Faith // Bible 101

Lets be honest - the Bible can be one intimidating book. All those names and places you can't pronounce, the first half of Isaiah, Leviticus, the predictions in Revelation - it's a mental block we've put on it all.

Are you someone with a mental block on the Bible because you can't possibly understand it?!
Never fear (literally, Psalm 27:1!) we've put together a 101 on the Bible, just to get you started.

Basic Bible Facts 

• The Bible is, obviously, the oldest book written
• It was originally a collection of separate books then brought together. I don't know why but lets face it - it's super convenient. 
• It's a collection of 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament
• It was written by over 40 different people from all different backgrounds - Kings, peasants, disciples, literate, illiterate...
• The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew 
• The New Testament was originally written in Greek (which is also called Aramaic)
• There are over 115* versions of the Bible available in all different languages (I stopped counting at 115!)

Something I find that complicates the Bible more is the time line. Because I flick from book to book from Old Testament to New, I often confuse myself. The Bible took place (events, writing) between 0 until about 100 A.D.

I also found this beauty of a time line to illustrate when books were written.

Don't freak out! (Side note: The faces of the kids in CU were absolutely priceless when this came up) The first time line is the time line of the Bible. A massive chunk of the Old Testament was written in the first section where the dates are unknown. This time line leads right up to the last book in the Bible, Revelation.

The time line at the bottom of the picture is that of the Israelites, which is basically the narrative of the Old Testament.

Another question we always get is how should we read our Bibles? Should we only read them on Sunday? Should we read them when we're happy?

We should read the Bible like our favourite book.
My favourite books are the Harry Potter series. Whatever time of day or month or year it is I am guaranteed to have one of the books on hand. I read it whenever, wherever and however I'm feeling. That's how we should read the Bible.
Sad? Bible.
Angry? Bible.
Lonely? Bible.
Happy? Bible.

To finish, I'd like to link you all to a video by a guy called Jefferson Bethke. If you haven't already listened to his spoken word 'Jesus>Religion' go and do it now! It's worth it.

In this video Jeff really touches on how we should look at the Bible, and I really like how he does it.

I really hope this was helpful for you and if you have any questions at all you can contact us at christianunion.blog@gmail.com

*information was counted at biblegateway.com