Nature and Origin of the Bible

The Bible is not a single book but a collection of books (manuscripts), written over the course of at least a thousand years. It is divided into two main parts. Two-thirds of it comprise the Old or First Testament, and the last third contains the New Testament.

Different branches of Christianity include different collections of books in their Bibles, but nearly all regard at least sixty-six as authoritative. These make up the Protestant Bible. The Roman Catholic Bible includes seven more books in its Old Testament, and the Eastern Orthodox churches a few more than that. Nearly all Christian Bibles, therefore, contain at least three-quarters of a million words, and it takes most people weeks or months to read them.

Books in the Old Testament fall into five categories. The Hebrew Torah (Jewish Law) contains the first five, which are followed by what Christians classify as historical books and Jews as Prophets. After these come documents known as wisdom literature, followed by writings of the major prophets, and finally those of the minor prophets.

The New Testament, which contains documents written by at least ten different authors, centers on the nature, work, and teachings of Jesus It contains four narratives (Gospels) of his life, each written from a different perspective, and a record of the early church, known as Acts of the Apostles (some believe a more accurate title for Acts the works of God’s Spirit). The Apostle (Messenger) Paul, or those close to him, wrote the bulk of the New Testament in the form of letters (epistles). One of them is an intellectual treatise or essay about the singular important of Jesus (Paul’s letter to Christians living in Rome), and another may have originated as an extended presentation (sermon) of the meaning of Jesus in light of prophecies in the Old Testament. It ends with Revelation or the Apocalypse, which is an allegorical unveiling of final era or end times.

Nearly all first-century Christians were Jewish and, like orthodox Jews today, took the Old Testament to be inspired by God. Well before the second century, Christians came to treat the letters of Paul, which had been widely circulating, with comparable reverence and respect. Although scholars continue to debate when, exactly, all twenty-seven books of the New Testament were “canonized” (accepted as authoritative), there is good evidence to suggest that all of them were regarded as scripture by the end of that century.

A key question arises concerning the documents on which translations of the Bible, in particular the New Testament, depend. This is because of the claims Christians make about Jesus. How do we know that what we read in the Gospels, for example, are anywhere close to what their authors wrote? And, how do we know that we have anything close to what Paul wrote in his epistles?

By far, we have more “source documents” for the books in the New Testament than for any other ancient writing. Some contemporary scholars have achieved some celebrity and made a handsome living by writing books that call this into question. A few of them are worth reading, if for no other reason than to know what the issues are, and which (small) sections may (or may not) have later been altered or added.

Going into detail would make this brief essay unwieldy, but what we have in any good translation of the New Testament clearly reflects the thought-forms of its authors, who shared a common view of who and what Jesus was.