Bible (redirected from Bibles)

Bible [Gr.,=the books], term used since the 4th cent. to denote the Christian Scriptures and later, by extension, those of various religious traditions. This article discusses the nature of religious scripture generally and the Christian Scriptures specifically, as well as the history of the translation of the Bible into English. For the composition and the canon of the Hebrew and Christian Bible, see Old Testament; New Testament; Apocrypha; Pseudepigrapha.

The Nature of Scripture

The sacred writings of the religions of the world exhibit a variety of genres—prayers, visions, ritual, moral codes, myths, historical narratives, legends, and revelatory discourses. Such works have tended to be transmitted orally at first and committed to writing at a later date. This is true of much of the content of the Christian Bible as well as of the Hindu Vedas and the Jewish Mishnah.

The sacred character of such writings is accorded them by communities that have come to value the traditions they embody. Scripture is also perceived in some sense as heavenly in origin—the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon are good examples of this. Religious communities value highly those who interpret their scriptures at both the scholarly and popular levels. Translation of scripture into the vernacular, though resisted in some religious traditions, is a common phenomenon. However, the original Arabic of the Qur'an is regarded as the actual words of God, and therefore as sacrosanct, and is printed alongside its translation. Translations can assume the status of inspired text, as did the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures (the Septuagint) in Hellenistic Jewish and Christian communities. The process of canonizing scripture has been an extended one in many religious traditions, e.g., the Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist faiths. Other traditions authorized their respective bodies of scripture early, e.g., the Sikhs, Muslims, and Manichaeans. Inspiration is an adjunct of the idea of the divine authority of scripture.

The role of scripture in the life of the community involves its public recitation or reading at worship, its veneration as a cult object, and its citation in public prayer and in prescribing appropriate rituals. In the private devotional life of the faithful, scripture is the focus of meditation. The use of scripture to function as a charm to ward off evil or to induce healing is also common. Scripture is also the inspiration for cultural expression in art, music, and literature.

The Bible as Christian Scripture

The traditional Christian view of the Bible is that it was written under the guidance of God and that it therefore conveys truth, either literally or figuratively. In recent times the view of many Christians has been influenced by the pronouncements of critics (see higher criticism); this has produced a counteraction in the form of fundamentalism, whose chief emphasis has been on the literal inerrancy of the Bible. The interpretation of the Bible is one of the traditional points of difference between Protestants, who believe that the Scriptures speak for themselves, and Roman Catholics, who hold that the church has ultimate authority in the interpretation of the Scriptures.

English Translations of the Christian Bible

John Wyclif was one of the first to project the publication and distribution of the Bible in the vernacular among the English people, and two translations go by his name. In the 15th cent. the Lollards did much to extend the use of the Wyclifite translation. The next name in the history of the English Bible is that of William Tyndale, whose translation was not from the Latin Vulgate, like Wyclif's, but from the Hebrew and Greek. Its quality is attested by its use as a basis of the Authorized Version. Tyndale's New Testament (1525–26) was the first English translation to be printed. Contemporary with Tyndale was Miles Coverdale. The second version of Coverdale and the translation of Thomas Matthew closely followed Tyndale. In 1539 the English crown issued its first official version, in the name of Henry VIII. This, the Great Bible, was done principally by Coverdale. The Geneva Bible, or Breeches Bible, was a revision of the Great Bible, financed and annotated by the Calvinists of Geneva. The Bishops' Bible (1568) was a recasting of Tyndale.

The greatest of all English translations was the Authorized Version (AV), or King James Version (KJV), of 1611, made by a committee of churchmen led by Lancelot Andrewes and composed of many of the finest scholars in England. The beautiful English of this version has had great influence and is generally ranked in English literature with the work of Shakespeare. The phraseology of much of it is that of Tyndale. The Douay, or Rheims-Douay, Version was published by Roman Catholic scholars at Reims (New Testament, 1582) and Douai, France (Old Testament, 1610); it was extensively revised by Richard Challoner. In the 19th cent. the project of revising the Authorized Version from the original tongues was undertaken by the Church of England with the cooperation of nonconformist churches. The results of this revision were the English Revised Version and the American Revised Version (pub. 1880–90).

Many scholars, either cooperatively or independently, have translated the Bible into English. In other literatures, also, the translation of the Bible has had a formative effect on the literary language, notably in the case of Martin Luther's German translation. Occasionally translation of the Bible has been the first or the only notable work in a language, e.g., the translation by Ulfilas into Gothic.

