Thursday, June 25, 2015

Strange and Amazing Facts About the Bible ll

   183.   The oldest verses in the Bible are believed to be fragments from "the Song of Deborah."

   184.   The newest verses in the Bible are thought to be found in the Gospel of John, which dates from around A.D. 100.

   185.   Job was written when? Job, the book that appears before the Psalms, is actually a much older book than the books it is located near. Job and Genesis are actually on similar timelines1

   186.   The most press? David receives second place for being mentioned a whopping 1,118 times in the Bible. He is second only to Jesus in this regard. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, receives most references as a woman-fifty-six!

   187.   The name Jesus appears seven hundred times in the Gospels and Acts, and less than seventy times in the Epistles. The name Christ can be found sixty times throughout the Gospels and Acts, but 240 times in the Epistles and the Book of Revelation.

   188.   The most press for an animal? Sheep win the prize with mention of this very necessary animal occurring over four hundred different times.

   189. Who was the oldest? Methuselah is believed to have lived 969 years on earth before he died (Gen. 5:27), making him the longest-lived person. Prior to the flood, people lived very long lives, but afterward, only a few (patriarchs and Moses among them) lived beyond the expected seventy-or eighty-year life span.

   190.   The longest-reigning king in the Bible was Manasseh, who oversaw the kingdom of Judah for fifty-five years (2 Kings 21:1). The shortest-reigning king was Zimri, who wore the crown of Israel for only seven days (1 Kings 16:15).

   191.   Weddings galore. King Solomon, son of David, is the most-often married man in the Bible. This king had seven hundred wives (all of royal birth!) along with an additional three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

   192.   A longer name can't be found in the Bible than that of Maher-shalal-hash-baz. The Lord told Isaiah, in 8:3, to give his child, born of a prophetess, this name, which means "quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil."

   193.   Though God is invisible and has no body parts, the Bible always refers to him with masculine pronouns, and we are said to be made "in his image" according to Genesis.

   194.   Shakespeare honored?! William Shakespeare is perhaps the only man not of Bible times who is honored in the Bible. How?  In honor of his forty-sixth birthday, which happened to be the year the King James Version was being printed for the first time, the scholars took the forty-sixth Psalm and made sure that forty six words into the psalm appeared the word shake and forty-six words from the end of the psalm appeared the word spear.