Holy Bible in Onyx engraved by hand.

The Bible is the holy book of Christianity. It is one of the most influential books in the world, the most widely distributed book ever and the first book to be produced using the printing press. The Bible consists of two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. These are composed of theologically-intended stories, hymns, allegorical erotica, parables, and didactic epistles. They were written or finalized in nearly 1,000 years between the 8th century BC. until around the end of the 1st century. Some parts of the Old Testament are older, but we don't know exactly how old. The Old Testament begins with the creation of the earth and man by God. The story in which man fell into sin in paradise is followed by a long series of stories mainly about the Israelites as God's people. The New Testament focuses on the coming of Jesus. His death and resurrection leads to the restoration of the disturbed relationship between God and man. His followers will inherit the Kingdom of God. Many books of the Bible are pseudepigraphic. Some are written in someone else's name, such as Daniel in the Old Testament and probably the Catholic epistles or epistles in the New Testament as well. The authorship of Paul is undisputed for seven of Paul's letters, but for the other seven there are doubts as to whether Paul wrote the letters. Other books do not name an author and are later attributed to well-known figures within Judaism or Christianity. For example, Job in the Old Testament was traditionally attributed to Moses. In the New Testament this is especially true of the four Gospels. The oldest Middle Dutch translation of the New Testament is the Southern Dutch Gospel Translation. It is also the oldest surviving prose text in Middle Dutch. The original text must have been written in the early thirteenth century. The Hernse Bible, a history bible, was the first almost complete Bible in a European vernacular. The first Dutch-language Bible that was translated entirely directly from the Hebrew and Greek source texts appeared in 1637. This translation was commissioned by the States General; hence the common name King James Version.