All complete Bibles (as opposed to extracts compiled for a specific purpose) have two major divisions - the
Testament, which corresponds to the
, or Hebrew Bible, and the
Testament, a collection of writings specifically about the life and teachings of
and his followers. The early Christians considered the Hebrew Bible as their
text, and used its contents as evidence to support their contention that the predicted
had arrived. It took several centuries before the various works that were considered as sacred
settled into the modern canons accepted by different Christian groups.
The first
books of the Bible are called the
, also known as the Torah or the Books of
. Then the numbers get messy, but there are between
and twenty books of
and between five and seven books of
. These are followed by varying numbers of books of prophecy. It is only when we reach the so-called Minor Prophets that everyone agrees again on what is included; there are
books in this concluding division of the Hebrew Bible.
As Christians felt a need to record the aspects of their faith that diverged from its Jewish roots, they had a lot of different written material on which to draw, including a number of letters (called
) written by early Christians to discuss their faith. The most prolific of these was the man known as
, whose interpretation of the Christian message forms the core of most modern understandings. These writings about what it means to be a Christian comprise the bulk of the Christian addition to the Bible, but they are preceded by four
, telling the story of Christ through different lenses, and the book of
, which describes the actions of the apostles in the earliest days of establishing their church. The final book in the Bible,
, is written in three genres: epistolary,
and prophetic.
