The Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, is divided into three parts: (1) the five books of the Torah ("teaching" or "law"), comprising the origins of the Israelite nation, its laws and its covenant with the God of Israel; (2) the Nevi'im ("prophets"), containing the historic account of ancient Israel and Judah plus works of prophecy; and (3) the Ketuvim ("writings"): poetic and philosophical works such as the Psalms and the Book of Job.
The Christian Bible is divided into two parts. The first is called the Old Testament, containing the (minimum) 39 books of Hebrew Scripture, and the second portion is called the New Testament, containing a set of 27 books. The first four books of the New Testament form the Canonical gospels which recount the life of Christ and are central to the Christian faith. Christian Bibles include the books of the Hebrew Bible, but arranged in a different order: Jewish Scripture ends with the people of Israel restored to Jerusalem and the temple, whereas the Christian arrangement ends with the book of the prophet Malachi. The oldest surviving Christian Bibles are Greek manuscripts from the 4th century; the oldest complete Jewish Bible is a Greek translation, also dating to the 4th century. The oldest complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic text) date from the Middle Ages.
During the three centuries following the establishment of Christianity in the 1st century, Church Fathers compiled Gospel accounts and letters of apostles into a Christian Bible which became known as the New Testament. The Old and New Testaments together are commonly referred to as "The Holy Bible" (). The canonical composition of the Old Testament is under dispute between Christian groups: Protestants hold only the books of the Hebrew Bible to be canonical; Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox additionally consider the deuterocanonical books, a group of Jewish books, to be canonical. The New Testament is composed of the Gospels ("good news"), the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles (letters), and the Book of Revelation.
Middle Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen. bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek ta biblia ta hagia, "the holy books".
The word itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of bublos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books (the Septuagint). Christian use of the term can be traced to ca. AD 223.
The Torah comprises the following five books: # Genesis, Ge—Bereshith (בראשית) # Exodus, Ex—Shemot (שמות) # Leviticus, Le—Vayikra (ויקרא) # Numbers, Nu—Bamidbar (במדבר) # Deuteronomy, Dt—Devarim (דברים)
The Torah focuses on three moments in the changing relationship between God and the Jewish people. The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Hebrew patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel)—and Jacob's children—the "Children of Israel"—especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from their liberation from slavery in Ancient Egypt, to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.
The Torah contains the commandments of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate amongst Jewish scholars as to whether these were all written down at one time, or over a period of time during the 40 years of the wanderings in the desert). These commandments provide the basis for Halakha (Jewish religious law). Tradition states that there are 613 Mitzvot or 613 commandments. There is some dispute as to how to divide these up (mainly between the rabbis Ramban and Rambam).
The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions which in the Jewish liturgy are read on successive Sabbaths, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy. The cycle ends and recommences at the end of Sukkot, which is called Simchat Torah.
According to Jewish tradition, the Nevi'im are divided into eight books. Contemporary translations subdivide these into twenty-one books.
The Nevi'im comprise the following eight books:
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The Ketuvim comprise the following eleven books, divided, in many modern translations, into twelve through the division of Ezra and Nehemiah:
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Orthodox Judaism continues to accept the Oral Torah in its totality. Masorti and Conservative Judaism state that the Oral Tradition is to some degree divinely inspired, but disregard its legal elements in varying degrees. Reform Judaism also gives some credence to the Talmud containing the legal elements of the Oral Torah, but, as with the written Torah, asserts that both were inspired by, but not dictated by, God. Reconstructionist Judaism denies any connection of the Torah, Written or Oral, with God.
The article Jewish commentaries on the Bible discusses the Jewish understanding of the Bible, including Bible commentaries from the ancient Targums to classical Rabbinic literature, the midrash literature, the classical medieval commentators, and modern day Jewish Bible commentaries.
Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of one or both of these "Testaments" of their sacred writings—most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.
Significant versions of the English Christian Bible include the Douay-Rheims, the RSV, the KJV, and the NIV. For a complete list, see List of English Bible translations.
In Judaism, the term Christian Bible is commonly used to identify only those books like the New Testament which have been added by Christians to the Masoretic Text, and excludes any reference to an Old Testament.
