William had never read the Bible, even though he grew up in a Christian family and considered himself Christian in commitments if not in practice. William figured that he couldn’t really call himself a true Christian because he didn’t go to church. He didn’t even know if his parents had baptized him when he was a baby or young child. Yet he was comfortable with the Christian stories he knew, believing that they were better than anything else in which he could believe. Yet then William began dating a young woman his age who seemed to know the Bible back and forth, cover to cover. She quoted it all the time and had even begun to gently tease William that he didn’t know what she was talking about. And so, William figured that he’d go ahead and read the Bible. But as soon as he began, he nearly stopped, stunned at its eccentricity, diversity, and detail. It wasn’t a simple book of children’s stories at all. It was instead a profoundly rich and complex spiritual history and theological text.
Scripture
The Bible is the Christian holy book, holding the texts that Christians regard as their religious scriptures or sacred writings. To call writings sacred is to acknowledge their divine inspiration or source. A sacred writing is not something the human mind alone would produce. Sacred writings instead reflect the character, desires, intentions, and designs of the divine entity of whom the writings give an account. The Bible is the Christian account of God in the three persons of the Father, Son Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit. One is a Christian when embracing the life, sacrifice, resurrection, and redemption of Jesus Christ, as the Bible’s lengthy account foreshadows, describes, and applies it. Christians generally believe in the Bible as holy scripture as a corollary to their belief in the life, work, and salvation of Jesus Christ, which is a sound approach given that the Bible reveals the full account of Jesus Christ.
Testaments
The Christian Bible has two testaments. A testament is typically a declaration of how one wants one’s affairs governed and property distributed at the end of life. The Bible’s testaments stand similarly for the desires of God in relationship to his people. Each testament marks a different arc and era in God’s relationship to his human images. The Old Testament contains Jewish sacred writings from creation to the beginning of the Jewish Second Temple period, just before the advent of Jesus Christ. The New Testament contains Christian sacred writings from the advent of Jesus Christ, through his crucifixion and resurrection, and into the early years of his Church, until about forty years following Christ’s ascension. The Old Testament is thus significantly longer than the New Testament, both in terms of their number of words and number of years each testament covers. The Old Testament primarily treats God’s relationship with his chosen people Israel, while the New Testament treats God’s relationship with all of humankind through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Read the Old and New Testaments together to get the full picture of God’s plan for redeeming creation through Jesus Christ.
Canon
The Bible’s canon, or approved writings, developed over time. The Jewish writings comprising the Hebrew Bible were largely settled by the time of Christ’s earthly ministry in the First Century AD. Christian leaders did not settle the Christian writings comprising the New Testament until late in the Fourth Century AD, although the texts were all from the First Century AD. Successive Christian councils held in Rome, Hippo, and Carthage fixed the New Testament canon at twenty-seven books, beginning with the four gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and including the Acts of the Apostles account of the early church, the letters of the apostle Paul and other early church leaders, and the final vision of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, also called the Apocalypse of John. After the 1517 Protestant Reformation, Protestants disagreed with Catholic and Orthodox Christians on the Jewish writings to include in the Old Testament. Protestants typically recognize thirty-nine Jewish Old Testament books including the Torah, histories, writings, and major and minor prophets, giving the Old and New Testaments a total of sixty-six books. Catholic and Orthodox believers may include other Jewish books, referred to in Protestantism as the Apocrypha. Protestants may regard apocryphal writings as informative, especially insofar as the Jews who wrote the Christian writings in the First Century AD would have been familiar with them and referenced them in the New Testament. Do not stumble over the relatively few distinctions among texts as canonical or not.
Distribution
As a prior chapter mentions, the Bible is by far the most-widely printed and distributed book in history, at about five billion Bibles with eighty million more each year. Many Christians share the concern that every people group worldwide would have access to the Bible in their native language. They share that commitment in keeping with the Christian commitment to share the good news of Jesus Christ as widely as possible, to make disciples of all nations, as Christ’s Great Commission charged. Bible translation is a key part of that sharing of the good news or evangelization. Christian evangelicals are those who take the Great Commission to heart. With thousands of languages worldwide, a significant percentage of the world’s population does not yet have a complete Bible translation, although the percentage of unreached people groups is less than half the world’s population. Scripture connects the preaching of the gospel to the whole world with the end of the age, not necessarily referring to the end of the world. Participate in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. You advance God’s work when you do.
Translations
Teams of scholars have translated the Bible not just into hundreds of different languages but also, in English, in dozens of different ways. Given that the original texts were in Hebrew and Greek, with a few passages in Aramaic, every Bible written in English is already a translation. But translators can have several choices of English words for Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic words. Translators can also attempt literal translations of the various ancient idioms, which modern readers would in no sense understand or might badly misconstrue. Translators may alternatively translate not literally but for equivalent meaning, so that modern readers understand, even if they do not get a word-for-word translation of the original. Translators can also choose easier or harder English words, to adjust the reading level of the translation to different audiences with different reading skills. Translators may also introduce modern idioms to make the ancient texts read in a more familiar manner. These options and their combinations are the reason for the many English translations of the Bible. Choose your favorite Bible translation fitting your reading level and interests. But also read different Bible translations for insight.
