The Bible

What is Bible? The Bible refers to the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. The Bible is divided into two parts. The first two thirds of the Bible are inherited from the Jews and this is called the Old Testament whereas the last third is considered to be written by Christians and is called the New Testament. The Hebrew Bible, or the Torah comprises the origins of the Israelites and traces the historic account of Israel. After the establishment of Christianity in the first century, Gospel accounts and letters of apostles were compiled into a Christian Bible, which became known as the New Testament. The Old and New Testaments together are referred to as the Holy Bible. The meaning of the word Bible is “the books.” This word is a translation of the Greek word “biblia” (books). The word Bible has been used to denote the sacred scripture of Christian religion. This scripture is inspired, meaning that God himself guided the authors who wrote the books of the Bible. The Bible is a collection of many works by different authors who had different ways of thinking and writing. Some of them wrote poetry, such as the kind found in the Psalms while some of them wrote symbolic visions they had. Some recorded facts and some wrote detailed history based on research. Therefore, the Bible is a book of knowledge. Although the Bible is written by human authors, the ultimate author of the Bible is God, because the Bible is actually God’s word. It is God’s experiences to the faithful people. This is why the Bible is free from error. The authors of the Bible wrote what God wanted them to write. The Bible comes from two main sources, Old and New Testaments, written in different languages. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and some books were written in Aramaic. The Old Testament was translated very early into Aramaic and Greek. The translation is called the Aramaic Targums. This translation was helpful to the Jewish people in understanding the Old Testament in the