The Bible

Summary

The Bible is the sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity, and the reference edition presents the King James Version of 1611, the most influential translation in English. It is a library rather than a single book. The Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, begins with Genesis: the creation of the world, Adam and Eve's disobedience and expulsion from Eden, Cain's murder of Abel, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the stories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, ending with Israel's family in Egypt. Exodus tells of slavery in Egypt, Moses, the plagues and the escape through the Red Sea, the covenant and the law given at Sinai. Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy set out ritual and moral law, including laws of purity, diet and skin disease, and Israel's wandering in the wilderness. The historical books, Joshua through Kings and Chronicles, recount the conquest of Canaan, the judges, the monarchy of Saul, David and Solomon, the division of the kingdom, and the conquest of Israel by Assyria and of Judah by Babylon; Ezra and Nehemiah describe the return from exile. The wisdom and poetic books include Job, in which a righteous man loses everything and argues with God about undeserved suffering; the Psalms, songs of praise, lament and trust; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes, whose Preacher meditates on the vanity of human striving; and the Song of Songs, a sequence of love poems. The prophets, from Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the twelve minor prophets, denounce injustice and idolatry and announce judgement and restoration; Daniel adds court tales and apocalyptic visions. The New Testament opens with the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which tell the life of Jesus of Nazareth: his birth, baptism, teaching in parables and the Sermon on the Mount, his many healings and exorcisms, his conflict with authorities, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and his resurrection. The Acts of the Apostles follows the early church from Jerusalem to Rome, centring on Peter and then Paul. The Epistles, letters by Paul and others to early communities, develop Christian doctrine and ethics, including Paul's hymn to charity in First Corinthians. The book of Revelation closes the canon with a visionary apocalypse of cosmic conflict, judgement and a new heaven and earth. The King James text's cadences have shaped the English language and its literature more deeply than any other book.

Plot or Argument

• The Law (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

  Creation, the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, the covenant at Sinai and the laws of Israel.

• The historical books (Joshua–Esther)

  The conquest, the judges, the kings of Israel and Judah, exile and return.

• Wisdom and poetry (Job–Song of Solomon)

  Job's suffering, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes' meditation on vanity, and love poetry.

• The Prophets (Isaiah–Malachi)

  Prophetic oracles of judgement and hope, and Daniel's visions.

• The Gospels

  The life, teaching, healings, death and resurrection of Jesus in four accounts.

• Acts and the Epistles

  The spread of the early church and letters on faith, community and conduct.

• Revelation

  An apocalyptic vision of judgement, the defeat of evil and the new Jerusalem.

Characters

• Adam and Eve, first humans

  Created in Eden and expelled after eating the forbidden fruit.

• Abraham, patriarch

  Father of Israel, called by God to leave his homeland.

• Moses, prophet and lawgiver

  Leads Israel out of Egypt and receives the Law at Sinai.

• Saul, first king of Israel

  King tormented by an 'evil spirit' and soothed by David's harp.

• David, king and psalmist

  Shepherd, warrior, king and traditional author of many Psalms.

• Job, sufferer

  Righteous man afflicted with loss and disease who questions God.

• Jesus of Nazareth, central figure of the New Testament

  Teacher, healer and, for Christians, the Messiah and Son of God.

• Paul, apostle

  Persecutor turned missionary, author of many epistles.

• Luke, evangelist

  Traditional author of the third Gospel and Acts, called 'the beloved physician' in Colossians.

Lessons

• The problem of suffering

  Job refuses the comforters' claim that suffering is always punishment. The book honours protest and leaves the question of innocent suffering open.

  • Why are Job's friends wrong, and what is right in what they say?
  • Does God's speech from the whirlwind answer Job?
  • How do Job's comforters resemble poor clinical communication?

• Healing as social restoration

  Gospel healings often restore outcasts, lepers, the unclean, the possessed, to community. Illness in the Bible is social and religious as well as bodily.

  • What does the touch of the leper signify in its context?
  • How do purity laws shape the experience of illness?

• Wisdom about limits

  Ecclesiastes and the Psalms confront mortality and the fragility of human effort, offering not escape but a way to live within limits.

  • Is Ecclesiastes pessimistic or liberating?
  • How does Psalm 90 or Ecclesiastes 12 describe ageing?

Context

The Hebrew scriptures took shape from the early first millennium BCE through the Persian and Hellenistic periods; the New Testament was written in Greek between about 50 and 120 CE. The King James Version was commissioned at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 and appeared in 1611.

