| Facts about the Bible and it�s contents. Bible Statistics.... To say that the bible is an amazing collection of books and letters is to really understate the issue. Do you know that it was written by at least 36 different authors mad up of prophets, kings, fishermen, missionaries, priests, a lawyer, a doctor and a tax collector. If that isn�t enough it covers some 1,600 years and is split into two basic periods of time, the Old Testament which was before Christ, and the New Testament which was written after His death. The original books were not divided into chapters with verses. The division of these books came much later in history and was done to make referencing the writings easier. Can you imagine going into a library and removing the dewy-decibel system that keeps track of all those books. Who would ever be able to remember exactly where those books were. The King James Version of the Bible consists of 1,189 chapters, 929 in the OT and 260 in the NT. The longest chapter is Psalms 119 which has 176 verses and the shortest is Psalms 117 consisting of only 33 words total. For those of you who find it interesting that those two are the shortest and longest and are only separated by one book check this out, Psalm 118 is the center of the Bible. Amazing huh? There are short books in there too such as Obadiah, Philemon, 2nd and 3rd John and Jude all of which only consist of one chapter. Now the English Bible contains 31,101 verses of which 23,144 are in the OT and 7,957 are in the NT. Just for trivia sake, while we are talking about verses, the center verse in the Bible is Psalm 103:2. Widely accepted as the shortest verse is John 11:35 �Jesus wept�, however in it�s original Greek form 1 Thessalonians 5:16 �rejoice always� is in fact the shortest verse. pantote cairete 1Thessalonians 5:16 in it�s Greek form. �rejoice always� in English edakrusen o ihsouV John 11:35 in it�s Greek form. �Jesus wept� in English Amazing....absolutely Amazing!!! Now for those wanting to ask what the longest verse in Scripture is well that is Ester 8:9. Did you know that the book of Ester never mentions God? It is the only one that does not bring Him up at all. Now as we learn about the current way our Bible is constructed you should know that the original had no such divisions, as I stated above. The Scriptures were written in three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The original writings consisted of large blocks of letters, written side by side. The texts written in Hebrew had dots or spaces between the words to break them up but the Greek, used to write the NT had no breaks between the words at all. The example I have seen used for years is what I am about to show you. Look closely at this sentence in English, as it would be written in Greek, with no spaces or punctuation: "Godisnowhere�. Where do you break this up? Do you make it read �God is now here� or do you make it read �God is nowhere�? Huge difference between the two don�t you think? Imagine someone handing you a piece of paper that read �I tell you today you are going to die�. If they told you that you could place a comma in that sentence either before, or after, the word �today� where would you put it? Would you want to read it as �I tell you, today you are going to die� (sounds very immediate and unsettling) or �I tell you today, you are going to die� (which states a simple fact that one day you will have to face death)? This is how men's preconceived notions, can dictate their understanding of Scripture. There was no punctuation separating one sentence from another so making reference to a specific passage was extremely difficult if not impossible. This is why people defered to the Scribes in the Biblical days for clarification on the Law and the Scriptures. These men hand copied the Scriptures over, and over, and over and...well you get the idea. Who better to go to when you want to know what the book says than the person that hand wrote it, and in most cases had hand written it many times. With all the advancements it was still 1200 years after Christ before the Scriptures were broken up into Chapter and Verse for our easy referral. Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, is credited with this concept and he died in 1228. In Paris, around the year 1550, a printer made the division we find most common in our Bibles today. The story says he did it while taking a horseback trip from Lyons to Paris, what a way to pass the time. Then in 1557 the first English NT in verse form was published, followed just 3 years later the entire Bible broken up the same way. This idea of breaking the Scriptures into chapters was so useful that the Jewish scholars adopted the idea and the present-day Hebrew Scriptures are done in the same fashion. I do want to note here that the chapters, and punctuation, are not inspired from the original writings but were placed there by men who, undoubtedly tried in all honesty to reflect the original thoughts of the authors of the books. Like above, common sense says, the passage should read �God is now here�, since the idea �God is nowhere� is absurd. Did you know you can read the entire Bible in one year by reading just a little over 3 chapters a day? How about the fact that the name Jesus Christ appears in the first and last verses of the NT? I recently found out that the Liberty bell at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, contains a Scriptural quote from Leviticus 25:10 �Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.� I am waiting for the day this offends someone and they sue to have it ground off that monument. With all the different authors, books and the sheer amount of time that the Scriptures were written over it is still a fact that they do not anywhere contradict themselves anywhere. The Old Testament does not contradict itself nor does the New Testament contradict itself. Even more shocking is that the Old and New both contain no contradictions of each other. Some argue it is Law verses Grace, Old Covenant verses New Covenant and so on, but, I simply state to you a Biblical fact: they all are from the same author and His Word, Old and New walk hand in hand as do Law and Grace. I am going to leave you with this part of our study of Scripture with a few of the most famous chapters of the Bible. The love Chapter 1 Corinthians 13 The faith chapter Hebrews 11 The resurrection chapter 1 Corinthians 15 The twenty-third psalm Psalm 23 (obvious I know) The Suffering Servant chapter Isaiah 53 The forgiveness psalm Psalm 51 The heaven chapter Revelation 21 All of these chapters contain great knowledge and guidance for us and I urge you to take the time to read them all and meditate on our Lord�s word. A final reminder to those who read the Holy Scriptures: The Bible does not contain the word of God, it IS the word of God. Being perfect in every way, we accept that God will never contradict Himself. 2 Timothy 3:16 �All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness� God Bless you all. Return to Navigation Page |
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