The Bible (upper case B) refers to one of two closely related religious texts central to Judaism and Christianity—the Hebrew or Christian sacred scriptures respectively.
The Hebrew Bible, composed between the 14th and 5th centuries BCE, is the main source for the history of ancient Israel. The five books of the Torah compromise the legal code and origins of the Israelite nation. The Prophets consist of prophetic and ethical teachings, as well as the historic account of Israel. The Writings such as Psalms and Job are poetic works. Israelite historians presented a picture of the ancient nation based on information that they viewed as historically accurate. Like modern historians, Hebrew writers provided historical explanations or background information of the events they describe.
Judaism recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, also called Hebrew Bible, traditionally divided into three parts: the Torah (“teaching” or “law”), the Nevi’im (“prophets”), and the Ketuvim (“writings”).
The Bible as used by Christians adopted the Jewish, or Hebrew Bible into its canon, classifying it as the “Old Testament”. Soon after the establishment of Christianity in the first century, Church fathers compiled Gospel accounts, and letters of apostles into a Christian Bible, in addition to the adopted Jewish Bible. This became known as the “New Testament”. The two together are referred to as “The Bible” by Christians. The canonical composition of the Jewish Bible is in dispute between Christian groups: Protestants hold only the books of the Hebrew Bible to be canonical; Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox additionally consider the deuterocanonical books, a group of Jewish books, to be canonical. The New Testament is comprised of the Gospels (“good news”), the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles (letters), and the Book of Revelation.
The generic term “bible” (lower case b) is also often used to refer to any central text of a religion, or a comprehensive guidebook on a particular subject.