Elis and John Present the Holy Vible: The Book The Bible Could Have Been

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Estēr ( Book of Esther) אֶסְתֵר ( Pûrîm) tells of a Hebrew woman in Persia who becomes queen and thwarts a genocide of her people. The Greek ta biblia ("the books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books". [5] The biblical scholar F. F. Bruce notes that John Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388 CE) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. [6] In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) was founded and they printed millions of cheap copies of the Bible for people to buy and read.Through the work of the Bible Societies the King James Version (KJV) became the most printed and most widely read book in the world. Letters were the natural way for itinerant church leaders to communicate with their converts, and the earliest ones were written before the Gospels. With some exceptions (Romans, Hebrews), they were not meant to be formal presentations of Christian belief, but offered advice to people who were working out how to express their commitment to Jesus in ways that would be relevant to the many different cultural contexts in which they found themselves throughout the Roman empire. Rūth ( Book of Ruth) רוּת ( Shābhû‘ôth) tells of the Moabite woman Ruth, who decides to follow the God of the Israelites, and remains loyal to her mother-in-law, who is then rewarded.

Although a paucity of extant source material makes it impossible to be certain that the earliest Samaritans also rejected the other books of the Tanakh, the 3rd-century church father Origen confirms that the Samaritans in his day "receive[d] the books of Moses alone." Schaff 1885, Chapter XLIX(Commentary on John 13:26) Nur Masalha argues that genocide is inherent in these commandments, and that they have served as inspirational examples of divine support for slaughtering national opponents. [190] However, the "applicability of the term [genocide] to earlier periods of history" is questioned by sociologists Frank Robert Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn. [191] Since most societies of the past endured and practiced genocide, it was accepted at that time as "being in the nature of life" because of the "coarseness and brutality" of life; the moral condemnation associated with terms like genocide are products of modern morality. [191] :27 The definition of what constitutes violence has broadened considerably over time. [192] :1–2 The Bible reflects how perceptions of violence changed for its authors. [192] :261 The Bible has been used to support and oppose political power. It has inspired revolution and "a reversal of power" because God is so often portrayed as choosing what is "weak and humble (the stammering Moses, the infant Samuel, Saul from an insignificant family, David confronting Goliath, etc.) to confound the mighty". [195] [196] Biblical texts have been the catalyst for political concepts like democracy, religious toleration and religious freedom. [197] :3 These have, in turn, inspired movements ranging from abolitionism in the 18th and 19th century, to the civil rights movement, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and liberation theology in Latin America. The Bible has been the source of many peace movements and efforts at reconciliation around the world . [198]The Book of Daniel is preserved in the 12-chapter Masoretic Text and in two longer Greek versions, the original Septuagint version, c. 100BCE, and the later Theodotion version from c. second century CE. Both Greek texts contain three additions to Daniel: The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children; the story of Susannah and the Elders; and the story of Bel and the Dragon. Theodotion's translation was so widely copied in the Early Christian church that its version of the Book of Daniel virtually superseded the Septuagint's. The priest Jerome, in his preface to Daniel (407 CE), records the rejection of the Septuagint version of that book in Christian usage: "I ... wish to emphasize to the reader the fact that it was not according to the Septuagint version but according to the version of Theodotion himself that the churches publicly read Daniel." [126] Jerome's preface also mentions that the Hexapla had notations in it, indicating several major differences in content between the Theodotion Daniel and the earlier versions in Greek and Hebrew. Because the canon of Scripture is distinct for Jews, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Western Protestants, the contents of each community's Apocrypha are unique, as is its usage of the term. For Jews, none of the apocryphal books are considered canonical. Catholics refer to this collection as " Deuterocanonical books" (second canon) and the Orthodox Church refers to them as " Anagignoskomena" (that which is read). [142] [o]

