107 Facts about the Bible!

Have you watched or heard of Channel Frederator’s ‘107 Facts About’ web series? If not, go check them out on Youtube! They share all kinds of cool behind the scenes info on some of media’s most beloved movies, tv shows, and video games. I certainly love watching them, and that got me thinking. It’s Easter time. So why not list 107 facts about the Bible to celebrate? Let’s see what you actually know about God’s Scriptures.

#1. The Bible isn’t actually one book. It’s a seamless collection of sixty-six divinely written documents.

#2. These sixty-six documents (or ‘books’ as they’re referred to) comprises of historical prose, poetry, and letters.

#3. While the Bible’s first chronological book is Genesis, it’s likely the Bible’s oldest book is Job.

#4. In its original form, the Bible was primarily written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

#5. God used approximately forty authors to write the Bible. These men consisted of people from nearly all walks of life from shepherds to fishermen to warriors to doctors to royalty.

#6. Though Bible critics often accused it of inconsistencies and falsehoods, the Bible still continues to be faultless at all fronts to this day, and many people who tried to prove it wrong ended up believing in it after failing to debunk it.

#7. The Bible is the earliest book to describe the earth as a round sphere floating in space. This was several thousands of years before any modern scientists could prove the earth was indeed round and indeed floated in orbit in the vacuum of space.

#8. The Bible is also the earliest book to understand that blood circulates.

#9. For a time, archeologists used to believe some of the peoples the Bible mentions like the Hittites were purely made up. That is until more recent excavations revealed that all the extinct peoples the Bible described did indeed exist.

#10. The Bible was the first book to ever be printed on a printing press thanks to Johannes Gutenberg.

#11. The Bible was written in approximately 2,000 years.

#12. The sixty-six books of the Bible were written in wildly different places across three continents.

#13. As of 2020, the whole Bible has been translated into 704 languages.

#14. The New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,551 languages.

#15. Various pieces of Scripture have been translated to another additional 1,160 languages.

#16. Added together, the Bible (whether in part or in whole) has been translated into no less than 3,415 languages. This handily makes it the most translated book in all history.

#17. There are 2,731 Scriptural translations currently being worked on right now in 2021.

#18. While written physically by forty authors, each person was divinely led and inspired by God’s Holy Spirit. Thus, while they ‘authored’ the sixty-six books, God is its director and orchestrater. Hence, why it’s God’s Word and how the Bible not only never contradicts itself but also carries a seamless story and theme of God’s redemptive love for mankind and our relationship with Him.

#19. The first five chronological books of the Bible are called the Pentateuch and were written by none other than Moses himself.

#20. Moses not only wrote the Pentateuch. He’s also credited for Psalm 90 in the book of Psalms.

#21. While skeptical theorists have tried to suggest that each of the six days of creation could have been symbolic for thousands of years each, the Hebrew word ‘yom’ that the word ‘day’ was translated from is used to literally refer to the usual twenty-four hour day.

#22. While the number may vary depending on how you count them, the Bible has approximately 2,500 prophecies in its pages. Over 2,000 of them have already been fulfilled with the remainder pertaining to the end times.

#23. Over 350 prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus alone.

#24. One fulfilled prophecy, as recorded by Daniel, perfectly predicted the rise and fall of Alexander the Great centuries before the conqueror’s birth.

#25. God also allowed Daniel to prophecy about the modern world’s rise in technology, knowledge, and high speed travel in Daniel 12.

#26. Jesus not only quoted David’s Psalm 22 while hanging on the cross. Psalm 22 also perfectly predicted and described Christ’s death by crucifixion thousands of years before the practice of crucifixion was even invented.

#27. The world’s first surgery was performed by God, when He put Adam to sleep and removed one of his ribs to form Eve.

#28. It’s implied by Job 38:4-7 that God had created the angels by day three of creation week.

#29. Though popularly depicted as an apple, the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from Genesis is never actually described as such.

#30. The first hinted promise of a coming Messiah to atone for all mankind’s sin was given as early as Genesis 3:15.

#31. God killing an animal in Genesis wasn’t just to clothe Adam and Eve. It was the first sin atonement sacrifice for sin and would eventually be contextualized in Levitical Law and was the first visible symbol of Christ’s eventual sacrifice which would eliminate sin once and for all.

#32. Only two people in history have never actually died: Enoch in Genesis 5 and Elijah in 2 Kings.

