19. Most Jews of Jesus' day spoke Aramaic, a Syrian language similar to Hebrew that was commonly used at the time. Jesus surely studied the formal Hebrew of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. Whether he could also speak Greek is unknown. Jesus left no personal writings.
20. Both the Jewish Bible and Christian Old Testament contained the same thirty-nine books, although they are arranged and numbered in a slightly different order. In Jewish traditions the Bible is called the Tanakh, an acronym of the Hebrew words Torah (for "law" or "teaching"), Nevi'im ("the Prophets"), and Kethuvim ("the Writings").
21. The Old Testament's first five books, the Pentateuch, were already considered authoritative Scripture by the time of Ezra in the fifth century B.C. The other books were recognized as part of the Old Testament at later times.
22. Jesus himself knew the "Old Covenant." As a Jewish Boy, He diligently studied the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. He could recite them by heart when he was twelve. Because there was no Bible as we know it, He would have learned by rote from scrolls kept by local teachers or rabbis'
23. The earliest references to the Old Testament were "The Law Of Moses," The Law Of The Lord," or simply "Moses." Since the additional writings were considered the work of prophets, the common term became "Moses and the Prophets" or something similar. Note: Wherever the word "law" is seen, the Jewish reference would be "Torah." By New Testament times, "Scripture" or "The Scriptures" became common. The simplest generic term for the collection was "Writings," often with "Sacred" or "Holy" added.
24. The uniformity of Bible printing sometimes obscures the scope of variety within the Bible's writings. If Bible printers laid out the print with all the different styles and languages accounted for, including prose, poetry, and songs, a wheelbarrow would be needed to move a Bible from the den to the bedroom.
25. No Bible writer that we know of ever drew a map to accompany his writing- at least not one that was preserved. Maps are generally drawn from facts discovered through historical and archaeological research.