Authorship
The Bible is a collection of sacred texts spanning significantly more than a millennium. As such, the Bible had many different authors, some authors attributed from context while others named in their text. As just indicated above, the Old Testament authors wrote and transmitted their texts in Hebrew with a little Aramaic mixed in. The New Testament authors wrote and transmitted their texts in Greek. While Christians recognize human authors of scripture, Christians generally consider the whole of the Bible as Spirit inspired, meaning that the authors wrote as the Spirit influenced, inspired, or directed them. At the same time, Christians embrace the different human authors of different biblical texts to help understand and interpret the text. For example, Christians generally construe Matthew’s gospel account as referring to authorship by the disciple tax collector bearing that name. Even though the text does explicitly say so, the account clearly appears to have had a Jewish author intimately familiar with both Jesus and Jewish customs, who wrote for Christian Jews. Luke’s gospel account, by contrast, claims authorship by a physician of that name who did not travel with Jesus but investigated and compiled first-hand accounts, for a Greek or non-Jewish audience. Learn more about Bible authorship in Walking Through the Bible: a Journey Guide.
Veneration
Christians venerate the Bible in different ways. The Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament, includes many direct quotes of God speaking and many more paraphrases. Some Bible editions put the New Testament’s quotes of Jesus Christ in red letters, suggesting prominence. Yet Christians generally simultaneously refer to the whole of the Bible text, whether quotes of God, accounts, poetry, histories, prophecy, or writings, as the word of God, giving full weight to everything in the canon. Jesus himself said that time would fulfill everything the Old Testament Law, Prophets, and Psalms recorded about him. Venerating the Bible in their own way, many Protestants embrace the doctrine of sola scriptura, translated as scripture alone, holding that the Bible is the sole, ultimate, sufficient, and infallible authority on the faith’s beliefs and practices. While likewise venerating the Bible’s authority, Catholic and Orthodox Christians may also give weight to sacred traditions as an expression of divine revelation. Treat the Bible with the respect and veneration it deserves as the inspired word of God.
Uniqueness
Even if you did not recognize the Bible as a divinely inspired and sacred text, you would rightly stand in wonder of it for its utter uniqueness. Although having dozens of authors writing over a period of a millennium or so, the whole of the Bible is an unprecedentedly cross-referenced or hyperlinked text. Depending on how one counts those internal cross references, the Bible may have tens of thousands of them. The Bible’s astounding and continual cross reference of words, phrases, signifiers, images, events, figures, structures, and other details and broad movements is so complex as to make it the richest of conceivable texts. Bible analysis across two millennia has filled whole libraries, and yet scholars still seem to have just scratched the Bible’s surface, as new insights come to light. New forms of analysis continue to reveal patterns, arrangements, and insights that prior scholarship had no idea existed within the text. Brilliant minds have given their careers to studying the Bible, only to find themselves still marveling at the Bible’s hidden mysteries. No other book anything like it exists.
Interpretation
Bible readers have many ways to interpret and apply the text. You may, for instance, choose to read the Bible as a moral guide for its commands, rules, laws, and principles. You may read the Bible as a social guide for its customs, conventions, and practices. You may read the Bible as literature for the power of its prose and beauty of its poetry, or as history for the fascinating figures and spectacular events it records. You may read the Bible in a symbolic manner for the way in which it reveals the structure of the cosmos and its hierarchical and fractal nature. You may read the Bible as a psychological guide drawing from the motivations, intentions, and mental makeup of its characters, as it affected their actions and brought the consequences of those actions. You may read the Bible as a supernatural guide to the rulers, powers, and principalities in the unseen realm that influence our earthly realm. You may read the Bible as a theological text revealing the character, disposition, actions, and desires of God. You may read the Bible as a doctrinal text, construing from it the creeds, precepts, and other beliefs forming an integrated faith. You may also read the Bible as a memory text, for its words and rhythms to resonate within you and shape your thoughts and consciousness. As you read the Bible, be aware of the mode of interpretation with which you read. Shift those modes to continually draw new insights.
Reflection
If you have not read the Bible, what’s stopping you? If you have read the Bible, did you do so as a believer, out of curiosity, for the literature, or for another reason? When you read the Bible, what interpretive mode do you follow, for instance, reading for memory, history, psychology, rule, custom, the character of God, or doctrine? How might you increase your Bible reading? Could you, for instance, have a habitual time of day when you read the Bible or place where you read the Bible? Would a Bible-reading plan, assigning you so much per day, help you? Would a Bible-reading group, holding you accountable to friends and acquaintances, help? Would a discussion group, letting you share your insights and hear the insights of others, stimulate your Bible reading?
Key Points
The Bible is the scripture or sacred text for Christians.
The Bible has both an Old Testament and New Testament.
The biblical canon took a few hundred years to settle and still varies.
The Bible is the world’s most-distributed book with billions of copies.
Hundreds of Bible translations reach more than half the world’s people.
Dozens of English translations of the Bible pursue different goals.
The Bible’s dozens of ancient authors had the Spirit’s inspiration.
Christians venerate the Bible as the word of God.
The Bible is unmatched in its cross-referenced richness.
You have many choices of interpretive mode for your Bible reading.