Bible
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The Gutenberg Bible, the first printed Bible (mid-15th century)
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The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, 'the books') is a collection of religious texts, writings, or scriptures sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, Islam, Rastafari, and many other faiths. It appears in the form of an anthology, a compilation of texts of a variety of forms that are all linked by the belief that they are collectively revelations of God. These texts include theologically-focused historical accounts, hymns, prayers, proverbs, parables, didactic letters, admonitions, essays, poetry, and prophecies. Believers also generally consider the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration.
Those books that are included in the Bible by a tradition or group are called canonical, indicating that the tradition/group views the collection as the true representation of God's word and will. A number of biblical canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents from denomination to denomination.[1] The Hebrew Bible shares most of its content with its ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint, which in turn was the base for the Christian Old Testament. The Christian New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be Jewish disciples of Christ, written in 1st-century Koine Greek. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about what should be included in the canon, primarily about the biblical apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect or recognition.
Attitudes towards the Bible also differ among Christian groups. Roman Catholics, High Church Anglicans, Methodists and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of both the Bible and sacred tradition,[2][3] while many Protestant churches focus on the idea of sola scriptura, or scripture alone. This concept rose to prominence during the Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only infallible source of Christian teaching. Others, though, advance the concept of prima scriptura in contrast, meaning scripture primarily or scripture mainly.[2]
The Bible has had a profound influence on literature and history, especially in the Western world, where the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type.[4][5] According to the March 2007 edition of Time, the Bible "has done more to shape literature, history, entertainment, and culture than any book ever written. Its influence on world history is unparalleled, and shows no signs of abating."[4] With estimated total sales of over five billion copies, it is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time.[4][6][7] As of the 2000s, it sells approximately 100 million copies annually.[8][9]
Contents
1Etymology
2Development
3Textual history
4Hebrew Bible4.1Torah
4.2Nevi'im
4.3Ketuvim
4.4Original languages
5Samaritan Pentateuch
6Septuagint6.1Incorporations from Theodotion
6.2Final form
7Christian Bibles7.1Old Testament
7.2New Testament
7.3Development of the Christian canons
7.4Peshitta
8Divine inspiration
9Versions and translations
10Views10.1Other religions
10.2Biblical studies
10.3Higher criticism
11Archaeological and historical research
12Bible museums
13Gallery
14Illustrations
15See also
16Notes
17References17.1Works cited
18Further reading
19External links
Etymology
The English word Bible is derived from Koinē Greek: τὰ βιβλία, romanized: ta biblia, meaning "the books" (singular βιβλίον, biblion).[10] The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece.
By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups began calling the books of the Bible the "scriptures", and they referred to them as "holy", or in Hebrew, כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ (Kitvei hakkodesh), and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "the Holy Bible" (in Greek, τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια, tà biblía tà ágia) or "the Holy Scriptures" (η Αγία Γραφή, e Agía Graphḗ).[11]
The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books")[12] was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books" (the Septuagint).[13][14] Christian use of the term can be traced to c. 223 CE. The biblical scholar F. F. Bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.[15]
Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen. bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe.[16] Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια tà biblía tà hágia, "the holy books".[17]
Development
See also: Authorship of the Bible and Dating the Bible
The Bible is not a single book but a collection of books, whose complex development is not completely understood. The books began as songs and stories orally transmitted from generation to generation before being written down in a process that began sometime around the start of the first millennium BCE and continued for over a thousand years. The Bible was written and compiled by many people, from a variety of disparate cultures, most of whom are unknown.[18] British biblical scholar John K. Riches wrote:[19]
[T]he biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural, economic, and ecological – varied enormously. There are texts which reflect a nomadic existence, texts from people with an established monarchy and Temple cult, texts from exile, texts born out of fierce oppression by foreign rulers, courtly texts, texts from wandering charismatic preachers, texts from those who give themselves the airs of sophisticated Hellenistic writers. It is a time-span which encompasses the compositions of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Sophocles, Caesar, Cicero, and Catullus. It is a period which sees the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire (twelfth to seventh century) and of the Persian empire (sixth to fourth century), Alexander's campaigns (336–326), the rise of Rome and its domination of the Mediterranean (fourth century to the founding of the Principate, 27 BCE), the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and the extension of Roman rule to parts of Scotland (84 CE).
Hebrew Bible from 1300. Genesis.
Considered to be scriptures (sacred, authoritative religious texts), the books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the 5th century BCE. A second collection of narrative histories and prophesies, called the Nevi'im ("prophets"), was canonized in the 3rd century BCE. A third collection called the Ketuvim ("writings"), containing psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories, was canonized sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE. These three collections were written mostly in Hebrew, with some parts in Aramaic, and together form the Hebrew Bible or "TaNaKh" (a portmanteau of "Torah", "Nevi'im", and "Ketuvim").[20]
Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria and elsewhere in the Jewish diaspora considered additional scriptures, composed between 200 BCE and 100 CE and not included in the Hebrew Bible, to be canon. These additional texts were included in a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek (common Greek spoken by ordinary people) known as the Septuagint (meaning "the work of the seventy"), which began as a translation of the Torah made around 250 BCE and continued to develop for several centuries. The Septuagint contained all of the books of the Hebrew Bible, re-organized and with some textual differences, with the additional scriptures interspersed throughout.[21]
Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, 16th-century painting.