See also: Islamic view of the Bible A Bible is placed centrally on a Lutheran altar, highlighting its importance The earliest manuscripts were probably written in paleo-Hebrew, a kind of cuneiform pictograph similar to other pictographs of the same period. [15] The exile to Babylon most likely prompted the shift to square script (Aramaic) in the fifth to third centuries BCE. [16] From the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible was written with spaces between words to aid in reading. [17] By the eighth century CE, the Masoretes added vowel signs. [18] Levites or scribes maintained the texts, and some texts were always treated as more authoritative than others. [19] Scribes preserved and changed the texts by changing the script and updating archaic forms while also making corrections. These Hebrew texts were copied with great care. [20]New Testament books already had considerable authority in the late first and early second centuries. [164] Even in its formative period, most of the books of the NT that were seen as scripture were already agreed upon. Linguistics scholar Stanley E. Porter says "evidence from the apocryphal non-Gospel literature is the same as that for the apocryphal Gospels–in other words, that the text of the Greek New Testament was relatively well established and fixed by the time of the second and third centuries". [165] By the time the fourth century Fathers were approving the "canon", they were doing little more than codifying what was already universally accepted. [166] The New Testament is a collection of 27 books [167] of 4 different genres of Christian literature ( Gospels, one account of the Acts of the Apostles, Epistles and an Apocalypse). These books can be grouped into: The books of 'latter prophets' preserve sayings and stories of religious and political activists ('prophets') who served as the spiritual conscience of the nation throughout its history, reminding people of the social values that would reflect the character of God. Some books are substantial ( Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), others are much shorter (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi). Sometimes, the prophets could be mime artists and dramatists, accompanying their actions by short spoken messages, often delivered in poetic form. These were the sound bites of their day, which made it easy for others to remember them and then write them down. See also: Quran §Significance in Islam, Bhagavad Gita §Composition and significance, and Torah §Significance in Judaism

Biblical criticism made study of the Bible secularized, scholarly, and more democratic, while it also permanently altered the way people understood the Bible. [289] The Bible is no longer thought of solely as a religious artifact, and its interpretation is no longer restricted to the community of believers. [290] Michael Fishbane writes, "There are those who regard the desacralization of the Bible as the fortunate condition for" the development of the modern world. [291] For many, biblical criticism "released a host of threats" to the Christian faith. For others biblical criticism "proved to be a failure, due principally to the assumption that diachronic, linear research could master any and all of the questions and problems attendant on interpretation". [292] Still others believed that biblical criticism, "shorn of its unwarranted arrogance," could be a reliable source of interpretation. [292] Michael Fishbane compares biblical criticism to Job, a prophet who destroyed "self-serving visions for the sake of a more honest crossing from the divine textus to the human one". [290] Or as Rogerson says: biblical criticism has been liberating for those who want their faith "intelligently grounded and intellectually honest". [293] Bible museums The first five books, Genesis to Deuteronomy. They are not 'law' in a modern Western sense: Genesis is a book of stories, with nothing remotely like rules and regulations, and though the other four do contain community laws they also have many narratives. The Hebrew word for Law ('Torah') means 'guidance' or 'instruction', and that could include stories offering everyday examples of how people were meant to live as well as legal requirements. What manner of man is the prophet? A student of philosophy who runs from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to an area of trivialities. Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the market place. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. The world is a proud place, full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized, and rave as if the whole world were a slum. They make much ado about paltry things, lavishing excessive language upon trifling subjects. What if somewhere in ancient Palestine poor people have not been treated properly by the rich? .... Indeed, the sorts of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice– cheating in business, exploitation of the poor – is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us an injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world." Heschel 2001, pp.3–4 The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is also known as the "Five Books of Moses" or the Pentateuch, meaning "five scroll-cases". [97] Traditionally these books were considered to have been dictated to Moses by God himself. [98] [99] Since the 17th century, scholars have viewed the original sources as being the product of multiple anonymous authors while also allowing the possibility that Moses first assembled the separate sources. [100] [101] There are a variety of hypotheses regarding when and how the Torah was composed, [102] but there is a general consensus that it took its final form during the reign of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), [103] [104] or perhaps in the early Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE). [105] Both Judaism and Christianity see the Bible as religiously and intellectually significant. [244] It provides insight into its time and into the composition of the texts, and it represents an important step in the development of thought. [244] It is used in communal worship, recited and memorized, provides personal guidance, a basis for counseling, church doctrine, religious culture (teaching, hymns and worship), and ethical standards. [244] [245] :145

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These books were later called the 'Pentateuch', and tradition attributed them to Moses. Some parts undoubtedly date from that period, but as things changed old laws were updated and new ones produced, and this was the work of later editors over several centuries. The Prophets