It could be true that the Bible is the most widely read book in the world, the most widely distributed and most translated.
But which Bible?
It used to be that if a student wrote a paper on a particular subject the end of that paper would contain a bibliography, a list of all the books used to get the information to write the paper. I don't know if the practice of requiring a bibliography has become antiquated, but the word and the origin of bibliography does go back to Antiquity.
Biblia, meaning books, ta biblia, meaning the books , biblion, meaning book and biblos, meaning papyrus, scroll. Somewhere along the way these words gave us the familiar BIBLE. Bible is the books.
With that in mind it is a little easier to comprehend that the Bible is a grouping of books. And hopefully it is not a heresy to consider that a Bible is a grouping of different books for different cultures, different epochs. different purposes. One could go to a bookstore today and get The Bible of French Cooking.
Sacred texts or canons make up the Bible for the religions of Christianity and Judaism. These books are said to have been first written in Hebrew, an ancient language which contained no vowels. Throughout antiquity the books were translated, reviewed, revised, renamed, reorganized, according to the religious leaders and movements of the period.
In time this bible came to have two significant parts, an old testament and a new testament.
The old testament is the group of books written before the birth of Jesus. These books relate a history, a set of laws, poetic works, and the prophecies of a grouping of people who are called the Israelites. The writings of the Old Testament tell of a people ant the God or gods of these people. Events are told about how the laws were given to the people, how the generations and tribes came into being, how struggles and suffering and wars, plagues and famine altered and formed the characters of the people. And much more.
The books of the Old Testament are divided into sections, these are laid out as The Law or Torah; the History; the Wisdom Teachings and Poetry; the Prophets. All these sections are said to unfold the purpose and put together will show the plan of God.
The New Testament works were written after Jesus came into the world and are said to reveal a new relationship between God and the people. Another article regarding the New Testament will evolve as the ANTIQUITY articles series evolves here.
These descriptions of the Bible are only brief summaries provided to offer an idea of the subject and are by no means authoritative.
The idea of sacred texts is not restricted to the Bible. There are many groupings of people and cultures who have evolved sacred books relative to religions and spirituality. Antiquity refers back to times and epochs long long ago, the Ancient days, the former ages. Anthropology is the study of humanity and it development of civilizations, Empires and cultures.
The three world religions that utilize the Old Testament as a sacred text are the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Within these groups theres are those who consider it to be the literal truth, those who study the texts with great respect and approach it as works of historical content written or told by human beings, and those who claim scholarship and have disagreements over the complex writings.
The ANTIQUITIES articles here are about the stories, the characters and the value of these.