During the rise of Christianity in the 1st century CE, new scriptures were written in Greek about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who Christians believed was the messiah prophesized in the books of the Hebrew Bible. Two collections of these new scriptures – the Pauline epistles and the Gospels – were accepted as canon by the end of the 2nd century CE. A third collection, the catholic epistles, were canonized over the next few centuries. Christians called these new scriptures the "New Testament", and began referring to the Septuagint as the "Old Testament".[22]
Between 385 and 405 CE, the early Christian church translated its canon into Vulgar Latin (the common Latin spoken by ordinary people), a translation known as the Vulgate, which included in its Old Testament the books that were in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible. The Vulgate introduced stability to the Bible, but also began the East-West Schism between Latin-speaking Western Christianity (led by the Catholic Church) and multi-lingual Eastern Christianity (led by the Eastern Orthodox Church). Christian denominations' biblical canons varied not only in the language of the books, but also in their selection, organization, and text.[23]
Jewish rabbis began developing a standard Hebrew Bible in the 1st century CE, maintained since the middle of the first millennium by the Masoretes, and called the Masoretic Text. Christians have held ecumenical councils to standardize their biblical canon since the 4th century CE. The Council of Trent (1545–63), held by the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation, authorized the Vulgate as its official Latin translation of the Bible. The Church deemed the additional books in its Old Testament that were interspersed among the Hebrew Bible books to be "deuterocanonical" (meaning part of a second or later canon). Protestant Bibles either separated these books into a separate section called the "Apocrypha" (meaning "hidden away") between the Old and New Testaments, or omitted them altogether. The 17th-century Protestant King James Version was the most ubiquitous English Bible of all time, but it has largely been superseded by modern translations.[24]
Textual history
The books of the Bible were written and copied by hand, initially on papyrus scrolls. No originals survive, and the oldest existing scrolls are copies that were made centuries after the books were first written. The copies contained both errors and intentional changes, resulting in different versions of the books in circulation, ultimately diverging into distinct lineages, called "text families" or "text types". Over time, the individual scrolls were gathered into collections, but these collections had different scrolls, and different versions of the same scrolls, with no standard organization. By the 3rd century CE, scrolls were supplanted by early bound books called codexes, and collections of biblical books began being copied as a set.[25]
The Isaiah scroll, which is a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, contains almost the whole Book of Isaiah. It dates from the 2nd century BCE.
More than 220 Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947, which date between 250 BCE and 100 CE, are the oldest existing copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible of any considerable length. The Qumran scrolls attest to many different biblical text types. In addition to the Qumran scrolls, there are three major manuscript witnesses (historical copies) of the Hebrew Bible: the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. Existing complete copies of the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, date from the 3rd to the 5th centuries CE, with fragments dating back to the 2nd century BCE. The Masoretic Text is a standardized version of the Hebrew Bible that began to be developed in the 1st century CE and has been maintained by the Masoretes since the latter half of the first millennium CE. Its oldest complete copy in existence is the Leningrad Codex, dating to c. 1000 CE. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah maintained by the Samaritan community since antiquity and rediscovered by European scholars in the 17th century; the oldest existing copies date to c. 1100 CE.[26]
There are about 3,000 existing New Testament manuscripts, copied between the 2nd and 17th centuries. The manuscripts include papyri, over a hundred of which have been discovered in Egypt since 1890; about 300 great uncial codices, which are vellum or parchment books written in block Greek letters, mostly dating between the 3rd and 9th centuries CE; and about 2,900 minuscules, written in a cursive style (using connected letters) that superseded uncials beginning in the 9th century. These manuscripts differ in varying degrees from one another and are grouped according to their similarities into textual families or lineages; the four most commonly recognized are Alexandrian, Western, Caesarean, and Byzantine.[27]
Hebrew Bible
Tanakh
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Main article: Development of the Hebrew Bible canon
The Nash Papyrus (2nd century BCE) contains a portion of a pre-Masoretic Text, specifically the Ten Commandments and the Shema Yisrael prayer.
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible. It defines the books of the Jewish canon, and also the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and accentuation.
The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE,[28] and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century. The term "Keter" (crown, from the Arabic, taj) originally referred to this particular manuscript. Over the years, the term Keter came to refer to any full text of the Hebrew Bible, or significant portion of it, bound as a codex (not a scroll) and including vowel points, cantillation marks, and Masoretic notes. Medieval handwritten manuscripts were considered extremely precise, the most authoritative documents from which to copy other texts.[29]
The name Tanakh (Hebrew: תנ"ך) reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings").
Torah
Main article: Torah
See also: Oral Torah
A Torah scroll recovered from Glockengasse Synagogue in Cologne.
