What is the Bible?

The big picture

The Bible is a collection of books—a library essentially.

It was written over a period of roughly 1,600 years, from around 1,500 BCE to 100 CE, by dozens of authors. They came from these modern-day regions (some are debated), ranked by text volume:

The Bible also spans very different genres. They are, by text volume: history, prophecy, poetry, law, gospel, epistle, wisdom, and apocalypse.

The Old Testament has 39 books (46 in the Catholic Bible). The New Testament has 27 books. There are more than 750,000 words in the Old and New Testament combined.

The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, with a few sections in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek. Translations came later: first the Latin Vulgate, then a range of spoken languages including German, French, and English.

Who wrote it?

Tradition assigns many books to well-known figures.

Moses is credited with the first five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy. David is associated with many of the Psalms, and Solomon with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

The prophetic books carry the names of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and twelve shorter prophets including Amos, Hosea, and Micah.

In the New Testament, the four gospels are attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul is named as the author of thirteen letters, with further letters attributed to Peter, James, and Jude.

Almost all of these attributions are debated, and the debate is old rather than modern.

Many scholars think the first five books were assembled over centuries from several earlier sources rather than written by one person. Isaiah is widely read as the work of at least two authors writing generations apart, since its later chapters describe events long after the prophet's lifetime.

The gospels were circulated anonymously at first and only received their familiar names in the second century.

Of the letters attributed to Paul, roughly seven are broadly accepted as his, while the rest may have been written by followers writing in his name—a common and not necessarily dishonest practice at the time. The letter to the Hebrews names no author at all, and never has.

Dates are contested for the same reasons.

A book's setting is not always its date of composition. Daniel is set in the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE but is often dated to the second century BCE. Many books also show signs of later editing, so a single date can be misleading even where an author is not in doubt.

Reading the Bible

There are reasons why the Bible is so hard to read.

The genres each have their own rules of interpretation. Older versions with their archaic phrasing are not accessible to modern readers. Timelines jump. Cultural references are unfamiliar. Many key people share the same or similar names. Maps change over time. The same story isn't always told consistently from one book to the next.

There's more.

The Bible is full of internal references, especially between the Old and New Testaments.

For example, without knowing first-century Jewish expectations of the Messiah, you can't fully appreciate the disappointment many felt when Jesus offered a completely different kind of salvation.

Bible Summaries Series

None of this should discourage you.

The difficulty is the point in a way: a library this old and this varied rewards patience. Every question it raises opens onto something worth knowing. You don't need to master it before you begin. You only need a way in.

That is what I am trying to build with my Bible Summaries Series. This work in progress is designed to give you various portals into the Bible via its Stories, People, Places, and Themes. I hope you will join me on this journey of discovery.

Comments or questions? Please Contact me.