The Bible

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The Bible is the primary sacred scripture of both the Jewish and Christian religions. These scriptures are compilations of what were originally separate documents (called "books") written over a long period of time. They were later compiled to form first the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) and, with later additions, the Christian Bible.

Overview
The Jewish Bible (Hebrew Bible or Tanakh) consists of the five books of Moses (the Torah or Pentateuch), a section called "Prophets" (Neviim), and a third section called "Writings" (also Ketuvim or Hagiographa). The term "Tanakh" is a Hebrew acronym formed from these three names. Though the Hebrew Bible is predominantly in Biblical Hebrew, it has some small portions in Biblical Aramaic.

The Christian Bible contains the entirety of the Tanakh translated with some modifications and re-ordered (there called the Old Testament), along with a set of later writings known as the New Testament. Roman Catholics, and some Anglicans (but not most Protestants) also include some additional works from the Septuagint, an early (pre-Christian) translation of the Old Testament by Jews into Greek. The Eastern Orthodox Church's Old Testament is the Septuagint, or a translation of it. Within Christianity, there is not complete agreement on what the Christian Bible contains, that is, on the Biblical canon. However, this only extends to a few books — there is no dispute as to the majority of books of the Bible.

The various books of the New Testament were written in koine Greek. Early Christian Bibles used texts of the Old Testament dependent on the Greek Septuagint, which differs in places from the primarily Hebrew Masoretic text. Most modern translations of the Old Testament are based primarily on the Masoretic text. Some modern editions of the Old Testament also adopt different readings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For more information, see the entry on Bible translations.

Synopsis: The Hebrew scripures of the Bible - portions of which contain stories traditionally held to be historical accounts of much of the early history of the Hebrew Nation - teach that there is one God, Jehovah, "Creator of Heaven and Earth" who created Man "in his own image", and details the relationship between Man and his Creator.

For Christians, the Bible continues - with the advent of Jesus Christ - the story begun in the Hebrew scriptures, and is both a primary source of religious doctrine and a foundation for their spiritual beliefs. Some religious sects, notably, several of the 'Protestant' Christian sects, believe the Bible to be the ultimate and authoritative guide in all spiritual matters, by a principle referred to as sola scriptura.

Definition of Biblical terms
The English word "Bible" means "book of books" (from the Greek word for "books", biblia: βιβλια ). A book of the Bible is an established group of writings. For example, the book of Psalms consists of 150 songs (151 in the Septuagint), while the book of Jude is a half-page letter. Canon refers to the accepted books of the Bible differentiated from other sacred writings not accepted as part of the canon, which are not accepted as part of the Bible. Catholics and Orthodox call writings that they do not accept Apocrypha; Protestants call those writings they do not accept but that Catholics and Orthodox do Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical, and call other writings that neither accepts Pseudepigrapha. The Protestant Bible consists of 66 books. The Roman Catholic version, including the Deuterocanonical books, counts altogether 76 books, while the Eastern Orthodox version includes 77 or 78. (4 Maccabees is sometimes included in an appendix, sometimes not.)

Description of the Bible
The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is divided into 3 sections, the Law (Torah), the Prophets, the Writings. The translated, modified and re-ordered version of the Hebrew Bible is called the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. The Christian Bible includes the Old Testament plus the New Testament, which chronicles the doings of Jesus and the reaction to them. The New Testament is divided into the four Gospels, History (Acts of the Apostles), the Letters to Christian churches by Paul and other apostles, and the Book of Revelation.

Bible Canon - Which books are biblical?
In addition to the diverse traditions concerning which books belong in the Canon of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, modern scholarship proposes alternative views concerning the authenticity of books, and of texts within books.

Biblical versions and translations
In scholarly writing, ancient translations are frequently referred to as 'versions', with the term 'translation' being reserved for medieval or modern translations.

Tanakh
The oldest books of the Bible are the Pentateuch, also known as the Torah. They are written in Hebrew and are also titled the 'Books of Moses'. Traditionally Judaism and Christianity held that these books were actually written by the prophet Moses; but many today believe that the current form of the Torah came about by a redactor bringing together several earlier, distinct sources. This idea is called the documentary hypothesis.

In addition to the Torah, as noted above, the Jewish scriptures include the Nevi'im ("prophets") and the Ketuvim ("writings"), the combined collection being designated by the Hebrew acronym "Tanakh".

The original text of the Tanakh was in Hebrew, with some portions in Aramaic. From the 800s to the 1400s rabbinic Jewish scholars known as the Massoretes compared the text of all known Biblical manuscripts, in an effort to create a unified and 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 nikud) to the text, since the original text only contained consonants. This sometimes required the selection of an interpretation, since words can differ only in their vowels, and thus the text can vary depending upon the choice of vowels to be inserted. In antiquity there were other variant readings which were popular, some of which have survived in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea scrolls, and other ancient fragments, as well as being attested in ancient translations to other languages.