In the 20th cent., American biblical scholars combined to produce the Revised Standard Version (RSV), published in 1952 and immediately adopted by many churches. A completely new translation, the work of a joint committee of representatives of all Protestant denominations in Great Britain, aided by Roman Catholic consultants, was begun in 1946. The New Testament was first published in 1961, and the entire Bible, called The New English Bible, appeared in 1970. New Roman Catholic translations were also undertaken, the Westminster Version in England, and a complete revision of the Rheims-Douay edition sponsored by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in the United States. The latter, after undergoing several major revisions and retranslations, was finally published as the New American Bible (1970). In addition, an English translation of the French Catholic Bible de Jerusalem (1961) appeared as the Jerusalem Bible (1966). A revision of the RSV was published in 1989 as the New Revised Standard Version.

Bibliography

See The Cambridge History of the Bible (3 vol., 1963–70); F. F. Bruce and E. G. Rupp, ed., Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition (1968); F. M. Denny and R. L. Taylor, The Holy Bible in Comparative Perspective (1985); H. M. Orlinsky and R. M. Bratcher, A History of Bible Translation and the North American Contribution (1991); J. Miles, God: A Biography (1995); J. L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (1997); R. E. Friedman, The Hidden Book of the Bible (1998); C. Murphy, The Word According to Eve (1998); D. H. Akensen, Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds (1999); A. Nicolson, God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (2003).

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Bible

Sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. The Jewish scriptures consist of the Torah (or Pentateuch), the Neviim (“Prophets”), and the Ketuvim (“Writings”), which together constitute what Christians call the Old Testament. The Pentateuch and Joshua relate how Israel became a nation and came to possess the Promised Land. The Prophets describe the establishment and development of the monarchy and relate the prophets' messages. The Writings include poetry, speculation on good and evil, and history. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bible includes additional Jewish writings called the Apocrypha. The New Testament consists of early Christian literature. The Gospels tell of the life, person, and teachings of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles relates the earliest history of Christianity. The Epistles (Letters) are correspondence of early church leaders (chiefly St. Paul) and address the needs of early congregations. Revelation is the only canonical representative of a large genre of early Christian apocalyptic literature. See also biblical source, biblical translation.

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Bible

a. the. the sacred writings of the Christian religion, comprising the Old and New Testaments and, in the Roman Catholic Church, the Apocrypha

b. (as modifier): a Bible reading
http://unbound.biola.edu/
www.yallop.org/synopsis/
www.bible-history.com/

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Bible

name used for Scriptures; “the real source of truth.” [Christianity: NCE, 291]

See : Genuineness

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(publication)

bible - The most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular language, operating system or other complex software system. It is also used to denote one of a small number of such books such as Knuth and K&R.

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Bible

a collection of writings of different times, different languages, and varying character, dating from the eighth century B.C. to the second century a.d., which forms the basis of the divine service and doctrines of Judaism and Christianity and is considered by them as sacred. The Bible consists of the Old Testament, recognized as sacred scripture by both the Jewish and Christian religions, and the New Testament, recognized by Christianity only.

The Old Testament, consisting of 39 books, written in ancient Hebrew and partly in Aramaic, was completed between the third and second centuries B.C. It contains folk myths and legends (the book of Genesis), which to some extent may be traced to common Semitic traditions, such as the myth of the fall of the first people and the flood; historical narratives (the books of Samuel and Kings), which are an important source for the history of ancient Palestine and the neighboring peoples; a record of ethical principles and ritual prescriptions (the book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments); social and religious pronouncements (the books of the Prophets); philosophical reflections (the books of Job and Ecclesiastes); love lyrics (the Song of Songs); religious poetry (the psalms, many ascribed to King David, all of which are called the Psalter); and pseudo-historical narratives (the book of Esther).

According to tradition, the books of the Old Testament are divided into three parts: the Law (in Hebrew, Torah), or Pentateuch, the compilation of which is ascribed to Moses; the Prophets, which include—apart from the so-called prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets—the books of Joshua, Judges, I and II Kings, and others; and the Writings, or Hagiographa.

