Sacred scripture typology
The Bible is a sacred scripture for the Hebrew and Christian worlds. Yet, sacred texts do exist in various other confessions. Sacred texts of major world religions were created during the period of time when man shifted from the mythological consciousness towards a rational worldview. Sacred texts were preceded by the invention of writing and the growing use of writing materials such as clay and papyrus. The Christian tradition divides the Bible into the Old Testament and the New Testament. Judaism does not have any New Testament and in this tradition the books of the Old Testament are called the Tanakh, or Mikra. It is divided into three parts: Torah (Instruction), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The notion "Old Testament" is conventional for it is "old" only in the Christian concept while in Judaism this testament is still in force. Moreover, the Old Testament books describe not only one but several covenants between God and man. The Old Testament was canonised in the Hellenistic period. The text canonisation resulted from the collision between the Greek civilisation where sacred texts had never been written down and the civilisation of the Middle East where every written text became sacred automatically. Apart from the canon there were many works of Jewish literature that are now called apocrypha.
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