10. Though the Bible as a whole is much longer than most any other book we'd like to read, it's individual books are mostly shorter than any other book we consider reading.
11. The Bible is an extraordinary gathering of many books of law, wisdom, poetry, philosophy, and history. The number of books in this portable library depends on which Bible you are holding. The Bible of a Jew is different from the Bible of a Roman Catholic, which in turn is different from a Bible of a Protestant.
12. The Bible is both ancient and contemporary as it deals with the unchanging issues of human existence: life, death, joy, sorrow, achievement, and failure... Yet these issues are couched in the language and correspondence of ancient times.
13. Testament was another word for "covenant"-meaning an agreement, contract, or pact. For Christians, the Old Testament represents the ancient covenant made between God and his people. In the New Testament, Christians believe in a new covenant with God made through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
14. Written over the course of a thousand years, primarily in ancient Hebrew, the Jewish Bible is the equivalent of Christianity's Old Testament. For Jews there is no New Testament.
15. At least half as much time elapsed between the Bible's first book and it's last (with well over a thousand years between the first writing and the time of the last), as has elapsed between its last book and now. This means that writing styles vary not just between modern books and the Bible but among the Bible books themselves.
16. The Terms Old Testament and New Testament originated with the prophet Jeremiah. When he spoke about the glorious future for Israel of which the prophets often spoke, he said God would "make a new covenant with the house of Israel." Testament means "covenant," and Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited Messiah, made a new covenant with God's people. The books of the New Testament provide the fulfillment of the promises made throughout the Old Testament books.
17. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Koine Greek dialect was an outstanding literary accomplishment under the Ptolemies. This translation was called the Septuagint. The translation project is said to have been sponsored by Ptolemy II Philadelphus around the third century B.C. According to tradition, seventy-two Jewish scholars ( six from each of the twelve tribes) were summoned for the project. The work was finished in seventy-two days; the Jewish scholars were then sent away with many gifts.
18. The Septuagint provided a bridge between the thoughts and vocabulary of the Old and New Testaments. The language of the New Testament is not the koine of the everyday Greek, but the koine of the Jew living in Greek surroundings. By the New Testament era, it was the most widely used edition of the Old Testament.
