The Bible

In ancient time paper was made from the papyrus or Egyptian paper reed.  The Greeks called it “byblos”, from which we get the word Bible which means The Books.  In fact, the Bible is not one book, but a small library of books.  As you know, if you go into a library you will find books on different subjects, written by different authors at different times.  So it is with the books of the Bible.  If you look at the list of them at the beginning of your Bible, you will see that there are 80 altogether, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.  In between the Old and New Testaments are the 14 books of what is called the Apocrypha.  The best known of these are the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the two Books of the Maccabees.

The word Testament means Covenant or Alliance.  The Old Testament tells us of the history of God’s alliance with the Chosen People, the Jews, and how God promised to bless them and how they promised to obey him.  But when the Jewish leaders crucified God’s Son, Jesus Christ, God made a new alliance with the Christian Church, and so the New Testament tells us about this alliance by giving us the history of Our Lord’s life, death and Resurrection and of the growth of the Church after the first Pentecost (Whitsunday).