BIBLE

The bible is the holy book of the Christians and Jews. It consists of the Old and the New Testaments. In the Old Testament, God makes a covenant (agreement) with His chosen people, the Jews, if they love and obey Him, he will protect them. In the New

Testament ta new covenant is established through the life and death of Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament, of 39 books, contains most of the Jewish scriptures. The first five books are known as the Pentateuch of the Law, containing, as it does, a collection of various codes of law. The prophets include the books of Kings and Isaiah, and are regarded as less sacred than the Law. The remaining books constitute the Writings. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew except for parts of Ezra and Daniel, which were in Aramaic. The earliest complete Hebrew manuscript dates from the ninth century, but the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contain much of the Old Testament, are much earlier.

The New Testament consists of 27 books. The first four books are the Gospel describing Jesus Christ’s life and teaching. The Acts of the Apostles provides a short history of early missionary activity. Then follow 21 Epistles, or letters, most of them by St. Paul and finally the book of prophesy, Revelation.

The New Testament is written in Greek. The earliest papyrus fragments date from the third or fourth centuries. Two complete manuscripts, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, date from the fourth century.

The first great translation of the bible was the Vulgate by St. Jerome. The Roman Catholic Church still uses this version. The main Greek translation of the Old Testament is the Septuagint. After a number of partial translations, John Wycliffe directed a complete translation from the Vulgate into English in the 1300’s. William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament in 1525 was the basis for the Authorized or King James Version of 1611. The Bible, or parts of it, has been translated into more than 1,300 languages and dialects. More than 100 million bibles, New Testament, or selections from them are sold each year.

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