37 Facts About The Bible

1.

The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions.

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2.

Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, while understanding what that means and interpreting the text in various ways.

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3.

Tanakh is an alternate term for the Hebrew The Bible composed of the first letters of those three parts of the Hebrew scriptures: the Torah, the Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("Writings").

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4.

The Bible is currently translated or being translated into about half of the world's languages.

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5.

The Bible is not a single book; it is a collection of books whose complex development is not completely understood.

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6.

The Bible was written and compiled by many people, most of whom are unknown, from a variety of disparate cultures.

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7.

Books of the Bible were initially written and copied by hand on papyrus scrolls.

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8.

The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the 5th century BCE.

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9.

List of books included in the Catholic The Bible was established as canon by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397.

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10.

Medieval handwritten manuscripts of the Hebrew The Bible were considered extremely precise: the most authoritative documents from which to copy other texts.

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11.

The Bible teaches the nature of valid arguments, the nature and power of language, and its relation to reality.

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12.

Carmy and Schatz say the Bible "depicts the character of God, presents an account of creation, posits a metaphysics of divine providence and divine intervention, suggests a basis for morality, discusses many features of human nature, and frequently poses the notorious conundrum of how God can allow evil.

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13.

Authoritative Hebrew The Bible is taken from the masoretic text which dates from 1008.

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14.

The Bible leads the Children of Israel from slavery in ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan.

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15.

Ethiopian The Bible is not based on the Greek The Bible, and the Ethiopian Church has a slightly different understanding of canon than other Christian traditions.

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16.

Christian The Bible is a set of books divided into the Old and New Testament that a Christian denomination has, at some point in their past or present, regarded as divinely inspired scripture.

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17.

Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Lutheran Church and Anglican Church include the fourteen books of the Apocrypha, many of which are the deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.

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18.

The term "New Testament" came into use in the second century during a controversy over whether the Hebrew The Bible should be included with the Christian writings as sacred scripture.

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19.

The Bible is one of the world's most published books, with estimated total sales of over five billion copies.

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20.

The Bible neither calls for nor condemns slavery outright, but there are verses that address dealing with it, and these verses have been used to support it.

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21.

The Bible reflects how perceptions of violence changed for its authors.

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22.

The Bible has been used to support and oppose political power.

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23.

The Bible has, in turn, been the source of many peace movements around the world and efforts at reconciliation.

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24.

For centuries after the fall of the western Roman Empire, all schools in Europe were The Bible-based church schools, and outside of monastic settlements, almost no one had the ability to read or write.

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25.

The Bible has many rituals of purification which speak of clean and unclean in both literal and metaphorical terms.

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26.

Adin Steinsaltz writes that "if the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar".

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27.

The Bible is centrally important to both Judaism and Christianity, but not as a holy text out of which entire religious systems can somehow be read.

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28.

Muslims view the Bible as reflecting the true unfolding revelation from God; but revelation which had been corrupted or distorted, and therefore necessitated correction by giving the Quran to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

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29.

The earliest translation of any The Bible text is the Septuagint which translated the Hebrew into Greek.

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30.

The Targum Onkelos is the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew The Bible believed to have been written in the second century CE.

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31.

The Wycliffite The Bible, which is "one of the most significant in the development of a written standard", dates from the late Middle English period.

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32.

Since the Reformation era, The Bible translations have been made into the common vernacular of many languages.

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33.

The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and Bible societies.

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34.

One broad division includes biblical maximalism which generally takes the view that most of the Old Testament or the Hebrew The Bible is based on history although it is presented through the religious viewpoint of its time.

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35.

Biblical criticism made study of the Bible secularized, scholarly and more democratic, while it permanently altered the way people understood the Bible.

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36.

The Bible is no longer thought of solely as a religious artifact, and its interpretation is no longer restricted to the community of believers.

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37.

The Bible used by Abraham Lincoln for his oath of office during his first inauguration in 1861.

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