Bible
The Bible (Hebrew תנ״ך tanakh, Greek η Βίβλος [hē biblos] ) (sometimes The Holy Bible, The Book, Good Book, Word of God, The Word, or Scripture), from Greek (τα) βίβλια, (ta) biblia, "(the) books", is the classical name for the Hebrew Bible of Judaism or the combination of the Old Testament and New Testament of Christianity ("The Bible" actually refers to two testaments of Scripture). It is thus applied to sacred scriptures. Many Christian English speakers refer to the Bible as "the good book" (Gospel means "good news"). For many people their Bible is the revealed word of God, or an authoritative record of the relationship between God, the world and mankind.
Both Bibles have been the most widely distributed of books. It has also been translated more times and into more languages (more than 2,100 languages) than any other book. It is said that more than five billion copies of the Bible have been sold since 1815, making it the best-selling book of all-time.
Because of Christian domination of Europe from the late Roman era to the Age of Enlightenment, the Christian Bible has influenced not only religion but language, law and, until the modern era, the natural philosophy of mainstream Western Civilization. The Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution in Europe and America brought skepticism regarding the divine origin and historical accuracy of the Bible. Although some critical scholars, including archeologists, continue to use the Bible as a point of reference in the study of ancient Near Eastern history, most have come to view it as a cultural and literary document.
Although the term "Bible" is most often used to refer to Jewish and Christian scriptures, "Bible" is sometimes used to describe scriptures of other faiths. Thus the Guru Granth Sahib is often referred to as the "Sikh Bible". In the early years after the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, it was sometimes known as the "Golden Bible". The word "bible" (in lower case) is also used to refer to any tome that incorporates coverage of its subject that is comprehensive or authoritative, or both.
As the original meaning of the word indicates, the Jewish and Christian Bibles are actually collections of several books considered by adherents to be inspired by God or to record God's relationship with humanity or a particular nation.
The Christian Bible
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The Septuagint was generally abandoned in favor of the Masoretic text as the basis for translations into Western languages from Saint Jerome's Vulgate to the present day. In Eastern Christianity translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text that seem to have suffered corruption in transcription. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in texts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. (For more information, see the entry on Bible translations.)
The New Testament
The New Testament is a collection of 27 books with Jesus as its central figure, written primarily in Koine Greek in the early Christian period, that almost all Christians recognize as Scripture. These can be grouped into:
- The Synoptic Gospels
- The Gospel of John
- The Acts of the Apostles
- The Pauline Epistles
- The General Epistles
- The Revelation of John "the divine" (traditionally identified as John the Apostle).
Original language
Most scholars believe that all of the New Testament was originally composed in Greek. The three main textual traditions are sometimes called the Western text-type, the Alexandrian text-type, and Byzantine text-type. Together they compose the majority of New Testament manuscripts. There are also several ancient versions in other languages, most important of which are the Syriac (including the Peshitta and the Diatessaron gospel harmony) and the Latin (both the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate).
A few scholars believe in Aramaic primacy — that parts of the Greek New Testament are actually a translation of an Aramaic original, in particular, the Gospel of Matthew. Of these, a small number accept the Syriac Peshitta as representing the original, while most take a more critical approach to reconstructing the original text.
The canonization of Scripture
In Judaism it is commonly thought that the canonical status of some books was discussed between 200 BC and AD 100, though it is unclear at what point during this period the Jewish canon was decided. Protestants cite the Old Testament canon defined by the Council of Jamnia in AD 90 as their basis for not including the Deuterocanonical books, where Roman Catholics assert that Jewish council was convened in reaction to the rise of Christianity and its use of the Greek Septuagint.
To the books accepted by Judaism as Scripture, Christianity subsequently added those of the New Testament, the 27-book canon of which was finally fixed in the 4th century. Catholicism mostly considers certain deuterocanonical books to be part of the Old Testament, though Protestantism in general accepts as part of the Old Testament only the books in the canon of Judaism and uses the term Apocrypha for the deuterocanonical books. The Protestant Old Testament has a 39-book canon — the number varies from that of the books in the Tanakh because of a different method of division — while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books as part of the Old Testament. For details, see Books of the Bible.
Canonicity is distinct from questions of human authorship and the formation of the books of the Bible; these questions are discussed in the entries on higher criticism and textual criticism.