The Bible

The Bible refers to both the Christian Holy Bible and the Hebrew Bible, and is considered sacred in both Religions although their contents differ.
The Christian Bible is based on the Septuagint, a 3rd century BCE translation into Greek, of the Masoritic Text (MT) of the Hebrew Bible.

The Christian Bible is a collection of 66 Canonical Books, translated from Koine Greek Septuagint, and divided into two parts, the Old and New Testaments.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church Bible has 88 Canonical Books.
The Christian Bible is similar to the Hebrew Bible, but has different works included in it.
The oldest complete Christian Bible dates from the 4th century CE.
The Bible was later divided into Book, Chapter, and Verse to help when quoting from it.

- 27 Books:
  - The Four Gospels
  - The Acts of the Apostles ( A continuation of the Gospel of Luke)
  - 21 Epistles
  - The Book of Revelation, written by John of Patmos, author of the Gospel of John.

The Vetus Latina (meaning Old Latin) was the Bible Texts used by the early Christian Church until 382 CE.
This was not a single Work, but a collection of Biblical texts written in Latin between c.200-382 CE.
Theses texts were supplanted by the Vulgate, which was commissioned in 382 CE and written by St. Jerome.

In 382 CE, Pope Damasus I commissioned St. Jerome (347-420 CE) to revise the existing Bible known as the ‘Vetus Latina’.
It is thought that Vulgate was the first translation directly from the Hebrew Bible, rather than from the Greek Septuagint.
It became known as the ‘Versio Vulgata’ or the ‘Vulgate’, and became the standard Bible Text used by the Catholic Church.

This Work is also known as the ‘Authorised Version’ (AV)
It was translated by 47 scholars, who were all members of the Church of England, between 1604 and 1611.
The Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic Text. The New Testament was translated from the Greek Text. The Apocrypha was translated from Greek and Latin.
The Apocrypha is usually omitted from the King James Bible, as being non-canonical.
The King James Bible replaced the Latin Vulgate in the Anglican and Protestant Churches.
The Authorised Version (AV) remains the standard text of reference in English by scholars today, and is also the main Bible used by English speaking Christians around the world, and is the most printed Book since printing began.

This is the Greek Translation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh and forms the basis of the Old Testament in Christian Bibles.
The word Septuagint is from the Latin ‘Versio Septuaginta Interpretum’ meaning ‘the translation of the seventy’.
It is also known as the ‘Greek Old Testament’ and is known in Latin as the ‘LXX’.
It is attributed to the decision by Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek for inclusion into the Great Library of Alexandria.
He asked 70 or 72 Jewish Scholars to translate the Torah into Koine Greek, along with additional texts.
The translation started in the 3rd century BCE (c.250 BCE) and was completed by 132 BCE.

The Books of the Septuagint form the basis of the Old Testament in Bibles of the Western Christian Churches.
However, the Septuagint is not only a translation of the Hebrew Bible, but includes additional texts.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church include these additional texts in their Bibles, and refer to them as the Deuterocanonical Books and consider them to be canonical.
During the Reformation, the Protestant Churches excluded the Deuterocanonical Books from the Septuagint and referred to them as ‘Apocrypha’, preferring to translate from the original Masoritic Text (MT) of Hebrew Bible. They consider them to be non-canonical.
However, the English King James version of the Bible published in 1611, decided to include the Apocrypha as a separate chapter, between the Old Testament and the New Testament.