The Bible (Hebrew: תנ״ך tanakh, Greek: η Βίβλος hē biblos, "the book") (sometimes The Holy Bible, Scripture, is the name used by Jews and Christians for their differing (and overlapping) canons of sacred texts. Roman Catholics include books which Protestants do not, Judaism accepts the old testament, not the new, Muslims may accept certain prophets. Roman Catholics have a different grouping for the ten commandments than Prostestants. Many people who identify themselves as Christians, Muslims, or Jews regard the Bible as inspired by God yet written by a variety of imperfect men over thousands of years. The concept that inspired men differed illustrates the difficulty in compelling a particular interpretation. Inspired men are not perfect men, implying that inspired texts are not perfect books. Wide variation of interpretation and acceptance of the accuracy and legitimacy of various books and passages remain. Strict literalist denominations of the Calvinist variety attempt to define God and compel a particular set of beliefs, elevating the text to practically an idol. Other more liberal denmoninations emphasize freedom of will and view the text as a people in history struggling to understand a living God. The more conservative literalist denominations interpret the term "Word" as a mandate to compel a fundamentalist interpretation of the text, while liberal denmoninations may interpret the term "Word" as a metaphor for Jesus; hence the name of God is the Word, not the book itself. Liberal free will denominations tend to give the teachings of Jesus greater weight, while more conservative literalists may not. Both views have clashed over the concept of sin, with strict Calvinist and Reformed denominations imposing the term "sin nature" for "flesh" on the English text impuning blame upon women and upon mankind, even though the phrase "sin nature" appears nowhere in the original language. Southern Baptists tend to accept the Calvinist assertion for "sin nature." On the other hand, liberal 'free will' denominations such as Methodists and Episcopalians, follow the Council of Trent's determination of sin as a "wounded nature" from Isaiah 1:6 "wounds," placing blame squarely upon evil and its attack on mankind (Matt 6:13), regarding the writer's intention as it was initially expressed, "infirmity of the flesh" (Gal 4:13-14 KJV), not the flesh itself. These divergent views of the Bible have fomented division throughout Christian history and continue to do so.
For Jews, the term Bible refers only to the Hebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh, which includes the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) as well as the books of the Prophets and Writings.
The Bible as used by the majority of Christians comprises the Hebrew Scripture, known to Christians as the Old Testament or First Testament; and the New Testament, which describes the life and message of Jesus.
For Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestants, the Deuterocanonical books (various writings important in the Second-Temple period of Judaism) are considered to be part of the Old Testament and as such part of the Bible. While Jerome included the Deuterocanonical books (such as Tobias, Sirach, and Wisdom) in the publication of the Vulgate or Latin Bible, he called these books the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha are those books present in the Greek Septuagint Old Testament but not found in Pharisaic Hebrew Scripture or the modern Hebrew Bible. Protestants beginning with Luther do not consider the Apocrypha to be divinely inspired, but "good for reading." Some books considered deuterocanonical by Orthodox Churches are considered apocryphal by other Orthodox Churches and/or Catholics.
The Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world. Both Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Bible have been translated more times and into more languages — more than 2,100 languages in all — than any other book. It is said that more than five billion copies of the Bible have been sold since 1815, making it the best-selling book of all-time. In some cities, the Bible is considered to be the most frequently stolen book. *
Because of Christian domination of Europe from the late Roman era to the Age of Enlightenment, the Bible has influenced not only religion but language, law and the natural philosophy of mainstream Western Civilization. The Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution in Europe and America brought skepticism regarding the divine origin and historical accuracy of the Bible. Some scholars continue to use the Bible as a historical document, as there are archeological sites that match biblical descriptions of events and places, including possible sites for Sodom and Gomorrah, and the ruins remaining after the fall of Jericho.
The term "Bible" is sometimes used to describe scriptures of other faiths. Thus the Guru Granth Sahib is often referred to as the "Sikh Bible", and the Qur'an is sometimes referred to as the "Muslim Bible".* After the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, it was sometimes known as the "Golden Bible" to those outside of Mormonism. The word "bible" is sometimes used to describe a book on a factual subject that is comprehensive and authoritative; some books making such a claim include "Bible" in their title (e.g., "PC Engine Software Bible; guitarists handbook or guitarists bible").
The Hebrew Bible (also known as the Jewish Bible, or תנ"ך, Tanakh in Hebrew) consists of 24 books. Tanakh is an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the Torah (Pentateuch), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings, or Hagiographia).
The five books are called pentatueach:
The Torah focuses on three moments in the changing relationship between God and people.
Traditionally, the Torah contains 613 mitzvot, or commandments, of God, revealed during the passage from slavery in the land of Egypt to freedom in the land of Canaan. These commandments provide the basis for Halakha (Jewish religious law).
The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions which are read in turn in Jewish liturgy, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, each Sabbath. The cycle ends and recommences at the end of Sukkot, which is called Simchat Torah.