By the beginning of the common era, most Jews no longer spoke Hebrew, but spoke Greek or Aramaic instead. Thus they made translations or paraphrases into these languages. The most important of the translations into the Greek was the Septuagint, though other translations were made as well. The Septuagint contains several additional passages, and whole additional books, compared to what was eventually compiled as the masoretic texts. In some cases these additions were originally composed in Greek, while in other cases they are translations of Hebrew books or variants that the Masoretes did not accept. Recent discoveries have shown that more of the Septuagint additions have a Hebrew origin than was once thought. While there are no surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew text on which the Septuagint was based, many scholars believe that it was a different textual tradition than the one that eventually became the basis for the Masoretic texts.

The Jews also produced non-literal translations known as targums, primarily in Aramaic. Targums were not literal translations but paraphrases. They frequently expanded on the text with additional details taken from Jewish oral tradition.

Early Christians produced translations of the Hebrew Bible into several languages; their biblical text was the Septuagint, which had been translated by the Jews into Greek in about the second century B.C. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important to the Church in the West, while in the Greek-speaking East, they 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. Exactly who translated it is unknown, but internal evidence suggests it is the product of several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included the Septuagint additions.

As a translation the Old Latin was far from ideal, and so Jerome was commissioned to produce the Vulgate translation as a replacement. Jerome based his translation on the Hebrew rather than the Septuagint. He was of the opinion that the Septuagint additions were of doubtful value, but he included them due to the demands of the church. He did not, however, translate the additional books anew; the Vulgate for these books is identical to the Old Latin. The Vulgate became the official translation of the Roman Catholic church.

 

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New Testament
The New Testament was originally composed in Greek. There are a number of different textual traditions of the New Testament. The three main traditions are sometimes called the Western text-type, the Alexandrian text-type, and Byzantine text-type, and together they comprise the majority of New Testament manuscripts. There are also several ancient translations into other languages, most important of which are the Syriac (including the Pe****ta and the Diatessaron gospel harmony) and the Latin (both the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate).

The earliest critical edition of the Greek New Testament is the 'Textus Receptus' (Latin for 'received text') compiled by the humanist Desiderius Erasmus. It is largely Byzantine in character. The Textus Receptus was for many centuries the standard critical edition of the New Testament, only losing that position after the discovery of manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. There are some who believe that many or all of the changes introduced by later critical editions are incorrect, and that the Textus Receptus is still the best critical edition available. A similar but distinct argument is sometimes made for the Majority Text.

Chapters and verses
The masoretic Hebrew text contains verse endings as an important feature. According to the Jewish 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 rather 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, however, 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 the Jews too 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 both traditionalists and modern scholars alike). Critics charge that the text is often divided into chapters in an incoherent way, or at inappropriate points within the narrative, and that it encourages citing passages out of context, in effect turning the Bible into a kind of textual quarry for clerical citations. Nevertheless, even the critics admit that the chapter divisions and verse numbers have become indispensable as technical references for Bible study.

Stephen Langton is reputed to have been the first person to put the chapter divisions into a Vulgate edition of the Bible in 1205. They came into the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the 1400s. Robert Estienne (Robert Stephanus) was the first to number the verses within each chaper; his verse numbers entered printed editions in 1565 (New Testament) and 1571 (Hebrew Bible).

Biblical interpretation
(Jewish, Christian, Islamic opinion of the text. Eastern. Western, influence of philosophy, fundamentalism, patristic interpretation, medieval interpretation, Reformation, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, inerrancy, biblical theology, inspiration, rationalism, translations, hermeneutics )

A wealth of additional stories and legends amplifying the accounts in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) can be found in the Jewish genre of rabbinical exegesis known as Midrash.

Throughout antiquity and the medieval periods, allegorical methods of interpretation were popular. The earliest use of these was probably Philo Judaeus, who attempted to make Jewish halakah palatable to the Greek mind by interpreting it as symbolising philosophical doctrines. Allegorical interpretation was adopted by Christians, and continued in popularity until a reaction against it during the Reformation, and it has not since found much favour in Western Christianity.

The Eastern Orthodox Church generally follows a patristic method of interpretation, attempting to interpret scripture in the same way that the early church fathers did. It also interprets scripture liturgically. This means that the passages that are publicly read on certain days of the liturgical year are significant, especially on feast days, and are intended to guide people in their interpretation as they are praying together. Since it was members of the Church who wrote the New Testament and a series of church councils that decided the biblical canon, the Orthodox believe that the Church should also be the final authority in its interpretation. This often includes allegorical interpretations.

The pesher method of interpretation, which views biblical passages as coded representations of events current to the writing of the passage, was recently (1992) put forward by Barbara Thiering, Ph.D. It is not taken seriously by most experts.