#33. It’s estimated through the Biblical records along with several reliable historical texts that the Great Flood likely occurred around 1,656 years after God created the earth and took place roughly 4,359 years before our modern day.

#34. The oldest man in the Bible is Methuselah, who lived to be 969 years old.

#35. The only book of the Bible to never mention God explicitly is the book of Esther.

#36. The Behemoth and Leviathan, as described in the book of Job, were once thought to refer to an elephant and crocodile respectively. Today, however, it’s considered a greater likelihood by creationist scientists that the passages were actually describing two kinds of dinosaurs - more specifically a type of sauropod and a type of plesiosaurus.

#37. The type of poetry featured in Scripture is parallelism. This means, instead of the repetition of rhyming words, it’s focused on the repetition of similar or contrasting thoughts to bring about deeper meanings and a well rounded message.

#38. The Mosaic Law, as recorded in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, was the most unique set of laws of its time. This is namely for such mandates as protections for immigrants, better treatment of women, and the implementation of cities of refuge.

#39. Cities of refuge God had established in Israel as places of safety for those responsible for accidental, non-premeditated deaths. Family members of the deceased were allowed to seek revenge if they wanted to, but could not attack the one responsible if they resided in a city of refuge.

#40. The Levitical Law also provided means for Israelite women to receive an inheritance from their fathers in the event of no potential male heirs. This was an ancient day first.

#41. The foundational center of the Scripture’s entire Levitical Law are the Ten Commandments.

#42. God Himself created, wrote, and gave Moses the original Ten Commandments on stone tablets. They were promptly broken, however, during the golden calf incident, and Moses had to return to the Lord’s presence on Mt. Sinai to receive a second copy later.

#43. God’s rules for Israel’s priesthood and designs for their Tabernacle bears similarities to recorded visions of God’s throne room in heaven.

#44. Unlike popular opinion, the Ark of the Covenant was not made of solid gold. The Bible specifies that though it was overlaid with gold, it was mostly made of Acacia wood.

#45. The blockbuster film, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, may claim that the Ark of the Covenant contained face-melting power of God’s presence. However, while the Ark of the Covenant did represent God’s direct presence among the Israelites for a time, it did not contain Him.

#46. The Bible reveals that the Ark of the Covenant instead carried three relics: the second set of the Ten Commandments; Aaron’s rod, which budded to indicate his family as the chosen high priesthood; and a jar of manna.

#47. According to Deuteronomy 17, the kings of Israel were supposed to write their own personal copy of the then current Bible to keep and study daily during their reign. Considering the majority of their kings were wicked, it’s likely this rule was seldom followed - if at all.

#48. Jesus and His followers re-quoted the Old Testament often.

#49. One of the main reasons behind the existence of many English versions of the Bible is due to the fact that some Hebrew words and phrases don’t have an exact English equivalent.

#50. A prime example of this can be found in the book Ecclesiastes. The commonly repeated Hebrew word ‘hevel’ in its text has been commonly translated to words like ‘meaningless’, ‘futility’, and ‘vanity’. However, ‘hevel’ more accurately means ‘emptiness’, ‘randomness’, ‘unsatisfactory’, and ‘transitory’. It’s more or less a word Jews used to associate to smoke or vapor. Thus, its use in Ecclesiastes is actually describing life as a passing, ungraspable, unpredictable thing - like wisps of snuffed smoke. As you can tell, this is tough to express in a direct translation to our modern language.

#51. It was a common practice in Bible times for children to be named after the circumstances surrounding their birth.

#52. Unless you count when Jesus gave nicknames to some of the twelve disciples, only four people in all of Scripture were given new names by God to mark significant events or new purposes in their lives.

#53. Abram (meaning exalted father) became Abraham (father of a multitude). This marked him as the forefather to nations, one of which through whom the Messiah would come.

#54. Abraham’s wife also underwent a name change from Sarai to Sarah. Funnily enough, they both mean ‘princess’.

#55. Sarah is also the only woman in the Bible to be divinely re-named.

#56. Abraham and Sarah’s grandson, Jacob, received his new name after physically wrestling with God. (He ended up with a permanent limp too.)

#57. Jacob (supplanter) became Israel (he who strives with God) and the founding father of the Israelite nation.

#58. The apostle Paul was the first person to be renamed by God Himself thousands of years after Jacob‘s death.

