Names For Books of Judeo-Christian Scripture - Christian Perspective

Christian Perspective

For Christians, the Bible refers to the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Protestant Old Testament is largely identical to what Jews call the Bible; the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Old Testament (held to by some Protestants as well) is based on the prevailing first century Greek translation of the Jewish Bible, the Septuagint.

The Bible as used by world Christianity consists of two parts:

• The Old Testament, largely the same as the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible.
• The New Testament, consisting of books added after Jesus' death
  • The four canonical Gospels tell of Jesus's life and teachings. (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)
  • The book of Acts, written by Luke, recounts the early history of the Christian movement.
  • The Epistles are letters, mostly written by St. Paul, to the various Christian communities of his day. Much of their content is interpretation of the teachings of Jesus.
  • The Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse, is a book of prophecy usually interpreted as regarding the Second Coming of Jesus.

Christians disagree on the contents of the Old Testament. The Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches and some Protestants recognize an additional set of Jewish writings, known as the deuterocanonical books. They are not accepted as canonical by the Jews (although some ancient Jews appear to have accepted them) and by most of the Protestants, who consider them to be apocryphal.

There are also a number of other early Christian writings some individual Christians regard as scripture, but which are not generally regarded as such by the churches. These include the apocryphal gospels, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.