The Bible and history
The absence of independent evidence confirming some of the biblical narratives has caused some scholars to question the accuracy or even the historicity of these accounts. For instance, many historians view the Biblical patriarchs, Moses, King David, and King Solomon as little more than legendary figures, though possibly based on historical events and persons. Today there are two loosely defined schools of thought with regard to the historicity of the Bible (biblical minimalism and biblical maximalism) with many in between, in addition to the traditional religious reading of the Bible. This subject is discussed in its own entry, The Bible and history.

The supernatural in monotheistic religions
Many modern skeptical readers of the Bible hold that its authors gradually reinterpreted historical and natural events as miraculous or supernatural. The article on The supernatural in monotheistic religions thus concerns itself with the junction between monotheistic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the supernatural.

 

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Christian canon
New Testament
When Christianity began, it had no well-defined set of scriptures outside of the Septuagint and relied on the oral tradition of what Jesus Christ had said and done, as reported by the apostles and other followers. Even after the Gospels were written and began circulating, some Christians preferred the oral Gospel as told by people they trusted.

By the end of the 1st century, the letters of Paul were collected and circulated, and they were known to Clement of Rome (c. 95), Ignatius of Antioch (died 117), and Polycarp of Smyrna (c. 115).

The first person to propose a definitive, exclusive canon of Christian scriptures was Marcion of Sinope, c. 150. He accepted only the Gospel of Luke, and ten of Paul's epistles. He rejected the entire Old Testament, the other three Gospels, the book of Acts and the epistles of Peter and John. From the books he did accept, he removed any passages that connected Christianity with Judaism. This was because Marcion believed that the God of the Jews who gave them the Law was an entirely different god than the Supreme God who sent Jesus Christ and inspired the NT scriptures. By editing the books he accepted, he thought he was removing judaizing corruptions and recovering the 'original' inspired words of the text. Marcion's canon and theology were soundly rejected as heretical; however, he forced the Church to consider which texts were scriptural and why. Marcion spread his beliefs widely; they became known as Marcionism, a form of Gnostic Christianity.

The Diatessaron was a one volume harmony of the four Gospels, translated and compiled by Tatian into Syriac c. 173. In Syriac speaking churches, it effectively served as the only New Testament scripture until Paul's epistles were added during the third century. Some authorities believe that the book of Acts was also used in Syrian churches alongside the Diatessaron. The Diatessaron was eventually replaced in the 5th century by the Pe****ta, which contains a translation of the separate books of the New Testament, except for 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation.

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 185) vigorously defended the notion that there were exactly four Gospels, no more and no less, as a touchstone of orthodoxy. He pointed out that it was illogical to reject Acts of the Apostles but accept the Gospel of Luke, as both were from the same author. This was crucial to refuting Marcion's anti-Judaism, as Acts gives honor to James, Peter and Paul alike. At the time, Jewish Christians tended to honor James (a prominent Christian in Jerusalem described in the New Testament as an "apostle" and "pillar", and by Eusebius and other church historians as the first Bishop of Jerusalem) but not Paul, while Gentiles tended to honor Paul more than James.

The earliest known listing of canonical books is the Muratorian fragment, usually dated at 170 (based on an internal reference to Pope Pius I) but possibly as late as the early 4th century. This partial canon lists four gospels and the Pauline epistles, as well as two books of apocalypse, one of John another of Peter (the latter of which it notes is not often read in the churches).

The canon of the New Testament began to be more firmly established in the later 4th century.

One of the first synods met together to judge which books were to be read aloud in churches was the Synod of Laodicea, held about 363 CE. The decrees issued by the thirty or so clerics attending were called 'canons' Canon 59 decreed that only canonical books should be read, but no list was appended in the Latin and Syriac manuscripts recording the decrees. The list of canonical books sometimes attributed to the Synod of Laodicea is a later addition, most scholars agree.

The first complete listing of canonical books in the Denziger Sources of Catholic Dogma is in §84, which dates from A.D. 382. The third Synod of Carthage, in 397 CE ratified the canon accepted previously at the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa, 393 CE, the acts of which have been lost. This synod marks the beginning of a more widely recognized canon. The inclusion of some books in the New Testament was debated: Epistle to Hebrews, James, 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation. Grounds for debate included the question of authorship of these books; suitability for use; and how widely they were actually being used. 2 Peter is the most weakly attested of all the books in the Christian canon. One concern regarding the book of Revelation at that time is that it was already being interpreted in a wide variety of controversial ways. Virtually all Christians have accepted and continue to accept the same 27 books as the New Testament, except for those Syriac-speaking Christians who continue to use the Pe****ta.


