Back to Index

Back to The Good Fight

Question: How old is the Bible?

1. There are 66 books in the Bible, written by 40 different men.
The earliest writing is that of Moses, who wrote the first five
books, during the 15th Century B.C. The last book is Revelation,
written at the close of the 1st Century A.D. Consequently, the
Bible was written over a period of about 1600 years. Therefore, if
we speak of the age of the completed revealed will of God, we would
say it is 1900 years old. If we speak of the earliest written
revelation,  then that goes back about 3400 years.
 
2. In the Old Testament, there are 5 books of law: Genesis, Ex.
Lev. Num, Deut.
3. 12 History: Josh. Jud. Ruth, 1&2 Sam. 1&2 Kings; 1&2 Chron.
Ezra. Neh. Esther.

4. 5 Poetry: Job, Psa. Prov., Eccl., Song of Solomon.

5. Prophets 17: Isa. Jer. Lament. Ezek. Dan. Hosea, Joel, Amos,
Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum  Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zech.
Malachi.

6. The New Test. consists of 27 books. The first 4 deal with the
life of Christ. The book of Acts gives a history of the preaching
of the gospel, with the establishment, and spread of the church.
Romans-Jude are letters written to instruct Christians how to live
so as to please God. Rev. is a book of prophecy, which primarily
deals with things which were to shortly come to pass (1:1), for 1
Century Christians.

Question #24: I've heard it said that we don't have all the Bible;
is that true?

1. This question has reference to the apocrypha (a Greek term that
means "hidden", or "secret things"), books that were written at
various times from about 300 B.C. to 30 B.C. (The Bible Almanac,
p.582).

2. These books are as follows:
     1) 1 Esdras
     2) II Esdras
     3) Tobet
     4) Judith
     5) The Rest of the Book of Esther.
     6) The Wisdom of Solomon
     7) The Wisdom of Ecclesiasticus
     8) Baruch
     9) The Song of the Three Holy Children
     10) The History of Susanna
     11) Bel and the Dragon
     12) The Prayer of Manasses
     13) I Maccabees
     14) II Maccabees

3) Some of these books are valuable as history, particularly the
books of Maccabees, but they are not inspired books.

4) This can be seen from the fact that the New Testament quotes
from the O.T. hundreds of times, but never from the apocrypha.

5) The 16th Century reformer, Martin Luther, included the apocrypha
in his German Bible (1534), but printed them separately, asserting
that they were not inspired, but profitable.

6) There is no internal or external evidence which would include
the apocrypha as scripture.

7) The Council of Trent (1545-63) proclaimed the books as Scripture
and pronounced an anathema on those who disagree. But this attempt
is 1 1/2 thousand years too late.

We can be confident that we have all God intended for us to have in
our Bible. 



Back to Index

Back to The Good Fight