What kind of book the Bible is

Many books, one story

The Bible looks like one book, but it is a library. A Protestant Bible holds thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, written before Jesus came, and twenty-seven of the New. ‘Testament’ here means covenant, the bond God made with his people. Shepherds and kings, priests and fishermen wrote these books over some thirteen to fifteen centuries, from Moses to the apostles, in Hebrew, a little Aramaic, and Greek.

Yet the books tell one story. It opens with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1), runs through the fall and God's promises to the cross and the empty tomb, and closes with "Behold, I make all things new" (Revelation 21:5): creation, fall, redemption in Christ, new creation.

Christ is its centre, as the risen Jesus showed two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.

Luke 24:27

Of the Scriptures he said, "These are the very words that testify about Me" (John 5:39). Many hands wrote them, but the Bible is God's word:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness

2 Timothy 3:16

In Peter's words, "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). On this inspiration, see The inspiration and authority of Scripture in the doctrine course.

Which books belong

The list of books the church receives as Scripture is called the canon. The church did not invent it: over generations it discerned and received as God's word the Scriptures Jesus had received and the writings of his apostles. The earliest surviving list of exactly our twenty-seven New Testament books is an Easter letter of Athanasius of Alexandria from 367 Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, and nearly all the churches receive those twenty-seven. The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches names the sixty-six books one by one Westminster Confession, ch. 1.2; the Belgic Confession of the Reformed churches of continental Europe lists the same Belgic Confession, art. 4.

Over the Old Testament the churches differ. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches of the East also receive as Scripture Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees and the additions to Esther and Daniel. These books, they point out, stood in the Greek Old Testament the early church widely used, and the church has read them as Scripture from its first centuries. Catholics call them deuterocanonical; the Orthodox receive a few more.

Protestant churches hold that the Old Testament Jesus and the apostles received was the Hebrew Bible entrusted to Israel (Romans 3:2). They call the other books the Apocrypha and do not receive them as Scripture, though many read them with profit. The Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican churches, the family of the Church of England, say:

And the other Books … the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine

Thirty-nine Articles, art. 6

The Westminster Confession is stricter: these books are to be used no otherwise ‘than other human writings’ ch. 1.3. See The canon, in the doctrine course, and How did we get the Bible?

Order and kinds

The Jewish Hebrew Bible gathers the same books into three parts: the Law (Torah), the Prophets and the Writings. Many hear those three parts in Jesus' words about "the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms" (Luke 24:44). Christian Bibles broadly keep the order of the old Greek and Latin Bibles: the Law, History, Poetry and Wisdom, the Major and the Minor Prophets; then the Gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, the General Letters and Revelation.

The books are of different kinds: law, history, poetry, prophecy, gospel, letter and apocalypse, and the map under the Jesus tab colours each book by its kind. Knowing the kind helps you read it rightly. A psalm is a prayer or a song; a letter was written to a church or a person; an apocalypse such as Revelation speaks in vivid symbols. Interpreting Scripture, in the theology course, shows how.

Chapters and verses are not the authors' own. They were added long afterwards to help readers find their place: our chapters are usually traced to the thirteenth century, and the New Testament's verse numbers to the sixteenth. A verse means what it means within its book, so read books whole.

How to use this course

Each lesson gives a book's author and date, its outline, its key passages, how it leads to Christ, and how to read it. On authors and dates it starts from the view the church has long received and sets out fairly where other scholars differ. On the map under the Jesus tab, a book's panel offers ‘About …’ to open its lesson, and every verse link in a lesson opens the reader. New to the Bible? Start with Starting to read the Bible in the New Believers course. On translations, see Which Bible translation should I read?, and on trusting the Bible, Can the Bible be trusted?

The course's motto comes from Augustine, the North African church leader. In 386, in a garden in Milan, he sat weeping, torn between his old life and God. In E. B. Pusey's translation of 1838:

I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read."

Augustine, Confessions 8.12.29

He took up Paul's letters and read where his eyes first fell, Romans 13: "clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh" (Romans 13:14). With them his doubt was gone, and he turned to the Lord. Tolle lege, take up and read: begin with Genesis.

Practice