What the Bible actually is (a 10-minute explanation)

The Bible is a library, not a book. It's 66 separate writings by dozens of authors, produced over roughly a thousand years in three languages, bound together because Jews and then Christians came to treat them as God speaking. That's the ten-second version. Here's the ten-minute one.

What's actually in it?

Two parts, called testaments (an old word for "covenant", meaning a binding agreement).

The Old Testament is 39 books, and it's the Jewish scriptures: the same texts, in a slightly different order, that a synagogue reads today. It covers the creation of the world, the story of Israel from Abraham to the return from exile in Babylon, its laws, its songs and its prophets. It was written mostly in Hebrew, with a few chapters (parts of Daniel and Ezra) in Aramaic, the everyday language of the Middle East after about 500 BC.

The New Testament is 27 books, all written in Greek in the first century AD, in the sixty or so years after Jesus's death. Four accounts of his life, a history of the first churches, twenty-one letters, and one very strange vision.

Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include a few more Old Testament books (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees and others), written between the testaments. Protestants call these the Apocrypha and don't count them as scripture. The 66 is the Protestant count, and it's what this site uses; you can browse all 66 books here.

Who wrote it, and when?

Lots of people, and for many books we honestly don't know exactly.

The earliest material may go back to around 1200 BC as oral tradition and song; most scholars date the writing and editing of the Old Testament to somewhere between 1000 BC and 200 BC, with plenty of debate about the details. The New Testament is much tighter: Paul's letters from around AD 50, the gospels from roughly AD 65 to 95, everything done by about AD 100.

The authors include a king (some of the Psalms), a shepherd turned prophet (Amos), a doctor (Luke), fishermen, a tax collector, a Pharisee who switched sides (Paul), and many people whose names we don't have. Some books name their author. Some were assigned one by tradition. Some are anonymous and always were. Anyone who tells you every book's author is beyond doubt is overselling.

That's a first-century author telling you his method: sources, eyewitnesses, careful ordering, a named reader. These were written by people, on purpose, for other people.

What kinds of writing are in it?

This is the part that changes how you read. A law code and a love poem don't work the same way. Eight main types:

One line on each: law tells you what Israel was told to do; history tells you what they did; poetry tells you how it felt; wisdom tells you how it usually goes; prophecy tells you what God thought about it; the gospels tell you what Jesus did about it; the letters tell you what the first Christians made of that; apocalyptic tells you where it's all heading, in pictures.

Most misreadings come from treating one genre as another: Proverbs as guarantees, Revelation as a news schedule, a psalm of rage as doctrine. Knowing what you're holding is half the work.

How did these books get collected?

Slowly, and not by a single vote.

For the Old Testament, the Law (the first five books) was treated as scripture early, the Prophets next, and the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job and the rest) last. By the time of Jesus, the collection was broadly settled, though the edges were still discussed. Jesus quotes it as "the Law and the Prophets" and treats it as authoritative.

For the New Testament, Paul's letters were being copied between churches within his lifetime, and the four gospels were in wide use by the early second century. Churches then spent a couple of centuries sorting which books were read everywhere, which were disputed for a while (Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, Revelation), and which were rejected. The tests were roughly: was it written by an apostle or someone close to one, was it consistent with what the churches already taught, and was it being used across the whole church, not just one region. The earliest surviving list that matches our 27 books exactly is from AD 367, in a letter from Athanasius of Alexandria, though the core was agreed long before that.

You'll hear that the Bible was "decided at the Council of Nicaea". It wasn't. Nicaea (AD 325) was about who Jesus was, not which books to keep. The list was settled by long use and slow consensus, which is less dramatic and more believable.

That's one New Testament writer describing Paul's letters as "Scriptures" and admitting they're hard. Both halves of that are worth noticing.

What does "inspired" mean?

Christians agree the Bible is inspired by God. They don't all mean the same thing by it, and this site isn't going to pick for you. The main views, roughly:

• God gave the very words. The writers wrote in their own styles, but what came out is exactly what God intended, without error, in everything it affirms. This is the view of many evangelical and conservative churches.
• God gave the message. The Bible is completely trustworthy in what it teaches about God, salvation and how to live, while the human writers could hold the science or history of their day. Common in Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant churches.
• God speaks through it. The books are human documents that God has used, and still uses, to meet people. Its authority is in the encounter more than in the text itself. Common in some mainline Protestant churches and among many biblical scholars.

Most Christians sit somewhere on that line, and plenty have moved along it over their lives. The text itself claims to be from God and useful:

What "God-breathed" means in detail is the argument above. What it's for is less argued: teaching, correction, training. It's meant to be read, and to change the reader.

Where do you start?

Not page one. You don't read a library alphabetically. Start with a gospel (Mark is shortest), or with one of the stories people have retold for three thousand years, and let the rest of the shelf wait. If you're choosing an English version, which translation to read explains the options in one page. And if you want it all on your phone, every chapter of all 66 books is in the app in a plain paraphrase next to the full text.

The Bible is old, uneven, sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal. Knowing what it is won't tell you whether it's true. It will tell you how to read it fairly, and that's the only way to find out.