The Old Testament is accepted by Christians as scripture. Broadly speaking, it contains the same material as the Hebrew Bible. However, the order of the books is not entirely the same as that found in Hebrew manuscripts and in the ancient versions and varies from Judaism in interpretation and emphasis (see for example Isaiah 7:14). Christian denominations disagree about the incorporation of a small number of books into their canons of the Old Testament. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Peshitta, and the English King James Version.
A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Evangelicals and those of the Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until around the 1820s. However, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes:
In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:
Some other Eastern Orthodox Churches include:
There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.
The Anglican Churches uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.
General Epistles, also called Jewish Epistles
Revelation, or the Apocalypse Re
The order of these books varies according to Church tradition. The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Protestant tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.
The autographs, the Greek manuscripts written by the original authors, have not survived. Scholars surmise the original Greek text from the versions that do survive. The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.
During the Protestant Reformation, certain reformers proposed different canonical lists to those currently in use. Though not without debate, see Antilegomena, the list of New Testament books would come to remain the same; however, the Old Testament texts present in the Septuagint but not included in the Jewish canon fell out of favor. In time they would come to be removed from most Protestant canons. Hence, in a Catholic context, these texts are referred to as deuterocanonical books, whereas in a Protestant context they are referred to as the Apocrypha, the label applied to all texts excluded from the biblical canon but which were in the Septuagint. It should also be noted that Catholics and Protestants both describe certain other books, such as the Acts of Peter, as apocryphal.
Thus, the Protestant Old Testament of today has a 39-book canon—the number of books (though not the content) varies from the Tanakh because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books(51 books with some books combined into 46 books) as the canonical Old Testament. The Orthodox Churches recognise 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 in addition to the Catholic canon. Some include 2 Esdras. The Anglican Church also recognises a longer canon. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is often used as being synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, since the surviving scriptures in Hebrew include only those books, while Catholics and Orthodox include additional texts that have not survived in Hebrew. Both Catholics and Protestants have the same 27-book New Testament Canon.
The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in , "all Scripture is inspired of God".
Belief in sacred texts is attested to in Jewish antiquity, and this belief can also be seen in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention Divine agency in relation to prophetic writings, the most explicit being: "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."
In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix wrote: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record." Most evangelical biblical scholars associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture. A minority even within adherents of biblical literalism extend the claim of inerrancy to a particular translation, e.g. the King-James-Only Movement.
The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version by itself, there are words which are traditionally read differently from written (sometimes one word is written and another is read), because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.
The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint or (LXX). In addition, they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ge'ez and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.
The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.
Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome in AD 382. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and in 1546 at the Council of Trent was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Rite.
Especially since the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations for many languages have been made. The Bible has seen a notably large number of English language translations.
+ Bible translations, worldwide | Number !! Statistic |
6,900 | Approximate number of languages spoken in the world today |
1,300 | Number of translations into new languages currently in progress |
1,185 | Number of languages with a translation of the New Testament |
451 | Number of languages with a translation of the Bible (Protestant Canon) |
The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and the Bible society.
There are a wide range of interpretations of the existing Biblical archaeology. One broad division includes Biblical maximalism that generally take the view that most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is essentially based on history although presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible a purely post-exilic (5th century BC and later) composition. In any case, even accepting Biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the Babylonian captivity of the 6th century onward have a basis in history.
On the other hand, the historicity of the biblical account of the history of ancient Israel and Judah of the 10th to 7th centuries BC is disputed in scholarship. The biblical account of the 8th to 7th centuries is widely, but not universally, accepted as historical, while the verdict on the earliest period of the United Monarchy (10th century BC) and the historicity of David is far from clear. For this reason, archaeological evidence providing information on this period, such as the Tel Dan Stele, can potentially be decisive.
Finally, the biblical account of events of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, and the migration to the Promised Land and the period of Judges are not considered historical in scholarship.
Regarding the New Testament, the setting being the Roman Empire period in the 1st century, the historical context is well established. There has nevertheless been some debate on the historicity of Jesus, but the mainstream opinion is clearly that Jesus was one of several known historical itinerant preachers in 1st-century Roman Judea, teaching in the context of the religious upheavals and sectarianism of Second Temple Judaism.