#59. Jesus renamed Saul (death, ditch) to Paul (little, humble). Considering his personal transformation, it couldn’t be more appropriate.

#60. The Bible includes many genealogies partially because Hebrews loved genealogy and put a lot of stock in it.

#61. Jesus’s genealogical record is particularly unique for its time because it included women in the listings. Such a thing was largely unheard of back then.

#62. While Jesus’s family line mostly consists of Hebrews, His bloodline included two Canaanite prostitutes and a female Moabite. We know them as Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth.

#63. The four Gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, all cover Jesus’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection from four angles and were written with four different focuses and audiences in mind.

#64. Mathew focused heavily on Christ as King of the Jews. Hence it was written primarily to appeal to Jewish audiences and placed extra emphasis on His genealogy, His prophetic fulfillments, and His teachings in relation to the Mosaic Law.

#65. Jesus’ earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, both being descendants of King David were important in two-fold. Through Mary, Christ became a blood relative to David, and through adoption under Joseph, Jesus could be legally considered David’s descendant too.

#66. The book of Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels.

#67. Instead of His teachings and prophetic fulfillments, the Gospel of Mark focuses on Christ’s willful servanthood to all peoples, so it mostly showcases Jesus’s deeds; His sufferings; and His miracles. You could say that if Matthew is the historical academic book about Jesus, Mark is the action book about Jesus.

#68. Not only is the book of Luke the only Gospel written by a Gentile. Luke himself is the only Gentile we know of who wrote in the Bible period.

#69. The Gospel of Luke is also not only the longest of the four Gospels. It’s the longest book in the New Testament.

#70. With Matthew being the historical academic book and Mark being the action book, the Gospel of Luke is the journalistic book. Its author recorded everything about Jesus’s life from beginning to end chronologically and with precise detail - almost like a modern-day celebrity profile.

#71. Written by the longest surviving member of Jesus’s initial twelve disciples, John wrote the Gospel of John to fully express Christ’s divinity as the Son of God both in His life on earth and even before the beginning of time.

#72. The apostle John also wrote the last book of the Bible, Revelation, during his exile on an island called Patmos.

#73. The shortest book of the Bible is John 3. It has only 1 chapter and 15 verses.

#74. The longest book in the Bible is Psalms. It has 150 chapters and around 2,461 - 2,598 verses depending on the translation.

#75. Psalms is so long in fact, that it’s sometimes divided into five mini-books within itself.

#76. Psalms also houses the longest chapter in the Bible: Psalm 119.

#77. Psalm 119 has 176 verses all to its own, and this particular piece of musical poetry is placed near the smack-dab middle of the Bible.

#78. Psalm 119 is all about our need for the Bible in our daily lives, and it does so in an acrostic pattern. This means that the first stanza of this Psalm begins with the first letter of the Hebrew’s 22 letter alphabet. Then the next stanza begins with the second letter and so on and so on through the full alphabet. This meant that Hebrew children who read Psalm 119 were learning the importance of God’s Word and their ‘A,B,Cs’ at the same time.

#79. Palm 119 is also proceeded by the shortest chapter in the Bible: Psalm 117. It bears only 2 verses.

#80. There was an approximate four hundred years of silence between Malachi (the last book of the Old Testament) and Matthew (the first book of the New Testament).

#81. There are a collection of books known as the apocrypha that some argue were meant to be included between the Old and New Testaments. However, these ‘Inter-Testament’ books were not recognized as divinely inspired. This is because (a) they didn’t fit the themes and consistencies of the rest of the Bible properly; (b) they carried historical inaccuracies; and (c) were not treated with the same respect by Jesus or His followers like the rest of Scripture was. Thus, the apocrypha is largely considered non-canon.

#82. Questions about the divine nature of many of the New Testament books were raised, but considering that most of them were letters of instructions to the first churches and were written by men who literally witnessed, walked, and learned from Jesus Himself, their legitimacy was pretty well set.

#83. Two books of the Bible were actually written by two of Jesus’s half-brothers: James and Jude.

#84. Funnily enough, though they grew up with Jesus and knew Him for virtually all of their lives, neither James nor Jude believed in Him as their Savior until after their half-brother’s death and resurrection.

#85. In all of Scripture, Jesus declared that the greatest normal man to ever live was John the Baptist.

#86. During the medieval period, most common folk in Europe were illiterate, so churches utilized elaborate stained glass to depict Bible scenes for them to help them learn.

