The bible is a book read by millions of people the world over. The Jewish population lives by the Old Testament portion, while Christians tend to focus on the New Testament. Muslims consider the bible a holy book as well, in spite of them having their own holy book. The bible is a text that has a vast amount of historical information in it and has the basic instructions for how we, the human race, ought to live. This makes it the most important book we could read. The purpose of this page is to help unfamiliar ones to become familiar with this special book. Let's take a look around the bible and see what it's all about:

The Holy Bible has been re-translated and revised many times throughout history, and it's something you can readily see today. Go to your local book store and look through the pages of the various versions. Some will use the names "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" for God, others don't. Some use outdated language (thee, thou, etc.), and some are more contemporary. Some contain only the New Testament portion, while others are complete with the Old Testament. In spite of all these different ways of publishing the bible, the message it contains remains the same. Therefore, don't be confused by the different versions, for they all tell the same information in their passages. Any of you who have already perused through this website will see we made the effort to quote scripture from different bible versions. We did this to help familiarize readers with the various Bibles available today.

The Bible is a book written from the inspiration of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and is divided into two major sections: The Old Testament, (a.k.a. "The Torah") and The New Testament (a.k.a. "The Gospel"):

The Old Testament gives a vast amount of historical information concerning the beginnings of Judaism and it's ancient culture. It is comprised of 39 smaller books. It starts with God's creation of everything (Genesis 1:1). It contains the accounts of various kings and peoples and nations and biographies. It also contains the prophecies of various Jewish holy men, the book of Psalms (which is mostly poetic songs), and is rich in historical value. Much of what is contained within has been verified by archaeological evidence. Roughly two thirds of the bible is the Old Testament. The first five books of the bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are called the "Pentateuch", a.k.a. "The Books of Moses". The Pentateuch details the beginnings of creation, the origin of sin/imperfection, the beginnings of Judaism (from which Christianity sprang from), and details the original Jewish Law Covenant.

Many of the other books in the Old Testament are historical accounts, such as Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. These detail (in no particular order) different battles, the lives and visions of certain prophets, the rulerships of Israelite kings, genealogies, etc., and the book of Esther tells about a queen who saves her nation from genocide. Then there are the books of the prophetic works are called the Minor Prophets, simply because they are the smaller/shorter books. The Minor Prophets are: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. In the New Testament you will frequently see these Minor Prophets being validated. Other books are called the Major Prophets because their books are much longer than that of the Minor Prophets. The Major prophets are: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. These books are also validated throughout the New Testament. However, the Major Prophets tend to be very deep with prophetic symbolism, therefore these can be difficult to understand. The books that are either poetic or otherwise are:
Job (with a long vowel "o"): This is the account of a man who was very conscientious towards God. Because of his love for God, Satan chose to try to break the man down to make him denounce God. Instead of breaking Job's faith in God, Job, in his misery, clung to God, even when his own friends weren't comforting. In the end, Job's faith won big and God blessed him greatly for it.
Psalms: This book has more than one author. Each chapter of Psalms is a poetic song. These songs were written over a long period of time. Some of the authors are: David, Sons of Korah, Asaph and then various others.
Proverbs, is a book of wise sayings mostly spoken by king Solomon (son of David), but also by Agur (Proverbs chapter 30) and Lemuel the king (Chapter 31).
Song Of Solomon (a.k.a. "Canticles" and "Song of Songs") is the account of King Solomon trying to win another wife. He already had dozens of wives and concubines at this time, but apparently didn't feel his collection was complete. However, this young woman he sought loved a shepherd boy, and she chose the shepherd instead of the king in the end.

It is important to note here that some bible versions, such as the Douay-Rheims, have alternative spellings for some of these book names, so please do not let that confuse you when you come across this.

The New Testament starts with the birth of Jesus Christ and proceeds to show the beginnings of Jewish conversion to Christianity. It is comprised of 27 books. It contains, not only the account of Jesus Christ's life, but also that of the newly formed Christian congregations that grew after Christ's death. The first four books: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John contain eyewitness accounts of Jesus Christ's life. Since each of writers weren't always together everywhere they went, each of their accounts is a little different from the other. The book of Acts contains the account of Christ's ascension to heaven, the conversion of Saul/Paul and the history of the beginning of the newly formed Christian church. The next several books are inspired letters written by the converted apostle Paul to the various congregations that Paul evangelized to. These are called the "Pauline Epistles". These books are: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians,Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. After Philemon is a book called Hebrews, written by an unknown person. The next books are called the "General Epistles", and consist of these books: James, (written by the human half -brother of Jesus), 1 Peter, 2 Peter, (written by the apostle Peter) 1 John, 2 John, 3 John (written by the apostle John, who is not the same as John the baptist) and Jude (another human half-brother of Jesus). The last book, Revelation, is sometimes called The Apocalypse. This book is prophetic of the future, when Christ comes back to right all the wrongs in the earth.

