Stamps with the theme Bible Texts

The Bible is a book containing the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the contents and the order of the individual books vary among the many religious denominations. The 24 texts of the Hebrew Bible are divided into 39 books in Christian Old Testaments, and complete Christian Bibles can contain as many as the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Bible. The Hebrew and Christian Bibles are also important to other religions, including Islam, but are not regarded by them to be central religious texts.

The Christian Bible is divided into two parts. The first is called the Old Testament and the second the New Testament. The first four books of the New Testament form the ‘gospels’- stories which recount the life of Jesus and are central to the Christian faith. Christian Bibles include the books of the Hebrew Bible, but arranged in a different order.

The oldest surviving Christian Bibles are Greek manuscripts from the 4th century and the oldest complete Jewish Bible is a Greek translation, also dating to the 4th century. The oldest complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible date from the Middle Ages.