The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is also known as the "Five Books of Moses" or the Pentateuch, meaning "five scroll-cases".[30] Traditionally these books were considered to have been written almost entirely by Moses himself.[31] In the 19th century, Julius Wellhausen and other scholars proposed that the Torah had been compiled from earlier written documents dating from the 9th to the 5th century BCE, the "documentary hypothesis".[31] Scholars Hermann Gunkel and Martin Noth, building on the form criticism of Gerhard von Rad, refined this hypothesis, while other scholars have proposed other ways that the Torah might have developed over the centuries.[31]
Samaritan Inscription containing portion of the Bible in nine lines of Hebrew text, currently housed in the British Museum
The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books:
Genesis, Beresheeth (בראשית)
Exodus, Shemot (שמות)
Leviticus, Vayikra (ויקרא)
Numbers, Bamidbar (במדבר)
Deuteronomy, Devarim (דברים)
The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel) and Jacob's children, the "Children of Israel", especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at biblical Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.[32]
The commandments in the Torah provide the basis for Jewish religious law. Tradition states that there are 613 commandments (taryag mitzvot).
Nevi'im
Main article: Nevi'im
Books of Nevi'im
Former Prophets
Joshua
Judges
Samuel
Kings
Latter Prophets (major)
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Latter Prophets (Twelve minor)
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
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Nevi'im (Hebrew: נְבִיאִים, romanized: Nəḇî'îm, "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups, the Former Prophets (Nevi'im Rishonim נביאים ראשונים, the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Nevi'im Aharonim נביאים אחרונים, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets).
The Nevi'im tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, ancient Israel and Judah, focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the LORD God"[33] (Yahweh) and believers in foreign gods,[34][35] and the criticism of unethical and unjust behaviour of Israelite elites and rulers;[36][37][38] in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians followed by the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Former Prophets
The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and end with the release from imprisonment of the last king of Judah. Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover:
Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan (in the Book of Joshua),
the struggle of the people to possess the land (in the Book of Judges),
the people's request to God to give them a king so that they can occupy the land in the face of their enemies (in the Books of Samuel)
the possession of the land under the divinely appointed kings of the House of David, ending in conquest and foreign exile (Books of Kings)
Latter Prophets
The Latter Prophets are divided into two groups, the "major" prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, collected into a single book. The collection is broken up to form twelve individual books in the Christian Old Testament, one for each of the prophets:
Hosea, Hoshea (הושע)
Joel, Yoel (יואל)
Amos, Amos (עמוס)
Obadiah, Ovadyah (עבדיה)
Jonah, Yonah (יונה)
Micah, Mikhah (מיכה)
Nahum, Nahum (נחום)
Habakkuk, Havakuk (חבקוק)
Zephaniah, Tsefanya (צפניה)
Haggai, Khagay (חגי)
Zechariah, Zekharyah (זכריה)
Malachi, Malakhi (מלאכי)
Ketuvim
Main article: Ketuvim
Books of the Ketuvim
Three poetic books
Psalms
Proverbs
Job
Five Megillot (Scrolls)
Song of Songs
Ruth
Lamentations
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Other books
Daniel
Ezra–Nehemiah (Ezra
Nehemiah)
Chronicles
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Ketuvim or Kəṯûḇîm (in Biblical Hebrew: כְּתוּבִים "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy.[39]
The poetic books
Hebrew text of Psalm 1:1–2
In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stichs in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth").
These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stichs within verses. However, the beginning and end of the book of Job are in the normal prose system.
The five scrolls (Hamesh Megillot)
The five relatively short books of Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, the Book of Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot (Five Megillot). These are the latest books collected and designated as "authoritative" in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the 2nd century CE.[40]
Other books
Besides the three poetic books and the five scrolls, the remaining books in Ketuvim are Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah and Chronicles. Although there is no formal grouping for these books in the Jewish tradition, they nevertheless share a number of distinguishing characteristics:
Their narratives all openly describe relatively late events (i.e., the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of Zion).
The Talmudic tradition ascribes late authorship to all of them.
Two of them (Daniel and Ezra) are the only books in the Tanakh with significant portions in Aramaic.
Order of the books
The following list presents the books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most printed editions. It also divides them into three subgroups based on the distinctiveness of Sifrei Emet and Hamesh Megillot.
The Three Poetic Books (Sifrei Emet)
Tehillim (Psalms) תְהִלִּים
Mishlei (Book of Proverbs) מִשְלֵי
Iyyôbh (Book of Job) אִיּוֹב
The Five Megillot (Hamesh Megillot)
Shīr Hashshīrīm (Song of Songs) or (Song of Solomon) שִׁיר הַשִׁירִים (Passover)
Rūth (Book of Ruth) רוּת (Shābhû'ôth)
Eikhah (Lamentations) איכה (Ninth of Av) [Also called Kinnot in Hebrew.]
Qōheleth (Ecclesiastes) קהלת (Sukkôth)
Estēr (Book of Esther) אֶסְתֵר (Pûrîm)
Other books
Dānî'ēl (Book of Daniel) דָּנִיֵּאל
'Ezrā (Book of Ezra–Book of Nehemiah) עזרא
Divrei ha-Yamim (Chronicles) דברי הימים
The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14b–15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles.[41]
In Tiberian Masoretic codices, including the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, and often in old Spanish manuscripts as well, the order is Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel, Ezra.[42]
Canonization
The Ketuvim is the last of the three portions of the Tanakh to have been accepted as biblical canon. While the Torah may have been considered canon by Israel as early as the 5th century BCE and the Former and Latter Prophets were canonized by the 2nd century BCE, the Ketuvim was not a fixed canon until the 2nd century of the Common Era.[40]
Evidence suggests, however, that the people of Israel were adding what would become the Ketuvim to their holy literature shortly after the canonization of the prophets. As early as 132 BCE references suggest that the Ketuvim was starting to take shape, although it lacked a formal title.[43] References in the four Gospels as well as other books of the New Testament indicate that many of these texts were both commonly known and counted as having some degree of religious authority early in the 1st century CE.
