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TheBible(fromKoine Greek ,t bibla, "the books") is a collection of textssacredinJudaismandChristianity. There is no single "Bible" and many Bibles with varying contents exist.[1]Various religious traditions have produced differentrecensionswith different selections of texts. These do largely overlap however, creating an important common core.With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best selling book of all time,[2][3][4]has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies,[5][6]and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where it was the first mass-printed book. TheGutenberg Biblewas the first Bible printed usingmovable type.Contents[hide] 1Versions of the Bible 1.1Jewish Bible 1.2Christian Bibles 1.3Textual history 2Etymology 3Development 4Hebrew Bible 4.1Torah 4.2Nevi'im 4.2.1Former Prophets 4.2.2Latter Prophets 4.3Ketuvim 4.3.1The poetic books 4.3.2The five scrolls (Hamesh Megillot) 4.3.3Other books 4.3.4Order of the books 4.3.5Canonization 4.4Original languages 5Septuagint 5.1Incorporations from Theodotion 5.2Final form 6Christian Bibles 6.1Old Testament 6.1.1Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books 6.1.2Pseudepigraphal texts 6.1.2.1Book of Enoch 6.1.2.2Denominational views of Pseudepigrapha 6.1.3Role of Old Testament in Christian theology 6.2New Testament 6.2.1Original language 6.2.2Historic editions 6.3Development of the Christian canons 6.3.1Ethiopian Orthodox canon 7Divine inspiration 8Versions and translations 9Views 9.1Other religions 9.2Biblical studies 9.3Higher criticism 10Archaeological and historical research 11Criticism 12Bibles 13Illustrations 14See also 15Endnotes 16References and further readingVersions of the BibleThis sectioncontainsclose paraphrasingof a non-free copyrighted source,https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/jpstoc.html. Ideas in this article should be expressed in an original manner.More details may be available on thetalk page.(May 2015)

The appropriate term to describe Judaism's scriptures isTanakh, although the termsBibleandOld Testamentare commonly used by non-Jews to describe Judaism's scriptures.[7]While there is just one Jewish Bible,[8][not in citation given]collected together and preserved as the sacred books of the Jewish people, the contents of each of the Christian compilations of canonical texts of theOld Testamentvary between different Christian traditions. Jewish scripture was (and is) originally written in Hebrew, the ChristianOldandNewTestaments were originally written inKoine Greek. The Tanakh has 24 books, the various versions of the Old Testament have more and the containing original 24 books of the Tanakh in a different order.Jewish BibleJudaism preserves and hands down a collection of scriptures called the Tanakh or the Jewish Bible.[9][10]In a context outside of Judaism, it is more generally referred to as theHebrew Bible.[11]This collection contains twenty-four books divided into three parts: theTorah("teaching", "instruction"), theNevi'im("prophets"), and theKetuvim("writings"). The unifying property of the Tanakh is that all its books are originally written in Hebrew, and, to a very minor degree, in theAramaic language.[dubiousdiscuss][citation needed]Christian BiblesThe Christian Old Testament features more than 24 books of the original Hebrew Bible, and deliberately in a divergent order.[11]Moreover, there are a number of different versions of the Christian Bible, with different selections of books, as well as different ordering and naming of books, or incorporation ofadditional materialinto the books. The unifying property of the varying Christian Bibles is that all their books were originally written in Greek.[dubiousdiscuss][citation needed]Christian Bibles range from the sixty-six books of theProtestantcanon to the eighty-one books of theEthiopian Orthodox Churchcanon. The first part of allChristian Biblesis theOld Testament, which contains, at minimum, the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible divided into thirty-nine books and ordered differently from the Hebrew Bible. TheCatholic ChurchandEastern Christianchurches also holdcertain books and passagesthat are excluded from the Hebrew Bible to be part of theOld Testament canon.The second part of the Christian Bible is theNew Testament, containing twenty-seven books originally written inKoine Greek, which discuss the teachings and person ofJesus, as well as events infirst-century Christianity. The New Testament is divided into the fourCanonical gospels, theActs of the Apostles, twenty-oneEpistlesor didactic letters, and theBook of Revelation.Textual historyBy the 2nd centuryBCEJewish groups had called the Bible books the "scriptures" and referred to them as "holy," or in Hebrew (Kitvei hakkodesh), and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible", in Greek ( ,t bibla t gia) or "the Holy Scriptures" ( ,e Aga Graph).[12]The Bible wasdivided into chaptersin the 13th century byStephen Langtonand into verses in the 16th century by French printerRobert Estienne[13]and is now usuallycitedby book, chapter, and verse.The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in theVatican Library, and known as theCodex Vaticanus. The oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates to the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin (Vulgate) Bible is theCodex Amiatinus, dating from the 8th century.[14]Etymology

An American family Bible dating to 1859.The English wordBibleis from the Latinbiblia, from the same word inMedieval LatinandLate Latinand ultimately fromKoine Greek ta biblia"the books" (singularbiblion).[15]Medieval Latinbibliais short forbiblia sacra"holy book", whilebibliain Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen.bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia,gen.bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe.[16]Latinbiblia sacra"holy books" translates Greek ta biblia ta hagia, "the holy books".[17]The worditself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive ofbyblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of thePhoeniciansea portByblos(also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptianpapyruswas exported to Greece. The Greekta biblia(lit. "little papyrus books")[18]was "an expressionHellenistic Jewsused to describe their sacred books (theSeptuagint).[19][20]Christian use of the term can be traced to c. 223 CE.[15]The biblical scholarF.F. Brucenotes thatChrysostomappears to be the first writer (in hisHomilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388) to use the Greek phraseta biblia("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.[21]Development

The Kennicott Bible, byBenjamin Kennicott, with illustration, Jonah being swallowed by the fish, 1476See also:Authorship of the BibleProfessor John K. Riches,Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticismat the University of Glasgow, in anOxford University Pressintroduction to the Bible, says that "the biblical texts themselves are the result of a creative dialogue between ancient traditions and different communities through the ages",[22]and "the biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers political, cultural, economic, and ecological varied enormously".[23]Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at theUniversity of Edinburgh, says that theOld Testamentis "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing."[24]He statesin accordance with Judaisms traditional viewthat it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written byGodand passed to mankind. Parallel to the solidification of the Hebrew canon (c. 3rd century BCE), only the Torah first and than the Tanakh began to be translated into Greek and expanded, now referred to as theSeptuagintor the Greek Old Testament.[25]In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from oral traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that:Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, but the results have not been too encouraging. The period of transmission is short: less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Mark's Gospel. This means that there was little time for oral traditions to assume fixed form.[26]The Bible was later translated into Latin and other languages. John Riches states that:The translation of the Bible into Latin marks the beginning of a parting of the ways between Western Latin-speaking Christianity and Eastern Christianity, which spoke Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and other languages. The Bibles of the Eastern Churches vary considerably: the Ethiopic Orthodox canon includes 81 books and contains many apocalyptic texts, such as were found at Qumran and subsequently excluded from the Jewish canon. As a general rule, one can say that the Orthodox Churches generally follow the Septuagint in including more books in their Old Testaments than are in the Jewish canon.[26]