one of the earliest translations of the Bible. It is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was prepared in second century BC for Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, Egypt who wanted to understand the ancient Hebrew Scriptures (Metzger, 2001). The Septuagint is an important translation to be familiar with as many of the New Testament quotations are actually taken from the Septuagint, not the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament). The Septuagint is also the translation of the Hebrew Bible that the early church used and thus it shaped their theology (Law, 2013).
Additional Works
Throughout the history of the Church, there have been numerous additional works that at one time were considered to be Scripture but are no longer included in modern Bibles.
REFERENCES
Barry, John D. “Canon, Books in Codices,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
Best-selling book. Guinness World Records. (2021). Retrieved 13 February 2022, from https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction.
Douglas, J. D.; Merrill C. Tenney. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Premier Reference Series) (p. 198). Zondervan Academic.
Freedman, David Noel ed., “Canon,” The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 837.
Hassler, Mark A. and Mangum, Douglas, “Old Testament,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
Law, Timothy Michael; When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4.
McDonald, L. (2011). The Biblical Canon (p. 4). Baker Academic.
Metzger, Bruce Manning. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 15.
Our Impact | Wycliffe Bible Translators. Wycliffe.org.uk. (2022). Retrieved 13 February 2022, from https://www.wycliffe.org.uk/about/our-impact/.