How did we get the Bible anyway?

How did we get the Bible anyway?

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1.21, NIV

Or as the beloved King James Version from the days of my youth states,

            holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

 From the mind of God to the quills of men to …?

 The most popular early writing material was papyrus.  The earliest dated papyrus fragment we have dates back to 2400 b.c.  (Other writing materials included parchment and vellum—also pottery, stones sand clay tablets)  Ancient books were made into rolls by gluing sheets of papyrus together and then winding the resulting long strips around a stick. Size was limited by the difficulty in using it.  The average scroll was about 20-35 feet long.

Scribes trained in the exactitudes of hand copied biblical texts did so until printing presses.   “Jews preserved it as no other manuscript has ever been preserved.  With their massora they kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word and paragraph. They had special classes of men within their culture whose sole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with practically perfect fidelity—scribes, lawyers, massoretes.” (Massoretes were the Jewish scholars described above)

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament in Greek.  The Bible was translated into Latin by Jerome in the fourth century, called The Latin Vulgate.  It was the most widely-used translation used in the middle ages, and the first major book printed on Gutenberg’s press – in 1456.

Compared to other ancient writings, the Bible manuscripts stand alone as the best-preserved literary works of all antiquity.  Unbelievably, there are thousands of O.T. manuscripts and fragments copied throughout the Middle East, Mediterranean and European regions that agree phenomenally with each other.  By comparison, Homer’s Iliad, the most renowned book of ancient Greece, has 643 copies of manuscript support discovered to date, whereas the New Testament has almost 25,000, including 5,600 of which are copies and fragments of the original Greek.

How did we get an English Bible?  In the seventh century, portions of Scripture in English began to emerge, and the first complete English translation was produced in 1382 by the influence of John Wycliff.  Copies of this work were widely circulated.  Later in the 16^th century, seven more popular English versions were produced, beginning with William Tyndale’s work in 1525.  This English version of the New Testament was the first to be translated directly from Greek to English, rather than from the Latin.  Before Tyndale’s completion of the Old Testament, he was tried as a heretic and executed in 1536.  Just as America gaining her independence caused the shedding of blood, so too did battling for the written words of God.

Finally in 1604, King James I authorized a translation the came to bear his name.  King James agreed under the pressure of the Puritans who wanted a new translation of the Bible, as the existing English Bible contained bias and controversy.  Forty-seven scholars spend six years on the translation, with all work meticulously reviewed and refined by their combined collaboration.  The four existing Massorec texts were used for the Old Testament, and a third edition of the Byzantine Greek text by Staphanus* was used for the New Testament.  *oftened referred to as the Textus Receptus

The King James Version was printed in 1611. The scholarly translation was made mandatory for the Church of England.  Most common folk could never own their own copy of the sacred book, so the law required every church to keep a copy on display 24 hours a day. Ordinary people could then come in and read the Bible at any time.  The precious Bibles were generally chained to reading desks to keep them from being stolen; trying to replace a Bible in those days could easily bankrupt a local parish. 

After its original printing the King James Version had four revisions by 1769.  It remains the most widely circulated Bible in existence. 

Study questions:  1.  How were most of the original manuscripts recorded?  2.  In what year did we have the first well-written and reviewed English Bible?   3.  According to Paul’s writing to Timothy, (above), how should the Bible function in the Christian’s life?  In the vernacular, what is the Bible good for?

¹Bernard Ramm – USC theologian and author

²”Bible Manuscripts” www.allaboutthejourney.org - which cites eleven more sources, including Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, The Books and the Parchments: How we got our English Bible, by F.F. Bruce