Trivia and Facts about the Physical Bible for your education.

​​The consensus is that less than 50% of Americans believe in the Bible.
 

The Bible is an excellent source of information concerning how we should live.

  It is the authority of the Christian faith, written by divine authority and with divine inspiration.
 

The Bible has other names.

The Scriptures.
Biblical Canon or The Canon.

Word of God.

The Book of Truth.
Divine Scripture.

The "Good" Book.

The Gospel(s).

Holy Scripture.

The Word.

The Living Word.
 

Does the Bible include any secret codes?

  Several people and organizations claim to have found codes hidden in the Bible.

  Their efforts and the evidence they provided have been debunked and disproved by reputable sources.

  The answer is that there are no hidden codes in the Bible.

  The Bible is straightforward; however, it does contain many parables.

  Parables are meant to bewilder the unbeliever while making sense to the believer.
  The condenses is that if you are filled with the Holy Spirit you can interpret the parables.
 

The three most important messages of the New Testament and the entire Bible, for that matter, are:

  1. We were created by a supreme being we call God.

  2. Jesus, the son of God, sacrificed his earthly life to pay for the sins of the believers.

  3. The marriage of believers to Jesus occurred at his crucifixion.

     Jesus is a bridegroom now away to create a new home for His bride (believers) to live in the afterlife.

     Jesus told his disciples in a parable at the Last Supper that believers are all part of this wedding.
     Jesus told them that he would return.

    These are the three most important messages that the Bible reveals to us.
 

The foundational core of Christianity is:

  Creation. God created humans, Earth, and the Universe.

  Sin: God's creation is not behaving to his expectations.

  Death: All humans are destined to die because of sin.

  Faith. Jesus paid for the sin by dying on the cross, in place, of the sinners.

  Afterlife. There is an eternal life for those who believe in the above.
 

The fundamentals of Christianity are:

  Salvation. The death of Jesus paid for our sins.

  Repentance. A change in our lives from bad to good.

  Judgment. What we do on Earth is judged by God.

  Path to heaven. A gift obtained by having faith in God.
 

The Bible explains why we are here and gives us hope for an everlasting afterlife.

"Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God, himself, will be with them and be their God. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21:

The entire purpose of Jesus is His "sacrifice" for our sins and His return to "rapture" his believers.
 

God's creation is not following the rules.
We are sinning and must pay for those sins.

This is similar to the same way, a father must have his child pay for the bad things done while growing up.

However, God gives us an escape plan to pay for our sins by allowing Jesus to take our place.
We don't have to take a beating for our wrongs because Jesus took the ultimate beating and gave his life in our place.

God also will allow believers to live forever in a new world.

Jesus will return to earth, gather all his believers (dead and alive), place their souls in a spiritual body, and settle them in a new home.

The Bible describes this as the "Second Coming" and the "Marriage". 

After Jesus was crucified paying for our sins, he came back to life and went to heaven.

At that point, Jesus became the husband and all believers became the bride, according to the Bible.

Jesus told this to his disciples.

He left for heaven to create a new home for us and when that is complete he will come back and gather us up to take us to our new home in our new bodies.

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There are well over a hundred translations of the Bible into English.

This includes all dialects of English, ancient and modern.

The complete Bible has been translated into approximately 724 different world languages.

Individual portions of the Bible have been translated into over 2,000 different languages.

The United Bible Society is a global fellowship of around 150 Bible groups translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible worldwide.

Bibles are created from copies of the original Hebrew and Greek texts and translations of translations.

Two versions (NIV and KJV) are the most popular and have had the most effort, with scholars working on them to make the most accurate translations.

The New King James Version (NKJV) Protestant Bible is perhaps the most popular.

The sale of The New International Version (NIV) surpassed King James in recent years.
But not necessarily surpassed in general use.
 

The Bible is not a book.

The Bible is a bound collection of "individual books" translated from ancient manuscripts.

Facts concerning the physical Bible depend on the translation and which version.

