[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] Did You Know? Facts About the Bible...

[Cheryl Fields]

Interesting Facts about the Bible
by Jeffrey Kranz | Jan 15, 2017 |
longest-book-in-the-bible
There’s a lot of really interesting stuff to learn about the Bible
beyond its core message. I’m keeping a running list of really
interesting facts that I’ve learned about the Bible—feel free to
comment with some that you think should make the list!

1. The Bible was written in three languages
Those languages are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Most of our Old
Testament was written in Hebrew, which was the language the original
readers spoke. A few bits of the Old Testament were written Aramaic
(looking at you, Ezra and Daniel). The New Testament was written in
Greek, the commonly-spoken language of the time.


2. The Bible is about 611,000 words long
In those original languages, the Bible’s word count is about 611,000.

That word count is not going to line up with your Bible though, for a
few reasons:

When translating the Bible from its original languages to English,
translators tend to use more words to get across the original author’s
point.
Different translations word passages differently, which results in a
variation in word count.
But even so: it’s interesting to think that while the Bible is longer
than Moby Dick, it’s nowhere near as long a read as the Harry Potter
saga. You can learn more about just how long the Bible is here.

3. The longest book of the Bible is Jeremiah
This prophet had a lot to say. He even wrote in the twentieth chapter
of his book:

But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his
name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my
bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:9)

Granted, Jeremiah is the longest book based on how we currently
arrange the books of the Bible. If we did it the old school way, the
two-part book of Kings would be the longest book. (See Fact #9!)

And if we did it really, really, really old school, the five-part
Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) would
dwarf all other contenders. This megabook alone makes up about one
fifth of the whole Bible!

You can learn more about the longest books of the Bible here.

4. The shortest book of the Bible is 3 John
You can read this book in about one minute. The book right before it,
2 John, is the second-shortest book of the Bible. You can learn more
about the shortest books of the Bible here.

5. The Bible was written by more than 40 traditional authors
The books of the Bible are traditionally attributed to heroes of the
Jewish and Christian faiths. Moses is given credit for the first five
books of the Bible, most of the prophets are given credit for the
books named after them, etc.

The reality is a bit messier than this, of course. Moses probably
didn’t pen every word of Genesis–Deuteronomy—he died before some of
the events happened! And there’s a good chance Jonah didn’t write
Jonah, and Isaiah may have had some help over the centuries, and so on
and so forth.

Plus, there are some books whose authors we just don’t know. (See Fact #10.)

6. The Bible was written by people from diverse occupational backgrounds
Parts of the Bible were written by kings. Half of the Psalms, a good
chunk of Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes seem to be penned by royalty.

But other parts of the Bible are written by farmers, fishermen, a
tentmaker, homeless prophets, a doctor, a professional scribe,
vocational musicians, pastors, etc.

7. The books of the Old Testament are arranged differently in Judaism
The English Bibles we use group the books of the Bible loosely by type
of literature. So in the Old Testament, you have the books of law
first, then books about Israel’s history in the promised land, then
books of wisdom and poetry, then books by the prophets.

But the Old Testament isn’t always arranged this way. For example, in
Judaism’s Hebrew Bible (the TaNaKh), the books of law come first (the
Torah), followed by the former and latter prophets (a blend of
prophets and history), followed by “the writings” (a blend poetry,
history, and prophetic books). In this arrangement, the last book is
Chronicles, not Malachi.

8. There are at least 185 songs in the Bible
About 150 of these are in the book of Psalms. (I say “about” because
there’s some debate as to whether a few of the separate Psalms were
originally meant to be sung as one.) But throughout both the Old and
New Testaments, people will sing songs about God or the events around
them.

And 185 is a bare minimum—that’s only if you count the portions of
Scripture that are specifically labelled as “song,” “psalm,” “dirge,”
or “chant.”

You can see the list (and infographic) here.

9. Some of the “First” and “Second” books were divided after they were written
I mentioned in Fact #3 that if the books of 1 & 2 Kings were combined,
they would be the longest book of the Bible. I bring that up because 1
& 2 Kings were originally written as one book. The same goes for 1 & 2
Samuel and 1 & 2 Chronicles.

Why did these books get split? Because in the old days, they couldn’t
print massive tomes for each book of the Bible. It was hard to fit the
very lengthy works on one scroll—and even if the scroll was big enough
for all that content, it would be too heavy to manage. So they broke
some of the longer books down into two volumes. So the book of 2
Samuel is really more like the book of Samuel, part two.

10. The authorship of Hebrews has remained anonymous for centuries
Several books of the Old Testament were written by people unnamed.
Tradition doesn’t identify the authors of Joshua–Kings, Esther, or
Job. Plus, many of the books with traditional authors assigned to them
were likely penned and edited by other people. For example, while
Jonah is the traditional author of Jonah, there’s a good case to be
made that some later scribe wrote this satire of the compassionate
God, the rebellious prophet, and the repentant cows.

The church has been (roughly) consistent with assigning authors (or at
least names of authors) to books in the New Testament. Even works that
are technically anonymous, like the Gospels, were so important that
the early church leaders consistently assigned their authorship to
either the same traditional person or a small group of candidates.

But the book of Hebrews is a glaring exception. Authorship of this
book has been debated for centuries. Augustine was sure Paul wrote it.
Luther was convinced it was the eloquent Apollos. Tertulian assigns
the work to Barnabas. But we just don’t know.

Granted, there seems to have always been a large group of Christians
who doubt Simon Peter wrote 2 Peter. But pseudepigraphy is a whole
other ball of wax. ;-)

11. The word “Trinity” is never mentioned in the Bible.
Most Christians believe that God eternally exists in three persons:
The Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And all three
are referred to as divine in Scripture—in fact, I’ve found 20 times
when the three of them are mentioned in the same verse.

However, do a word search: the word “Trinity” doesn’t come up.

12. The Bible was written on three continents
Most was written in what is modern-day Israel (Asia). But some
passages of Jeremiah were written in Egypt (Africa) and several New
Testament epistles were written from cities in Europe.

13. There are 21 dreams recorded in the Bible
And most of them are had by two different men named Joseph! You can
see the whole list here.

14. The book of James is the bossiest book of the Bible
If you make a list of words in each book of the Bible and then a list
of commands in the same book, the book with the highest concentration
of words is the book of James. (You can read about how I found this
here.)

I’ll be docking more facts here as I keep studying and writing about
the Bible. Stay tuned. =)

-- Happy Reading!

Cheryl E. Fields


A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human
life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will
never sit.
--D. Elton Trueblood