NEW TO THE BIBLE?
I am assuming that visitors to CCM.CO.ZA are somewhat familiar with the Bible, which is perhaps a dangerous assumption – if the Bible is something new to you, or if you have had very limited exposure to it, it might be a bit confusing once you pick it up to read.
So if you know nothing, or almost nothing, about the Bible, this is for you: a very basic introduction, just to help you find your way around.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The Bible is the authoritative book of the Christian faith. It tells the narrative of God's dealings with humanity, starting from creation until the future end of the world, and the creation of "a new heavens and a new earth".The word "Bible" comes from the Greek word "biblia", meaning "the books". It is actually a collection of 66 different books, written over a period of about 1,600 years by at least 40 different authors. In its current final form it consists of two parts:
The Old Testament, consisting of 39 individual books, and
The New Testament, consisting of 27 individual books.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
It consists of 39 books, and is also the holy book of the Jewish faith. Together with the New Testament it makes up the holy book of the Christian faith. The Old Testament was originally written (mostly) in Hebrew with a few portions written in Aramaic, and consists of three main sections:
· History:
It starts with the Law, the first five books, also known in the Jewish faith as the Torah (Instruction), containing the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which is mostly history, as well as the laws given to Israel by God.
Then follows more historical books, covering the history of old Israel from the time they settled in Palestine until about 400BC, when they returned from the Exile. It consists of the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemia.
· The Prophets:
It's subject matter is mostly prophecies, but it also contains historical sections. It is divided into the Major and Minor prophets, which basically refers to the length of the books (Major = long, Minor = shorter):
The Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
The Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
· The Writings:
Contains the books of Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes. Its subject matter is mostly "wisdom literature", but it also contains also some historical sections.
THE NEW TESTAMENT
It is the second part of the Christian Bible, and consists of 27 individual books. It was originally written in Koine ("Common") Greek in the first century AD, by at least 9 different authors, and consists of four main sections:
· The Gospels, which tells the story of Jesus from His birth until His ascencion into heaven: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
· The Acts of the Apostles, which tells the story of the Christian church and its growth, focusing strongly on the ministry of the apostle Paul, until about AD62. It was written by Luke, a medical doctor, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke.
· The Epistles, which are letters to churches and individuals, written by some of Jesus' apostles:
·· Paul wrote at least 13 epistles:
··· to churches: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and
··· to individuals: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon.
·· Other apostles wrote at least 7 epistles: James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2 & 3 John, and Jude.
·· It is uncertain who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews: No author is mentioned in the letter, and church tradition offers various possibilities, including Barnabas, Paul's companion on his first missionary journey.
· The Book of Revelation was written by the apostle John, and contains letters to seven first century churches, dictated to John by Jesus, and prophecies (foretellings) relating to the end of the world.
REFERENCING THE BIBLE
The writing process of the Bible books had a lot to do with its current form. The original manuscripts of all the Bible books were written by hand, on papyrus or parchment, and carefully copied through the ages, until the invention of the printing press by Gutenburg in around AD1440. Added to that, all the books were originally written as one continuous script with no internal divisions or markers, often without punctuation or spaces between words. These days we are taught the importance of "white space" in any piece of writing, but in ancient times that was a cardinal sin – when you were writing on a material that was hand-made from papyrus or animal skin, there was limited space available, and every bit of it had to be used to the fullest.Fortunately the readers (and copiers) of these ancient manuscripts knew most of its content by heart, memorising it from a young age; so if they wanted to share a particular sentence or two with an audience, the would roll the scroll to the place, or page the papyrus book to the place, and read it. Or show it.
But today.... If you've read something in the Bible, and you want to share it with someone, how do you tell them where to find it? You might say that it is in the book of Jeremiah, but where exactly in this long book?
Actuallly, it's easy for us. If you open any modern Bible, you will see that the books are divided into chapters, and the chapters are divided into verses. So it's easy to tell someone the sentence you want to share is in Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11. But it wasn't always like that – for more than a millenium after the completion of the Bible people just had the continuous books.
The first New Testament division into topical sections was done in the 4th century AD, but it was only in the year 1205 that Cardinal Stephen Langton had a bright idea and created the chapter divisions used today (sadly, credit for this often goes to a different person, Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro).
And then it took a few centuries for verses to be added. Most attribute the verse system of the Old Testament to Rabbi Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus's work in about AD1440, but the New Testament took a bit longer. The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was the Italian Dominican biblical scholar Santes Pagnino, but his system was never widely adopted.
Finally, in 1551, the Parisian printer Robert Estienne created another numbering in his edition of the Greek New Testament, which was also used in his 1553 publication of the Bible in French. Estienne's system of division was widely adopted, and it is this system which is found in almost all modern Bibles.
The first English Bible to use both chapters and verses was the Geneva Bible published in 1560.
And at last it was possible to refer to a Bible portion in a simple, easy-to-understand manner!
So today the most widely accepted method for referencing is Book chapter(numeral) : verse (numeral) – so our earlier example would be written as Jeremiah 29:11.
In this book we will use the following reference system:
References to chapters (Book names can written in full, mostly abbreviated):
Gen. 1 – refers to chapter 1 of the book of Genesis
Gen. 1-10 – refers to chapters 1 through 10 of the book of Genesis
References to verses:
Gen. 1:5 – refers to verse 5 of chapter 1 of the book of Genesis
Gen. 1:26a – refers to the first part of verse 26 of chapter 1 of the book of Genesis
Gen. 1:26b – refers to the second part of verse 26 of chapter 1 of the book of Genesis
Gen. 1:10-15 – refers to verses 10 through 15 of chapter 1 of the book of Genesis
Gen. 1: 7,24 – refers to verses 7 and 24 of chapter 1 of the book of Genesis
If you have any questions which should be answered in this sections, please send a mail with your suggestions to .