As opposed to a bible, the Bible is the holy book of Christianity, statistically the most popular religion in the world. It's a collection of histories, letters, prophecies, geneologies, biographies and autobiographies, songs, wisdom, and mythologies. (The irresponsible reader sometimes gets those categories confused, and then places the blame on the book for not being literally true on some point.)

The books of the Bible were written by a number of different authors over a few millennia in at least three different languages. None of the original documents have survived, mainly because of the mortality of the published material or their lack of perceived value at the time of writing. The translations in print today are based upon the earliest known copy of the documents, or in some cases (such as the NIV) every extant early copy.

In the year A.D. 90, the Jewish Council of Jamnia canonized the Old Testament as it is known today, and in A.D. 397, the Synod of Carthage canonized the New Testament. The books which were believed by the religious scholars of the time to be authentic and spiritually relevant were preserved, and those that were not were rejected. The rejected books from both Testaments are collectively referred to as the Apocrypha.

For a list of the sixty-six books and their contents, see the King James Bible.