The documentary hypothesis posits that the Written Torah has its origins in sources who lived during the time of the monarchy or later, labeled J (Yahwists), E (Elohim), D (Deuteronomists), and P (Priests). These in turn may go back to oral traditions and/or draw on (and sometimes parody) earlier ancient Near Eastern mythology. Julius Wellhausen, who in the late 19th century gave this hypothesis a definitive formulation, suggested that these sources were edited together or redacted during the time of Ezra, perhaps by Ezra himself. Since that time Wellhausen's theory has been widely debated by critical scholars (e.g. Yehezkel Kaufman). The general opposion to JEDP is as follows: There is no existing proof for a redactor ever having lived. Also, the division of what text fits into any particular division of JEDP is purely arbitrary and based mostly on the particular scholar's speculation.
Scholars who accept the documentary hypothesis differ as to whether these sources were or were not divinely inspired, and also differ over the nature and extent of their obligation to the 613 commandments and to the body of law represented in the Oral Torah. Nonetheless, each branch of Judaism recognizes both the Written and Oral Torahs as central to Jewish tradition, whether it be conceived of as sacred, national, or cultural.
According to Jewish tradition, Nevi'im is divided into eight books. Contemporary translations subdivide these into seventeen books.
The eight books are:
The Torah and the Nevi'im have an epical quality, although they have no human hero. Moses and David are, in many ways, antiheroes; one may consider the Children of Israel collectively to be the hero of the epic, or, if one must choose a single character, God.
Ketuvim contains eleven books:
Some time in the 2nd or 3rd century BC, the Torah was translated into Koine Greek, and over the next century, other books were translated (or composed) as well. This translation became known as the Septuagint and was widely used by Greek-speaking Jews, and later by Christians. It differs somewhat from the later standardized Hebrew (Masoretic Text). This translation was promoted by way of a legend that seventy separate translators all produced identical texts, indicating that the translation was divinely inspired.
From the 800s to the 1400s, Rabbinic Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes compared the text of all known Biblical manuscripts in an effort to create a unified, standardized text; a series of highly similar texts eventually emerged, and any of these texts are known as Masoretic Texts (MT). The Masoretes also added vowel points (called niqqud) to the text, since the original text only contained letters. This sometimes required the selection of an interpretation, since some words differ only in their vowels— their meaning can vary in accordance with the vowels chosen. In antiquity, variant Hebrew readings existed, some of which have survived in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea scrolls, and other ancient fragments, as well as being attested in ancient versions in other languages.
Versions of the Septuagint contain several passages and whole books beyond what was included in the Masoretic texts of the Tanakh. In some cases these additions were originally composed in Greek, while in other cases they are translations of Hebrew books or variants not present in the Masoretic texts. Recent discoveries have shown that more of the Septuagint additions have a Hebrew origin than was once thought. While there are no complete surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew texts on which the Septuagint was based, many scholars believe that they represent a different textual tradition ("vorlage") from the one that became the basis for the Masoretic texts.
Jews also produced nonliteral translations or paraphrases known as targums, primarily in Aramaic. They frequently expanded on the text with additional details taken from Rabbinic oral tradition.
The Bible as used by the majority of Christians comprises the Hebrew Scripture, known to Christians as the Old Testament or First Testament; and the New Testament, which relates the life and teachings of Jesus, the letters of St Paul and other disciples to the early church and the book of Revelation.
For Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestants, the Deuterocanonical books (various writings important in the Second-Temple period of Judaism) are considered to be part of the Old Testament.
There are many different translations of the Bible in current use.
There are among Christians wide differences of opinion as to whether particular incidents as described in the Bible are to be interpreted as literal history or whether they are mythologized history or pure mythology, and as to what meaning should be attached to various prophecies.
However Christians in general are in agreement as to the Bible's basic message. A general outline, as described by C.S. Lewis, is as follows:
A number of deuterocanonical books which are part of the Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew Bible are often referred to as the Apocrypha. Most modern Protestant traditions do not accept the Apocrypha as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them until around the 1820s. However, most other Christians (including members of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches) include the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes seven such books (Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch), as well as some passages in Esther and Daniel. Various Orthodox Churches include a few others, typically 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, 1 Esdras, Odes, Psalms of Solomon, and occasionally 4 Maccabees.
Some scholars believe in Aramaic primacy — that parts of the Greek New Testament are actually a translation of an Aramaic original, in particular, the Gospel of Matthew. Of these, a small number accept the Syriac Peshitta as representative of the original. The idea that the original language of the New Testament was not entirely Greek also comes from Bishop Papias of Phrygian Hierapolis who wrote Five books entitled, Exposition(s) of the Lord’s Report(s) (written somewhere around 150 AD).Paul Allan Mirecki, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 1, p. 624 There is no extant copies of the works in question, but there is fragments of his work from quotations and allusions made by men like Eusebius, an early Church father who quotes Papias as having said the following:
Logia here is Greek and is being translated as “word(s) the Lord.”
Erasmus was a Roman Catholic, but his preference for the textual tradition represented in Byzantine Greek text of the time rather than that in the Latin Vulgate led to him being viewed with suspicion by some authorities of his church.
