The Bible!

[Nossa]

Hello everyone,
I'm interested in knowing about the Bible. The Old Testament and the New Testament...the difference between them...what they consist of...and anything related to this subject. I studied something related to this in the first semester last year, and I'm interested in adding more information about it to my general knowledge.
I was wondering if anyone can give me some information, or maybe links to sites or something like this.
And please, do not give me any details that contain ANY personal opinions or impressions, I'm looking for mere academic information..and that also goes for any sites you might wanna provide. I want everything that's said here to be just stating facts, cuz I don't wanna find myself in a religious debate or discussion here.
Thank you in advance :)

[dzebra]

The Old Testament consists of 39 books, divided as follows:
5 books of law. These are the Jewish Torah, they tell the old covenant of God, with a little history in them.
12 books of history. These follow the events of the Torah.
5 books of poetry and wisdom.
5 major prophet books (major because of their length).
12 minor prophet books.
The main story throughout the Old Testament (I'll hit the high points) starts with creation, then goes on to Noah and the flood, Abraham is promised by God to become a great nation, Abraham has a son named Isaac, Isaac has Jacob and Esau, Jacob steals his older brother's birthright, making him blessed. Jacob is renamed Israel, has 12 sons, one of which is Joseph (the one with the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat). The sons of Jacob, now called Israel, become the 12 tribes of Israel. Israelites go into slavery under Pharoh. Moses is raised up and frees Israel with 10 plagues and crossing the Red Sea. 10 Commandments. Israel wanders in the wilderness for 40 years. Battle of Jericho. Israel is now in the Promised Land (I forgot to whom it was promised, maybe Abraham, but I could be wrong). Reign of the Judges (Deborah, Gideon, Samson, etc.). King Saul, King David, King Solomon. Temple built. Israel splits into 2 empires, larger part keeping the name Israel, smaller part taking the name Judah. Elijah does tons of crazy miracles. Prophets become more prevalent. Israel and Judah are enslaved in Babylon. Ezra and Nehemiah get back to Jerusalem and start rebuilding things.

Then you get into the Apocrypha, which I don't know well enough to tell you what happens.

[dzebra]

New Testament has 27 books:
4 Gospels, tellings of the story of Jesus.
1 Acts, tells story of apostles and early church after Jesus left.
21 letters, mostly from Paul
1 Revelation, the apostle John telling what he saw in a vision.

Story: John the baptist is born and predicts Jesus' birth and ministry. Jesus is born. Jesus grows up. Jesus is baptized and begin his ministry. Jesus teaches things that Jewish officials don't like. Jesus has several clashes with Pharisees and teachers of the Jewish Law. Pharisees get enough people riled up to crucify Jesus. Jesus dies, then comes back to life and hangs around on Earth for a little while before going to Heaven. Apostles preach about Jesus all over the place. Saul, who is a Pharisee, has an encounter with Jesus and converts to Christianity and changes his name to Paul. Paul starts preaching everywhere, taking several missionary journeys and getting in a lot of trouble with the Jewish leaders and goes to jail frequently and gets stoned and stuff like that. Eventually Paul winds up in Rome, where the story ends with him preaching there. Revelation gets into the future, but I can't do it much justice.

[Logos]

From University of Virginia, online etext/comparison of Old Testament, New Testament, Apocrypha etc. :)
http://etext.virginia.edu/kjv.browse.html
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[Nossa]

Thank you SO much dzebra and Logos :D

[MaryLupin]

Hello everyone,
I'm interested in knowing about the Bible. The Old Testament and the New Testament...the difference between them...what they consist of...and anything related to this subject.

Are you interested in secondary literature (i.e. academic studies of biblical literature)?


I studied something related to this in the first semester last year, and I'm interested in adding more information about it to my general knowledge.

What kinds of things did your course cover? Can you summarize what you learned?

[weepingforloman]

The Old Testament and New Covenant represent two different covenants between God and man (in the Christian faith-- obviously the Jews deny the validity of the NT). The OT is primarily the Mosaic Covenant, which God formed with the Hebrews through the intermediary of Moses at Mount Sinai. The NT is under the Christocentric Covenant, the covenant announced by Christ at the Last Supper, initiated by His Incarnation, and sealed by the Crucifixion and Resurrection. The terms and details of the covenants provide the major divisions in Jewish and Christian theology.

[Orpheus]

I would recommend, first, just to read the bible in it's entirety. It's really not that big of a book. This will give you a greater understanding of the order of events as well as why certain things happened. We are on a literature site after all. I'm sure that you would never enter a book discussion with out first reading the book in question, right?

[Nossa]

Are you interested in secondary literature (i.e. academic studies of biblical literature)?



What kinds of things did your course cover? Can you summarize what you learned?

I'm so sorry for my late reply, I wasn't able to come online for sometime now.
I basically studied how the medeival thought used allegory for religious texts...and the relationship between the Isaeli offspring from Egypt and Christ's suffer. To tell you the truth, I think that when you come to think about it, you'll find that we barely studied anything, not to mention that all the things related to the topic came in another context. Meaning that we weren't studying the Bible, but we were studying medieval thought basically.
That's all I can tell you...I know it's not much, but that's the reason why I wanna know more...cuz I think that we should have learned more about the topic.
And yes I'm interedted in academic studies of the Bible and anything related.

@Orpheus: You're right, I've been meaning for a while now to start reading parts of the Bible, I just can't find a good edition sold in Egypt, in English. So I'll probably seek some online resources.

@weepingforloman: Thank you so much :D