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The Holy Bible
The Bible is a very old book that has come to us because many men
and women have worked hard copying and studying manuscripts, examining important artifacts and ancient ruins, and translating
ancient texts into modern languages. Their dedication has helped keep the story of God's people alive.
Read the Bible daily: The Bible is God's inspired Word. Besides
revealing the Good News about forgiveness and eternal life, it can also answer the many questions you will have as you try
to live a life that pleases God. It will enable you to be "thoroughly equipped for every good work" - 2 Timothy 3:17Different
Kinds of Literature in the Bible Most books fall into one particular category of
literature or another. An instruction booklet for making something uses technical language; a novel will probably use some
kind of fictional narrative; a book of poetry may use rhymed or non-rhymed verse; and a book of history uses factual narrative
writing. The type of book almost always determines the literary form used.
The Bible is bound as one large book, but
it is really made up of many different books using many different kinds (genres) of literature. This makes the Bible very
exciting and challenging to read. When studying the books of the Bible, it is important to look not only at the information
a book contains but also at the literary form that the author has used. The kind of literature used can give clues about what
the author was trying to say. For example, you would not read laws and rules in the same way you read prayers. And you would
read a poem differently than you would read a parable or genealogy.
In telling their stories, the biblical writers
drew from the types of literature common in their day. For example, the laws of the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) share
language with legal material from the ancient Near East. And the parables Jesus told were common ways to teach using familiar,
everyday things. The same is true for the poetry, the prayers, the proverbs, and the letters found throughout the Bible.
Translating the Bible
Translation is the process of communicating a message into a language that is different from the one in which the message
was originally written. The message may be in a song, a poem, a story, directions, a telephone message, or a sermon. But if
a person is not able to understand that message because it is written or told in an unfamiliar language, the message must
be translated. This is especially important when it is the message of the Bible that is to be communicated.
The Bible
is made up of several individual books that were written and told long ago in various languages quite unfamiliar to us today.
None of these books was originally written in English (or Spanish or most other languages used throughout the world today).
They were written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic (for the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures) and in Greek (for the New Testament).
Without Bible translation, people today would have to learn these three languages in order to read and understand the words
of the Bible!
The work of translating the Bible began around 250 B.C. when a group of Jewish scholars translated the
Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) into Greek because many Jewish people were living in places where Greek was the everyday
language. Since that first Bible translation, the words of both the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament
have been translated into hundreds of languages. These languages include ancient languages (like Coptic, Arabic, Latin, and
Syriac), as well as more recent, modern languages (like Portuguese, Russian, Navajo, Danish, Spanish, and English). The purpose
behind all these Bible translations is exactly the same: to put the words of the Bible into a language that people will understand.
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