Written by What is the Bible?
Bible means Book in Greek. It was called The Book because it is the most important book ever written. The Bible is God’s message to all people. It tells us how we can live a godly life and how we can get to heaven. It was begun in the time of Moses and finished about 65 years after Jesus went to heaven. It wasn’t written in one long book but is 66 different books put together.
Why should we read the Bible?
We read the Bible to learn about God. The Bible tells us about how we can accept Jesus into our hearts and how we can live the way God wants us to. We also read the Bible to learn about other people who followed God and Jesus. If we didn’t have the Bible we wouldn’t know a lot about God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
Who wrote the Bible?
About 40 different people wrote the Bible including Moses, King David and the apostle Paul. All of these people were inspired by God, which means that God was in their hearts and helped them to write the Bible.
How many books are in the Bible?
There are 66 books in the Bible that tell stories of history, poems, and theology (things we know about God). The Bible is divided into 2 parts. The Old Testament, which has 39 books, and the New Testament, which has 27 books.
Why are there an Old Testament and a New Testament?
The Old Testament tells the history of the Israelites and how God promised to take care them. The books of the Old Testament were written on scrolls and stone tablets. The New Testament tells us how Jesus died on the cross for the sins of all the people who believed in him.
What language was the Bible written in?
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew: the language of the Israelites. The New Testament was written in Greek and Aramaic. Some people believe that Jesus’ apostles spoke Aramaic. Greek was the language that most people spoke in Israel. Jesus probably spoke both Aramaic and Greek.
How did we get the Bible in English?
Since the Bible was written in other languages, someone had
to translate the Bible into English. John Wycliffe was the first to translate
the Bible into English in 1385. He used a Latin translation of the Bible to
rewrite it into English. Later, in 1525, William Tyndale used Hebrew, Greek and
Aramaic versions of the Bible to make another English translation.
It is better to use the original language versions to translate the Bible
because translation is hard to do. Every time someone translates the Bible they
could make mistakes, so if you used a translation of the Bible to rewrite into
English, you might be translating those mistakes.
Today when people translate the Bible into English or any other language, they
usually do it with hundreds of people. This helps them to make the best
possible and most correct translation of the Bible.
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
They are really old manuscripts (written stories) that were discovered in a cave in the mid 1900s. Some of them are old versions of the Bible and others are other stories and histories.
Why are they important?
Some of the oldest scrolls were written 100 years before Jesus was even born. They are the oldest copies of the Bible that anyone has found. It is as close to the original Bible books that we have.
Why are there so many translations of the Bible?
Our language changes over time. The King’s James Bible uses
the language of the people who lived in the 1600s. For example they used the
words thee and thou, which mean you. Some people still like to read that
version of the Bible because it is almost poetic; others have a hard time understanding
the old English so they read other more modern versions of the Bible.
There is no original version of the Bible left because it has been so long
since the Bible was written. That means, even the oldest versions are sometimes
a little bit different. Every time a group of people translates the Bible, they
have to decide which word is the best match for the word in the original
language. Sometimes this can be hard because there isn’t an exact word and the
translator decides what is the best word. Different translators make different
choices. Try reading the same verse of the Bible in different translations and
see how they are different.
What other languages is the Bible translated into?
There are organizations that are working hard to translate
the Bible in all kinds of languages so that everyone in the world can read the
Bible in their own language. What if you couldn’t read the Bible in your
language?
The Bible has been translated into 2,285 languages, according to the Bible
Society, one of the organizations that translates the Bible. They guess there
are still 4000 more languages that don’t have a Bible translation.
