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A Brief Overview Of The Holy Bible
The Bible is the work of many prophets and inspired writers influenced by God. The Christian Bible is separated into 2 portions referred to as the Old and New Testaments. The first, the Old Testament, consists of the 39 books of the Hebrew Scripture thought to have been written at various times from the twelfth to the second century BC. Much of the content is believed to have been handed down from person to person for many generations. Hardly any manuscripts are claimed to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. In the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) the books were separated into 3 categories: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Law consists of the five books of the Torah which describe the origins of the Israelite nation as well as its laws and its covenant with the God of Israel. The Prophets contains the historic record of ancient Israel and Judah plus books of prophecy. The Writings are the poetic and philosophical writings like the Psalms and the Book of Job. This system was in accordance with the Jews’ assessment of the value of the books according to the identity of the author. The Old Testament is recognized by Christians as scripture. For the most part, it contains the same writings as the Hebrew Bible. However, the sequence of the writings isn't the same as that seen in Hebrew Bible. The Bible used in the Christian community is based on a different layout of the Old Testament books and was set up by a Greek translation called Septuagint. In this case the writings are classified based on subject type, such as historical, poetical, and prophetical. The other portion of the Holy Bible is called the New Testament (N.T.), and is really a set of 27 books. The New Testament. is made up of writings belonging to the Apostolic age, chosen by the Church and regarded as having the same sanctity and authority as the Jewish scriptures. The books of the N.T. were initially written in Greek. They are composed of the 4 Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles (or letters) of Paul (arranged with respect to length, except Hebrews); the general epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude; and the Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse or Revelation of John. During the three centuries after the first century establishment of Christianity, Church Fathers gathered Gospel accounts and letters of apostles and put them into a Christian Bible that came to be referred to as the New Testament. Jesus Christ is the key figure in the New Testament. Pertaining to the word testament, the word testament is a translation of the Greek word diatheke, which is also translated as covenant or arrangement. The Old Testament or Old Covenant is the law that was presented to Moses. The New Testament or New Covenant is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Old and New Testaments collectively are commonly called "The Holy Bible". The Bible utilized by most churches these days has 66 books-39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. There are a variety of other books, referred to as the apocrypha, that are generally not accepted as part of the standard cannon of the bible but used by some sects including the Catholic Church. The books known as Apocrypha typically have not been printed in the non-Catholic Bibles during the past century, although in recent times these books are actually gaining in popularity. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Robby has been teaching people about the Bible for years. If you would like to know more about the Bible or are interested in purchasing a bible, visit his website buy bibles online. |
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