What is in the Bible?

The Bible is in a sense a single book, for the word 'Bible' comes from the Greek and Latin words for book or books. But within the set of covers that we call our Bible, there are collected together 66 individual books: 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. The Old Testament is written mostly in Hebrew, the language of the Jewish people (with a few parts in Aramaic). The New Testament is written entirely in Greek, the common language of the time.

For ease of reference to a particular passage, each of these books has a name or title and is now broken down into chapters and each chapter further divided into verses. So John 3.16 for example, refers to verse 16 of chapter 3 of the book of John. Most Bibles have a Contents page at the beginning (where else?) that is really helpful to locate the individual books that you're not familiar with. The chapters and verses in each book did not exist in the original writings, but were only added in much later. Sometimes the points at which the chapters and verses divide the text are not very helpful. The headings that are found in some Bibles were also added by translators and were not part of the original text.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The 39 Old Testament books were written over a long period of time, perhaps as much as 1000 years, from about 1500 BC to the middle of the fifth century BC. The books include historical accounts, lists of laws, poetry, songs, prophecy and other types of writing. These accounts were not collected together merely because they were thought to be of historical interest, but because they were believed to show how God was at work in and through his people Israel.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

The 27 New Testament books were written over a period of about 50 years. The exact dates for all of them are not known, but the earliest probably dates from some time in the 40s AD. Four books are effectively biographies of Jesus – called Gospels. The author of one of the Gospels, Luke, also wrote an account of the early church and its preaching, called the Acts of the Apostles. One book, called Revelation, is a highly symbolic account of the end of the world. The rest of the books are letters written to various Christian churches with encouragement, criticism and advice, many being written by Paul, who was one of the most important early Christian missionaries.