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In the class today, we will study the two main divisions of the Sacred Scripture and the divisions of the books of Old Testament and New Testament. We will discuss the books of the first canon and those of the second canon, otherwise known as “Deuterocanonical books” We will also discuss the unity of the two Testaments 

In the Old Testament, the New is CONCEALED

In the New Testament, the Old is REVEALED.

Furthermore, we will study the origin of the three versions of the Sacred Scripture. The background helps to evaluate the current situation whereby many denominations of the same faith often have different tenets. The Bible is written in the major languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic’

In the end we will discuss the criteria some scholars adopt to determine the canonicity and authenticity of the 3 major versions before 1600 AD. 

Practical Lesson: As we stated last week, the Bible does not only reveal Christ it also reveals who a person is. The more you know Christ Who is the Summation of the Bible, the more you understand yourself. The power of God is hidden in the Word of God. It works for everyone. Just as water is hidden in hydrogen and oxygen, when mixed both together water comes out. When knowledge of the Word of God mixes with faith that comes by knowing the Word of God, the power of God is the inevitable output. And then, we shall work in the power and love of God revealed in Christ.

How many books are there in the Bible?

The Bible has 73 Books in total.  46 Books in the Old Testament, 27 Books in the New Testament

Divisions of the Bible

Divisions of the Books of the Bible vary in some scholars. However, we look into this 7 foundational structuring of the Bible

The Old Testament books are grouped in the following manner as discussed in some of Catholic major networks, :

1. Historical books, which are arranged not in the order in which they were written but according to the order of events in time which they narrate (Genesis to Esther);

2. Didactic or sapiential or moral books, which are so called because they instruct us especially about heavenly wisdom and principles of morality (Job to Ecclesiasticus);

3. The prophetical books, which contain God's message to men, and predictions concerning the future (Isaias to Malachias);

4. A historical appendix (the Books of the Maccabees).
   
   

The New Testament like the Old Testament has also a threefold division:

1. Historical books (the Gospels and the Acts);

2. Didactic writings (the fourteen Pauline Epistles and the seven Catholic Epistles);

3. A prophetical book (the Apocalypse).

The various divisions of the Biblical books are of rather recent origin. The Jews divided their sacred books into sections. The chapter division, as found in the Bible today, dates from the thirteenth century and is the work of Stephen Langton, professor at the University of Paris and later Archbishop of Canterbury. The present verse division was first introduced by the Dominican, Santes Pagnino (1528), and his system is still in use in most of the books of the Old Testament. The modern verse division in the New Testament is the work of Robert Stephen, a Paris printer of the sixteenth century. The chapter and divisions are of great value for purposes of reference but frequently break up the sequence of thought.

Material taken from http://www.cathtruth.com/catholicbible/bookbook.htm

LANGUAGES AND TEXT VERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURE

Masoretic, Septuagint, and Vulgate Versions

For centuries, Bible scholars examined two ancient texts to elucidate the original language of the Bible: The Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. The Masoretic Text is a traditional Hebrew text finalized by Jewish scholars around 1000 C.E. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Torah created by the Jews of Alexandria in the third century B.C.E. (The other books of the Hebrew Bible were translated over the course of the following century.) According to Septuagint tradition, at least 70 isolated ancient scholars came up with identical Greek translations of the Torah.

The “Original” Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually have more in common with the Greek Septuagint than the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text. This suggests that the Greek translators must have been translating from Hebrew texts that resembled the Dead Sea Scrolls…

In “Searching for the ‘Original’ Bible” in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Hebrew University of Jerusalem scholar and long-time editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication team Emanuel Tov suggests we turn to the Dead Sea Scrolls to help us compare the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. The “Original” Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls - Biblical Archaeology Society

As an example, Tov asks: Did Hannah bring one bull or three bulls as an offering at Shiloh? (1 Samuel 1:24):

When the infant Samuel had been weaned and his mother, Hannah, finally came to Shiloh with her son, she also brought with her an offering for the Lord that is described in two ways in our textual sources. According to the Masoretic Text, she brought “three bulls,” but according to the Septuagint and a Qumran scroll (4QSama from 50–25 B.C.E.) she brought one “three-year-old bull.”

Incidentally an offering of a “three-year-old bull” is mentioned in Genesis 15:9

Vulgate Version

The Vulgate (/ˈvʌlɡeɪt, -ɡət/)[a] is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initiative, Jerome extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible. 

By the 13th century it had taken over from the former version the designation versio vulgata (the "version commonly used"[2]) or vulgata for short.[3] The Vulgate also contains some Vetus Latina translations that Jerome did not work on.[4] Vulgate - Wikipedia

The Catholic Church affirmed the Vulgate as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), though there was no single authoritative edition of the book at that time in any language

Masoretic Text

The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the masora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masora specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE).

The Septuagint sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy and abbreviated as LXX,[2] is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew.[3][4] The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BC) by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel…

Etymology

The term "Septuagint" is derived from the Latin phrase Vetus Testamentum ex versione Septuaginta Interpretum ("The Old Testament from the version of the Seventy Translators").[16] This phrase in turn was derived from the Koine Greek: Ἡ μετάφρασις τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα, romanized: hē metáphrasis tôn hebdomḗkonta, lit. 'The Translation of the Seventy'.[17] It was not until the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) that the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures was called by the Latin term Septuaginta.[18] The Roman numeral LXX (seventy) is commonly used as an abbreviation

A Legend has it that 72 of them not knowing each other produced the same translations.  It is also found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud:

King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: "Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher". God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did

According to later rabbinic tradition (which considered the Greek translation as a distortion of sacred text and unsuitable for use in the synagogue) …After the Torah, other books were translated over the next two to three centuries… The translation process of the Septuagint and from the Septuagint into other versions can be divided into several stages: the Greek text was produced within the social environment of Hellenistic Judaism, and completed by 132 BC. With the spread of Early Christianity, this Septuagint in turn was rendered into Latin 

The Hebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh, has three parts: the Torah ("Law"), the Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("Writings"). The Septuagint has four: law, history, poetry, and prophets.  Septuagint - Wikipedia