Composition

The KJV translators worked from Hebrew and Greek texts, consulting earlier English versions, especially Tyndale's. The text most commonly printed today is Benjamin Blayney's standardized revision of 1769. The reference edition is edited by David Norton.

Reception

For three centuries the KJV was the dominant English Bible, shaping the style of writers from Bunyan and Milton to Lincoln, Melville and Morrison, and supplying countless idioms to the language.

Comparisons

• the-koran

  The Quran retells many biblical figures, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Mary and Jesus, with distinct emphases.

• confessions

  Augustine's autobiography is saturated with the Psalms and Paul; his conversion turns on reading Romans.

• the-scarlet-letter

  Hawthorne's Puritan Boston lives by biblical law and typology, and Dimmesdale's guilt is framed in scriptural terms.

• east-of-eden

  Steinbeck's novel restages Cain and Abel and builds its moral argument on the Hebrew word timshel from Genesis 4:7.

• the-bhagavad-gita

  Two scriptures in which God answers a human's crisis; compare Krishna and Arjuna with God and Job.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening chapters of Genesis: the ordered days of creation in chapter 1, the garden and the forbidden tree in chapters 2 and 3, and God's sentence on Adam that ends with dust returning to dust.
• The binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, told with almost no description of thoughts or feelings. Notice how much the spare narration leaves the reader to supply.
• God's speeches to Job from the whirlwind in Job 38-41, which answer Job's questions with questions of their own about the foundations of the earth, the sea, and the creatures.
• The parallelism of Hebrew poetry as the King James translators preserved it, where a second line restates, extends, or contrasts the first, as throughout the Psalms and Proverbs.
• The way Revelation 21-22 closes the canon with a river, a city, and the tree of life, deliberately echoing the garden of Genesis 2.

Key terms and names

Covenant

A binding agreement between God and his people, made with Noah, Abraham, Israel at Sinai, and David, and announced as a new covenant in Jeremiah 31 and at the Last Supper. It is the thread that ties the Bible's many books together.

The Law (Torah)

The first five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy, traditionally ascribed to Moses, and the commandments given at Sinai within them. Jesus says in Matthew 5 that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it.

Prophet

One who speaks God's word to Israel, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos. The prophets denounce idolatry and injustice and announce both judgment and restoration.

Messiah

Hebrew for anointed one, rendered Christ in Greek. The Old Testament hope for an anointed king of David's line is what the Gospels claim is fulfilled in Jesus.

Parable

A short story Jesus uses to teach about the kingdom of God, such as the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 or the Sower in Matthew 13. Parables often end with a reversal that the hearer must interpret.

Gospel

Old English godspel, good news, for the Greek euangelion. It names both the message about Jesus and the four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that tell his life, death, and resurrection.

King James Version

The English translation commissioned at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 and published in 1611, drawing heavily on William Tyndale. Its phrases became part of the English language.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension In Genesis 3, what does the serpent say to the woman, what happens after she and Adam eat, and what consequences does God announce to each of them?
2. Comprehension What do Job's three friends argue about the cause of his suffering, and why does God say in Job 42 that they have not spoken rightly?
3. Comprehension In Luke 15, what does the younger son ask for, what does he do with it, and how do the father and the elder brother each respond to his return?
4. Interpretation God answers Job from the whirlwind without ever mentioning the wager with Satan in chapters 1 and 2. Why might the book withhold that explanation from Job, and does the answer he does receive satisfy him?
5. Interpretation The Preacher of Ecclesiastes says all is vanity, yet he also commends eating, drinking, and enjoying one's labor. Is Ecclesiastes a book of despair, of contentment, or of something between?
6. Interpretation When Jesus is criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners in Matthew 9, he answers that the whole need no physician. What does the image of the physician say about who Jesus came for and what sin is?
7. Big Question The Bible is a library written over a thousand years by many hands. What, if anything, makes it one book rather than many?

Faith Connections

• Luke 24:13-27 (Scripture)

  On the road to Emmaus the risen Jesus begins at Moses and all the prophets and expounds in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. The passage is the Bible's own instruction for reading the Old Testament and New Testament as a single story.

• Hebrews 1:1-2 (Scripture)

  God, who spoke at many times and in many ways to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken by his Son. The opening of Hebrews names both the variety of the Bible's books and the unity Christians find in them.

• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine I.36 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine teaches that anyone who thinks he understands the Scriptures but does not build up the twofold love of God and neighbor has not yet understood them. His rule of charity remains one of the most influential guides to reading the whole Bible.

