The Bible is composed of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. It's not organized by date, but rather by genre - like a library.
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How is the Bible laid out? What’s in the table of contents? This one book has a lot of smaller books in it, so it can seem confusing - until you understand the structure of the Bible.
The Old Testament is called “old” not because it is obsolete, but because it came first, over the span of around 1,000 years. Another way to refer to it is the Hebrew Bible. It’s what the Jews had. This is the Bible that Jesus and his first followers used. There’s much we can learn from the Old Testament. We hope you will make that part of the Bible a part of your regular reading.
We also have the New Testament. The New Testament was written over the span of about a generation. It started being written shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s a collection of books written to churches and to individual Christians. Over time these writings began to be collected together by the churches, to create what we call the New Testament. By the 300’s, the New Testament was affirmed by the Christian church as a whole. A large majority of the Bible’s books were recognized far before that. These two parts of the Bible come together to tell us God’s story for today.
Think about the relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament.
The New Testament builds on Old Testament themes like creation, sin, salvation, the Day of the Lord. It gives further insight on these matters, but doesn’t negate the Old Testament meaning.
For example, Matthew’s gospel makes many references to Old Testament practices and quotes many Old Testament prophecies. Paul, in Romans 4, assumes that his readers understand the story of Abraham and his relationship with God. He uses this story to underscore that a right relationship with God is based on faith, not on performance.
The New Testament connects the dots between the Old Testament and the person of Jesus. For example, Hebrews explains how Jesus fulfills the Old Covenant and its sacrificial system.
