College of Education | Religious Education Department

Notre Dame of Marbel University

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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 111 - Salvation
History and the Old Testament
MODULE 1 / Lesson 4: THE BIBLE

LEARNING OUTCOMES. At the end of the session, the students can:

1. present correctly their understanding on the basic concepts of the Bible

through a chart;
2. cite concrete ways how to develop the love for the word of God through a
#statement hashtag statement;
3. express one’s gratitude and faith in God’s salvific plan through reflective
writing.

CapSoul of the Session: “I believe the Bible is

the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the savior of the
world is communicated to us through this book.” - Abraham
Lincoln-

INTRODUCTION.

This module will primarily focus on the basic or fundamental matters that we need
to know about the so called, “The Book of Life” or “The Best Love Story of All
Times”- THE BIBLE.

Specifically, it will dwell on the meaning, historical development, authorship,

languages used, Canon of the Bible, interpretation, its division, and a brief
description of each important part of the Bible. Hence, this module will serve as a
refresher or review for some and maybe for others, a good starting point to
appreciate, reflect and eventually live out the Word of God.

ACTIVITY Think-Ink-Share

Bible Scanning:

This activity is a good start in familiarizing yourself with the content of the Bible.
Get your own Bible and using the table below, list down all the books in the Old
and New Testaments with its corresponding number of chapter/s. Write your
answers on the table provided. Use separate paper if necessary.

Old Testament Books No. of Chapters New Testament Books No.

of Chapters
1.
2.
3.
.
.

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What you have done gives us a picture of the books of the Bible. Let us look
further into the important details of the Bible.

ACQUISITION OF NEW KNOWLEDGE

THE BIBLE
I- Etymology and Meaning

The word Bible comes from the Greek word, “ta biblia”; it is a plural noun which
means, ‘the books’. When translated into Latin, it becomes singular, the Bible. The
Bible is more than a book; it’s a library. In it you will find a number of very
different works, collected together in two large groupings, the Old Testament and
the New Testament (usually abbreviated as OT and NT). The Bible is often called
scripture, the scriptures, or Holy Scripture.

The word ‘Testament’ here does not mean what we might take it to mean in
modern English: it is the same word as the Latin testamentum, which translates
the Hebrew word meaning covenant. So the Bible is the collection of books which
tells us about the covenant, the agreement, which God made with Israel through
Moses (the old covenant) and which he fulfilled in Jesus (the new covenant).

II- Historical Development of the Bible

1. BIBLICAL INSPIRATION. The Bible is believed to be inspired by God. It has an

authority equaled by no other written source. It is, in the theological sense,
the norma normans non normata (“the norm which is the standard for all
other norms but is not itself subject to a higher norm”). The understanding
of the Bible’s authority is rooted in its inspired character.
2. The Sacred scriptures, collected in the Bible, are the inspired record of how
God dealt with His people, and how they responded to, remembered, and
interpreted that experience.

3. The Scriptures arose as the expression of the people’s experience of God,

and as a response to their needs. Collectively, the scriptures form “The Book
of the People of God, for the People of God” – the book of the Church.
4. The Bible was written by persons from the People of God, for the people of
God, about the God-experience of the People of God” (NCDP, 131).
5. The Scriptures, then, are never to be separated from the people of God
whose life and history (Tradition) formed the context of their writing and
development as best shown in the three formations of the Gospels.
6. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are bound closely together, flowing
out from the same divine well spring, moving towards the same goal and
making up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God (DV, 9,10).
7. Tradition can be taken either as the process by which divine revelation,
coming from Jesus Christ through the apostles, is communicated and
unfolded in the community of the Church, or as the content of the revelation
so communicated. Thus, the living Tradition of the Church, which includes
the inspired Word of God in the Sacred Scripture, is the channel through
which God’s self-revelation comes to us.

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 8. As Sacred Scripture grew from Tradition, so it is interpreted by Tradition –
the life, worship, and teaching of the Church.
9. Tradition depends on Scripture as its normative record of Christian origins
and identity, while Scripture requires the living Tradition of the Church to
bring its Scriptural message to the fresh challenges and changing contexts
confronting Christians in every age.

