Books of the Bible in order: how many, how they are grouped

How many books are in the Bible?

The Catholic Church recognizes 73 books as inspired by God: 46 in the Old Testament, written before Jesus, and 27 in the New, written by the apostles and their followers after the Resurrection. This list is called the canon of the Bible. The Church came to recognize it in the first centuries, guided by the Tradition of the apostles: it appears at the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and the Council of Trent solemnly confirmed it in 1546.

If Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one book, the Old Testament has 45, which is why you sometimes read that the Bible has 72 books. It is the same Bible. Protestant Bibles today, like the New International Version, have 66: the same New Testament and 39 books in the Old.

How is the Bible divided? What are the first five books called?

The Bible has two great parts. The Old Testament tells of God’s covenant with his people, Israel, and prepares for the coming of the Savior. The New Testament tells the life of Jesus and the birth of the Church. The two belong together: the Old prepares for the New, and the New fulfills the Old.

Within each Testament, the books are not in the order they were written but grouped by kind. The Old Testament has four groups: the Pentateuch, the historical books, the wisdom books and the prophets. The first five books are called the Pentateuch (Greek for five scrolls); the Jewish people call them the Torah, the Law. The New Testament has four groups too: the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the letters and Revelation.

The books of the Bible in order

These are the 73 books, in the order of a Catholic Bible:

• The Pentateuch (5 books)

  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Creation, the patriarchs, Moses and the Law.

• The historical books (16)

  Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. The story of the people of Israel in their land.

• The wisdom books (7)

  Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Wisdom and Sirach. Prayers, poems and advice for living well.

• The prophetic books (18)

  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

• The Gospels (4)

  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus: they are the heart of the whole Bible.

• The Acts of the Apostles (1)

  How the Church was born and grew after Pentecost.

• The letters (21)

  Saint Paul’s: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon. Then the Letter to the Hebrews and the seven catholic letters: James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John and Jude.

• Revelation (1)

  The last book: the final victory of Jesus and the hope of heaven.

That makes 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. Some names change with the translation: older Catholic Bibles like the Douay-Rheims call Sirach Ecclesiasticus, call Revelation the Apocalypse, and number 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings as 1 to 4 Kings.

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Why do Catholic Bibles have 73 books?

Catholic Bibles have seven more books in the Old Testament: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch, as well as some parts of Esther and Daniel. They are called the deuterocanonical books, meaning of the second canon, because their place on the list was debated for longer. They were in the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the first Christians used, the Septuagint, and the Church read them from the beginning.

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and other reformers followed the list of the Hebrew Bible, which does not include them: they moved them to an appendix as useful but not inspired, and over time many Protestant Bibles stopped printing them. Protestants call them the Apocrypha. For Catholics, the apocrypha are other ancient books that never became part of the Bible, like the so-called Gospel of Thomas. When you buy a Bible for the family, look for a Catholic one, with the bishops’ approval in the first pages.

How do you find a Bible passage?

Passages are written with the book, the chapter and the verse. John 3:16 means the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 16. A dash marks a stretch: Luke 1:26-38 runs from verse 26 to verse 38 of chapter 1. A semicolon separates two different passages. Spanish Bibles usually put a comma where English uses the colon (Juan 3, 16).

The table of contents at the front of the Bible gives the page of each book, and almost every Bible has a list of abbreviations (Gn for Genesis, Mt for Matthew). To start with children, the Gospels are the best door in: Mark’s is the shortest, and Luke’s tells the Christmas story.

The Church urges everyone to read the Bible often, and to read it with the Church: the Bible was born within God’s people, and Tradition helps us understand it.