Reading the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is called the Old Testament by Christians, but in the Jewish tradition it is called the Tanak. Composed between the 13th and the 3rd centuries, it comprises twenty-four books in an intentionally simplified Hebrew. Contrary to popular belief, the Jewish Bible is not a single, uniform, and coherent text. After the discovery of inconsistencies, similarities and repetitions, scholars have come to the conclusion that the Tanak contains many fragmentary texts pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. In some cases, it appears to contain multiple versions of these fragmentary texts–versions that come from different places and different times.
The Greek Bible is called the New Testament by Christians. Composed between 50 and 120 CE, it comprises twenty-seven books in koine (common, or marketplace) Greek, by fifteen or sixteen different authors. The New Testament is divided in four sections, the synoptic Gospels, ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which tell stories about the life and death of Jesus; the Acts of the Apostles which describes the dissemination of early Christianity after Jesus’ death via the apostles; the Epistles (or letters) written by early church leaders to other communities and to individuals, which address theological or practical problems within the nascent Christian communities; and the Book of Revelation, ascribed to the prophet John, which describes the Christian apocalypse.
The Bible is, arguably, the single most important work of literature and source of literature in the Western tradition. Because the texts it contains achieve their effects in the same way as other written texts, it can be studied using methods developed for studying non-religious literary works.