Category:Greek loanwords Category:Judeo-Christian topics
af:Bybel als:Bibel am:መጽሐፍ ቅዱስ ang:Biblioþēce ab:Абиблиа ar:الكتاب المقدس an:Biblia arc:ܟܬܒܐ ܩܕܝܫܐ ast:Biblia ay:Biblia az:Bibliya bm:Bibulu bn:বাইবেল zh-min-nan:Sèng-keng ba:Библия be:Біблія bi:Baebol bar:Bibel bo:གསུང་རབ། bs:Biblija br:Bibl bg:Библия ca:Bíblia cv:Библи ceb:Bibliya cs:Bible ny:Baibulo sn:Bhaibheri tum:Baibolo co:Bibbia cy:Beibl da:Bibelen pdc:Biwwel de:Bibel dv:ބައިބަލް et:Piibel el:Αγία Γραφή es:Biblia eo:Biblio ext:Bíblia eu:Biblia ee:Biblia fa:کتاب مقدس fo:Bíblian fr:Bible fy:Bibel fur:Biblie ga:An Bíobla gd:Bìoball gl:Biblia gan:聖經 ki:Biblia gu:બાઇબલ hak:Sṳn-kîn ko:성경 ha:Baibûl haw:Paipala hy:Աստվածաշունչ hi:बाइबिल hsb:Biblija hr:Biblija io:Biblo ig:Akwụkwọ Nsọ ilo:Biblia bpy:বাইবেল id:Alkitab ia:Biblia ie:Bible os:Библи xh:IBhayibhile zu:IBhayibheli is:Biblían it:Bibbia he:ביבליה jv:Alkitab kl:Biibili kn:ಬೈಬಲ್ ka:ბიბლია csb:Biblëjô kk:Таурат және Інжіл kw:Bibel rw:Bibiliya ky:Библия rn:Bibiliya sw:Biblia ya Kikristo kg:Biblia ht:Bib ku:Kitêba Pîroz lad:Biblia koi:Библия lo:ພະຄຳພີ la:Biblia lv:Bībele lb:Bibel lt:Biblija li:Biebel ln:Biblíya lg:Baibuli lmo:Bibia hu:Biblia mk:Библија mg:Baiboly ml:ബൈബിൾ mt:Bibbja mr:बायबल arz:الكتاب المقدس ms:Alkitab cdo:Séng-gĭng mwl:Bíblia mn:Библи nah:Teōāmoxtli mrj:Библи na:Bibel fj:Ai Vola Tabu nl:Bijbel (christendom) nds-nl:Biebel ne:बाइबल ja:聖書 no:Bibelen nn:Bibelen nrm:Bibl'ye nov:Bible oc:Bíblia om:Kitaaba uz:Muqaddas Kitob (Xristian Dinida) pa:ਬਾਈਬਲ pap:Beibel pfl:Biewel pms:Bibia tpi:Baibel nds:Bibel pl:Biblia pt:Bíblia ty:Pipiria ksh:Bibel ro:Biblia rm:Bibla qu:Dyuspa Simin Qillqa ru:Библия sah:Биибилийэ sm:'O le Tusi Pa'ia sg:Bible sc:Bibbia sco:Bible stq:Biebel st:Bebele sq:Bibla scn:Bibbia si:ශුද්ධවූ බයිබලය simple:Bible ss:LiBhayibheli sk:Biblia sl:Sveto pismo szl:Biblijo srn:Bèibel sr:Библија sh:Biblija su:Alkitab fi:Raamattu sv:Bibeln tl:Bibliya ta:விவிலியம் te:బైబిల్ tet:Bíblia th:คัมภีร์ไบเบิล ti:መጽሓፍ ቅዱስ tg:Таврот ва Инҷил to:Tohitapu ve:Bivhili tr:Kitab-ı Mukaddes tk:Injil tw:Twere Kronkron uk:Біблія ur:بائبل ug:ئىنجىل vec:Bibia vi:Kinh Thánh fiu-vro:Piibli vls:Bybel war:Bibliyá wo:Biibël wuu:圣经 yi:ביבל yo:Bíbélì Mímọ́ zh-yue:聖經 diq:İncile bat-smg:Bėblėjė zh:聖經This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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