The Holy Bible is not only the greatest and best of all books, but it is also the oldest. Its history has been very difficult to trace, yet the same Divine guidance that set its authors to work to write it has made Christians delve into the mists of the past to learn all about it. We find out more about it every day through the research of learned men, and things that are now hidden from us regarding it doubtless will be revealed in the course of time.
As to its authors and age, however, we know a very great deal. It was written by about forty different men and as it comes to us it took about sixteen hundred years to compose. We know pretty accurately that Moses began it about the year 1500 B.C. and that John, who wrote the last book, Revelation, finished it about the year 90 A.D., which estimate fills out the sixteen centuries.
The Bible gets its name from a Greek word which means “the little books.” Gradually, in the course of many years, this word came to stand for something more than “little books,” of which the Big Book was composed. It came to mean “the book,” the “holy book,” and finally it came to mean just what it means today—the Holy Book of Books.
This great work is composed of two parts—the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament has in it thirty-nine books or parts. It contains God’s account of the creation of the world, a history of the Jewish people and God’s dealings with them, a number of books written by the great Jewish prophets in which are foretold the things that happen in the New Testament, as well as a number of beautiful books of purely a religious character, such as the Psalms.
The men who wrote the Old Testament discontinued working on it about four hundred years before Jesus Christ was born. The New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus and covers a period of about seventy-five years down to the time when the faith of Christianity was being extended by the men Jesus Himself chose to go out into the world and tell about it. The New Testament contains twenty-seven books, four of which are known as Gospels, because they tell particularly of the life of Jesus. Some learned men think the word “gospel” means “God story” or “narrative of God,” while some think it means “good story” or “good tidings,” because of the tidings of salvation that it brings to those who read it.
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PASTOR ANDRA HIGGINBOTHAM