What Is The Bible?

Today’s Bibles. The Bible has been translated from the ancient languages into many different languages. There are also a large number of specialty Bibles which include study aids, maps, and indexes. They are all based on the original manuscripts, sometimes called autographs, of the 66 books of the Bible. The Old and New Testaments were composed of many parchment scrolls. The Old Testament was a collection of scrolls written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Today the Jews call the Old Testament the Tanakh. The Greek version of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint, and was written in 280-150 B.C. The Septuagint is abbreviated as LXX. Its Greek words are sometimes used to understand word meanings in the Hebrew version. The New Testament was written exclusively in Greek.

The Bible was written and approved by Christ (Luke 24:44) and His apostles. The Apostle Peter approved of Paul’s writings in 2 Pet. 3:15-16, and Paul endorsed Luke in 1 Tim 5:17 when he quoted Luke 10:7. The New Testament books were approved by the apostles. By the end of the beginning of the second century, the canon or the Bible was complete. By the end of the second century, the early church fathers had quoted from all of the New Testament books. The Muratorian Fragment (A.D. 170) listed all the New Testament books, except for Matthew, Mark, Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter and 3 John. The document is called a fragment because portions of the document have been torn off. The well known biblical scholar Westcott states that the missing books were probably included initially because the document is torn where they should have been listed. The Bible had already been established. In the years that followed, the authority of certain books was challenged and church councils were convened to review and verify the contents of our Bible. The Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) is usually pointed to as the council which finally put the debates to rest. But unfortunately there will always be men who will challenge the authority of various books in the Bible.

In A.D. 383-405 the Latin Vulgate was created. This is a Latin version of the entire Bible. Since then at least 34 different versions of the Bible have been published. Some of the significant versions of the Bible are the Wycliffe, King James, New American Standard (NASB), New International Version (NIV) and the New King James Version (NKJV). The NASB and the NKJV Bibles attempt to keep the exact word, meaning and phrasing of the original language in the translation. The Living Bible is called a free translation because it tries to accurately communicate the idea of the passage. The NIV is somewhere in between. If you desire to study the Bible by yourself without knowing Greek, the NASB or the NKJV are highly recommended because their translations are closer to the original Hebrew and Greek.