Tell me about the Bible.
When you first look at the Bible, it's such a large book that it can seem a bit daunting. But once you look into it, you find that it's largely made up of really dramatic stories and is very readable.
You see, when God designed His book for mankind, He didn't give us a boring manual or a text book in which he just laid out the dry facts. Since God is all about RELATIONSHIP He gave us a beautiful and thrilling story of His relationship with mankind. And from that story we learn the character of God and how we should relate to Him and to each other. What is also amazing is that there is a special POWER in the Bible. As you read it, it has a special ability to speak to you from God and about God. So let's find out a bit more about the Bible. What is the Bible? Although we call the Bible a book, it's actually a collection of 66 short books - some of them running to many pages, some less than one page long. They were written over a period of about 1500 years by people who were at the centre of what God was doing at the time. God laid it upon these people's hearts to write the various books and inspired them and guided them so strongly that we can say they wrote down 'God's words'. The writers (about 40 different authors) were amongst the closest people to God in their day. Paul, one of the early Christian leaders, wrote: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16) The Bible is divided into two parts: the story of how God worked amongst people before Jesus lived on earth (we call that the OLD TESTAMENT) and the story from Jesus onwards (we call that the NEW TESTAMENT) So how should I get to know the Bible? The short answer is, just read it! Repeatedly! If you begin at the very beginning, the book of Genesis, you get a very important grounding in the character of God and in spiritual truth that forms the basis of everything that follows. Carry on reading through the first 17 books up to Esther. If you just try and get the story and skip some of the finer details to start with, you will find that easier. Sometimes you will get long lists of names (genealogies), detailed building specifications and detailed laws. Some of these are best passed over until you're more familiar with the general outline and stories. Also reading the GOSPELS (which are four different accounts of the life of Jesus on earth) and the book of Acts (the story of the first Christians and first churches) are a good place to start. So here's the list of Bible books in order, and the books written as stories (more properly history) are in red. The Bible
Books of the OLD TESTAMENT
Books of the NEW TESTAMENT
What of the rest of the books in the Bible - other than the history books? Well, you have four amazing poetry and wisdom books - Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon.
Psalms was the original song book of God's ancient people, and the words speak deeply and emotionally about daily struggles as we seek to deal with life and learn to relate to God. They are very real and honest, as well as very beautiful. Proverbs does what it says on the tin - it's essentially a list of proverbs or wisdom teachings. Ecclesiastes is book that considers the meaning of life and deals with someone struggling and questioning everything in life. Song of Solomon is a beautiful love song with a deeper spiritual meaning. The rest of the Old Testament - Isaiah to Malachi - is made up of PROPHETIC BOOKS. These are messages sent from God to different people and nation, and spoken by His messengers, the prophets. These can be quite hard to understand without someone explaining them, but as you read more and more of the history, they will start to make more sense. Even without understanding everything, they are still a blessing if you can persevere. There are bits of story contained within the prophetic books, such as in the book of Daniel. Finally, in the New Testament, after the Gospels and Acts, you have twenty LETTERS from leading Christians, sometimes written to whole churches, sometimes to individuals. These contain really useful teachings about how to live a Christians, how to organise churches and about the character of God. These letters are the nearest thing in the Bible to a manual, but the fact that they were written as personal letters to real people gives them a context that helps to stay very readable. Some of the teaching gets quite deep and technical at times and it can be helpful to have someone explain it to you. The Bible ends with a book that mainly contains prophecies about the end of the world, called the book of Revelation. A final thing to say is that because the Bible is from God, it has a special power to speak into our own personal circumstances today. We might call it a supernatural book for that reason. Tell me about Bible Versions. The Bible was originally written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic (a version of Hebrew) and ancient Greek. So obviously our English Bibles are translations. There have been numerous different translations (or versions) of the Bible produced in English over the years, each with different strengths. Essentially, when making a translation, a translator has to decide whether to translate the words very exactly (i.e. word for word) or to try to make it simpler for a modern reader. If you make it too simple, you may miss something of what God intended us to know. So the best translators keep very closely to the original text but still make it intelligible for modern readers. We recommend the following versions of the Bible in order of whuch we think is the best: New King James Version New American Standard Bible English Standard Version A very readable but less accurate Bible is the New Living Translation. The Authorised (King James) Version was translated in 1611 and is a very beautiful and powerful version preferred by many. It is an excellent version of you can handle some of the archaic language. You can purchase Bibles online here amongst other places. You can also read the whole Bible in many different versions on various excellent sites and download it to your phone. These apps also contain an audio version. We recommend: www.biblehub.org www.e-sword.net www.biblegateway.com |