Old Testament
Eastern Orthodox OT canon
The Christians tended to use the Septuagint, a Greek language version of the Jewish scriptures, and had more books in circulation, besides putting them in a different order. In the New Testament, most but not all Old Testament quotations seem to follow the Septuagint. In the Old Testament, the deuterocanonical books included are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, I-II Maccabees, and Sirach (a.k.a. Eclesiasticus), as well as parts of Esther and Daniel and some short additions to some other Books (such as Job). Many of these additions have long been thought to have been written originally in Greek, although some scholars are finding evidence that at least parts of them may have been translated from Hebrew texts that are no longer extant. Some manuscripts of the Septuagint also include III-IV Maccabees, one or more additional books of Ezra, and 151 Psalms instead of just 150, and consequently some Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions include these as well. IV Maccabees, which is felt to sometimes err in the direction of pagan Greek philosophy, is often put into an appendix.


Roman Catholic OT canon
The third Synod of Carthage, in 397 ratified the OT canon accepted previously at the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa in 393. This was identical with the Septuagint Canon of the OT, excluding the debatable books III-IV Maccabees, Psalm 151, and the extra books of Ezra. This canon was endorsed by Pope Damasus I. When St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, producing the Vulgate bible, he argued for the "Veritas Hebraica", or the acceptance of the Jewish canon of the OT. At the insistence of the Pope, however, he added translations for the doubtful books. Over the years, the feeling in favor of this group of "doubtful" books grew, until at the ecumenical Council of Florence (1451), this list was defined as canonical. This Council was not binding, however, and in light of Luther's demands, the Catholic Church examined the question of the Canon in the Council of Trent, which reaffirmed the Canon of the Council of Florence. The Old Testament books that had been in doubt were termed "deuterocanonical", not indicating a lesser degree of inspiration, but a later time of final approval.

Protestant OT canon
The Protestant churches however rejected these books (though how strongly they are rejected varies from one Protestant group to another). At the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther eliminated the "doubtful" books from his Old Testament, terming them "Apocrypha, that are books which are not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read". He also argued unsuccessfully for the relocation of Esther and certain New Testament books from the Canon to the Apocrypha. Those were the Letter of James, which he called the "Epistle of Straw", the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of Jude, and Revelation. Luther Bibles in Germany still put these four books last. As a result Catholics and Protestants continue to use different canons, which differ in respect to the Old Testament: the Protestant Old Testament is identical to the Jewish canon, while the Catholic Old Testament contains in addition 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, additions to Daniel and Esther, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), and the Wisdom of Solomon. There is some evidence that the first decision to omit these books entirely from the Bible was made by Protestant laity rather than clergy. Bibles dating from shortly after the Reformation have been found whose tables of contents included the entire Roman Catholic canon, but which did not actually contain the disputed books, leading some historians to think that the workers at the printing presses took it upon themselves to omit them.

Not in the above-mentioned canons
Furthermore, there are many books similar in style to the books of the Bible and dating from the same period, which are accepted by neither Protestants nor Catholics. Catholics call these books Apocrypha, while Protestants call them "Pseudepigrapha", reserving the term Apocrypha for the Catholic Deuterocanon. These books include 3 and 4 Maccabees (though many Orthodox include these), and 1 and 2 Esdras ("Esdras" is the Greek form of "Ezra"; many Orthodox include at least one of these). A few Oriental Orthodox churches use some of these books: e.g. the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's canon includes Jubilees, 1 Enoch, the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement, Acts of Paul, and some uniquely Ethiopian books.

In December of 1945, near the village of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, a collection of 13 ancient codices containing 52 religious and philosophical texts was discovered. This find has become known as the Nag Hammadi library. It is believed that these texts were hidden by monks from a monastery in the area when these writings were banned by the Orthodox Church. Perhaps the most significant document found was a complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas, a book that had been mentioned by the early theologian Origen, but thought to be lost. Translation of the Nag Hammadi library was completed in the 1970's.

 

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Selected biblically contemporary or influenced works till the 2nd century
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Books quoted or alluded to in the New Testament but not included themselves
Enoch
Jannes and Jambres
Martyrdom of Isaiah
Assumption Of Moses
Apocryphal Gospels
Books considered Gnostic
Gospel of Thomas
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Truth
Gospel of Philip
Gospel of Mary
Books considered heretical or fraudulent
Gospel of Peter
Gospel of Mathias
Apocryphal Acts
Acts of Andrew
Acts of John
Other books -- some of these books, while often quoted by orthodox authors, were nonetheless not considered canonical.
1 and 2 Clement
Shepherd (or Pastor) of Hermas
Acts of Paul
Didache
Epistle of Barnabas
Apocalypse of Peter
The Infancy Gospel of James

Modern or Mediaeval 'Pseudepigrapha'
Gospel of Barnabas (mediaeval Islam-friendly forgery)
Book of Mormon (considered a 19th-century product outside the LDS churches)
Gospel of the Holy Twelve (a.k.a. Gospel of Perfect Life, late 19th century forgery)

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org