Two Major Sections of the Bible

The Old Testament has 39 books. It begins with Genesis and ends with Malachi. It contains 929 chapters. The middle book is Proverbs; the middle chapter is Job 29; and the middle verse is Psalm 118:8 (KJV). The longest chapter is Psalm 119 and the shortest chapter is Psalm 117. The longest verse is Esther 8:9 and the longest word is Mahershalal-hashbaz (Isaiah 8:1). The longest book is Psalms and the shortest book is Obadiah.

The Old Testament was originally divided into two or three sections: the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 7:12; Luke 16:16, 29, 31); or, Law, Psalms, Prophets (Luke 22:44). The Jews divided these into lessons; it was one of these that Jesus stood up to read in the synagogue (Luke 4:16). The thirty-nine books of the Old Testament provide the foundation upon which the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are built. The Old Testament and New Testament are essential to one another. Augustine said,

The New is the Old contained; the Old is the New explained; the New is the Old latent; the Old is the New patent. Eternity bounds the one side, eternity bounds the other side, and time is in between. The New is in the Old revealed, and the Old is in the New concealed (Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, 2, 73).

Christ quotes from twenty-two Old Testament books (in Matthew, nineteen times; Mark, fifteen times; Luke, twenty-five; John, eleven). The book of Hebrews quotes the Old Testament, including allusions, eighty-five times. Revelation quotes it 245 times.

The New Testament has twenty-seven books. It begins with Matthew and ends with Revelation. It has 260 chapters and 7959 verses. Its shortest book is 2 John, and the shortest verses are John 11:35 (English) and 1 Thessalonians 5:16 (Greek). The name Jesus occurs almost 1000 times (893) in the New Testament-about twice as often in Matthew through Acts as in the epistles and Revelation. The title Christ occurs ninety-one times in the Gospel accounts and Acts and 480 times in the epistles and Revelation. The New Testament was written by eight men, four of whom (Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul) were apostles; two (Mark and Luke) were companions of the apostles; and two (James and Jude) were brothers of Jesus.

The Old Testament anticipates the Messiah’s work in many ways, and the New Testament points back to Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). He is the “Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). Christ claimed to be the One of whom the Old Testament spoke (Luke 24:44–46).