The Bible - God's Textbook

As Christians, our beliefs, our understanding of life, our understanding of God, our understanding of ourselves and how we should live our lives and relate to God and to other people, are all based on the teaching and instruction that we find in the book called the Bible.

The Book of Books

Actually, the Bible is not just a book – it is more like a library or a book of books – 66 books in all.  The oldest ones were written about four thousand years ago, and the latest ones just under two thousand years ago, and they contain a mixture of history, poetry, wisdom, teaching, and prophetic revelation.

Despite being so ancient, the message of the Bible is every bit as relevant in today’s 21^st century western world as it was when it was being written in the Middle East all those thousands of years ago, because the truths of the Bible are eternal and unchanging and are relevant in all times, in all places, and to all peoples, all cultures, and all nationalities.

The Bible begins at the beginning of time with the famous words, “In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth”, and it concludes by looking forward to the creation of a new heaven and earth at the end of time.  In between, it tells us how we managed to get into the mess that the world is in today, and how God has made it possible for us to get out of that mess and come into a new place of relationship with Him where we find purpose, meaning, wholeness, peace, and prosperity.

A Book of Two Parts

The Christian Bible has two main sections, which are known as the Old Testament and the New Testament.  A “testament” is what we might call a “witness statement” – a written testimony of what was seen, heard, or experienced.  Much of what we read in the Bible is the written testimony of men who knew God, who spoke on His behalf, and who were witnesses of what He had done or others had done, either for Him or against Him.  The Bible bears witness to the character of God and how He deals with those who obey Him and those who oppose Him.

The Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible – the holy scriptures of the Jewish people.  It contains the history of the Jews, the Israeli people, explaining how their nation came into being, then tracing their history through their golden age under kings David and Solomon, their defeat and deportation by the empires of Assyria and Babylon, and eventual restoration to their homeland round about two-and-a-half thousand years ago.  (They were expelled from their God-given homeland again by the Roman empire in the late first century A.D. and were unable to return in great numbers until the twentieth century, but none of that is recorded in the Bible).  It also contains many books of prophecy, recording God’s warnings and encouragements to His people, and His predictions of what is to take place in the future.  It contains the famous psalms of king David and others, the best known of which is the 23^rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd”.

The Old Testament was written in the Hebrew language, the language of Israel.

The New Testament contains the story of Jesus Christ and some of those who were his immediate followers.  The first four books, called ‘the Gospels’, give details of the life and ministry of Jesus, and culminate in his death by crucifixion and his subsequent resurrection from the dead.  Most of the other New Testament books are letters from the apostles Paul, Peter, John, and James, plus a couple of other letters, and finally the Book of Revelation, which is the only purely prophetic book of the New Testament, which tells us what to expect in the last days.

The New Testament was written in the Greek language, which had been the common language of trade, commerce, and politics since the empire of Alexander the Great imposed Greek language and culture throughout the civilised world of those days.

The Books of the Bible

Why does the Bible contain the books that it does?  Who decided what would be included in what is known as “the canon of scripture” and what would be left out?  (The word ‘canon’ means ‘a standard’, from a Greek word meaning ‘a straight rod’.)

It is important to remember that the books of the Bible were not written in order to be included in any canon of scripture.  They were written by godly men who were inspired to do so by God Himself, speaking to the people of their own day, but their writings were weighed and tested by other men of God, sometimes over many generations, before being judged worthy to be included among the holy scriptures – the body of writings that were recognised by the spiritual leaders of the Jewish or Christian community to have been inspired by God.  The apostle Peter, referring to what we would know as the Old Testament, puts it this way:

In another passage, Peter recognises the writings of his contemporary, the apostle Paul, as being divinely inspired, by treating them on an equal footing with “the other scriptures”:

As regards the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), it is unclear when its canon was finalised, but it was probably during the first or second century A.D., and the Christian church has always accepted that canon of 39 books.  For the New Testament we know that by the middle of the 4^th century its 27 books were widely recognised as being divinely inspired, and that the canon was formally established at the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D.

The Bible in English

Since few of us are able to read ancient Hebrew or Greek, we rely on the work of others who have translated the scriptures into our own language.  Unfortunately, the history of the Bible being translated into English has not always been a pleasant journey.

In 1536, at Vilvoorde near Antwerp in Holland, William Tyndale was strangled to death and his body burned at the stake on the orders of king Henry the Eighth.  What was his crime so vile that he deserved such an undignified execution?  He had translated the New Testament and the first five books of the Old Testament into the English language.  (Two years earlier, in 1534, Martin Luther had published his translation of the scriptures into German.)  As he was about to die, Tyndale’s last words were, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes!”. 

