Several Interesting Facts about the Bible

Its compilation

• The Bible is the method the Supernatural Being (the God of the Bible) who created everything has chosen to communicate with the pinnacle of His creation: mankind. How do we know? We know because the Bible says so: 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is breathed out by God…” So when Moses wrote about the creation in the first few chapters of Genesis, his mind was being guided by God. And when Isaiah wrote about Cyrus being king of Persia approximately 150 years before Cyrus was born (Isaiah 45:1-3) and when he wrote about the coming Messiah (chapter 53); His linage, incarnation (coming in human form) and His death in amazing detail some 700 years before Jesus was born, his mind was being guided by God.
• The Bible is unique in all literature.  It was written by about 40 writers, ranging from kings, farmers, prophets and fishermen, to a tax collector, a doctor, a Rabbi, a cupbearer, a military General, and others. They wrote it over a period of 1,600 years. It was written on three continents (Asia, Africa and Europe) and in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) — but it is one coherent story from start to finish with salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as its theme.
• The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic. It was translated into Greek from 250 BC to 200 BC in Egypt. This version is known as the Septuigint.  The New Testament was originally written in Greek.
• The full cannon of scripture was not finally put together until AD 367 when the Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, set out the 27 books of the New Testament in their present form in his Easter letter in an effort to protect his flock from the heretical writings circulating at the time. Even though the writings (letters and books) were held up as inspired scripture and circulated among the churches at the time of the apostles. His compilation was confirmed by the councils at Hippo in 393 and at Carthage in 397.
• Mark wrote his gospel while in Rome and from listening to Peter preach. For more information, see my blog article: here.
• The present chapter divisions of the Bible were most likely devised by Stephen Langton (died 1228), a professor in Paris who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. He placed them into a Vulgate edition of the Bible.
• The Old Testament was divided into verses by Rabbi Nathan in 1488 and the New Testament by Robert Stephanus who placed them in a Greek New Testament in 1551 and he published them in an edition of the Latin Vulgate in 1555 which was the first Bible to have the present chapters and divisions. The first English Bible with these divisions was the Geneva Bible of 1560.

• The Bible has a total of 66 books.
• 39 Books in the Old Testament.
• 27 Books in the New Testament.
• 31,173 verses in total depending on the translation.
• 23,214 verses are in the Old Testament.
• 7,959 verses are in the New Testament.
• The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119, with 176 verses.
• The shorest chaptert is Psalm 117 with only  2 verses.
• The  verse which  is at the exact center of the Bible is Psalm 118:8 which states; It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. 
• There are a total of 185 songs in the Bible.
• The whole King James Bible has 788,258 words, 31,102 verses, and 1,189 chapters.

Its distributiontion

• The Bible was the first book to be printed by Johannes Gutenberg after he invented the movable type printing press. This was carried out in Mainz, Germany in the 1450’s. Only 21 complete copies survive. The one shown here is held in Yale University.
• The Bible is the first and undisputed best-seller of all time and no other book is likely to take its place. Best estimates put the total number of Bibles printed to be in excess of 4 billion.

Miscellaneous interesting facts

• The name Bible was first applied to the Hebrew scriptures in the 2nd Century A.D.
• The book of Esther is the only book in the Bible that never mentions God.
• There is a total of 365 verses that tell us not to fear. One for every day of the year!
• The Wicked Bible. In 1631 London printers Martin Lucas and Robert Barker accidentally forgot the word “NOT” in thou shall not commit adultery. Making the 7^th commandment state…. “thou shall commit adultery.” This became known as the wicked Bible. And a year later, the printers were fined for their error and had their printing license removed. It is said there are only 9 of these Bibles are left since most of them were removed from circulation.
• Our days are numbered. An arithmetic sequence gives the life spans of the patriarchs in their correct order on the linage to the Messiah.

Patriarch                  Life Span          Arithmetic Sequence     Biblical Reference

Abraham                   175 years                 7 x 5²                               Genesis 25:7
Isaac                            180 years                 5 x 6²                               Genesis 35:28
Jacob (Israel)          147 years                 3 x 7²                               Genesis 47:28

• William Shakespeare’s name is in the Bible. In the 1500’s in England, Latin was the language of religion and all business was conducted in French. English was only spoken by the peasant class. However, two literary masterpieces promoted the English language significantly: they were the writings of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible. They are connected in another way as well. When the King James Bible was published in 1611, William Shakespeare was 46 years old and psalm 46 has his name encoded in it: the 46th word of psalm 46 is shake and the 46th word from the end of the chapter is spear. The same is true for the current King James Bible which was written in 1769.  Although the spelling of Speare is different, it still makes for an interesting conversation topic.