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The word "Bible" refers to the canonical collections of sacred writings of Judaism and Christianity.

Judaism's Bible is often referred to as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, which includes the sacred texts common to both the Christian and Jewish canons.

The Christian Bible is also called the Holy Bible, Scriptures, or Word of God. It is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament; some versions also have an Apocrypha section. The Old Testament includes all the contents of the Jewish Tanakh. In addition, Old Testaments published by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches contain books not found in the Tanakh, but which are found in the Greek Septuagint.

More than 14,000 manuscripts and fragments of the Hebrew Tanakh exist, as do numerous copies of the Septuagint, and 5,300 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, more than any other work of antiquity.

In scholarly writing, ancient translations are frequently referred to as "versions", with the term "translation" being reserved for medieval or modern translations. The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. The primary Biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint or (LXX).