Question: How old is the Bible? 1. There are 66 books in the Bible, written by 40 different men. The earliest writing is that of Moses, who wrote the first five books, during the 15th Century B.C. The last book is Revelation, written at the close of the 1st Century A.D. Consequently, the Bible was written over a period of about 1600 years. Therefore, if we speak of the age of the completed revealed will of God, we would say it is 1900 years old. If we speak of the earliest written revelation, then that goes back about 3400 years. 2. In the Old Testament, there are 5 books of law: Genesis, Ex. Lev. Num, Deut. 3. 12 History: Josh. Jud. Ruth, 1&2 Sam. 1&2 Kings; 1&2 Chron. Ezra. Neh. Esther. 4. 5 Poetry: Job, Psa. Prov., Eccl., Song of Solomon. 5. Prophets 17: Isa. Jer. Lament. Ezek. Dan. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zech. Malachi. 6. The New Test. consists of 27 books. The first 4 deal with the life of Christ. The book of Acts gives a history of the preaching of the gospel, with the establishment, and spread of the church. Romans-Jude are letters written to instruct Christians how to live so as to please God. Rev. is a book of prophecy, which primarily deals with things which were to shortly come to pass (1:1), for 1 Century Christians. Question #24: I've heard it said that we don't have all the Bible; is that true? 1. This question has reference to the apocrypha (a Greek term that means "hidden", or "secret things"), books that were written at various times from about 300 B.C. to 30 B.C. (The Bible Almanac, p.582). 2. These books are as follows: 1) 1 Esdras 2) II Esdras 3) Tobet 4) Judith 5) The Rest of the Book of Esther. 6) The Wisdom of Solomon 7) The Wisdom of Ecclesiasticus 8) Baruch 9) The Song of the Three Holy Children 10) The History of Susanna 11) Bel and the Dragon 12) The Prayer of Manasses 13) I Maccabees 14) II Maccabees 3) Some of these books are valuable as history, particularly the books of Maccabees, but they are not inspired books. 4) This can be seen from the fact that the New Testament quotes from the O.T. hundreds of times, but never from the apocrypha. 5) The 16th Century reformer, Martin Luther, included the apocrypha in his German Bible (1534), but printed them separately, asserting that they were not inspired, but profitable. 6) There is no internal or external evidence which would include the apocrypha as scripture. 7) The Council of Trent (1545-63) proclaimed the books as Scripture and pronounced an anathema on those who disagree. But this attempt is 1 1/2 thousand years too late. We can be confident that we have all God intended for us to have in our Bible.