The following year, 1537, the same king Henry, having separated himself from the Roman Catholic church and made himself the head of the newly-established Church of England, encouraged the distribution “abroad among the people” of Myles Coverdale’s English Bible.  Coverdale had assisted Tyndale in his translation work, and Coverdale’s New Testament was mostly Tyndale’s work virtually unaltered.  Then in 1539 Henry encouraged all printers and sellers of books to provide for the “free and liberal use of the Bible in our own maternal English tongue”.

God had answered Tyndale's dying prayer!

1611 saw the publication of a new English translation that had been sponsored by king James the Sixth (of Scotland) and First (of England) and “authorised to be read in churches”.  This translation became known as both “the King James Version” (KJV) and “the Authorised Version” (AV).  Once again, the translators had relied heavily on Tyndale’s original work, and for the four centuries since its publication this version has been seen as not only a master-piece of English prose, but as the gold standard of Bible translation in that it seeks to provide as faithful as possible a translation of the original languages and at the same time express its meaning in English that is both grammatically correct and pleasing to the ear.

However, the English language has evolved quite a bit over four hundred years.  Many words have changed their meanings, and others have disappeared from use entirely, making it inaccessible for many people. However, over the last couple of centuries, in order to address this problem, a number of revisions of the KJV have been produced, including the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the New King James Version (NKJV), and the English Standard Version (ESV), each of which attempt to maintain the qualities of the KJV while making it more accessible to the modern reader.

While the King James tradition tries to produce a word-for-word translation, other modern translations, such as the New International Version (NIV), are more concerned with producing a text that reads well in English and conveys the general meaning of the original.  This gives a text that is easier to read and memorise, but runs the risk of presenting an interpretation based on the doctrinal position of the translators rather than an accurate translation.

The Amplified Bible (AMP) is helpful for study, as it includes alternative readings of many passages, and translates some words which have no single-word equivalent in English with a phrase that helps the English-speaking reader to have a better understanding of its meaning.

Other versions, such as The Message (TM) and The Living Bible (TLB), are paraphrases and not translations at all, in that they try to present the message of the Bible in modern English as it is spoken by the ordinary man in the street.

Of the many different translations of the Bible into English, which is the best one to use?

I would recommend that you use one of the Bibles belonging to the King James tradition that have been listed above (KJV, NKJV, NASB, RSV, ESV), or the Amplified Bible (AMP), as these are the best for getting an understanding of what was in the original language, and are best for serious study.  Other versions may be used to get a different perspective on a passage of scripture, or to see how someone else would interpret it.

The Word of God

Christians believe that the Bible not only contains some of the things that God has said, but is, from start to finish, the true word of God and contains all that we need for life and godliness.  While other Christian books may be beneficial for understanding God’s ways and receiving encouragement and instruction, we recognise the Bible as being the authoritative source of all doctrine, and the plumb line by which all teaching, preaching, prophesying, and decision-making are judged.

This is not simply a statement of “blind faith”, but it is a conclusion based on the lifelong experience of countless followers of Christ throughout the ages, who have lived their lives according to God’s Word and have found it to be true, trustworthy, reliable, and life-changing.

Scripture References

All of the books of the Bible have been divided into chapters and verses for ease of reference.  (The original writers did not do this.  It was done later by scholars as they compiled the books and needed a means of finding particular passages easily.)  We reference passages by citing the name of the book followed by the number of the chapter, then a colon (:), then the number of the verse or series of verses.  For example, earlier in this article we had this reference: 2 Peter 1:20-21.  This means:

• The book of Second Peter (or Peter’s second letter)
• Chapter 1
• Verses 20 to 21 inclusive.

Your Own Bible

If you don’t already have a Bible of your own, please make it a priority to go out and buy one.  We are fortunate in the United Kingdom that there are no restrictions on selling, buying, or owning Bibles, unlike some other countries where the Bible is banned and owning one is a criminal offence.  As you progress on your Christian walk you may find that you experiment with different versions until you find one that you are most comfortable with.

You can also install a Bible app on your smart-phone or tablet.  In this way you will have access to multiple translations and paraphrases, and are more likely to find one in your own language, if your mother tongue is not English.

Here are five things that you need to do with the Word of God:

• Read it
• Meditate on it
• Study it
• Memorise it
• Live by it

Whatever you hear or read about God and His ways, whether on this website or elsewhere, should line up with the clear teaching of Scripture.  This is what makes being taught by God possible. 

William Tyndale’s vision was that every plough-boy in England should be able to hear the Word of God in his own mother tongue, rather than in Latin, so that he might get to know God for himself and not have a religious organisation standing between him and his Lord.  Every true servant of God has the same ambition as Tyndale - every preacher, every teacher, every pastor, every prophet, every apostle. As the apostle Paul put it:

God is ready and willing to teach us, but how many of us are ready or willing to learn from Him?