Bridge Talk - September 2008

Last month Bridge Talk featured a brief Bible quiz. Here are the answers to the questions:

1. Sarah is the most frequently mentioned woman in the Bible, with Rachel second.
2. David is the most frequently mentioned man in the Bible, with Moses second.
   
3. The longest book in the Bible by word count is Jeremiah, even though Psalms takes up more pages in your Bible. Psalms has 150 "chapter headings" and is entirely poetic. That means a lot of the page space it takes up is due to formatting, rather than the actual length of the text by word count.
4. The shortest Psalm is Psalm 117, printed below.
5. The longest Psalm is Psalm 119, which is composed of twenty-two sections of eight lines each. In the first section, every line begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the second section, every line begins with the second letter of the alphabet, and so on.
6. The shortest verse in the New Testament in English is John 11:35, "Jesus wept," two words and nine letters. In Greek, though, it is three words and sixteen letters. That makes 1 Thessalonians 5:16 the shortest verse in Greek, with two words and fourteen letters.
7. The only book of the Bible that never refers to God directly is Esther, but his presence and activity is nevertheless very obvious. See especially Esther 4:12-14, which makes the most sense if you go ahead and read the whole book!
8. Ruth and Esther are the only two women to have books of the Bible named after them.
9. The Apostle Paul wrote more books of the Bible than any other human author. The thirteen letters from Romans through Philemon in the New Testament are Paul's. (The authorship of Hebrews is debated)
   
10. The book of the Bible which features a talking donkey is Numbers. There is, however, neither an ogre nor a sword-fighting cat in Numbers. You can read about the talking donkey in Numbers 22:21-30.

Psalm 117

Praise the LORD, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
For great is his love towards us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD.

(NIV)