Education

What is the Bible? and  Where did the it come from?  

The Bible is a collection of writings by many different people across several millennia. Referred to as “scriptures” which means “writings,” these are considered sacred because through the generations their teachings have served to bring people into a growing, vital faith with God.  The church as an institution has decided which of all the writings are included in what we know as the Bible. Different denominations include slightly different books. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include some scripture passages within the Old Testament that are not included in the protestant Bibles, and also books referred to as “deuterocanonical,” which are usually omitted in protestant Bibles.    

The word “bible” actually means “collection of books” or “library.”  Inside the covers of our Bible is an entire library of books. Protestant Christians have 66 books in their Bibles. 39 books in the Old Testament – or Hebrew Scriptures, and 27 books in the New Testament – or Greek Scriptures.  

  The various stories that make up the Bible originated some as recently as 2000 years ago, others as far back as 5000 years ago or more.  The oldest stories predate written language. These stories were told in families and tribes, passed along through generations by repeated tellings.  While the stories helped to build the identity of a people, you can imagine that the stories told would change over time as storytellers’ techniques changed or family members married into different tribes and shared a new twist or embellishment on an old story.  

There is a variety of genre contained in the Bible:  history, poetry, fiction, biographical narrative, letters, apocalyptic are a few.  It is important to think about what genre is being read, as we anticipate learning differently from different genre.

copyright Janette Saavedra 2009/2013/2015/2018
Permission is given to reproduce this for congregational use
A Framework for Understanding