What Is the Bible?

Summary

This animated explainer asks what the Bible actually is and answers that it is a small library of books that emerged from the history of ancient Israel. Written by a long line of prophets over roughly a thousand years, these texts were eventually shaped into the Jewish Scriptures (the TaNaK), an epic story that builds toward a coming leader but ends without one. The video explains how Jesus claimed to carry that story forward, how the apostles composed new writings about him, and why the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions came to recognize different collections of books as Scripture.

Key Points

A Library Born from Israel's History

• The Bible is a small library of books that all emerged out of the history of the people of ancient Israel.
• Among the Israelites was a long line of individuals called prophets who saw Israel's story as central to what God was doing for all humanity.
• These prophets were literary geniuses who crafted the Hebrew language into epic narratives and sophisticated poetry, mastering metaphor and storytelling to explore questions of death, life, and the human struggle.
• The texts were produced over a thousand-year period, beginning with Israel's origins in Egypt, leading to their kingdom and first temple, then their conquest and exile by the Babylonians.
• After exile, many Israelites returned, built a second temple, and reformed their identity — the period when the Jewish Scriptures began taking their present shape.

The Jewish Bible: The TaNaK

• In Hebrew the Jewish Bible is called by the acronym TaNaK.
• T — Torah (sometimes called the Law): Israel's five-book foundation story.
• N — Nevi'im ("prophets"): historical books telling Israel's story from the prophets' point of view, plus the poetic books of the prophets themselves.
• K — Ketuvim ("writings"): a diverse collection of poetic books, wisdom books, and more narrative.
• Jewish people believe God speaks to his people through all of these literary works.

Second Temple Literature

• During the Second Temple period other Jewish writings were also produced and were highly valued in Jewish communities.
• From ancient times there was debate over whether some of these texts should be considered part of Scripture.

A Story Without an Ending

• Together these texts tell an epic story about God working through his people to bring order and beauty out of the chaos of the world.
• The story builds toward hope for a new leader who would renew all creation — but the TaNaK concludes and that leader never comes, leaving the story missing an ending.

Jesus and the Apostles Carry the Story Forward

• Centuries later a Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, claimed to be carrying the TaNaK story forward; his followers claimed he was the long-awaited leader and that he rose from the dead.
• His earliest followers, the apostles, composed new works: the Gospels ("good news"), the account of Acts about the spread of the movement, and letters circulated to Jesus communities.
• The apostles wrote these as the fulfillment of the epic story in the TaNaK and believed God was speaking through them alongside the Scriptures of Israel.

Different Bibles in Different Traditions

• From the beginning, all Christians recognized the TaNaK and the New Testament as Scripture.
• For centuries much of the Second Temple literature was read as part of the biblical tradition; the Catholic Church eventually made it official, calling some of these books the deuterocanonical books.
• Some Orthodox churches use even more books from the Second Temple literature.
• During the Reformation in the 1500s, Protestant Christians sought the oldest writings of the prophets and apostles and accepted only the Old and New Testaments.

Notable Quotes

"The Bible is a small library of books that all emerged out of the history of the people of ancient Israel."

"It's an expertly crafted work, but it's missing an ending."

"The apostles wrote all of this as the fulfillment of that epic story found in the TaNaK, and they were continuing the literary genius of the Jewish tradition."