Many scholars believe that the limits of the Ketuvim as canonized scripture were determined by the Council of Jamnia c. 90 CE. Against Apion, the writing of Josephus in 95 CE, treated the text of the Hebrew Bible as a closed canon to which "... no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable..."[44] For a long time following this date the divine inspiration of Esther, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes was often under scrutiny.[45]
Original languages
The Tanakh was mainly written in biblical Hebrew, with some small portions (Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4–7:28)[46] written in biblical Aramaic, a sister language which became the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world.[47]
Samaritan Pentateuch
Main article: Samaritan Pentateuch
Samaritans include only the Pentateuch in their biblical canon.[48] They do not recognize divine authorship or inspiration in any other book in the Jewish Tanakh.[49] A Samaritan Book of Joshua partly based upon the Tanakh's Book of Joshua exists, but Samaritans regard it as a non-canonical secular historical chronicle.[50]
Septuagint
Main article: Septuagint
Fragment of a Septuagint: A column of uncial book from 1 Esdras in the Codex Vaticanus c. 325–350 CE, the basis of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton's Greek edition and English translation.
The Septuagint, or the LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and some related texts into Koine Greek, begun in the late 3rd century BCE and completed by 132 BCE,[51][52][53] initially in Alexandria, but in time it was completed elsewhere as well.[54] It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised.[55]
As the work of translation progressed, the canon of the Septuagint expanded. The Torah always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Nevi'im, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it. In addition, some newer books were included in the Septuagint, among these are the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. However, the book of Sirach, is now known to have existed in a Hebrew version, since ancient Hebrew manuscripts of it were rediscovered in modern times. The Septuagint version of some biblical books, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Jewish canon.[56] Some of these deuterocanonical books (e.g. the Wisdom of Solomon, and the second book of Maccabees) were not translated, but composed directly in Greek.[citation needed]
Since Late Antiquity, once attributed to a hypothetical late 1st-century Council of Jamnia, mainstream Rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint as valid Jewish scriptural texts. Several reasons have been given for this. First, some mistranslations were claimed. Second, the Hebrew source texts used for the Septuagint differed from the Masoretic tradition of Hebrew texts, which was chosen as canonical by the Jewish rabbis.[57] Third, the rabbis wanted to distinguish their tradition from the newly emerging tradition of Christianity.[53][58] Finally, the rabbis claimed a divine authority for the Hebrew language, in contrast to Aramaic or Greek – even though these languages were the lingua franca of Jews during this period (and Aramaic would eventually be given a holy language status comparable to Hebrew).[59]
The Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.[60] The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches use most of the books of the Septuagint, while Protestant churches usually do not. After the Protestant Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts, which came to be called biblical apocrypha. The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James Version of the Bible, the basis for the Revised Standard Version.[61]
Incorporations from Theodotion
In most ancient copies of the Bible which contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel is not the original Septuagint version, but instead is a copy of Theodotion's translation from the Hebrew, which more closely resembles the Masoretic Text.[citation needed] The original Septuagint version was discarded in favour of Theodotion's version in the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE. In Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the 2nd century, and in Latin-speaking areas (at least in North Africa), it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. History does not record the reason for this, and St. Jerome reports, in the preface to the Vulgate version of Daniel, "This thing 'just' happened."[62] One of two Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel has been recently rediscovered and work is ongoing in reconstructing the original form of the book.[63]
The canonical Ezra–Nehemiah is known in the Septuagint as "Esdras B", and 1 Esdras is "Esdras A". 1 Esdras is a very similar text to the books of Ezra–Nehemiah, and the two are widely thought by scholars to be derived from the same original text. It has been proposed, and is thought highly likely by scholars, that "Esdras B" – the canonical Ezra–Nehemiah – is Theodotion's version of this material, and "Esdras A" is the version which was previously in the Septuagint on its own.[62]
Final form
Some texts are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. These additional books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah (which later became chapter 6 of Baruch in the Vulgate), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasseh, the Psalms of Solomon, and Psalm 151.
Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic Text are grouped together. For example, the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are in the LXX one book in four parts called Βασιλειῶν ("Of Reigns"). In LXX, the Books of Chronicles supplement Reigns and it is called Paralipomenon (Παραλειπομένων – things left out). The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve.[63]
The Orthodox
Old Testament[54][64][a]
Greek-based
name
Conventional
English name
Law
Γένεσις
Génesis
Genesis
Ἔξοδος
Éxodos
Exodus
Λευϊτικόν
Leuitikón
Leviticus
Ἀριθμοί
Arithmoí
Numbers
Δευτερονόμιον
Deuteronómion
Deuteronomy
History
Ἰησοῦς Nαυῆ
Iêsous Nauê
Joshua
Κριταί
Kritaí
Judges
Ῥούθ
Roúth
Ruth
Βασιλειῶν Αʹ[b]
I Reigns
I Samuel
Βασιλειῶν Βʹ
II Reigns
II Samuel
Βασιλειῶν Γʹ
III Reigns
I Kings
Βασιλειῶν Δʹ
IV Reigns
II Kings
Παραλειπομένων Αʹ
I Paralipomenon[c]
I Chronicles
Παραλειπομένων Βʹ
II Paralipomenon
II Chronicles
Ἔσδρας Αʹ
I Esdras
1 Esdras
Ἔσδρας Βʹ
II Esdras
Ezra–Nehemiah
Τωβίτ[d]
Tobit
Tobit or Tobias
Ἰουδίθ
Ioudith
Judith
Ἐσθήρ
Esther
Esther with additions
Μακκαβαίων Αʹ
I Makkabaioi
1 Maccabees
Μακκαβαίων Βʹ
II Makkabaioi
2 Maccabees
Μακκαβαίων Γʹ
III Makkabaioi
3 Maccabees
Wisdom
Ψαλμοί
Psalms
Psalms
Ψαλμός ΡΝΑʹ
Psalm 151
Psalm 151
Προσευχὴ Μανάσση
Prayer of Manasseh
Prayer of Manasseh
Ἰώβ
Iōb
Job
Παροιμίαι
Proverbs
Proverbs
Ἐκκλησιαστής
Ekklesiastes
Ecclesiastes
Ἆσμα Ἀσμάτων
Song of Songs
Song of Solomon or Canticles
Σοφία Σαλoμῶντος
Wisdom of Solomon
Wisdom
Σοφία Ἰησοῦ Σειράχ
Wisdom of Jesus the son of Seirach
Sirach or Ecclesiasticus
Ψαλμοί Σαλoμῶντος
Psalms of Solomon
Psalms of Solomon[65]
Prophets
Δώδεκα
The Twelve
Minor Prophets
Ὡσηέ Αʹ
I. Osëe
Hosea
Ἀμώς Βʹ
II. Amōs
Amos
Μιχαίας Γʹ
III. Michaias
Micah
Ἰωήλ Δʹ
IV. Ioël
Joel
Ὀβδίου Εʹ[e]
V. Obdias
Obadiah
Ἰωνᾶς Ϛ'
VI. Ionas
Jonah
Ναούμ Ζʹ
VII. Naoum
Nahum
Ἀμβακούμ Ηʹ
VIII. Ambakum
Habakkuk
Σοφονίας Θʹ
IX. Sophonias
Zephaniah
Ἀγγαῖος Ιʹ
X. Angaios
Haggai
Ζαχαρίας ΙΑʹ
XI. Zacharias
Zachariah
Ἄγγελος ΙΒʹ
XII. Messenger
Malachi
Ἠσαΐας
Hesaias
Isaiah
Ἱερεμίας
Hieremias
Jeremiah
Βαρούχ
Baruch
Baruch
Θρῆνοι
Lamentations
Lamentations
Ἐπιστολή Ιερεμίου
Epistle of Jeremiah
Letter of Jeremiah
Ἰεζεκιήλ
Iezekiêl
Ezekiel
Δανιήλ
Daniêl
Daniel with additions
Appendix
Μακκαβαίων Δ' Παράρτημα
IV Makkabees
4 Maccabees[f]
Christian Bibles
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Main articles: Biblical canon and List of English Bible translations
A page from the Gutenberg Bible
A Christian Bible is a set of books that a Christian denomination regards as divinely inspired and thus constituting scripture. Although the Early Church primarily used the Septuagint or the Targums among Aramaic speakers, the apostles did not leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead the canon of the New Testament developed over time. Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of their sacred writings, most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.
Historically significant translations of the Christian Bible into English include the Geneva Bible, the Douay–Rheims Bible, the King James Version, the Revised Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New American Bible, the New International Version, the New King James Version, and the English Standard Version.[g]
Old Testament
Main article: Old Testament
The books which make up the Christian Old Testament differ between the Catholic (see Catholic Bible), Orthodox, and Protestant (see Protestant Bible) churches, with the Protestant movement accepting only those books contained in the Hebrew Bible, while Catholic and Orthodox traditions have wider canons. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint and the Aramaic Peshitta.[citation needed] The Old Testament consists of many distinct books produced over a period of centuries: The first five books – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, book of Numbers and Deuteronomy – reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BCE), and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled the Temple at that time.[66] The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c. 587 BCE.[67]
These history books make up around half the total content of the Old Testament. Of the remainder, the books of the various prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve "minor prophets" – were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, with the exceptions of Jonah and Daniel, which were written much later. The "wisdom" books – Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Song of Solomon – have various dates: Proverbs possibly was completed by the Hellenistic time (332–198 BCE), though containing much older material as well; Job completed by the 6th century BCE; Ecclesiastes by the 3rd century BCE.[68]
Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books
The contents page in a complete 80 book King James Bible, listing "The Books of the Old Testament", "The Books called Apocrypha", and "The Books of the New Testament".
