The Protestant Bible is actually a collection of 66 books. The Old Testament contains 39 books and the New Testament contains 27books.
The Old Testament is sometimes called the Hebrew Scriptures, because they were originally written in Hebrew. New Testament scriptures were translated from Greek. These books make up the cannon, a word that is taken from Greek that means rule. The Catholic and Orthodox Bibles contain a set of books that are often called the, the apocrypha. Catholic Christians describe these books as deuterocanonical, meaning 'of the second canon, while Orthodox Christians call them the traditional name of anagignoskomena, meaning 'that which is to be read'.
The first five books of the Hebrew scriptures are call the Law, or the Hebrew Torah. Other books can be categorized as history, poetry, prophecy, gospels or letters.
Dictionaries, maps and information: Some study Bibles contain dictionaries or information such as maps, diagrams and lists of people in the Bible.
The Bible Text is broken out into book names, chapters and verses. That way it is easy to look up exactly what you want to find. Once you know the book you are looking for, you can turn to it by using the table of contents. Then you can look up the chapter number within the book. Then you can look up the verse number within the chapter.
A scripture verse is listed like this: Name of Book followed by the chapter, colon, and then verse numbers.
Example:
If these numbers are followed by a semicolon, and another number this would be another chapter in the same book. If the numbers are followed by a comma, the numbers following would refer to other verses.
Examples:
John 3:16, 19 would mean the book of John, chapter three, verse sixteen, followed by verse 19.
Chapter headings, footnotes and comments.
Often Bibles will have chapter headings to help summerize what is going on in a particular set of verses. In addition, footnotes at the bottom of the page may offer explanations about the footnoted verses. There can also be comments, usually set in boxes or on separate pages. These are often helpful guides to the meaning of scripture, but they should not be confused with the scripture itself. (Often early handwritten scriptures would contain similar comments in the margins of the text. This is where we get out word "marginal" as meaning close to the lower limit of qualification, acceptability, or function.)
Other footnotes, usually listed only as a book, chapter and verse refer to cross references. These are other Bible verses that refer to the same topic.
Matthew 14:22-33; 23:5 This would be Matthew chapter 14, verses 22through 33 and chapter 23, verse five. Matthew 14:22-33. This would be the book of Matthew, chapter 14, verses 22 through 33. Most Bibles begin with a table of contents that lists the books of the Bible divided into Old Testament and New Testament. Each book is listed in order, with the page number for the beginning of that book. Occasionally the page numbers begin again at the beginning of the New Testament.