Throughout the bible, each book is divided up into sections called "chapters", and each chapter is divided up into smaller sections called "verses". Therefore, when you come across a scriptural reference, you can find exactly where it would be in the bible. For example, if you are given the reference of "Genesis 1:2", that means the book of Genesis (which is the very first book in the bible), chapter one, verse two. It goes from largest to smallest: The book, its chapter, and its verse. Some bible versions, such as the Douay-Rheims, contain a sequence of chapters and verses that are different from most other versions, so be aware of this to avoid confusion.

There is a wide variety of bible versions printed. Some of the most common English language versions are the King James Version, the New King James Version, the American Standard Version, New American Standard Version, New World Translation, New International Version, and The Living Bible . These are some of many versions that contain solely canonical scripture. Canonical scripture is that which is contained in the "canon"; the canon is scripture that is fully deemed inspired from God. Some bibles, such as the New American Bible, Rheims-Douay, and the New Jersusalem Bible, contain other scriptures aside from the other ones mentioned on this page. These other scriptures are called the "Apocrypha". The Apocryphal books include writings such as: The Book of Tobit (or Tobias), The Book of Judith, and the book of Wisdom, among others. These apocryphal books have not been verified as authentic, therefore they are not considered to be canonical in the Protestant community.

There are various little tidbits in the bible that some people find interesting. For example, the scriptures at 1 Kings 10:1- 26 and 2 Chronicles 9:1- 25 are nearly identical accounts. There are two mentions of left-handed people: Judges 3:15 and Judges 20:16. There are two different men named "Saul" in the bible: One was the Jewish King Saul in the Old Testament (1 Samuel chapters 9-10), and the other was a Jew who was converted by Christ in the New Testament (Acts Chapter 9). The first man to play the harp and the pipe was named Jubal (Genesis 4:21). Any who read through the bible will find these things, and other interesting little pieces of information.

One thing that many people fail to notice is that several bible versions actually give us the name of God. In some versions, it is "Jehovah"(American Standard Version, The Bible in Living English, Darby Translation, King James Version, The Living Bible, New World Translation, Young's Literal Translation), and in some versions it is "Yahweh" ( Bible in Basic English, Holman Christian Standard Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, World English Bible). There are also place names in the bible that incorporate God's name into them: (Genesis 22:14, Exodus 17:15, Judges 6:24).The actual pronunciation of God's personal name was lost several hundreds of years ago. This was because the Jewish leaders of the times decided that God's name was so holy that it shouldn't even be pronounced.

For many people, study of the bible can be made easier by the use of a concordance. A concordance is a book that indexes all the words in the bible so that you can find an appropriate scripture. For example, if you want to look for that scripture that says something about a rooster crowing just before Christ's murder, but aren't sure where it is, you'd look in the concordance under words such as: rooster, cock, or crowing. Under each of those words the concordance will list little blurbs of scripture in biblical order, and you find the one that most closely matches what you're looking for. However, I must remind you, a concordance can only work for you if you have one that matches the bible version you're using. Here are some links for online concordances for those of you who are interested:
http://bible.crosswalk.com/Concordances/
http://www.studylight.org/jscripts/biay.html
http://www.bibles.net/
http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert.fs/biblitlk.htm

Some bibles include little footnotes and other notations in the margins and between columns for cross-referencing purposes. These little notes are well worth your while to look into when doing your personal bible reading. So get a bible, take a good look, and don't rush the reading. If you don't have your own bible, we have listed a few online places in which you can order a free bible for yourself. Even if you just read one page a day, you will still be doing yourself a great service!

Free Bibles:
Free Bible #1
Free Bible #2
Free Bible on CD-ROM

For online bibles in languages other than English, please browse the links in the "Foreign Language Online Bibles" section in the following link:
http://www.commontruth.com/Links.html