In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. The Septuagint was generally abandoned in favour of the 10th-century Masoretic Text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages.[citation needed] Some modern Western translations since the 14th century make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic Text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text.[citation needed] They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts, e.g., those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.[69][70]
A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or the Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew Bible (i.e., among the protocanonical books) are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e., deutero) canon, that canon as fixed definitively by the Council of Trent 1545–1563.[71][72] It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one) and 27 for the New.[73]
Eighty book Protestant Bibles have fourteen books in between the Old Testament and New Testament in a section called the Apocrypha.[74][75] Protestant traditions traditionally teach that these books are useful for instruction, but are non-canonical.[74][75] However, Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament and the Roman Catholic Church most of them with the exception of three books.[74][75]
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes:[76]
Tobit
Judith
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Wisdom
Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
Baruch
The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6)
Greek Additions to Esther (Book of Esther, chapters 10:4–12:6)
The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children verses 1–68 (Book of Daniel, chapter 3, verses 24–90)
Susanna (Book of Daniel, chapter 13)
Bel and the Dragon (Book of Daniel, chapter 14)
In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:[citation needed]
3 Maccabees
1 Esdras
Prayer of Manasseh
Psalm 151
Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches include:[citation needed]
2 Esdras i.e., Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles
There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it is therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.[citation needed]
The Syriac Orthodox tradition includes:[citation needed]
Psalms 151–155
The Apocalypse of Baruch
The Letter of Baruch
The Ethiopian biblical canon includes:[citation needed]
Jubilees
Enoch
1–3 Meqabyan
and some other books.
The Revised Common Lectionary of the Lutheran Church, Moravian Church, Reformed Churches, Anglican Church and Methodist Church uses the Apocryphal Books liturgically, with alternative Old Testament readings available.[77] Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Lutheran Church and Anglican Church include the fourteen books of the Protestant Apocrypha, many of which are the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.[78][self-published source]
Pseudepigraphal books
Main article: Pseudepigrapha
The term pseudepigrapha commonly describes numerous works of Jewish religious literature written from about 300 BCE to 300 CE. Not all of these works are actually pseudepigraphical. It also refers to books of the New Testament canon whose authorship is misrepresented or questionable. The Old Testament pseudepigraphal works include the following:[79]
3 Maccabees
4 Maccabees
Assumption of Moses
Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)
Slavonic Book of Enoch (2 Enoch)
Hebrew Book of Enoch (3 Enoch) (also known as "The Revelation of Metatron" or "The Book of Rabbi Ishmael the High Priest")
Book of Jubilees
Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch)
Letter of Aristeas (Letter to Philocrates regarding the translating of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek)
Life of Adam and Eve
Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah
Psalms of Solomon
Sibylline Oracles
Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch)
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Book of Enoch
Notable pseudepigraphal works include the Books of Enoch (such as 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, surviving only in Old Slavonic, and 3 Enoch, surviving in Hebrew, c. 5th to 6th century CE). These are ancient Jewish religious works, traditionally ascribed to the prophet Enoch, the great-grandfather of the patriarch Noah. They are not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest or significance. It has been observed that part of the Book of Enoch is quoted in the Epistle of Jude (part of the New Testament) but Christian denominations generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.[80] However, the Enoch books are treated as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
The older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) are estimated to date from about 300 BCE, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of the 1st century BCE.[81]
Denominational views of pseudepigrapha
There arose[when?] in some Protestant biblical scholarship an extended use of the term pseudepigrapha for works that appeared as though they ought to be part of the biblical canon, because of the authorship ascribed to them, but which stood outside both the biblical canons recognized by Protestants and Catholics. These works were also outside the particular set of books that Roman Catholics called deuterocanonical and to which Protestants had generally applied the term Apocryphal. Accordingly, the term pseudepigraphical, as now used often among both Protestants and Roman Catholics (allegedly for the clarity it brings to the discussion), may make it difficult to discuss questions of pseudepigraphical authorship of canonical books dispassionately with a lay audience. To confuse the matter further, Eastern Orthodox Christians accept books as canonical that Roman Catholics and most Protestant denominations consider pseudepigraphical or at best of much less authority. There exist also churches that reject some of the books that Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants accept. The same is true of some Jewish sects. Many works that are apocryphal are otherwise considered genuine.[clarification needed]
Role of the Old Testament in Christian theology
Further information: Sola scriptura and Christian theology
The Old Testament has always been central to the life of the Christian church. Bible scholar N.T. Wright says "Jesus himself was profoundly shaped by the scriptures."[82] He adds that the earliest Christians also searched those same Hebrew scriptures in their effort to understand the earthly life of Jesus. They regarded the "holy writings" of the Israelites as necessary and instructive for the Christian, as seen from Paul's words to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:15), and as pointing to the Messiah, and as having reached a climactic fulfilment in Jesus himself, generating the "new covenant" prophesied by Jeremiah.[83]
New Testament
Main article: New Testament
The New Testament is the name given to the second and final portion of the Christian Bible. Jesus is its central figure. The term "New Testament" came into use in the 2nd century during a controversy among Christians over whether the Hebrew Bible should be included with the Christian writings as sacred scripture. The New Testament presupposes the inspiration of the Old Testament.[84] Some other works which were widely read by early churches were excluded from the New Testament and relegated to the collections known as the Apostolic Fathers (generally considered orthodox) and the New Testament Apocrypha (including both orthodox and heretical works).
