WORLD RELIGIONS

Detailed explanation-1: -The Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the Old Testament includes writings considered apocryphal by Protestants. The New Testament contains four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Acts, 21 letters, and Revelation.

Detailed explanation-2: -It is called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning five books) in Greek; the second oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi’im); the third collection (the Ketuvim) contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories.

Detailed explanation-3: -The oldest surviving full text of the New Testament is the beautifully written Codex Sinaiticus, which was “discovered” at the St Catherine monastery at the base of Mt Sinai in Egypt in the 1840s and 1850s. Dating from circa 325-360 CE, it is not known where it was scribed – perhaps Rome or Egypt.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Bible takes its name from the Latin Biblia (’book’ or ‘books’) which comes from the Greek Ta Biblia (’the books’) traced to the Phoenician port city of Gebal, known as Byblos to the Greeks. Writing became associated with Byblos as an exporter of papyrus (used in writing) and the Greek name for papyrus was bublos.