BIBLE BASICS
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What is the Bible?
The Bible is composed of 66 different books that all share one common theme: Jesus Christ. The word Bible simply means book or books and is also called Scripture or the Word of God.
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The Bible begins by describing how the universe was made. It then explains how sin entered the world and separated mankind from God. From that point, the Bible tells of God’s plan, action, and ways of removing that separation through His Son, Jesus. Although there are many different books and writing styles, the Bible shows us the love God has for each person. God has given us His Word to learn about Him, to learn how and why you are here, to guide your decisions, and to distinguish between right and wrong. The Bible has stories of prophets, battles, giants, kings, queens, miracles, healing, victories, failures, life, death, and so much more. A person can read the Bible repeatedly and discover something new each time. It is not an ordinary book. It is alive and powerful. It is the Word of God. It is written to you, for you, and about you. It is the best book you will ever read!
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Who wrote the Bible?
About 40 different people wrote the books of the Bible. While the books of the Bible have the writing styles of the authors, the Holy Spirit inspired the authors to write the books. Therefore, the Bible is called the inspired Word of God. The word inspired, when talking about the Bible, means the Bible was breathed by God (2 Timothy 3:16), or it comes directly from the mouth of God. Every word in the Bible is true, and He has a purpose for every story, every teaching, every word, and even every number.
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How is the Bible put together?
The Protestant Bible is not put together in chronological order. For example, the 39 books in the Old Testament are put into four parts according to their type. The first five books of the Bible are the Law and are called the Pentateuch. The next 12 books are the historical books. The following five books are books of poetry (or wisdom), and the last 17 books in the Old Testament are the major and minor prophets. Some publishers, however, have changed the order and have made a chronological Bible. It has the same verses but they are rearranged according to when the events occurred.
The Bible has been put together in two sections called the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament has 39 books and the New Testament has 27 books. The Old Testament was originally written mostly in the Hebrew Language (a few parts were in Aramaic) and includes more than half of the Bible. It starts with the book of Genesis and ends with the book of Malachi. The Old Testament describes of the time before Jesus came to earth. It includes well-known stories like God’s creation, Abraham, Moses, Noah and the ark, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion’s den, Samson, and much more.
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The New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. This section starts with the book of Matthew and ends with Revelation. The New Testament tells of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection, and growth of the early church.
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Another word for testament is “covenant”. A covenant is like an agreement or promise. These two sections of the Bible are best described as the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, God made a special promise (or covenant) with a group of people called the Israelites. In the covenant, He promised to bless the entire world through these people (Genesis 26:4). The Old Covenant was only temporary and prepared the way for Jesus to come (Romans 10:4).
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The New Covenant started when Jesus died (Hebrews 9:16). With His death and resurrection, Jesus took away the sins of the world so people were no longer separated from God (2 Corinthians 5:21). The New Covenant was God’s plan from the beginning. It is a much better covenant with better promises (Hebrews 8:6). Christians are a part of the New Covenant today (Romans 7:6). It brought about salvation (Ephesians 2:8) and eternal life (John 17:3). It is available to everyone who believes and trusts in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
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When was the Bible written?
There was a period of time when the writings in the Bible were passed on through memorization and saying it aloud. The first person to write any part of the Bible down was Moses (Exodus 17:14). That was over 3,000 years ago. This was more than 1,000 years before Jesus was born. From that point, people began to write the Bible down.
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The Bible was not recorded in one specific year or in one location. It took around 1,500 years for the entire Bible to be complete. Why so long? One reason is it took time for the events of the Bible to happen. God chose Moses to write the first five books of the Bible. Daniel, for example, was born over 800 years after Moses. So it took hundreds of years before the book of Daniel could be written.
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The very first writings of the Bible do not exist today. However, we have manuscripts. Manuscripts are copies of the original bible. The Bible was first written in the languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The Greek writings were written without spaces between words. The Hebrew writings were written without vowels in the words. This was normal practice for people at that time. The original writings also did not have chapters and verses. As copies were produced and translated, vowels, spaces, chapters and verses were inserted.
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Why are there so many versions?
Have you noticed something like this at the end of a sentence:
(Exodus 34:27 NIrV) or (Rom. 1:16 NKJV)
The letters “NIrV” is the version of the Bible. It stands for New International Reader’s Version. The letters NKJV stands for New King James Version. Another example is ESV which stands for English Standard Version. There are over 100 versions of the Bible in English. The versions are the same Christian Bible, but they are each written slightly different without changing the meaning.
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Here is an example:
And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
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Mark 5:34 ESV
He said to her, “Dear woman, your faith has healed you. Go in peace. You are free from your suffering.”
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Mark 5:34 NIrV
You can see that the meaning of the two verses is the same, but the words are slightly different. This is an example of two different versions of the same Bible.
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The Bible is translated into hundreds of different languages so people around the world can read it. Some versions are translated as a “word to word” translation. This means the translators tried to keep the words very close to the words of the original language. They attempted to keep the same number of words and the same order of words.
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Others versions are a “thought to thought” translation. This means the translators looked at a whole sentence and put it into English words with the same meaning. However, it may not have the same amount of words and may not be put in the same order. These versions were developed to make translations easier to understand.