The New Testament is a collection of 27 books[85] of 4 different genres of Christian literature (Gospels, one account of the Acts of the Apostles, Epistles and an Apocalypse). These books can be grouped into:
The Gospels
Synoptic GospelsGospel According to Matthew
Gospel According to Mark
Gospel According to Luke
Gospel According to John
Narrative literature, account and history of the Apostolic age
Acts of the Apostles
Pauline Epistles
Epistle to the Romans
First Epistle to the Corinthians
Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Epistle to the Galatians
Epistle to the Ephesians
Epistle to the Philippians
Epistle to the Colossians
First Epistle to the Thessalonians
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
Pastoral epistles
First Epistle to Timothy
Second Epistle to Timothy
Epistle to Titus
Epistle to Philemon
Epistle to the Hebrews
General epistles, also called catholic meaning general epistles
Epistle of James
First Epistle of Peter
Second Epistle of Peter
First Epistle of John
Second Epistle of John
Third Epistle of John
Epistle of Jude
Apocalyptic literature, also called Prophetical
Revelation, or the Apocalypse
The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.
Original language
See also: Language of the New Testament
The mainstream consensus is that the New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek,[86][87] which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean[88][89][90][91] from the Conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BCE) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600).
Historic editions
See also: Biblical manuscript and Textual criticism
An early German translation by Martin Luther. His translation of the text into the vernacular was highly influential.
The original autographs, that is, the original Greek writings and manuscripts written by the original authors of the New Testament, have not survived.[92] But historically copies exist of those original autographs, transmitted and preserved in a number of manuscript traditions. There have been some minor variations, additions or omissions, in some of the texts. When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they sometimes wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses) to correct their text – especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line – and to comment about the text. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text.
The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.
Development of the Christian canons
Main articles: Development of the Old Testament canon and Development of the New Testament canon
St. Jerome in his Study, by Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1541. Jerome produced a 4th-century Latin edition of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, that became the Catholic Church's official translation.
The Old Testament canon entered into Christian use in the Greek Septuagint translations and original books, and their differing lists of texts. In addition to the Septuagint, Christianity[vague] subsequently added various writings that would become the New Testament. Somewhat different lists of accepted works continued to develop in antiquity. In the 4th century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39, 46, 51, or 54-book canon of the Old Testament and to the 27-book canon of the New Testament that would be subsequently used to today, most notably the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE. Also c. 400, Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible (see Vulgate), the canon of which, at the insistence of the Pope, was in accord with the earlier Synods. With the benefit of hindsight, it can be said that this process effectively set the New Testament canon, although there are examples of other canonical lists in use after this time.
The Protestant Old Testament of today has a 39-book canon – the number of books (though not the content) varies from the Jewish Tanakh only because of a different method of division – while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books (51 books with some books combined into 46 books) as the canonical Old Testament. The Eastern Orthodox Churches recognize 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 in addition to the Catholic canon. Some include 2 Esdras. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is often used as being synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, since the surviving scriptures in Hebrew include only those books, while Catholics and Orthodox include additional texts that have not survived in Hebrew. Eighty book Protestant Bibles include 14 books called Apocrypha in between the Old Testament and the New Testament that are deemed useful for instruction but non-canonical.[75][93] [74] Both Catholics and Protestants (as well as Greek Orthodox) have the same 27-book New Testament Canon.[94]
The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God".[12]
Some denominations have additional canonical holy scriptures beyond the Bible, including the standard works of the Latter Day Saints movement and Divine Principle in the Unification Church.
