THE BIBLE: The Basics

The word bible comes from biblos, a Greek word which means book. It is not one book but a collection of books. This collection is also referred to as scripture.

 There are 66 books in the Bible. An easy way to remember this is to change each b in bible to a 6: 6i6le.

 The Bible is divided into two main sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. An easy way to remember this is the equation: 3 x 9 = 27.

 Over 99% of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. This language bears little resemblance to English and is read from right to left. Over 99% of the New Testament was originally written in Greek. This language looks similar to English and is read from left to right. Less than 1% of the Bible was written in Aramaic. This was the language Jesus spoke.

 The books of the Bible were first written on stone tablets, leather skins, or sheets of papyrus. Unfortunately, all of these original writings have been lost. In fact, the number of Bible words that we have today in the author’s original handwriting is zero.

 What we do have, however, are manuscripts of the original writings, meticulously hand-copied over thousands of years. Some of these manuscripts are older than others. They are considered more reliable because they are closer in age to the original document. Some consist of entire books of the Bible, but many pieces or fragments of books have been discovered as well. The oldest and most famous ancient manuscripts were a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Palestine in the twentieth century.

 Using these available manuscripts, scholars have translated the Bible from the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into hundreds of languages and dialects, the number of translations still growing each year.

 

BASICS: questions 1-10

 Fill in the blanks below.

1

The word “bible” comes from the Greek word “biblos” which means ________.

2

The Bible is not one book but a ________ of several books.

3

The Bible contains ___ books.

4

The Old and New Testaments consist of ___ and ___ books, respectively.

5

An easy way to remember the number of books in each testament is the equation: __ x __ = ___.

6

Greater than 99% of the Old Testament was originally written in ________.

7

Greater than 99% of the New Testament was originally written in ________.

8

Less than 1% of the Bible was originally written in ________, the language Jesus spoke.

9

The number of words from the Bible available today in an original author’s handwriting is ___.

10

Though not available today, the original writings were meticulously ________ over the years and have been ________ into many languages.

Answers  

1. book      2. collection     3. 66     4. 39, 27    
5. (3 x 9 = 27)      6. Hebrew     7. Greek    
8. Aramaic     9. zero     10. copied, translated