Introduction: How the Bible came to be is a fascinating story, albeit complicated. In this study, we shall attempt to present the facts of the origin and development of the Greatest Book of all as simply and briefly as possible.
The Bible did not just simply happen nor has it been preserved by accident or without effort. Bible came little by little, not at once to one person in a single location in a single time.
Studies shows that God communicated to us His Word in 4 different stages :
1. Verbal Transmission
From the time of Adam to till Moses God communicated to the mankind verbally,. There was not written stuff to communicate what God has spoken, Moses being the first person to write God’s word. Until then God directly had spoken to them. As the population increased God has to ask Moses to write His word, teach to the generation and preserve it.
God knew that He will not be communicating in the same way in future to the coming generations ; thus He in His sovereign knowledge asked to write it and teach the coming generations.
2. Written Transmission
Beginning from Moses, prophets and kings and later apostles inspired to write the Word of God.
The first person mentioned in the Bible as writing down God's communiqué was Moses, who lived about 1500 B. C. The Bible itself contributes six distinct writings to Moses (Ex. 17: 14; 24: 4; 34: 27, 28; Num. 33: 2; Deut. 31: 9, 24; 32: 1-43, cp. 31: 22). According to strict Jewish tradition, Moses is the author of the first five books of the Bible (Genesis through Deuteronomy). Some have scoffed at the idea that Moses who lived 1500 B. C. could have written about creation, seeing how creation was antecedent to Moses' time. Herein, the Bible is set apart from all other writings - the Bible is inspired or God breathed (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17). The very words were supplied to the men who wrote; hence, plenary inspiration (I Cor. 2: 13, I Pet. 1: 11, 2 Pet. 1: 21).
The Bible also mentions writings by Joshua, Samuel, Jeremiah, and others (Josh. 24: 26; I Sam. 10: 25; Jere. 36: 2). The books of law came first, then the prophets, until it grew into the collection we now know as the Hebrew scriptures ("Old Testament").
Initially most of books were written in animal skin, parchments and papyrus. Ancient writing materials consisted of many things before our modern type book evolved. Stone (eg. Ten Commandments, Ex. 20), clay, wood, pottery, leather, and papyrus were commonly used at different periods as material upon which to write. Leather (animal skins) was the primary material used by the Hebrews ("Old Testament") and papyrus (plant material) appears to have been the material mainly used for the first writings of the New Testament. Papyrus rolls, as they were called, were often used. Such "rolls" were widespread by 500 B. C. Papyrus sheets were sometimes joined together (top and bottom), thus, the papyrus roll (average length appears to have been about 30 feet long and nine to ten inches wide, the writing was usually on one side, cp. an exception, Rev. 5: 1). This was often the "book" during this time period (see Rev. 5: 1).
The Papyrus roll (so called because when not in use, it was rolled up) was simply laid down, usually on the floor or ground, and rolled out to be read. About 600 years later (ca. first or second century A.D.), the papyrus roll began to be replaced by what is known as the papyrus codex. The codex manuscript is what we know today as a book, papyrus sheets placed together in the form of a book, instead of a roll).
Parchment (improved animal skins) was also used. Vellum (parchment) became popular in about 199 B. C. For about 1, 000 years parchment was commonly used in the making of some of the first copies of the original writings of the New Testament.
3. Manuscripts Transmission
Copies on papyrus and parchments were few and takes quite a long time to make another copies. Only few were able to have copies of them, since they were costly.
People began to makes hundreds of copies of them to make available to people and preserve them. These copies are called Manuscripts. Manuscripts are knowns with different coeds and names such as : MS, MSS, HS, NS, etc.
Since these are copied, some directly from original parchments and papyrus, some indirectly, errors are found made for different reasons ; these does not mean the Bible has lost its originality and genuineness and thus not reliable. Though Bible has not its original copy as and when it was written but its copies are still preserved with divine intentional and not losing its context.
There are two kinds of copying errors: (1) those done accidentally, and (2) those done intentionally.
· Accidental. Many of the variations in the biblical manuscripts can be easily explained in several ways. First, bad eyesight was common because the Bible was copied in places which often were poorly lit. Scribes, working with the text for many hours each day, sometimes had trouble reading the details necessary to correctly write each work and phrase.
· Second, a word may be replaced by a similar sounding word. Sometimes, instead of each scribe reading a manuscript and copying it, one scribe would read the manuscript aloud while others copied the words. For instance, 1 John 1:4 states, “We write these things so that ____ joy may be full.” Does this verse say that the author wrote so that “your joy may be full” or so that “our joy may be full”? Multiple manuscripts contain each reading. This kind of mistake is merely a misspelling.
· A third type of unintentional mistake is caused by repeated words. In John 17:15, one manuscript is missing the following part in the bracket: “I do not pray that you should take them from the [world but that you should keep them from the] evil one.” Notice how the sentence still reads properly with the bracketed material, even though the meaning was changed.
