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There are over 750,000 words in the Bible!  We’ve all heard a friend or teacher mention some phrase from the Bible that we’d like to find and read for ourselves. In a volume as large as the Bible, how does one go about finding the phrase? It’s a lot easier now than it used to be thanks to all sorts of Bible study aids available on the Internet, computers and smart phones. Since you may not always be in a position to use a software tool to do your search, let’s learn how to do it the old fashioned way using a concordance. 

The Bible is a collection of many shorter books, written at different times, and later compiled into one volume.  In the middle ages, the individual books were assigned chapters and verses to make it easier and faster for Bible students to refer to a specific passage of Scripture.  Since the chapter and verse divisions are not part of the original text, they often fail to coincide with the beginning or end of a new thought and may subconsciously be disruptive to the “flow” of the text. In spite of this, they are extremely beneficial to the Bible student and overall are very helpful.

If one is to properly understand the message of the Bible, he or she must first understand how the Bible is structured. We need to be able to read the Bible’s “blueprint”.

Two major sections

The books of the Bible are separated into two major sections. The first 39 books are contained within what is referred to as the Old Testament. The remaining 27 books are in the New Testament. The books of the Old Testament were written in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. The New Testament books were all written in Greek.

Reading and studying the Bible is vital to all disciples of Jesus. The Bible is our “instruction manual” for living a life that will be pleasing to God. The Bible is a guide to everyday living and a standard by which we can measure the quality of our lives. It should be the goal of every Christian to become as familiar with its contents as possible. Here are a few tips that might help in gaining greater knowledge about God’s book.