Bible

Bible. The collection of sacred writings of Jews, or that of Christians. The word derives from Gk. biblia, ‘books’, which came to be used as a singular noun as the books of the Bible were thought of as a unity. See also CANON and articles on individual books. The Hebrew Bible is divided into three sections, Torah (law), Nevi'im (prophets) and Ketuvim (writings). From the initial letters, the acronym Ta Na Kh is formed, which thus becomes a common name for the Bible i.e. Tanach, Tanak, etc. Torah includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (collectively known as the Pentateuch). Nevi'im includes Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the twelve prophets. The Ketuvim are Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the five scrolls (the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther), Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. This division into three parts goes back at least to the 2nd cent. BCE. Other books which are not regarded as canonical are to be found in the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. Much was translated into Greek (Septuagint) and Aramaic (Targum) before Christian times.

The earliest Hebrew term for the Bible was ha-seferim (the books), the Greek translation of which is ta biblia. The notion of a canon of scripture is distinctively Jewish, and the Jews saw themselves as separate from other people in their devotion to the Bible (cf. the aphorism of BEN GURION).

The Christian Bible consists of two parts, the Old and the New Testaments. The Christian Old Testament corresponds to the Hebrew Bible. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles also include other books and parts of books which belonged to the Septuagint version of the Jewish scriptures. Until recently Roman Catholics usually cited the names of books in the Vulgate form. Protestant Bibles restrict the Old Testament to the Hebrew canon, segregating these other writings as the Apocrypha, or omitting them.

The New Testament was formed as the second part of the Christian Bible when at an early date churches began to regard certain of their own writings in Greek, especially if of apostolic origin, as of equal authority and inspiration to those inherited from Judaism. It attained its present form in the 4th cent., comprising four Gospels, Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, seven catholic epistles, and Revelation. By the 5th cent. there were translations of the New Testament into Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Latin (see VULGATE), and Ethiopic. See also CANON.

Christian understandings of the provenance of the Bible are unlike that of Muslims of the Qur'ān. While recognizing the initiative of God (especially through (the agency of) the Holy Spirit) in bringing these words into being, they have largely abandoned theories of ‘divine dictation’, as though the human author/poet/prophet, etc., simply ‘took down’ the words dictated. The process is seen as one in which the work is concursive, with God not by-passing, or overruling, the human competence and social circumstances of the writer. For this reason, Muslims, who acknowledge Jews and Christians as ‘people of the Book’ (ahl al-kitāb), regard the Bible as defective and compromised when compared with the Qur'ān.