Both parts of the Bible—the Old Testament and the NewTestament—have five major sections and include differentkinds of writing.All about theHOW THE BIBLE IS ORGANIZEDIn Scripture God communicates to us in a variety of ways,including stories, poems, commands, and letters. Each typeof writing makes a special contribution to God’s Word. Thenext few pages will help you see how the parts of the Biblefit together.THE BIBLE MULTIPLIESAND SPREADS1.4There were no printing presses in the ancient world, so peoplebegan to carefully and exactly copy the Gospels and letters byhand so they could be taken all over the known world. Parts ofthe Bible were translated early on into other languages.One of the most important languages at the time of the earlychurch was Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. A monkby the name of Jerome created the first Latin version of the Bible,known as the Vulgate, around AD 400. This Bible was used forcenturies as the translation of choice in Western Europe. Later, inthe 1500s, people like Martin Luther and William Tyndale beganto translate the Bible from the original languages into German,English, and other languages so that people could have God’sWord in their own language. The official church was so opposedto using any other language than Latin that Luther and Tyndalehad to work in secret. William Tyndale was put to death for hiswork of making God’s Word accessible.In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. The first book he printed was a Bible—known as theGutenberg Bible (1455). This leap in technology enabled theBible to become the most widely printed and distributed book inthe world.Today, God’s Word has been translated in whole or in partinto over two thousand languages worldwide, but hundreds oflanguages still don’t have translations of any part of the Bible. Aportion of the money used to purchase the Bible you are holdingin your hands was given to the work of making God’s Word available to all people in their own language.1.5
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