The books
The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia, which means books (plural). The Bible is not one book, but a collection of books written by 35 writers, over a period of more than 2000 years.
It comprises:
- An Old Testament (the books of the old covenant) - 39 books, written over a period of at least 1500 years.
- A New Testament (the new covenant) - 27 books, written over a period of about 50 years.
These together form the books of the "canon" (the collection of writings which are the Bible as we know it today), a total of 66 books.
Other books
There are a number of other Old Testament books that do not belong to the canon. In protestant circles these are known as the Apocryphal (literally: hidden) books. These books were not part of the Hebrew Old Testament. The books have been included in Roman Catholic Bible translations. The reason for this is that they were included in Greek translations of the Old Testament, and later also in the Latin translation (the Vulgate). In old protestant Bibles they are sometimes included as a block between the Old and New Testaments, or right at the end, with the note that they are useful to read, but do not belong to the canon.
The sequence of the books
The usual sequence of the Bible is as follows:
Old Testament:
- Historical books (17)
- Poetic books (6)
- Prophetic boeken (16)
The historical books have been arranged in approximate chronological sequence in our Bible.
The poetic and prophetic books have a different sequence.
New Testament:
- Historical books (5) - Gospels and Acts of the Apostles
- Letters (21) - mostly written by the Apostle Paul
- Prophetic book (1) - Revelation
The books of the New Testament are arranged as above, and not in the order in which they were written.
Written down
In the 19th century the idea was put forward that the Bible had for generations been handed down from father to son, and that only after the exile (almost at the end of the Old Testament) was it actually written down. This idea is based on the very limited state of archeology in those days. It was assumed that before the time of the exile writing did not exist.
Since then more research has been done and complete libraries have been found from the same time as the first Bible book. The fact that this argument is still used today by saying that "after the exile all the legends from the past were written down" says more about the person who says it than it's having any basis in reality. Obviously people are trying to undermine the authority of the Bible and do not allow themselves to be hampered by a reality which we now know to be quite different. If you repeat something often enough, some of it will stick.
There are good reasons to assume that Scripture has been written down since the earliest times. The heading (left) "materials" tells us more about this.