In 1948, some Old Testament manuscripts (along with some non-biblical writings) were found in caves near the Dead Sea which dated as early as 250 B.C.E., about a thousand years before the Masoretic text. These are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Instead of being anywhere from 1000-3000 years from the original, these are as close as a few hundred. In the case of one of these scrolls – a copy of the book of Isaiah – the only difference between its text and the Masoretic text, was three words, and these only differed in spelling! Though over 1000 years separate these two texts, there are only three spelling changes! This shows the care with which the Masoretes and other scribes had worked.
The New Testament was copied more quickly, and thus less carefully, than the Old. It is likely that this happened in order to immediately spread the good news about Jesus. F.F. Bruce wrote, “The New Testament was complete, or substantially complete, about AD 100, the majority of the writings being in existence twenty to forty years before this.” To those of us who have become accustomed to hearing today’s news about the world, 50 years between event and record may seem like a lot. However, this seems like a moment in time compared to other ancient literature.
4. Interpretation Transmission
Before the New Testament written translating the manuscripts were found necessary.
The history of Bible Translation is long story record here.
The Jewish Bible, the Old Testament, was originally written almost entirely in Hebrew, with a few short elements in Aramaic. When the Persian empire controlled the eastern Mediterranean basin, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the area, and for liturgical reasons it became necessary for the Jewish communities of the region to have the Torah, or Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), translated into the common language from traditional Hebrew. The resulting Targums (from Aramaicmeturgeman, “translator”) survived after original Hebrew scrolls had been lost. By the mid-3rd century bc Greek was the dominant lingua franca, and Jewish scholars began the task of translating the Hebrew canon into that language, an undertaking that was not completed for more than a century. Because tradition held that each of the 12 tribes of Israel contributed six scholars to the project, the Greek version of the Jewish Bible came to be known later (in Latin) as the Septuagint (septuaginta: “70”).
The Hebrew Scriptures were the only Bible the early Christian church knew, and as the young religion spread out through the Greek-speaking world, Christians adopted the Septuagint. In the meantime, many of the books of the Christian Bible, the New Testament, were first written or recorded in Greek, and others in Aramaic.
The spread of Christianity necessitated further translations of both the Old and New Testaments into Coptic, Ethiopian, Gothic, and, most important, Latin. In 405 St. Jerome finished translating a Latin version that was based in part on the Septuagint, and this version, the Vulgate, despite errors introduced by copyists, became the standard of Western Christianity for a thousand years or more.
Hebrew scholars at Talmudic schools in Palestine and Babylonia about the 6th century ad began trying to retrieve and codify the Hebrew scriptures, restoring them authoritatively and in the Hebrew language. Over centuries they laboured to complete the traditional, or Masoretic, text, which since its completion in the 10th century has come to be universally accepted. The Masoretic version was transmitted by scribes with amazing fidelity down to the time of movable type in the 15th century.
Jerome’s Latin Vulgate served as the basis for translations of both the Old and New Testament into Syriac, Arabic, Spanish, and many other languages, including English. The Vulgate provided the basis for the Douai-Reims Version (New Testament, 1582; Old Testament, 1609–10), which remained the only authorized Bible in English for Roman Catholics until the 20th century.
The new learning in the 15th and 16th centuries revived the study of ancient Greek and led to new translations, among them an important one by the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who in 1516 published an edition of the New Testament containing the Greek text and his own translation into Latin. Meanwhile, in Germany, Martin Luther produced the first complete translation from the original Greek and Hebrew into a modern European language. His German-language translation of the New Testament was published in 1522 and that of the complete Bible in 1534; this remained the official Bible for German Protestants and was the basis for Danish, Swedish, and other translations.
The first complete English-language version of the Bible dates from 1382 and was credited to John Wycliffe and his followers. But it was the work of the scholar William Tyndale, who from 1525 to 1535 translated the New Testament and part of the Old Testament, that became the model for a series of subsequent English translations. All previous English translations culminated in the King James Version(1611; known in England as the Authorized Version), which was prepared by 54 scholars appointed by King James I. Avoiding strict literalism in favour of an extensive use of synonym, it was a masterpiece of Jacobean English and the principal Bible used by English-speaking Protestants for 270 years.
Conclusion: It has been aptly remarked that the Hebrew scriptures are the New Testament in prophecy and the New Testament is the Hebrew scriptures in fulfillment (Jere. 31: 31-34, cp. Heb. 8: 7-13). When one considers there were about 40 persons, many of whom from totally different backgrounds, and about 1500 and 50 years, respectively, consumed in the making of the Bible, the Bible truly bespeaks inspiration - a book beyond the scope of mere men. The internal and external evidence regarding each of the books has been subjected to critical analysis unlike any other books before they are admitted into the sacred canon of scripture.
All the combined great books of all time do not even begin to compare to the contribution the Bible has made to mankind. Abraham Lincoln perhaps summed it up best when he wrote: "I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this book."