Depending on which website was consulted, the Bible used, and the revision referred to yield different results.
 

General Bible Facts and Physical Bible Information.

There are 66 books in the combined New and Old Testaments.

39 in the Old Testament.

27 in the New Testament.
 

There are 1189 chapters in the combined two testaments.

929 in the Old Testament.

260 in the New Testament.
 

There are 31,102 verses in the combined two testaments.

23,145 in the Old Testament.

7,947 in the New Testament.
 

There are 788,280 words in the combined two testaments.

609,269 in the Old Testament.

179,011 in the New Testament.
 

There are 1.2 million individual letters in the Bible.
These are characters or letters of the English alphabet.
 

There are 150 songs in the Book of Psalms.

The Book of Psalms is the only Bible book that does not have chapters.

It is a collection of individual, poems and songs identified as simply Psalms 1 through 150.

It does have numbered verses, however.
 

There are 14,000 words, more or less, spoken by women.

Eight women talked to God.

Approximately 200 women are mentioned in the Bible.
Not all are identified by name.
 

There are 31,426 words in the Bible spoken by Jesus.
This does not count duplicate sentences in the Gospels.
 

Some Bibles include a third set of books called the Apocrypha.

There are 14 "approved" books in the Apocrypha.

The Apocrypha are books not considered "authorized" as part of the Bible.
They are important enough to be valid scripture and are useful for instruction and teaching.

The original Latin Vulgate and Greek Septuagint included the Apocrypha.

Not all churches recognize the Apocrypha as valid scripture.

The Hebrew Bible and many Protestant Bibles do not include the Apocrypha.

It is bound in the Bible between the Old and the New Testaments.

The Bible has a total of 80 books, which include the Apocrypha.
 

Generally, 14 books are officially recognized in the Apocrypha.

Esdras

2 Maccabees

1 Maccabees

Prayer of Manasseh

The Idol Bel and the Dragon

Susanna

The Song of the Three Children

Jeremiah

Sirach or Ecclesiasticus

Wisdom

Esther

Judith

Tobit

2 Esdras
 

The original scripture is in three different languages.

Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

The Old Testament is written mostly in Hebrew.

The New Testament is written mostly in Greek.

This is due to the popular spoken language at the time of the writing.

Aramaic was spoken during the time of Jesus.
This is the time between the Old and New Testaments.
 

The most popular King James Bible was published in 1611.

Before the King James version, three other popular Bibles were written and used.

The Great Bible. (published in 1539)

The Geneva Bible. (1560)

The Bishop's Bible. (1568)
 

King James Charles Stuart, was King James VI of England, aka King James I of Scotland.

He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England.

He was a converted Christian.

James was a writer in his own right and is credited with writing The Book of Common Prayer.

He decreed that the Bible be read out loud in church.
The Great Bible was the authorized Bible at the time.

James decreed that the Bible was to be rewritten and should be the one and only one used.

This was mainly due to the Puritan sect of the church having issues with the earlier translations.

King James declared the New Bible to be written in the language of the time so that all subjects could read and understand it.
 

The Bible was originally called "The Holy Bible", not the King James Version. That came later.

The King James Version included 80 books in total.

There are 39 books in the Old Testament.

There are 14 books in the Apocrypha.

There are 27 books in the New Testament.
 

The short and long of it:

The shortest verse in the Bible is
John 11:35. "Jesus Wept.".
 

The longest verse is
Ester 8:9. "Then were the king's scribes...".
 

The shortest chapter is
Psalm 117.  It has only 30 words in 2 verses.
 

The longest chapter is
Psalm 119. It has 176 verses.
 

The shortest book is
3 John. It has 14 verses and about 219 words.
Some say 2 John because it has fewer verses but has 245 words.
 

The longest book is
Jeremiah. It has 25 chapters and about 33,000 words.
Some say Psalms because it has more chapters.
But it has only about 30,000 words.
 

The first and last books of the Old Testament are Genesis and Malachi.

