10 interesting facts about the Bible – one of the most important books in the world

The greatness of the Bible is that itbreathes God and is useful for learning, correction and pursuit of righteousnesssays Timothy (2 Timothy 3:16), but you may not know that Timothy became head of the church in Ephesus at Paul’s request.

And Ephesus is probably the last place where Mary, the mother of Jesus, lived. We have compiled some of the interesting facts about the Bible into a list that may surprise you.

10 A typo that changes everything

Everyone knows that the Bible, to put it mildly, does not approve of adultery, but once it was the opposite. In 1631, a publishing house published the Bible with a misprint: the negation of “not” was omitted, so it turned out “commit adultery”.

Today, only 9 of these Bibles, known as the “Sinners’ Bible”, exist. It is not surprising that this edition is in great demand among collectors, so for such a copy you will have to pay a tidy sum.

9. Written by different authors

One of the most amazing facts about the Bible is that it was written over 1600 years and had 40 different authorsbut they all talk about Jesus Christ, hundreds of years before he was born.

8. Translated into all languages ​​of the world

The New Testament was originally written in Greek. The Old Testament is in Hebrew. However Now the Bible can be read in any, even a very rare language.. The material, by the way, can also be very different: for example, at the University of Göttingen there is a Bible written on 2470 palm leaves.

7. Contains prophecy.

There are more than 2000 prophecies in the Bible that have already been fulfilled, and there are about 2500 of them in total.. Wars, inventions, natural disasters – all this was predicted. In addition, the Bible contains a lot of scientific information, for example, that our planet is spherical:

«Isaiah 40:21-22. Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Wasn’t that what you were told from the start? Haven’t you understood since the foundation of the earth? He sits on a throne above the circle of the earth, and his people are like grasshoppers. He stretches the skies like a canopy and spreads them like a tent for life».

6. Divided into chapters and verses

Although the Bible is 1 book, it contains 66 smaller books. The books of the Old Testament were written before the birth of Jesus Christ, but the New Testament covers the life of Christ and beyond. Each of the books, except 5, is divided into chapters and verses. Those that are not divided into chapters are Obadiah, Philemon, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude. These are short books that only have a division of verses.

Chapters, by the way, were introduced into the Bible in 1238 by Cardinal Hugo de S. Caro. The division verses were added in 1551 by Robertus Stephanus.

5. The Bible mentions a long-lived record holder

Although Methuselah is mentioned only a few times in Scripture, he has a strong line in the Bible.. As a descendant of Adam and Noah’s grandfather, he was the oldest person in history, living 969 years. “Methuselah lived 969 years and then died” (Genesis 5:27).

4. Based on it, the Quran was written.

Many people consider the Quran to be a radically different book from the Bible. Moreover, according to this view, despite the fact that Muslims and Christians (and Jews) all believe in the same God, these religions are different.

However, an argument can be made that the similarities between the Bible and the Quran are actually much stronger than one might think, and that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are simply different interpretations of a common religious culture.

According to Muslim beliefs and scientific sources, the history of the Quran began in 610, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad in a cave near Mecca, reciting the first verses of the Quran to him.

The angel Gabriel is of course an important character in the Hebrew Bible (where he appears and explains visions to the prophet Daniel) and in the New Testament (where he appears to Zechariah, telling him about his future son, John).

In addition to Gabriel, the Quran is filled with other characters from the Hebrew Bible: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and Goliath, Jonah, Mary and John the Baptist, and even Jesus.

These common characters are also involved in many of the common stories of the Qur’an and the Bible. Among them are the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the choice of Abraham and the creation of the people of Israel, the sacrifice of Abraham by one of his sons, Moses and the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the life and death of Jesus, and the idea that God repeatedly sends prophets to mankind to warn and instruct them. .

As similar as these stories and characters are, there are many interesting differences between the texts. These differences seem to have two explanations: First, Muhammad could not actually read the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, since Islamic tradition claims that he was illiterate.

Instead, he heard traveling Jews and Christians recount oral versions of Bible stories loosely mixed with folklore. Second, Muhammad changed some of the details of the stories to fit his cultural and theological perspective.

3. The smallest specimen is 4,76 mm in size

If you’ve ever tried to fit your Bible into an already overflowing bag, you know how difficult it can be. To solve this problem, Jerusalem Nano has developed a tiny chip containing all 27 books of the New Testament written in the original Greek.

Each printed letter is about 0,18 microns wide, or 18 millionths of a meter, so you’ll need a fairly powerful microscope if you want to read. The overall size of this square “book” is 4,76mm on each side..

Made from a silicon wafer, the chip is designed to be embedded in jewelry and watches, so shoppers can carry the sacred text wherever they go.

«Our goal is to be able to mass-produce it so that the Bible is in almost every pocket. Because this world’s smallest bible can be used in the jewelry industry.”, says David Almog of the Jerusalem Nano Bible Company.

2. The Bible forbids eating certain birds

Leviticus 11:13-19 is clear on this: “These are the birds that you should consider unclean and not eat: eagle, vulture, black vulture, red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, horned owl, hog owl, gull, any kind of hawk, little owl, cormorant, great owl, snowy owl, desert owl, osprey, stork, any heron, hoopoe and bat.”

The most interesting thing is that few people know about this list from the Bible, but the birds indicated in it are really not accepted to eat.

1. In the past, it carried a teaching function

This is not surprising, because in many respects it was more accurate than history books. Not only historical evidence confirms what the Bible says, but also archaeological finds that mention the names, dates and places recorded in the Bible..

Luke the Evangelist can also be called “Luke the Historiandue to its great detail of times, people, places and events recorded in the Word of God. Born a pagan, Luke was a doctor by profession and being well educated, he knew and named places, years, and sometimes times of something special, such as the census and the year of the reign of a certain ruler.

Therefore, the Bible once served not only for the study of the Word of God, but for education in general.