THE BIBLE

COLLECTION OF 66 BOOKS

This is a short treatise concerning the Bible. (Revised 2007)

The Bible as we know it has two parts. These are called The Old Testament and The New Testament.

These two parts comprise of the following:

Old Testament – 39 Books

New Testament – 27 Books

The Old Testament

The Old Testament consists of 39 books in total and was written mainly in Hebrew, Chaldee and Greek. Although some passages have been handed down to us in Aramaic.

It supposedly tells the story of The Creation of the world, history of the Jews and also their relationship with God.

The 39 books of the Old Testament are:

Genesis	I Kings	Ecclesiastes
Exodus	II Kings	The Song of Solomon	Obadiah
Leviticus	I Chronicles	Isaiah	Jonah
Numbers	II Chronicles	Jeremiah	Micah
Deutronomy	Ezra	Lamentations	Nahum
Joshua	Nehemiah	Ezekiel	Habakkuk
Judges	Esther	Daniel	Zephaniah
Ruth	Job	Hosea	Haggai
I Samual	Psalms	Joel	Zechariah
II Samual	Proverbs	Amos	Malachi

The New Testament

The New Testament was written in Greek and tells the story of Jesus, his beliefs, the relationship between God and all peoples, and that salvation comes from the belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The New Testaments of today are based on originals such as Sinaiticus (British Museum) and Vaticanus (Vatican Library).

In AD384 Pope Damasus ordered that there should be a standard or common version of the New Testament. This was done and called The Vulgate (Common Version). Today this version is still the authorised version for the Catholic Church. In 1384 the New Testament was translated into English by John Wyclif, for which you can still find versions of today.

The 27 books of the New Testament are as follows:

St. Matthew	Philippians	I Peter
St. Mark	Colossians	II Peter
St. Luke	I Thessalonians	I John
St. John	II Thessalonians	II John
Acts	I Timothy	III John
Romans	II Timothy	Jude
I Corinthians	Titus	Revelations
II Corinthians	Philemon
Galatians	Hebrews
Ephesians	James

The Gospels

(Good Tidings or Good News)

There are four gospels, and these are as follows:

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

At this moment in time I shall not go into detail with The Gospels, as these are a much-debated area on when or who wrote them.

The only thing I shall say on this area is that the Gospels themselves are believed by many to portray the Life, Teachings, Death and Resurrection of Jesus through the eyes of the author.

The Epistles

(Letters)

The epistles are letters, which are believed to have been written by a converted Jew called Paul. There are 21 Epistles in the New Testament.

These were written in order to give advice and encouragement to Early Christians, but today’s church considers them as written for all Christians irrelevant of which era.

Acts

One of the extra books in the New Testament. This is the book, which describes the early development of Christianity.

Revelations

The final book in the New Testament, and another of the extras. This is believed to be a vision of the End of Days and of the Second Coming.

Between 1947 and 1956 some ancient texts have been found at Qumran. These Qumran texts or as they are better known Dead Sea Scrolls have many scriptures, of which quite a large portion are to this day still being deciphered and translated. These texts show that a community that called themselves Essenes knew the stories of the New Testament. There is also evidence within these to suggest that Jesus himself may have actually been one. If this were so it would point out the fact that Jesus would have been well versed and acquainted with the stories of the Old Testament. This would then show that the ancient texts, which we base our translations on, may be just copies and that far older versions may have been in circulation. If this is so then the New Testament may have been written millennia before our known history of it and could even have been written in languages that we have yet to decipher. Also consider that we know that most books are written from a previous oral tradition, which would date the Old Testament even further into our past. So how old is the Old Testament, we may never know.

The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Hebrew, however there are various scrolls which are written in Greek and Aramaic. Aramaic was the language commonly used by Jews in Palestine between 2BC and 2AD

Written by Sage Robert Worrall

Sources & Credits:
The Holy Bible (King James Version)
The Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World Relgions 2001
The World's Religions - Understanding the Living Faiths - Readers Digest
Fortean Times Magazine
Times Newspapers

Copyright ORRAR - Can be freely distributed providing name of author and ORRAR are mentioned along with this agreement.

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