The first and last books of the New Testament are Matthew and Revelation.
 

The first verse in the Bible is
Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.".
 

The last verse in the Bible is
Revelation 22:21. "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all, Amen.".
 

The original, non-translated Hebrew text has the following:
Psalm 119 has 22 sections with eight lines in each section.
Each of the eight lines in each section starts with a Hebrew letter in the alphabet.
The Hebrew alphabet outlines the chapters from A to Z (Alef to Tav), ordered alphabetically.
 

The longest word in the Bible is Isaiah 8:1. "Mahershalalhashbaz"

Mahershalalhashbaz is a Hebrew name or word meaning "swift are the spoils, speedy is the plunder.".

God told Isaiah to name his son this name.
 

The Nano Bible is the smallest known Bible.

It is printed on an aluminum disk.

The disk is 600 nanometers in diameter and requires an electron microscope to read it.

It was taken to the international space station by astronaut Eytan Stibbe.

It now resides at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, next to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Technion created the Nano Bible.
 

The biggest known modern Bible weighs over 1000 lbs.

It was the creation of Louis Waynai of Texas and was completed in 1930.

It currently resides at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas.

It is approximately 43 inches thick and spans about 98 inches when opened.
 

One of the worst things concerning the Bible is that it is the most stolen book in history.

However, it is also the most purchased book in history.

The estimate is that over 100 million copies of the Bible, all translations, are sold worldwide each year.
 

The first five books of the Old Testament are also called the Pentateuch.

The set includes the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The translation of the Pentateuch is a volume of five.

Moses has been given credit for writing these books.

They are referred to as the Books of the Law as well.

The Jewish community calls this section the "Torah" or the "Chumash.".

The Torah makes up about one-fourth of the "Tanakh.".

The Tanakh is the Jewish Holy Scriptures, aka the Jewish Bible.

The Torah is just one section of the Hebrew Bible.

The four sections include:

the Chumash (the Five Books of Moses),
the Neviim (the Prophets),
the Treisar (the Minor Prophets), and
the Ketuvim (the Writings).

The Torah is also one section of the Protestant Bible (the Old Testament).

Christians call this section the Pentateuch.
 

The first four books of the New Testament are called the Gospels.

The books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are called the Gospels.

The Jewish faith does not recognize the New Testament as true scripture.

The Jewish faith also does not accept Jesus as the Messiah.

The faithful believe that the Messiah has yet to come.

As time moved on, many Jews recognized, of course, that Jesus was the catalyst of the Christian movement.

They admit that he was at least a teacher.
 

Forty people have been identified and considered to be the main authors of the Bible.

However, there is controversy over this between ancient and modern scholars.

Other writers besides the forty have been identified as authors or aids in helping.

The authors of many books are unknown.

Most of the authors of the Old Testament were Hebrew.

Many of the authors of the New Testament were Christian Jews.

However; Luke was not. He was a Gentile and a doctor.

Credit is given to Luke for writing the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts.
 

The Bible was mostly written in Israel, some in Egypt, and a few in European cities.

Many manuscripts were not written during the time they happened.

The stories were handed down orally for generations without any particular order.
 

The "Books" of the Bible are not placed in chronological order or by the order of their authors.

The books were placed in order of their purpose.

Law, history, wisdom, poetry, and prophets are the five groups of the Old Testament.

Gospels, History, Epistles, and Prophetic are the four groups of the New Testament.
 

Interesting derivatives of biblical words.

The Bible comes from the Greek word "biblia"; which means "books".
Christ comes from the Greek word "khristos"; which means "the anointed".
Lucifer comes from the Latin word "lux ferre"; which means "light bringing".

Amen is derived from the Hebrew word "āmēn"; which means “certainty,”
 

The Protestant Bible is generally believed to be true and accurate.

Many consider the Bible to be the literal word of God.

Some believe the writers were full of the Holy Spirit when they wrote.

Others believe the Bible is a book authored by inspired believers in God.
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