Fun Facts about the Bible

  1. Every biblical author but one (Luke, who also wrote Acts) was Jewish.
  2. One the other hand, Luke and Acts together are one-fourth of the New Testament.
  3. Also on the other hand, there are two other books (besides Luke) named for Gentiles, namely Ruth and Job.
  4. Job, by the way, is considered the oldest book in the Bible.
  5. Jude was the last book admitted to the Biblical canon.
  6. I suspect you could make the case that there is something unique about each book in the Bible, for the Old Testament and the New, but I’ll say this anyhow:  In the New Testament, the books of Acts and Revelation stand alone (the former is the only non-Gospel historical narrative, and the latter is the only, well, it’s just different).
  7. We Trinitarians can nod knowingly that there are 27 — that is, three to the third power — books in the New Testament.
  8. There are thirty-one chapters in Proverbs, one for every day of the month.
  9. There are 150 Psalms, a nice round number.                                                                                               Some mnemonic devices:
  10. I’ve already noted that there are 27 (three to the third power) books in the New Testament.  In the Old Testament, there are 39, made by adding 5’s and 12’s only:  the five books in the Pentateuch, duh; twelve historical books; five wisdom books; five major prophets; and twelve minor prophets.
  11. I use this sentence to remember those pesky minor prophets in the correct order: High jinks are often just minor nasty habits, Zephaniah H. Zechariah moaned.
  12. The Gospels are in reverse alphabetical order.
  13. Paul’s three “T” letter recipients (Thessalonians, Timothy, and Titus) are in alphabetical order.
  14. The non-Pauline New Testament letters start with the author who wrote only one (James), followed by the author who wrote two (Peter), followed by the author who wrote three (John).
  15. How fitting that Hebrews bridges the Pauline and non-Pauline epistles, since he might have written it (but probably didn’t).
  16. Some Old Testament dates (roughly):  Jacob/2000 B.C., Moses/1500 B.C., David/1000 B.C., Esther/500 B.C.