The Contents of
the Bible
© 2003
© 2003
The word “Bible”
comes
from the Greek word biblia,
which
means “books” or, more literally,
“scrolls.”
A scroll is
a long sheet of
papyrus
rolled up to the middle. The Bible is a collection of small
‘books’ or
writings that originally circulated independently on scrolls, but were
later
collected
into a single volume after the invention of the codex
(pages bound together
along one edge like a modern book). The Christian Bible is made up of two main parts called the Old Testament and the New Testament respectively. What most Protestants call the Old Testament is the Bible of Jewish communities, although its contents are arranged differently. For Jewish communities, the Bible is made up of 24 books arranged into three sections: Torah (Instruction, or Teaching), Neviim (Prophets), and Kethuvim (Writings). Using the first letter of the Hebrew names of these three divisions, Jewish communities call this collection the (T-N-K). Since virtually all of the Tanak/Old Testament was written in Hebrew, many scholars use the neutral term when referring to these books.1
The Old Testament used by Catholics, Eastern
Orthodox
Christians, and a few Protestant groups contains six or seven books
(plus
some additions to the books of Esther and Daniel) that are not found
in
the Jewish Tanak or
the
Bibles used by most Protestants.
The
New Revised Standard Version (a popular translation of the Bible
required in many college classes) has the deuterocanonical / apocryphal
books in a separate section between the
Old and New Testaments.
These
additions
are found in the earliest known Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible,
but
not among the Hebrew documents that were eventually adopted by the
Jewish
community as the Tanak. In
many modern translations of the Bible these additional
books are included in a special section called the Deuterocanon by
those groups that
consider them scripture and the Apocrypha
by groups that do not.
While the first seven books of the bible appear in the same order in
both
Jewish and Christian bibles, the rest of the Hebrew Bible is organized
quite differently in the two faith traditions. Let’s now take
a
brief
look at the contents of each of the three main sections of the Hebrew
Bible
as used in Jewish communities.
The story begins with a prehistory telling the story from creation to the emergence the ancestors of Israel. It then tells the story of those ancestors up to the time of Moses, the greatest leader of Israel’s early history (and arguably, of all of Israel’s history). Moses leads the people out of captivity in Egypt, and encounters God at Mount Sinai where they receive God’s Law. They then wander in the wilderness for forty years at the end of which they are at the outskirts of the land that God has promised them, and Moses dies.
The books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers gather together almost all of Israel’s oldest legal material and religious customs. The setting is the experience with God at Mount Sinai. Much of this same material is recapitulated in the book of Deuteronomy, which ends the Torah.
The Latter Prophets consist of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (called the major prophets by Christians) and the Scroll of the Twelve (called the minor prophets by Christians). This section is very different in form from the Former Prophets. Rather than being in the form of a story, these books are collections of the words of Israel’s prophets who lived between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE (799-400 BCE). Much of the material in these books is poetry rather than the prose style found in the Former Prophets. Still, these books do include some short anecdotes about the prophets written in prose.
Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are history interpreted in light of Israel’s religious values, much like the Former Prophets. Perhaps for that reason these books are placed immediately after 2 Kings in Christian bibles.
Ruth and Esther are short stories. They do not say much about God, but are important stories that interpret significant values of the Jewish people. (Hauer and Young call them ‘edifying fiction.’) They are included along with Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations in the Megilloth, a collection of five festival scrolls to be read at important religious holidays.
Daniel is the only example of an apocalyptic work in the Tanak. Apocalyptic was an influential literary form that arose after the Babylonian conquest of Judah. It tended to be used in times when people were experiencing significant persecution, and it uses vivid imagery and striking symbolism. [The book of Revelation in the New Testament is the only other full-length apocalyptic work in the Christian bible.] Christians later came to see the book of Daniel as prophetic, and it is placed among the prophets in Christian Bibles, but it was not classified among the prophets in ancient Israel.
Like the gospels, the Acts of the Apostles tells a story. It takes up where the gospels leave off (with a resurrection appearances of Jesus) and gives an overview of the early spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. This history is interpreted in light of the activity of the Holy Spirit through the followers of the resurrected Jesus.
Most of the remainder of the New Testament consists of letters. While some of these documents are anonymous, most are connected in some way with the ministry of one of the earliest church leaders. Thirteen of them bear the name of Paul. Even some documents that may have originally been sermons or essays eventually became regarded as letters because this literary form was so popular (Hebrews, James, First John).
The New Testament Ends with the Revelation to John, the only full-length apocalyptic work in the New Testament.
In discussing the New Testament, we will look at how it influences the way Christians read the Hebrew Bible and at the role of the early church in selecting the documents which would become the second part of the Christian Bible.
Click on the note number below to go to the relevant note reference in the main text above.