#87. For a time, the Bible existed as separate scrolls, letters and documents. The first person to compile them all together was St. Jerome in A.D. 400.

#88. The Old Testament books are split into five categories: Law (Genesis - Deuteronomy), History (Joshua - Esther), Wisdom/Poetry (Job - Song of Songs), Major Prophets (Isaiah - Daniel), and Minor Prophets (Hosea - Malachi)

#89. What is commonly considered the Bible’s hardest book to comprehend is the Song of Songs (a.k.a. the Song of Solomon). This is due to what’s considered odd and even bizarre imagery of a man and woman’s love for each other.

#90. However, the purpose of Song of Songs is to depict how passionate love between a man and woman is meant to reflect God’s love for those who love Him.

#91. Did you know that God commanded one of his prophets to marry a prostitute and record it in Scripture? Hosea, author of the book of the same name, was given that exact order. His love life with a loose lady named Gomer beget a sobering yet beautiful demonstration of God’s just anger against sin and His forgiving grace. No doubt about it. The prophetic poetry of Hosea contains one of the great Biblical romances.

#92. The reason why some prophetic books were called Major and Minor isn’t because some are more important than others. It’s simply because the Minor Prophet books are much smaller in volume compared to the Major Prophet books.

#93. The New Testament book are also split into categories, but instead of five, they’re split into six: The Gospels (Matthew - John), History (Acts), Paul’s Church Letters (Romans - 2 Thessalonians), Paul’s Personal Letters (1 Timothy - Philemon), Other Letters (Hebrews - Jude), and Prophetic/Apocalyptic (Revelation).

#94. Romans is considered one of the easiest books to start with for new Christians, since it lays out a lot of the groundwork for the faith. Thus, it is often dubbed the Roman’s Road.

#95. The word ‘Gospel’ means ‘Good News’ and is originally derived from the Greek word ‘euangelion’ which means "reward for bringing good news". Thus, the Gospel accounts of Jesus not only bear that title to say that His life is the Good News but also that Jesus is our reward.

#96. Even though the Rapture is a popular speculative topic among Christians and Eschatologists (people who study the End Times), you won’t find the word ‘Rapture’ anywhere in Scripture. The word was created by Bible scholars to easily refer to the future event described in 1 Thessalonians 4.

#97. One of the most popular sections of Scripture (and my personal favorite) is Hebrews 11. This chapter is often nicknamed ‘The Hall of Faith’ because it examines the true nature of faith by listing and considering the actions of the Bible’s long list of famous figures.

#98. Did you know that Bible is so important to the Lord that He declared a curse would befall anyone who tries to add or remove from it? Read it for yourself in Revelation 22:18-19.

#99. The Bible records the single instance when God halted the earth’s rotation for twenty-four hours! (Joshua 10:12-14)

#100. The Bible also mentions one time where God even had the earth briefly rotate backwards! (2 Kings 20:8-11)

#101. Many of the world’s greatest men and women were students of the Bible. George Washington once said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

#102. Isaac Newton, one of history’s most respected scientist, quoted, “We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever.”

#103. Horace Greeley (politician, editor, and founder of the New York Tribune) said this, regarding the Scriptures: “It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”

#104. Arguably the greatest President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, said regarding the Bible: “I am busily engaged in the study of the Bible. I believe it is God’s word because it finds me where I am” and “I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good of the Savior of the world is communicated to us through the Book.”

#105. President Ronald Reagan quoted, “Of the many influences that have shaped the United States into a distinctive nation and people, none may be said to be more fundamental and enduring than the Bible.”

#106. To our utter shame, recent surveys found that only 10% of Americans have a Biblical mindset. The survey also found that only half of Christian adults can even name the four Gospels, and sixty percent of Americans don’t even know five of the Ten Commandments.

#107. One of the greatest national treasures of Ireland is The Book of Kells. It’s a book full of impossibly elaborate pages that ancient monks inked by hand. This book also includes portions of Scripture, and it’s most famous and most exquisitely designed page is the Chi Rho page - the one that starts the Gospel of Matthew. (You saw a partial picture of it at the beginning of this blog!)

And there you have it! 107 facts about the Bible! How many did you already know? And how many of them did you learn for the first time? Let me know and have a Happy Easter!

#Bible #Facts #107 #Scripture #GodsWord