These works were written in the course of many centuries. Some fragments, such as the Song of Deborah, included in the Book of Judges, date back to the 12th century B.C. The parts began to be compiled in the fifth century B.C. and were subjected to editing by the Jerusalem priesthood, who incorporated into the Bible the idea that monotheism had supposedly prevailed among the Jews from the very beginning. The Old Testament canon was worked out between a.d. 90 and 100; between the seventh and ninth centuries a group of theologians, called Masoretes (from ancient Hebrew, masorah, “tradition”), produced a unified text of the Old Testament. The most ancient complete manuscripts of the Old Testament that have come down to us date from the late ninth and tenth centuries and are based on the Masoretic version. Only the Qumran scrolls, discovered between 1947 and 1965 in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea, have permitted us to become acquainted with certain books and fragments of the Bible in their pre-Masoretic version and created a serious basis for studying the composition of the Old Testament text.

Christian divine services use the Old Testament in Greek, Latin, Old Slavonic, and modern language translations. Many of these translations are based on the ancient Greek translation (the so-called translation of 70 interpreters, called in Latin the Septuagint), which was made from a pre-Masoretic text in the second century B.C. and which has come down to us in manuscripts dating from the fourth century a.d. and later. It contains variants from the Masoretic version, corresponding in some cases to the Qumran scrolls. Moreover, the Septuagint contains a number of works that have not been included in the Jewish canon of the Bible. The Latin translation—for the most part from the ancient Hebrew text, with the utilization of the existing Latin translation of the Septuagint—was completed by the theologian St. Jerome between a.d. 386 and 406. It forms the basis of the so-called Vulgate, the Roman Catholic Bible, of which manuscripts of the sixth century have been preserved. In Rus’, the Bible was for the most part translated from the Greek, although it is possible that the Hebrew original was used for some books. The first complete Russian translation appeared in 1499, with some books translated from the Latin text of Jerome. During the period of the Reformation in Western Europe, translations of the Bible into modern languages appeared, among them the translation of Martin Luther.

The New Testament was written in Greek. The question of whether part of the Gospel of Matthew was initially written in Aramaic remains under discussion. The New Testament consists of four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles, and the Revelation (Apocalypse) of St. John the Divine. According to tradition, the New Testament writings belong to the closest followers of Christ or to their disciples and date essentially from the middle of the first century a.d. In fact, they were written later, apparently between the second half of the first and the beginning of the second century. The oldest preserved manuscript, a fragment of the Gospel of John, dates from about a.d. 125. The New Testament was compiled as the result of a compromise between various early Christian groups; its canon was not established until the end of the fourth century. There existed a number of gospels, epistles, and revelations that were not recognized by the church; some of them, such as the Revelation of John and the epistles of James, Jude, and others were included in the canon only at a later time. The New Testament is the most important source on the history of the growth of Christianity.

The Bible, heterogeneous in origin, reflects different social, political, and moral views. Side by side with the appeal to improve the condition of the oppressed, especially in the books of the Prophets, and to destroy the Roman Empire (in Revelation), there prevails in the Bible an apologetic attitude toward monarchic rule, social inequality, and property. It is proclaimed that “there is no power but of god.” The ideal of family relationships is the patriarchal family, with its subordination of the woman to the master of the household and with the inclusion of concubines and servants in the household. The historical process is viewed as a manifestation of “divine providence,” the earth is viewed as the center of the universe, and the world is viewed as having a beginning and an end.

Recognized as the sacred (“divinely inspired”) book of the Christian Church, the Bible determined the form of expression of thought throughout the Middle Ages. The biblical cosmogony, social teaching, and ethics were upheld by the church as the indisputable norm and were utilized in the interests of the exploiting classes. The Bible was invoked for justification of feudal privileges, the Inquisition, slavery, and the humble position of women. Heretical teachings— including those of the Paulicians and the Bogomils, who denied the divine inspiration of the Old Testament—did not so much reject as reinterpret biblical teachings, sometimes finding in the Bible a basis for the idea of equality. (“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”) Biblical quotations were used to support the demands of the peasants in the Great Peasants’ War of 1524–26 and the programs of the English Bourgeois Revolution (English Civil War). Biblical images and themes formed the arsenal of medieval art, above all of iconography and church sculpture; later the Bible also provided artists, writers, and composers with subjects (Rembrandt, J. Milton, J. S. Bach, G. Byron, T. Mann, and others).