THE LANGUAGE USED IN THE BIBLE

1. The whole of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew (there are just a few
passages in Aramaic).
2. Like Arabic, these two languages are written with consonants only; the
reader has to add the vowels according to the way in which he understands
the text.
3. Beginning in the seventh century of our era, Jewish scholars known as
“Massoretes’1 fixed the meaning of a text by adding vowels in the form of
little points above and below the consonants.
4. This is why the Hebrew text is sometimes called the ‘Massoretic text’.
5. The Old Testament was translated into Greek in Alexandria, from about the
third century BC onwards. According to legend, seventy scribes working
independently all arrived at exactly the same translation. The significance of
this legend is important. It indicates that a translation of this kind must have
been inspired by God. As a result, the translation is known as the Septuagint
(Greek for seventy: the usual abbreviations is LXX). There were other
ancient Greek translations, by Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion.
6. The New Testament was written entirely in Greek, which is the common
language spoken at that time. This Greek, which is not the same as classical
Greek, is called koine (Greek for common, i.e. language).
7. Bible scholars translated the New Testament text in Greek into Latin, known
as Vulgate.

Books, Chapters and Verses

1. The First part of the Bible, the Old Testament, is common to both Jews and
Christians, but with some differences. The Jews, followed by Protestants,
recognize only the books written in Hebrew, forty of them; Catholics also
recognize six books written in Greek. Protestants call these latter books
‘apocryphal’; Catholics call them deutero-canonical’, that is, books which
entered the canon, or rule of faith, at a secondary stage. So the Christian
‘library’ – the Bible – contains either sixty-seven or seventy-three books.
2. The New Testament, which is identical for all Christians, is consists of
twenty-seven books. The books of the New Testament are arranged in the
same way in all Christian Bibles. The books of the Old Testament are
arranged in two different ways. The Jewish Bible contains three parts: the
Law or Torah (which we call the Pentateuch); the Prophets or Nebiim, divided
into two groups, the former prophets (which we wrongly call the ‘historical’
books) and the latter prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve
others); and lastly the Writings or Kethubim.

1
Masoretes. From about 6th to the 10th century CE worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible, added to
“YHWH” the vowel signs of the Hebrew words Adonai or Elohim
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 3. By taking the first letter of each of these Hebrew titles (Torah, Nebiim,
Kethubim), The Jews formed the word TANAK, which is their name for the
Bible. This is the arrangement you will find in the Jerusalem Bible, which
adds at the end those books which are not recognized by Catholics. Most
Bibles have adopted an order inspired by the Greek Bible, which arranges
the books in four parts; the Pentateuch, the historical books, the prophetic
books and the wisdom books.
4. To make it easy to find one’s way around the Bible, Stephen Langton,
Archbishop of Canterbury, had the idea of dividing each book into numbered
chapters: this was done in 1226. During a carriage journey from Lyons to
Paris in 1551, the printer Robert Estienne numbered almost every phrase of
these chapters: hence our modern division into verses. The division into
chapters and verses does not always match the meaning of the text; you
don’t have to take account of it to understand the meaning. However, it is
very practical, because all Bibles have adopted it. So to indicate the passage
in the Bible, it is enough to give the reference, i.e. to indicate the book, the
chapter and the verse (ex. Gen. 2:4).

Division and Brief Description of the Books of the Bible

According to our Christian belief the coming of Christ is the most important event
of all of human history. This event divides the Bible in two major parts: the Old
Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament describes everything God
said and did before the coming of Christ. The New Testament tells us of Christ, his
life and mission, and of the life of the early Christian community.

I- THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Old Testament is divided in four major parts. When you open your Bible, you
will find the list of the different books contained in it.

1. THE PENTATEUCH. The Pentateuch consists of the first five books of the
Bible. It expresses the will of God with regard to His people. It contains the
story of creation and of the formation of the people of God. It also gives a
number of rules of conduct for the people of God.
2. THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. After the people of God entered the Promised Land,
they had to start building their own nation. The historical books tell us this
story, depicting all the difficulties and hardships they have experienced, and
also their successes and achievements. The historical books introduce to us
the different leaders this nation has known throughout its long history.
Further, we learn from this books that unfaithfulness to God can lead to the
destruction of the nation.
3. THE WISDOM BOOKS. These books abound with simple sayings full of
wisdom. Though they were written many centuries ago they still are words
to live by, even for people of today.
4. The wisdom books also contain beautiful prayers, called psalms. They praise
the greatness and goodness of God. They express people’s gratitude and
love for God. They also speak of people’s fears and anxieties, and of their
need to put their trust in God’s power.
5. THE PROPHETIC BOOKS. The prophets appear when the nation becomes very
weak and falls into the hands of foreign nations. The prophets scold the

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 people because of their sins and unfaithfulness to God. They warn the
people that God will punish them if they do not change.
6. But we also meet many prophets who console the people in their sufferings.
They assure the people of God’s unchanging goodness and remind the
people of God’s promise to send a Savior.

II- THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament tells us how the promises God made in the Old Testament
have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It brings us the Good News from God.
1. THE GOSPELS. The Gospels tell us about the life, the words and deeds of
Jesus. They relate the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They give a
faith account of the people who lived with Jesus. The Gospels conclude with
the mission Jesus has given to all believers to bring His Good News to the
whole world.
2. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. The Acts of the Apostles are the continuation
of the Gospels. In it we read how the first Christian community lived and
worked spreading the Good News.
3. THE APOSTOLIC LETTERS. This section of the New Testament contains the
letters some apostles wrote to Christian communities to give information and
instructions concerning Christian faith and practices.
4. THE BOOK OF REVELATION. This is the last book of the Bible. It gives us
John’s vision of the second coming of Christ and the completion of the
Kingdom of God.

CANON OF THE BIBLE

A canon includes the official list of books or writings that make up the Bible,
“measured” by a Church or Religious group and recognized to contain the Divine
Revelation.
The canon becomes like the constitution of the nation – an expression of the basic
principles by which a religious community understands itself. The Jewish canon,
later used by the Protestants, contains only thirty – nine books, all written in
Hebrew or Aramaic languages. For the Catholic Bible, the canon contains forty –
six books, seven beyond the thirty – nine in Hebrew.

The difference of seven books between the two canons stems from the fact that
the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, had more books in it
than were generally accepted in Palestine by the Hebrew and Aramaic speaking
Jews.
These extra seven books, are all written in Greek, although we know that at least
one, Sirach, was originally in Hebrew. These works are called “deuterocanonical”
(i.e. a “second canon” of the inspired books besides the Hebrew ones) to indicate
that the Jews do not accept them into the canon. For Christians at the time of
Christ and in the early Church, the common book of the Scriptures was not the
Hebrew Bible at all but the Septuagint Greek Bible. It had much wider use in the
Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities, and
because most Christians were Greek – speaking Gentiles and not Jews at all.

• Thus, the Greek Bible, although mostly a translation of the Hebrew books,
had almost as exalted a status as the Hebrew itself did. Sometimes scholars
even speak of an “Alexandrian canon” of forty – six books that was parallel
and equivalent to the “Palestinian canon” of only thirty – nine books.
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 Because of disputes, the Church found it necessary to make a definitive list,
a “canon” of the books which have been truly inspired by God and thus have
God for their author (CCC,120).
• The Canon of the Scripture is divided into the books written before Jesus’ life
(the Old Testament) and those written after (the New Testament).
• Guided by the Holy Spirit, the Church determined the inspired and normative
New Testament books in terms of their apostolic origin, coherence with
Gospel message, and constant use in the Church’s liturgy.
• After a long development, the Church finally accepted as inspired, sacred,
and canonical, the 46 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the
New Testament that we find our Catholic Bible (CFC,88 p27).

THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(39 books in Hebrews/Protestant Bibles; 46 in Catholic Bibles)

PENTATEUCH: GENESIS
(“TORAH”) EXODUS
LEVITICUS
NUMBERS
DEUTERONOMY
HISTORICAL BOOKS:
“Deuteronomic JOSHUA
History” JUDGES
1 & 2 SAMUEL In Greek Bible = 1 & 2 Kings
1 & 2 KINGS In Greek Bible = 3 & 4 Kings

“Chronicler’s 1 & 2 CHRONICLES In Greek Bible = “Paralipomenon”

History” EZRA
NEHEMIAH

RUTH
ESTHER
LAMENTATIONS
JUDITH Only included in the Greek
Apocrypha/ TOBIT Septuagint and part of the
Deuterocanon* BARUCH Catholic Bible
1 & 2 MACCABEES

WISDOM WRITINGS: JOB

PSALMS

PROVERBS
ECCLESIASTES =”Qoheleth”
SONG OF SONGS =”Canticle of Canticles”

Apocrypha/ ECCLESIASTICUS =”Sirach” or “Jesus ben Sira"

Deuterocanon* WISDOM OF SOLOMON

PROPHETS:
Major Prophets: ISAIAH
JEREMIAH
EZEKIEL
(DANIEL) In Hebrew, Daniel is not a prophet

Minor Prophets: HOSEA NAHUM

(“The Twelve”) JOEL HABAKKUK
AMOS ZEPHANIAH
OBADIAH HAGGAI
JONAH ZECHARIAH
MICAH MALACHI

*Books that are underlined are found only in Catholic Bibles

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