What is the Bible?

One of the biggest questions non-Christians have about the Bible is, “What is the Bible?”

Even if you consider yourself a Christian, you may not have read the whole Bible, and you might not be very familiar with what is in it.

Today I will quickly share the most important things that everyone should know about the Bible.

If you have read the Bible many times and you know all about it, you might want to skip ahead to the next lesson. But for everyone else, this lesson is going to answer a lot of questions you have about the Bible.

The Bible is a big book. In fact, it is a book of books. There are 66 books that most Christians believe are part of Bible. These 66 books are divided into 1,189 chapters, and the chapters are divided into more than 31,000 verses.

If you want to read or listen to the whole Bible, it will probably take you more than 70 hour to finish it. Many people read the Bible slower than that, because there are many parts of the Bible that are not easy to understand.

Why do people want to read the Bible?

Most people who follow Christianity, Islam, or Judaism believe that the Bible contains a message from God who created the universe. About half the people in the world follow one of these three religions, and they usually read the Bible because they want to find out what God has revealed to humans.

People who don’t believe in the God of the Bible usually read the Bible to find out what other people believe. Historians read it to learn about history. Writers read it to improve their writing. Other people read it because it has a lot of interesting stories and practical advice.

A Quick Walkthrough of the Bible

The Bible has two main parts. The first part was written in the Hebrew language, and the second part was written in Greek. People usually call these two parts of the Bible the Old Testament and the New Testament. I will just call them the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek Scriptures.

The Hebrew Scriptures begin with a group of 5 books called the Torah. The word Torah means Instruction or Law. This section has a lot of instructions about how to live life and worship God. But it also has a lot of stories.

The very first book of the Bible tells the story of how God created everything. After the earth was ready, God created two humans and placed them in a beautiful garden with the Tree of Life and another tree that was forbidden. As you might expect, the people decided to eat the fruit the tree that God told them not to eat from, so God sent them out of the garden and away from Himself.

After this, humans developed their own way of life and mostly ignored God. Human developed their own cultures and technologies, and the world became filled with selfishness and violence. But there was one guy named Noah who God was happy with, and God told Noah to build a huge boat. When the boat was finished and filled with food and animals, God sent a flood, and everyone died except for Noah and his family.

After the flood, people began to build new cultures, and soon everyone was ignoring God again. Then God chose a guy named Abram and told him that if he obeyed God, God would bless him more than anyone else. Abram moved to the land that is called Israel and Palestine now, and God changed Abram’s name to Abraham.

After a while, Abraham had a son named Ishmael, who became the father of the Arabs. But the main story of the Bible follows Abraham’s second son, Isaac, and his grandson Jacob. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel and he became the father of the Israelites. Then the Israelites moved to Egypt during a famine.

That is a quick summary of the first book of the Bible. If you have never read the Bible before, it is best to start reading from the very beginning, because these stories are the foundation for understanding the rest of the Bible. In this guide to the Bible, I will start reading from the very beginning of the Bible and I will explain the significance of each story. But right now, let’s get back to our walkthrough of the whole Bible.

The next four books of the Bible tell the story of how the Israelites escaped from Egypt, how God gave them the 10 Commandments, and what happened during their travels through the wilderness. In the middle of this story there are also a lot of rules from God for how people should live and instructions for how to worship God.

After the five books of the Torah, there are more books that continue the story of the Israelites. First the Israelites conquered the land of Israel. Before long they rejected God and started worshipping idols. Then they had trouble, so they asked God for help, and God rescued them. This happened again and again for several hundred years.

Finally the Israelites got a king and they became a small but powerful kingdom in the Middle East. After their third king died, the Israelites split into two separate kingdoms. The first kingdom continued to be called the Kingdom of Israel. The people in the Kingdom of Israel rejected God, and about 200 years later they were conquered, taken away from their land, and they disappeared from history.

The second kingdom was the Kingdom of Judah, and the people of this kingdom are called Jews. Sometimes the Jews worshipped God, and sometimes they worshipped other gods. Eventually the Jews were also conquered and taken away to Babylon.

About seventy years later, some of the Jews came back to the land of Israel, and there are a couple more books in the Bible that tell the history of the Jews after they came back from Babylon.

Next, in modern Bibles, there is a group of books that contain the Psalms of King David and others, the Proverbs of King Solomon, and other books of wisdom.

The Hebrew Scriptures also contain 16 books of prophecy. These prophecies contain warnings to the Jews and Israelites. The prophets warned them that if they didn’t obey God they would be taken away from their land. These prophecies also foretold of a future king that would come and rescue the Israelites and establish God’s Kingdom on earth.

About 400 years after the Hebrew Scriptures were written, a prophet named John began preaching among the Jews who had returned from Babylon. He told people that the king that the prophets had written about was about to come. Soon after this, Jesus began announcing that God’s Kingdom was coming soon. Jesus called the message that He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The word gospel means good news. Many people followed Jesus, and He chose 12 of His followers to be with Him and to preach about the Kingdom of God.

As Jesus became more and more popular, the leaders of the Jews became jealous. They arrested Jesus, accused him of rebellion against the Romans (who ruled the land of the Jews). So the Romans crucified Jesus. A few days later, His followers claimed that they saw Jesus alive again, and they began telling everyone that Jesus had been raised from the dead and had gone to heaven. They also said that Jesus would return soon to establish God’s Kingdom.

This story about Jesus is found in the first four books of the Greek Scriptures. These four books are called the Gospels. The next book in the Bible tells the history of how the followers of Jesus spread the message about Jesus and God’s Kingdom throughout the Roman Empire.

The followers of Jesus also wrote 21 letters that are included in the Greek Scriptures. These letters explained the teachings of Jesus to the early followers of Christianity.

The last book of the Bible is a prophecy from Jesus about what will happen right before He returns at the end of the age.

The very end of the Bible tells the story of how Jesus will come from heaven set up God’s Kingdom. The Bible says that Jesus will be the King of the earth for 1000 years.

After the 1000 years, everyone who has ever lived will be raised from the dead. Those who accept God’s way will be given eternal life, and those who reject God’s way will be destroyed in a lake of fire. Then God will come down from heaven to live with Jesus and the people who have been changed into immortal beings, and they will live forever without any more pain or sorrow in a beautiful garden with the Tree of Life.

The Bible Is a Story

As you can see, the Bible is not just a collection of random books. It is an epic story about God’s plan for humans.

But who wrote this story, and why?

Join me in the next lesson to find out who wrote the Bible.