The Bible is not a single book but a library of texts — composed over roughly a thousand years by many different authors, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek — that together form the foundational scripture of Judaism and Christianity, in overlapping but distinct forms. It is, by a wide margin, the most translated, printed, and distributed book in human history.
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The Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, is organized into three sections whose initials give the name its acronym: Torah ("Teaching" or "Law," the five books of Moses), Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings," including Psalms, Proverbs, and Job). Composed and compiled over centuries, its content ranges from covenant and law to prophecy, poetry, and wisdom literature. Christianity inherited this collection as its Old Testament, though different Christian traditions recognize somewhat different sets of additional books alongside it.
The New Testament, written in Greek in the first century CE, recounts the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth across four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), continues with the Acts of the Apostles describing the early Christian community, gathers a series of Epistles (letters), many attributed to Paul, addressing doctrine and conduct in the young churches, and closes with the visionary Book of Revelation.
Covenant — the binding relationship between God and humanity, renewed across different eras
Law and Prophecy — ethical instruction and calls to justice and faithfulness
Grace and Redemption — central to New Testament teaching on Jesus's life and death
The Kingdom of God — a recurring theme in Jesus's parables and teaching
The Bible's texts were assembled gradually from oral tradition, historical record, poetry, prophecy, and correspondence. The process of settling which books belonged in an authoritative canon took centuries and was never fully uniform: the Christian Old and New Testament canon was substantially settled by regional church councils such as the Synods of Hippo (393 CE) and Carthage (397 CE), yet Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish traditions today still recognize somewhat different collections and orderings of books.
Beyond its religious role, the Bible has profoundly shaped Western law, art, literature, and moral philosophy for two millennia — from the structure of common law to the imagery of Renaissance painting to the cadences of English prose. This site's coverage of Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart and St. Francis of Assisi draws directly on the contemplative traditions the Bible inspired.
Major Sections: Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim, the Gospels, the Epistles
Related Topics: Covenant theology, Christian mysticism, the Kabbalah's use of the Hebrew Bible
Bible on Wikipedia · Britannica: Bible · Bible Gateway (read online)
