Bible - Books of the Bible

WWW Bible Gateway

The term prophet is derived from a Greek word meaning "to speak on behalf of." The prophets were ancient Israelites who spoke to the nation on behalf of God. In other words, they were preachers. Their purpose was not, as is often mistakenly assumed, to foretell the future. The prophets were men who interpreted Israel's behavior in the light of God's laws and frequently found reason to condemn that behavior. The prophets also declared that Israel would be punished for breaking the laws. A series of national disasters that befell Israel seemed to prove the merit of the prophetic warnings: Israel was conquered or subjugated in turn by Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome over a period of seven centuries.

This scroll contains the Book of ...

Ruth, Book of

Lamentations

Chronicles

The third section of the Bible of Judaism consists of a miscellaneous assortment of books that includes history, songs and hymns, poetry, stories, and wisdom literature. Unlike the books in the Law and Prophets sections, the Writings do not constitute a unity, but their very variety has made them useful in both Judaism and Christianity as aids in worship and for teaching purposes.

   The best-known and probably the most often used book among the Writings is Psalms (from the Greek word for "song"). It is a collection of hymns and songs dating from various periods in the history of Israel. The collection was assembled so that it could be conveniently used at worship services. The book is often called "Psalms of David," referring to the king of Israel in about 1000 BC (see David). It is now generally accepted by Biblical scholars that, while David may have written some of them, the authorship of most of them is unknown. The other books included in the Writings are: Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah (considered as two books in the Christian Old Testament), and Chronicles (also considered as two books).

   The books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes are books of wisdom, a literary form that flourished throughout the ancient Near East. There were two main types of wisdom literature: practical and speculative. Practical wisdom, of which Proverbs is an example, consisted of wise sayings, maxims, parables, and aphorisms. This kind of wisdom was used as a teaching device to instill in young students sensible attitudes for the conduct of life. Speculative wisdom, as found in Job and Ecclesiastes, explored issues such as the problem of good and evil, justice versus injustice, the sufferings of innocent people, and why the wicked are so often successful and prosperous.

   The books of Ruth and Esther are basically short stories that have a bearing on Israel during various periods of its history. Daniel is a composite of stories (chapters 1-6) and visions (chapters 7-12).

   The Song of Songs (also called Song of Solomon) and Lamentations are collections of poems. The Song of Songs is a collection of love poems, often ascribed to Solomon, king of Israel after his father David. Lamentations is a collection of five poems, mourning the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. At that time Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside were overrun by the armies of the Babylonian Empire (see Babylonia and Assyria).

   Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles are historical books. Both books are interpretations of the history of Israel. Chronologically the book of Chronicles precedes the material in Ezra-Nehemiah, but in the Hebrew Bible their order is reversed. This was probably done because Ezra-Nehemiah contains information found in no other book of the Bible, information that follows logically upon the material in the book of Kings. Chronicles, on the other hand, basically reiterates the material already told in other books. In the Christian Old Testament the two books are divided into First and Second Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah, and the four books are printed in that order.

For Christians, the Bible has two components--the Old Testament and the New Testament. To clarify the reason for having two testaments, it is helpful to think of the word testament in terms of one of its synonyms--"covenant." (The two parts of the Christian Bible are often called the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.) A covenant is an agreement or a contract. The chief teaching of the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible) is that God has made a covenant with the nation of Israel, beginning with a covenant He made with Abraham, the founder of Israel (see Abraham). Under the terms of the covenant God chose the people of Israel to be His special people, promised to make their nation great, gave them the Law (the Ten Commandments and many other statutes detailed in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), and demanded obedience from the people. The purpose of the covenant was to make Israel a "beacon light" by which all other nations would be enabled to become God's people. The promises God made to Israel were contingent upon Israel's complete loyalty to him.

The Old Testament was written by many authors over a period of many centuries. The New Testament was written by far fewer men over a much shorter span of years--perhaps between AD 50 and 150.

   After the earthly ministry of Jesus was over, his followers banded together in an organization that came to be called the "church," a word derived from the Greek kuriakon, meaning "the Lord's house." The church formulated as its mission the spreading of the message about Jesus to the civilized world. As the years passed, some members of the church began to write down the message. They wrote for several reasons: to make sure information was correctly preserved, to instruct believers, to exhort believers to keep the faith in difficult circumstances, and to make a record for coming generations.

A stained glass window depicts a ...

In the Book of Kells, the ...

Gospels

Mark, Saint

The word gospel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word godspell, meaning "good news." There are four Gospels in the New Testament--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--each presumably composed by one of Jesus' closest followers. The Gospels appear at first to be brief biographies of Jesus. While they do contain a wealth of information on the life of Jesus, they are really testimonies of belief about him. Beside recording what he said and did, they interpret the history of his ministry. The Gospels are biographical forms of proclamation of good news.

   Although appearing second in the order of New Testament books, Mark was the first Gospel written. It is also the shortest. Biblical scholars believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark, as well as other sources, to write their Gospels. These three, taken together, are called synoptic Gospels. Synoptic is a term of Greek origin meaning "viewed together." The three Gospels can be printed in parallel columns and their contents can be compared to see which passages appear in all of them and which material is peculiar to each of them.

Hebrews, Epistle to the

Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 21 are epistles; and of these 21 many were written by St. Paul. The names of his epistles, or letters attributed to him, are Romans, I and II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. This is the order of their arrangement in the New Testament. While the letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon were addressed to individuals, the others were sent to churches in various cities. All of these letters were later copied and circulated among the churches in the Roman Empire. It was the intent of the writer of the letters that they be read aloud in the churches, because the messages contain extensive interpretations of the Gospel, solutions to local problems in the churches, and sound advice about how the Christians were to live. Sometime before the end of the 1st century, most of Paul's letters were collected and circulated for general use in all the churches.