• Augustine, Confessions VIII.12 (Church Fathers)

  In a Milan garden Augustine hears a child's voice chanting take up and read, opens Paul's letters to Romans 13:13-14, and is converted. The scene shows the Bible not only studied as literature but read as an address to the reader.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Read as the Christian canon, the Bible makes one dramatic argument across many books. God made the world good and made human beings in his image. Humanity's rebellion brought death, toil, and estrangement, which law, sacrifice, and prophecy could reveal but not undo. God bound himself by covenant to Abraham's family and promised an anointed king. Jesus of Nazareth fulfils that promise by his death and resurrection, so that the story that began in a garden ends in a restored creation with the tree of life.

Rhetorical device: antithetical parallelism. Proverbs 17:22 sets two lines against each other: "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones." The second line reverses the first, a characteristic pattern of Hebrew wisdom poetry that the King James translators carried over into English with its balance intact.

Debate: Resolved: God's speeches from the whirlwind are a sufficient answer to Job's complaint.

Memory Work

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity

Writing Prompts

Essay: Job's friends insist that suffering is always punishment for sin, Job insists on his innocence, and God speaks from the whirlwind. Trace the argument from Job 3 through Job 42 and argue what the book finally teaches about undeserved suffering and the right way to speak to God about it.

Comparison with The Odyssey: Erich Auerbach famously contrasted the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 with the scene of Odysseus's scar in Odyssey 19: Homer lights every detail, while Genesis leaves most in shadow. Compare the two scenes and argue what each style of narration implies about the human person and about the presence or absence of God.

Medical Lens

The Bible is foundational for the history of Western ideas of illness, impurity and healing. Leviticus 13–14 prescribes priestly inspection, quarantine and purification for 'leprosy' (tzara'at), a skin condition not identical with Hansen's disease, which later shaped medieval leper policy. Saul's 'evil spirit' soothed by music, Nebuchadnezzar's madness, and David feigning madness are key early accounts of mental disturbance. The Gospels contain many healings and exorcisms, including the Gadarene demoniac living among tombs and the boy whose symptoms (falling, foaming, gnashing teeth) the KJV describes as 'lunatick' and which are often read as epilepsy; these readings are retrospective. Other passages include the woman who 'suffered many things of many physicians', Asa who sought physicians rather than God, Hezekiah's boil treated with a fig poultice, Elisha's revival of the Shunammite's son, plague narratives, childbirth deaths, and abundant material on wine and drunkenness. The KJV's own word choices ('lunatick', 'leprosy') carry later medical connotations into English.

• Leviticus 13–14

  Laws for priestly diagnosis, isolation outside the camp and purification of 'leprosy' in people, garments and houses.

  LeprosyPublic Health Sanitation
• 1 Samuel 16:14–23; 18:10–11

  Saul's evil spirit, David's harp, and Saul's later violent episodes.

  Melancholia DepressionMadness Psychosis
• Daniel 4

  Nebuchadnezzar is driven from men and eats grass like oxen until his reason returns.

  Madness Psychosis
• 2 Kings 4:18–37

  Elisha restores the Shunammite woman's dead son by lying upon him, mouth to mouth.

  Reanimation Galvanism
• 2 Kings 20:1–7 / Isaiah 38

  Hezekiah's mortal illness and the lump of figs laid on his boil.

  Ancient MedicinePhysicians Doctors
• Mark 5:1–20

  The Gadarene demoniac, bound with chains among the tombs, healed by Jesus.

  Madness Psychosis
• Mark 5:25–34

  The woman with an issue of blood for twelve years who had spent all she had on physicians and grew worse.

  Physicians Doctors
• Matthew 17:14–18; Mark 9:17–29

  The boy described as 'lunatick' who falls into fire and water, foams and is rigid, often read as epilepsy.

  Epilepsy Seizures
• Genesis 35:16–20

  Rachel dies in hard labour giving birth to Benjamin.

  Childbirth MaternalGrief
• 2 Samuel 24

  A pestilence kills seventy thousand after David's census.

  Plague Epidemic

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Job's friends as clinicians: what can the Book of Job teach about how not to comfort the suffering?

• Classroom

  Compare Leviticus 13–14 with modern quarantine guidance: what is similar in the logic of isolation and readmission?

Further Reading

• The Literary Guide to the Bible, Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (eds.)

• God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, Adam Nicolson

• The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter

• The Falling Sickness, Owsei Temkin

  History of epilepsy, including religious interpretations.