The study of the Bible began in antiquity and was initially of a primarily theological character. In the Middle Ages a special discipline was evolved, exegetics, the purpose of which is to interpret individual passages of the Bible and in particular to explain contradictions, which were glaring even then, treating them, however, as merely apparent. Biblical criticism begins in the 17th and 18th centuries with B. Spinoza and J. Astruc. It was pointed out that the Bible was not a unique, divinely inspired book, but a complex literary monument, reflecting the interests of various social groups and abounding in contradictions. Thus, mutually exclusive myths are given in the book of Genesis about the origin of man. According to one version, man and woman were created simultaneously, but according to the other version, the woman Eve was created from a rib of the man Adam at a later time; according to one myth about the flood, the rain fell for 40 days, but according to the other, it fell for 150 days; and so forth. The various gospels determine differently the time and the place of Christ’s birth, where the child Jesus was brought, and the duration of his preaching. There are also theological contradictions in the Bible. It is said in some epistles that man is saved by faith, in others by good works. Contradictory also are the social and ethical principles of the Bible, such as the condemning of riches as against making friends with riches, the call to bring the sword into this world as against the threat that all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword, an appeal not to judge others as against a demand to submit them to judgment, the appeal not to divorce a wife as against the call to forsake her, and so forth. Contradictions were found not only between the Old and the New Testaments, but also within separate books. In addition, many repetitions and stereotypes were discovered. Biblical criticism showed that the world view of the Bible was in no way unique but had definite roots and parallels in various beliefs, rites, and customs of ancient peoples, especially in Babylonian mythology. Elements were uncovered of polytheism and archaic cults, which contradicted the main trend of the Bible toward monotheism.

It was established that the Pentateuch could not be ascribed to Moses; as early as the beginning of the 19th century, it was shown that one of the books, Deuteronomy, originated in 621 b.c, significantly later than the time when, according to tradition, Moses died. Stylistically, the Pentateuch forms a unit with the Book of Joshua, which relates events after the death of Moses. A number of sources (so-called Elohist and Yahwist) were discovered, from which contradictory versions of the same legends and the like were often drawn. The nature of the priests’ revision of the Bible was also revealed; a collation of the books of Chronicles (Paralipomenon) with the books of Samuel and Kings revealed that in the editing certain dates were changed, some episodes were inserted, and others were omitted, with the intention of proving that the history of Judea was the history of the glory of Yahweh. Thus, everything was omitted that might have cast a shadow on King David, who was represented as the founder of the Yahweh cult and not as the daring little brigand king described by earlier tradition.

Biblical criticism, which impinged on the interests of the church, met with violent resistance from confessional scholarship, although some of its conclusions began to be used by theologians—particularly Protestants—to purge biblical stories of obvious absurdities. In recent years, a series of contentions of biblical criticism were reexamined in the light of new research, especially on the basis of the data of so-called biblical archaeology. Some biblical traditions that had been regarded as myth, such as the origin of Christianity on the territory of Palestine, seem to have a historic core.

For using the Bible there exist specially prepared alphabetical indexes, called concordances, of all words and proper names encountered in the Bible.

REFERENCES

Marx, K., and F. Engels. O religii. Moscow, 1955.
Lenin, V. I. O religii. Moscow, 1955.
Ranovich, A. B. Ocherki istorii drevneevreiskoi religii. Moscow, 1937.
Wellhausen, J. Vvedenie ν istoriu Israilia. St. Petersburg, 1909. (Translated from German.)
Frazer, J. Fol’klor ν Vetkhom zavete. Moscow-Leningrad, 1931. (Translated from English.)
Lentsman, A. Ia. Proiskhozhdenie khristianstva. Moscow, 1960.
Amusin, I. D. Rukopisi Mertvogo moría. Moscow, 1960.
Kryvelev, I. A. Kniga o Biblii. Moscow, 1958.
Kryvelev, I. A. Kak kritikovali Bibliiu ν starínu. Moscow, 1966.
Kosidowski, Z. Bibleiskie skazaniia. Moscow, 1966. (Translated from Polish.)
Zehren, E. Bibleiskie kholmy. Moscow, 1966. (Translated from German.)
Livshits, G. M. Ocherki istoriografii Biblii i rannego khristianstva. Minsk, 1970.
Eissfeldt, O. Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 3rd ed. Tubingen, 1964.
Glanzman, G., and J. Fritzmyer. An Introductory Bibliography for the Study of the Scripture. New York, 1965.
Feine, P., and J. Behm. Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 14th ed. Heidelberg, 1965.

A. P. KAZHDAN