The sacred book of Christianity. All Christian Churches accept two sections of the Bible: the Hebrew scriptures, known as the Old Testament, and specifically Christian writings, known as the New Testament. In addition, some Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, accept a third section called the Apocrypha, found in the Greek version of the Old Testament (Septuagint). Each section consists of a number of separate books, written at different times by different authors. However, most Christians consider them to be endowed with unique divine authority.

The Old Testament contains 39 books. The first five books (‘the Law’, the Torah, or Pentateuch) describe the origins of the Jewish people. ‘The Prophets’ give a history of the settlement in Canaan, the period of the kingdom of Israel, and prophetic commentaries. ‘The Writings’ consist of the remainder of the books including the Psalms, Job, and Daniel. The final content of the Hebrew Old Testament was probably agreed c.100 ad. The New Testament consists of 27 books. The four Gospels (meaning ‘good news’), attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, record the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Acts of the Apostles traces the development of the early Christian Church and the Epistles (or Letters), notably those of St Paul, contain advice on worship, conduct, and organization for the first Christian communities. The Book of Revelation gives a prophetic description of the end of the world. Most of these books were acknowledged as canonical (accepted as sacred and genuine) by the middle of the 2nd century. The Apocrypha (Greek, ‘hidden things’) is the name given to a collection of 12 books written between 300 bc and 100 ad. They were included in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament of the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc that was used by the early Christian Church. These books do not appear in the Hebrew Old Testament and are not accepted by all Christian Churches.

The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The first translation of the whole book was the Vulgate (405 ad) of St Jerome. The first translation into English was undertaken by John Wyclif and his followers (1382–88). The development of printing stimulated the production of vernacular editions. Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German in 1522 and William Tyndale into English in 1525–26. William Coverdale’s edition of the Bible, drawing heavily on Tyndale’s work, was first published in 1535 and revised as the Great Bible in 1539. The Authorized or King James Version (1611), named after James I who agreed to a new translation at the Hampton Court Conference, was produced by about 50 scholars and remained for centuries the Bible of every English-speaking country. There are now translations of all or part of the Bible in over 1760 languages.