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Which version is the best one to read? It depends on which one you are most comfortable reading. Some of the more popular versions for “word to word” translations are King James Version (KJV), New King James Version (NKJV), English Standard Version (ESV), and New American Standard Bible (NASB). Versions like the New Living Translation (NLT) are popular for the “thought to thought”. The New International Version (NIV) is said to be a translation more in the middle of the two extremes. Versions like the International Children’s Bible (ICB) and New International Reader’s Version (NIrV) are translated for children. The ESV, NIV and NLT are said to be translated for all ages. There are even parallel Bibles that have more than one version within the same Bible.
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Why are there so many different Bibles?
Besides different versions, there are also different Bibles. The Protestant Bible is what the Christian church uses and is called the inspired Word of God. It is the Bible that has been described within this book. However, some other religions use different Bibles.
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For example, the Catholic religion uses a Bible similar to the Protestant Bible. However, the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible has 46 books instead of 39. Those books are called the Apocrypha. The extra books are not “canonized”. This means these books were not found to be the inspired word of God. However, the Catholic religion still includes them in their Bible.
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Another example is the Mormon religion. This religion uses The Book of Mormon. The Mormon’s claim that a person named Joseph Smith found ancient gold plates in 1823. Joseph was then said to translate the plates into other languages. The Mormons believe this new book is better than the Bible.
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Where do I start reading the Bible?
It is important to read the entire Bible. However, if you are new to reading the Bible, some books are easier to understand than others. There are many opinions as to which book of the Bible is best to start reading for first-time readers. Some recommend starting with the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). And maybe more specifically start with the books of Mark and then John. Genesis is another suggestion along with the book of Acts, Psalms, and Proverbs.
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The Bible is not a book that has to be read from beginning to end. You can start at any book you want. However, for new readers, books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation may be more difficult to understand right away because of the amount of prophecy and symbolism they contain.
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There are many great daily bible reading plans that will help you along your reading journey. Reading plans will tell you what books and verses to read each day. Many will help you read the entire Bible in one year.
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How do I understand the Bible?
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1.The Bible is the Word of God. The entire book is true. First, you must understand what the Bible is. Just because someone does not understand something does not make it false. For example, some people will read about the Laws in the Old Testament. They will see the punishments for breaking the Law and say they don’t think God would do such a thing. So they choose not to believe that part of the Bible. However, those people do not have a true understanding of God’s purpose for the Law. God used the Law to prepare people for Jesus. Do not choose to believe only parts of the Bible based on your own feelings. You may just need more understanding.
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2. Pray. If you doubt that prayer will help you understand, this just shows how much more you need to read the Bible. Prayer works. Answered prayer requires faith and faith comes from hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). One suggestion is praying the prayer found in Ephesians 1:17-23.
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3. Read and read some more. Don’t give up after a time or two of reading. Your mind and feelings may fight it. But if you keep reading God’s Word, it will change your way of thinking and your attitude. The Holy Spirit will help you understand the spiritual things of God that are found in the Bible (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). They can’t be understood by yourself. Keep reading, pray, and the understanding will eventually come.
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4. You can ask for help from other Christians. In Acts chapter eight, the Holy Spirit sent Philip to a man who was having a hard time understanding the book of Isaiah. Philip asked the man if he understood what he was reading. The man said he couldn’t without someone’s help. There are many people in this world who have studied the Bible for many years and have understanding through the Holy Spirit. However, there are a lot of others who think they understand but they do not. There are even many churches who do not teach what the Bible says. Be careful who you receive help from. A person’s teachings should never go against what any part of the Bible says. Always compare what a person says to what the Bible says.
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5. Other Resources. There are other resources such as bible commentaries, bible dictionaries, and bible concordances. A commentary is a person’s notes of their understanding of scripture. A Bible dictionary is like a normal dictionary except it has words from the Bible only. A concordance is a list of words from the Bible. It shows where you can find those same words in other parts of the Bible. All these resources can be very helpful. However, be aware that there are some resources that do not teach what the Bible says (even though they claim to). There are even study notes within a Study Bible that can be incorrect. Don’t’ be discouraged by this and don’t give up on reading. God will help you understand. Reading your Bible is essential to follow Jesus and understand God’s ways.
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6. The bible is best understood when you read the whole book. Since the books of the Bible work together, it’s hard to get a true understanding by reading one part or one book. Your understanding of the Bible will grow when you read the entire book (2 Timothy 3:16).
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Chapter and Verse Numbers
The books in the Bible are divided into chapter and verses. Below is an example of a page in the Bible. The big numbers are chapter numbers and the small numbers are verse numbers.
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The chapters and verses in the above example are found in the book of Proverbs (NIV version). When someone refers to these verses, they will be written like this:
The chapter and verse numbers are separated by a colon. If you only wanted to refer to the second verse in the same chapter, you would write: Proverbs 2:2.
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If you open your Bible, you will most likely see a scripture reference (like the example above) at the top of each page. The scripture on the left page tells you the very first verse that appears on that page. The scripture on the right page tells you the very last verse that appears on that page. If you are looking for a specific verse, this makes it easier to find. Here is an example:
