My purpose for writing for the Bible Basics site on Bella Online is two-fold. First, I want to help Christians get a firm grip on their faith by becoming thoroughly familiar with Scripture. Second, I hope to help people who might be seeking the Truth to understand why we consider the Bible to be true, the Truth, the Living Word of God.

To that end, let’s begin by analyzing the structure of the Bible. Mortimer Adler, in How to Read a Book, tells us this is an essential part of understanding important books, and there is no more important book on the planet. Many people start out by trying to read the Bible straight through. It’s real hard to do that, especially without some knowledge about how its parts are arranged.

At the front of your Bible, there are most likely several pages of introductory material. We’ll talk about this stuff, the notes in the margins and at the bottom of the pages, the little articles and the maps and helps at the back, another time. Men and women wrote all that.

The part God wrote begins at Genesis 1:1, and ends at Revelation 22:21. You probably know that the chapter and verse numbers were added by people. They make it easy to find a certain section of Scripture, but the divisions created by the numbers are often arbitrary, and sometimes do the reader a real disservice. So, use them to find your way, but don’t place any importance on how they chunk up the message.

The Bible comprises two main sections: The Old Testament and the New Testament. Testament means a covenant between God and the human race. The Old Testament tells about God’s covenant with the Jews, and the New Testament tells about Jesus, and the new covenant He put in place. That’s an enormous oversimplification, of course, but we have to start somewhere!

The Old Testament contains 39 books. They’re arranged in groups according to type of content: History, Poetry, and Prophecy. These are general descriptions, with types of content overlapping in all the groups. You might like to memorize the books in the order they occur. To make this easier, you can divide them into sets of five and twelve, thus:

History (17 books)
5 Law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Also known as the Torah or the Pentateuch. These present God’s laws, but also contain lots of history.)
12 Historical: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, I & II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (These tell the story of the Jews and Israel, mainly.)
Poetry (5 books): Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (Poems, songs, and wisdom literature.)
Prophecy (17 books)
5 Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel
12 Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

The New Testament has 27 books. They are organized like this:
Gospels (4): Matthew, Mark, Luke, John (These tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.)
History (1): Acts (The Acts of the Apostles is the long name, describing the beginning of the Church.)
Epistles (21): Romans, I & II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I & II Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, I & II Peter, I,II & III John, Jude (Letters to and from leaders and churches, mostly.)
Prophecy (1): Revelation (The Revelation of Jesus Christ, telling about the end of the world as we know it, and then the happily ever after part.)

Boy, I guess that’s enough for one day. Now perhaps all those weird names don’t seem like just a random jumble. One more little memory aid: There are 66 books in the Bible. 39 in the OT plus 27 in the NT. To remember the 39 and the 27, remember that 3 x 9 = 27.

We’re just barely scratching the surface. It gets better and better. Come back again and read some more!