The first edition with critical apparatus (variant readings in manuscripts) was produced by the printer Robert Estienne of Paris in 1550. The type of text printed in this edition and in those of Erasmus became known as the Textus Receptus (Latin for "received text"), a name given to it in the Elzevier edition of 1633, which termed it the text nunc ab omnibus receptum ("now received by all"). Upon it, the churches of the Protestant Reformation based their translations into vernacular languages, such as the King James Version.
The discovery of older manuscripts, such as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, led scholars to revise their opinion of this text. Karl Lachmann’s critical edition of 1831, based on manuscripts dating from the fourth century and earlier, was intended primarily to demonstrate that the Textus Receptus must finally be rejected. Later critical texts are based on further scholarly research and the finding of papyrus fragments dating in some cases from within a few decades of the composition of the New Testament writings. It is on the basis of these that nearly all modern translations or revisions of older translations have, for more than a century, been made, though some still prefer the Textus Receptus or the similar "Byzantine Majority Text".
It has been theorized that the canonical status of some books was discussed between 200 BC and AD 100, though it is unclear at what point during this period the Jewish canon was decided. Protestants cite the Jewish canon, among other reasons, as their basis for not including the deuterocanonical books (known as the Apocrypha to Protestants) in their canon.
To the books accepted by Judaism as canonical, Christianity subsequently added those of the New Testament, the 27-book canon which was finally fixed in the 4th century. Catholicism mostly considers certain deuterocanonical books to be part of the Old Testament, though Protestantism in general accepts only the books in the canon of Judaism as part of the Old Testament and uses the term Apocrypha for the deuterocanonical books. Thus, the Protestant Old Testament has a 39-book canon—the number varies from that of the books in the Tanakh (though not in content) because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books as part of the canonical Old Testament.
Canonicity is distinct from questions of human authorship and the formation of the books of the Bible; which are issues of higher criticism and textual criticism.
The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible.
Early Christians produced translations of the Hebrew Bible into several languages; their primary Biblical text was the Septuagint. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.
The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.
Pope Damasus assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official bible. The Douay-Rheims New Testament, a direct translation of the Latin Vulgate, was first published by the English College at Rheims in 1582 A.D. The Douay-Rheims Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay in 1609 A.D. The first King James Version was published in 1611. More recently, the New American Bible was first published in 1970.
The work of Bible translation continues, including by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators (wycliffe.org), New Tribes Missions (ntm.org) and the Bible Societies. Of the world's 6,900 languages, 2,400 have some or all of the Bible, 1,600 (spoken by more than a billion people) have translation underway, and some 2,500 (spoken by 270m people) are judged as needing translation to begin (www.vision2025.org). The gender-neutral bible translations has caused controversy.
The Hebrew Masoretic text contains verse endings as an important feature. According to the Talmudic tradition, the verse endings are of ancient origin. The Masoretic textual tradition also contains section endings called parashiyot, which are indicated by a space within a line (a "closed" section") or a new line beginning (an "open" section). The division of the text reflected in the parashiyot is usually thematic. The parashiyot are not numbered.
In early manuscripts (most importantly in Tiberian Masoretic manuscripts, such as the Aleppo codex) an "open" section may also be represented by a blank line, and a "closed" section by a new line that is slightly indented (the preceding line may also not be full). These latter conventions are no longer used in Torah scrolls and printed Hebrew Bibles. In this system the one rule differentiating "open" and "closed" sections is that "open" sections must always begin at the beginning of a new line, while "closed" sections never start at the beginning of a new line.
Another related feature of the Masoretic text is the division of the sedarim. This division is not thematic, but is almost entirely based upon the quantity of text.
The Byzantines also introduced a chapter division of sorts, called Kephalaia. It is not identical to the present chapters.
The current division of the Bible into chapters and the verse numbers within the chapters have no basis in any ancient textual tradition. Rather, they are medieval Christian inventions. They were later adopted by many Jews as well, as technical references within the Hebrew text. Such technical references became crucial to medieval rabbis in the historical context of forced debates with Christian clergy (who used the chapter and verse numbers), especially in late medieval Spain. Chapter divisions were first used by Jews in a 1330 manuscript, and for a printed edition in 1516. However, for the past generation, most Jewish editions of the complete Hebrew Bible have made a systematic effort to relegate chapter and verse numbers to the margins of the text.
The division of the Bible into chapters and verses has often elicited severe criticism from traditionalists and modern scholars alike. Critics charge that the text is often divided into chapters in an incoherent way, or at inappropriate rhetorical points, and that it encourages citing passages out of context, in effect turning the Bible into a kind of textual quarry for clerical citations. Nevertheless, the chapter divisions and verse numbers have become indispensable as technical references for Bible study.
Stephen Langton is reputed to have been the first to put the chapter divisions into a Vulgate edition of the Bible, in 1205. They were then inserted into Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the 1400s. Robert Estienne (Robert Stephanus) was the first to number the verses within each chapter, his verse numbers entering printed editions in 1565 (New Testament) and 1571 (Hebrew Bible).**
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