Ethiopian Orthodox canon
Main article: Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon
The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than the canons used by most other Christian churches. There are 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.[95] The Ethiopian Old Testament Canon includes the books found in the Septuagint accepted by other Orthodox Christians, in addition to Enoch and Jubilees which are ancient Jewish books that only survived in Ge'ez but are quoted in the New Testament,[citation needed] also Greek Ezra First and the Apocalypse of Ezra, 3 books of Meqabyan, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalter. The three books of Meqabyan are not to be confused with the books of Maccabees. The order of the other books is somewhat different from other groups', as well. The Old Testament follows the Septuagint order for the Minor Prophets rather than the Jewish order.[citation needed]
Peshitta
Main article: Peshitta
The Peshitta (Classical Syriac: ܦܫܺܝܛܬܳܐ or ܦܫܝܼܛܬܵܐ pšīṭtā) is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition. The consensus within biblical scholarship, although not universal, is that the Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from biblical Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD, and that the New Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Greek.[96] This New Testament, originally excluding certain disputed books (2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation), had become a standard by the early 5th century. The five excluded books were added in the Harklean Version (616 AD) of Thomas of Harqel.[97][98][99]
Divine inspiration
Main articles: Biblical inspiration, Biblical literalism, Biblical infallibility, and Biblical inerrancy
A Bible is placed centrally on a Lutheran altar, highlighting its importance
The Second Epistle to Timothy says that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness". (2 Timothy 3:16)[100] Various related but distinguishable views on divine inspiration include:
the view of the Bible as the inspired word of God: the belief that God, through the Holy Spirit, intervened and influenced the words, message, and collation of the Bible[101]
the view that the Bible is also infallible, and incapable of error in matters of faith and practice, but not necessarily in historic or scientific matters
the view that the Bible represents the inerrant word of God, without error in any aspect, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans
Within these broad beliefs many schools of hermeneutics operate. "Bible scholars claim that discussions about the Bible must be put into its context within church history and then into the context of contemporary culture."[83] Fundamentalist Christians are associated with the doctrine of biblical literalism, where the Bible is not only inerrant, but the meaning of the text is clear to the average reader.[102]
Jewish antiquity attests to belief in sacred texts,[103][104] and a similar belief emerges in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention divine agency in relation to its writings.[105] In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix write: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record."[106] Most evangelical biblical scholars[107][108][109] associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture.[110] Among adherents of biblical literalism, a minority, such as followers of the King-James-Only Movement, extend the claim of inerrancy only to a particular version.[111]
Versions and translations
Further information: Bible translations and List of Bible translations by language
Title page from the first Welsh translation of the Bible, 1588. William Morgan (1545–1604)
The original texts of the Tanakh were almost entirely written in Hebrew; about one per cent is written 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. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version there are words which are traditionally read differently from written, because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.
The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint. In addition, they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, 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 translations 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.
According to the Latin Decretum Gelasianum (also known as the Gelasian Decree), thought to be of a 6th-century document[112][113] of uncertain authorship and of pseudepigraphal papal authority (variously ascribed to Pope Gelasius I, Pope Damasus I, or Pope Hormisdas)[114][115][116] but reflecting the views of the Roman Church by that period,[117] the Council of Rome in 382 CE under Pope Damasus I (366–383) assembled a list of books of the Bible. Damasus 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, in the 4th century CE (although Jerome expressed in his prologues to most deuterocanonical books that they were non-canonical).[118][119] In 1546, at the Council of Trent, Jerome's Vulgate translation was declared by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Church.
Since the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations for many languages have been made. The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and Bible societies.
Bible translations, worldwide (as of September 2021)[120]
Number
Statistic
7378
Approximate number of languages spoken in the world today
2217
Number of translations into new languages in progress
1582
Number of languages with a translation of the New Testament
717
Number of languages with a translation of the Bible (Protestant Canon)
Views
John Riches, professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow, provides the following view of the diverse historical influences of the Bible:
It has inspired some of the great monuments of human thought, literature, and art; it has equally fuelled some of the worst excesses of human savagery, self-interest, and narrow-mindedness. It has inspired men and women to acts of great service and courage, to fight for liberation and human development; and it has provided the ideological fuel for societies which have enslaved their fellow human beings and reduced them to abject poverty. ... It has, perhaps above all, provided a source of religious and moral norms which have enabled communities to hold together, to care for, and to protect one another; yet precisely this strong sense of belonging has in turn fuelled ethnic, racial, and international tension and conflict.[121]
Other religions
Main article: Islamic view of the Christian Bible
In Islam, the Bible is held to reflect true unfolding revelation from God; but revelation which had been corrupted or distorted (in Arabic: tahrif); which necessitated the giving of the Qur'an to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, to correct this deviation.[122]
Members of other religions may also seek inspiration from the Bible. For example, Rastafari view the Bible as essential to their religion[123] and Unitarian Universalists view it as "one of many important religious texts".[124]
Biblical studies
Main articles: Biblical studies and Biblical criticism
Biblical criticism refers to the investigation of the Bible as a text, and addresses questions such as authorship, dates of composition, and authorial intention. It is not the same as criticism of the Bible, which is an assertion against the Bible being a source of information or ethical guidance, or observations that the Bible may have translation errors.[125]
Higher criticism
Main articles: Higher criticism and Lower criticism
In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, arguing that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses ..."[126]
Archaeological and historical research
Main articles: Biblical archaeology school, Historicity of the Bible, and Religiously motivated pseudoarchaeology
Biblical archaeology is the archaeology that relates to and sheds light upon the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures (or the New Testament). It is used to help determine the lifestyle and practices of people living in biblical times. There are a wide range of interpretations in the field of biblical archaeology. One broad division includes biblical maximalism which generally takes the view that most of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible is based on history although it is presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered to be the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible to be a purely post-exilic (5th century BCE and later) composition. Even among those scholars who adhere to biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the 6th century BCE Babylonian captivity have a basis in history.
The historicity of the biblical account of the history of ancient Israel and Judah of the 10th to 7th centuries BCE is disputed in scholarship. The biblical account of the 8th to 7th centuries BCE is widely, but not universally, accepted as historical, while the verdict on the earliest period of the United Monarchy (10th century BCE) and the historicity of David is unclear. Archaeological evidence providing information on this period, such as the Tel Dan Stele, can potentially be decisive. The biblical account of events of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, and the migration to the Promised Land and the period of Judges are not considered historical in scholarship.[127][128]
Bible museums