   The Letter to the Hebrews, at one time ascribed to Paul, is now generally accepted to be by some unknown Christian of the 1st century. More like a sermon than a letter, it is one of the best and most carefully constructed compositions in the New Testament. Addressed originally to Christians out of Jewish backgrounds, the book makes extensive use of Old Testament material to demonstrate that the ministry of Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

Revelation, Book of

The Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine, is the most colorful and imaginative work in the New Testament, as well as the most difficult to interpret. An apocalypse is a type of religious literature that has to do with the end of the world and the events that will take place before the end comes. The author of the book was probably a man named John, leader at the church of Ephesus in Asia Minor, who was banished to the island of Patmos, just off the coast. While on Patmos, John wrote Revelation for circulation among the churches in Asia Minor. Revelation got its name from the first verse in the book.

Jerome, Saint

The Old Testament is not the whole literature of Israel, nor is the New Testament the whole literature of early Christianity. Many other books with religious themes circulated among those of ancient Judaism and in the early church. Some of these books are called pseudepigrapha, a Greek term meaning "spurious writings." Among Judaism's pseudepigrapha are: The Letter of Aristeas, III and IV Maccabees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Testament of Job, the Life of Adam and Eve, the Psalms of Solomon, and the Assumption of Moses. The Christian pseudepigrapha include various gospels, books of acts, epistles, and revelations.

   There is another group of books, not included in the Hebrew Bible, that have been accepted into the Old Testaments of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. These books circulated in ancient Judaism, and many of them were very popular and widely read. For some reason they were never accepted by Judaism as authoritative, probably because they were not included in Hebrew versions of the text. This collection came to be called by the Jews the Apocrypha, a Greek term meaning "hidden things." In reference to the writings it has the connotation of books not meant for common use.

   Although not included in the Hebrew versions of the Bible, the Apocrypha was included in a translation of the Hebrew texts into Greek made at Alexandria, Egypt, beginning in the 3rd century BC. This translation, popularly called the Septuagint because of the legend that it had been made by about 70 scholars, became the Bible of the early Christians before there were any New Testament writings. In about AD 400, when St. Jerome made a Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible, he included the Apocryphal books (somewhat against his better judgment) because they had been in the Septuagint used by earlier Christians. These books thus found acceptance in both the Latin (Roman) and Greek churches. In the Bibles used in these churches, these books are found distributed throughout the Old Testament and are not considered Apocryphal as they are in Judaism, but as authoritative. Some modern editions of the Bible include these books as a separate section.

   The books in this collection are: I and II Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to the Book of Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or the Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach), Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three (or the Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Young Men), Daniel and Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, and I and II Maccabees. Of these 15 books, three are not recognized as authoritative by the Roman Catholic church: I and II Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh. This listing is based on compilations of the books under the title Apocrypha.

Two major discoveries of ancient texts in the 20th century have added considerably to the understanding of the development of both Hebrew and Christian Bibles. These are the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi collection. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the Palestinian desert beginning in 1947. They contain copies or remnants of almost all the Old Testament writings as well as hitherto unknown books and fragments (see Dead Sea Scrolls).

Of the vast literature that circulated in ancient Israel and in the early church, only a small number of works came to be included in the Bible. Those that were eventually included make up what is called the canon (from a Greek term for standard) of the Old and New Testaments. This meant that there was a consensus in both Judaism and Christianity concerning the authoritative books of their religions.

   From early in the 5th century BC the prestige of the prophets as national figures aroused interest in preserving their teachings in written form. The acceptance of the various books of the prophets was probably complete by the late 4th century BC.

   There were two chief reasons for the formation of a definitive New Testament canon. As the church moved from the 1st to the 2nd century, it was obvious that the oral tradition concerning Jesus and the work of the apostles was ending because the original witnesses were dying. And a number of sects and heresies (schools of doctrine) had emerged, each laying claim to the correct interpretation of the Gospel. Both of these factors made it imperative for the church to collect those writings that most accurately presented its message. The principles by which books were accepted as canonical were three: they had to have the authority of apostolic teaching in them; they had to present true doctrine; and they had to have been widely circulated.

None of the original Bible manuscripts exists. They were lost centuries ago, and the texts that are now in the Bible represent copies of copies that were handed down in a variety of translations over many generations. The most famous version of the Old Testament is a Greek translation, the Septuagint, made at Alexandria by about 70 Jewish scholars beginning in the 3rd century BC. Another famous ancient translation, including both testaments, is the Latin Vulgate (common, or vernacular) made by St. Jerome in about AD 400. Throughout the Middle Ages the Bible was translated and copied by hand, a process prone to error. It was only with the invention of printing in the late 15th century that fixed, invariable texts of the Bible could be published.

   The present versification of the Old Testament is based upon the work of a 15th-century rabbi. It was edited by Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah and published in Venice in 1524. The New Testament division into verses was done by a Paris printer, Stephanus, in 1551. His printed version of the Latin Bible in 1555 was the first edition to contain both testaments in the present chapter and verse forms.

   In the 20th century the Bible has often been updated--mainly to eliminate archaic translations and reflect contemporary usage. The American Standard Version of 1901 was followed by a rephrasing of the New Testament in 1946 and the Old Testament in 1952. Among the more than two dozen different English translations of the whole Bible published since then was the New Revised Standard Version (1990).