ORIGINS OF THE BIBLE AND WHO COMPILED IT
The Bible is a book comprising 66 disparate books written over a period of some 1500 years. It is thought by many that these books were probably brought together into the one book, the Bible, by some committee or other in the early days of the christian church. We shall seek to determine the facts surrounding this and associated issues in the course of this article.
The word bible is a Greek plural noun meaning ‘the books’ or ‘the little books’ and began to be used of the sacred writings as a whole about 400 years after Christ. The broad division of the Bible into Old Testament and New Testament originated among early Greek-speaking Christians who used to speak about the books of the ‘old covenant’ and the books of the ‘new covenant’.
When the Latin-speaking christians began to use the same terms, they translated the Greek word covenant into testament, which means a will and does not convey the sense of the Greek word. Notwithstanding, these two collections of sacred writings began to be called the Old Testament and New Testament in the early years of the christian era. However, it was not until the 13th Century that the writings began to be familiarly spoken of as a single book, though at this time the content was disputed.
The books of the Old Testament, categorised the law, prophets and psalms, were originally written on animal skins forming strips of vellum rolled upon two sticks and fastened by a thread. Those of the New Testament were probably written on papyrus paper in common use at the time. All these original writings were of course long lost and perished but many manuscript copies were made by scribes, who made errors in so doing. It is a fact that in the manuscripts of the New Testament in particular there are thousands of differences, though they are of minor significance.
At the time our Lord was on earth, the Old Testament, the sacred writings of the Jews, were collected in two different forms. The Palestinian collection, so called, was written in the Hebrew language and the Alexandrian collection, called the Septuagint, in Greek. This latter translation soon came into general use because there were many Jews who knew Greek well enough but no Hebrew at all. At this time Hebrew was a dead language; it may have been the language of the temple but the common people did not understand it.
The vernacular of the Palestinian Jews was Aramaic, a language similar to Hebrew. When the Hebrew tongue is referred to in the New Testament, it is Aramaic that is meant. Greek on the other hand was a living language and many Jews understood it almost as well as Aramaic. Hence, the Greek version of the scriptures was more freely used by the Jews and it was from the Septuagint that Christ and the apostles mainly quoted.
The precise content, or canon, of the Old Testament (the Palestinian canon or Hebrew bible) was not however irrevocably fixed by the Jews until about 90 AD at the synod of Jamnia and, unlike the Septuagint, did not include those books collectively known as the Apocrypha. The apocryphal books were later in origin than the recognised Old Testament books and mostly written in Greek; they were not regarded by the stricter Jews as sacred Scriptures.
However, the Septuagint version continued in general use in christendom until the 16th Century when there was general acceptance among Protestants that the Hebrew canon occupied a higher plane than the books of the Apocrypha in the Septuagint. Thus by a gradual process of recognition, there was established the canon as we know it today comprising 39 books, the Apocrypha being retained by the Roman Catholic church.
The New Testament canon numbers 27 books and these were finally acknowledged, again by general acceptance at the time of the Reformation in the 16th Century. The grounds for acceptance of any writings in the New Testament canon appear to have rested primarily on whether they were deemed to have been written by or under the direction of an apostle. Certain other writings, not in the established canon, were originally included among the recognised sacred apostolic writings but were in due time excluded by the reformers.
However, there is safety in numbers and many manuscripts have been placed at the disposal of scholars for translation purposes in parallel with the acceptance/recognition of sacred Scripture on the part of millions of believers over centuries. The settling of Holy Writ was a very human exercise involving dedicated scholarship and spiritual discernment, though undoubtedly under the overall guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Many versions (translations) of the Bible have resulted from the labours of scholars over the centuries from Tyndale to Darby and of these the most widely respected has been the Authorised followed by the 1881 Revised. Whilst these versions and others have been great helps in teaching the Word, they are not themselves inspired as were the original writings. All are based on manuscripts containing copyist mistakes, inaccuracies and in some cases alterations, which inevitably occurred in transmission. To quote one notable example:
“the big and important difference between the manuscripts in Revelation 22:14. Some manuscripts read “Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they might have right to the tree of life …..”. Other manuscripts read, “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they might have right to the tree of life ….”. Now obviously John did not write both. One of these readings is what John originally wrote; the other is the work of someone who substituted his own idea in the place of the inspired original. Now, the experts are agreed that the first of these readings is the original and the second is spurious. That must be evident to the non-expert as well. The first reading makes eternal life and entrance to the heavenly city depend on washing our robes, i.e. in the blood of the Lamb, and this agrees with what scripture everywhere teaches. The second reading has not only changed what the Holy Spirit originally wrote, but has substituted a gospel of works. It makes eternal life and entrance to the heavenly city depend on keeping the commandments. This is the heresy that Paul denounces in the Epistle to the Galatians. Unfortunately, the Authorised Version has here followed the manuscripts that have this spurious and erroneous reading so that we cannot agree with the AV here unless we are willing to admit that whoever changed what John originally wrote, had a right to change God’s inspired Word. Elsewhere of course, in the vast majority of cases, the Authorised represents more exactly what was originally written and makes it abundantly clear that our right to eternal life rests solely on the blood of Christ.” (Dr D. Gooding)
However, critically, the experts in this field make clear that the overwhelming majority of manuscript errors and differences are unimportant trifles, so we can be certain that the Scriptures we have today in our Bible are, for all spiritual and doctrinal purposes,substantially the same as the original inspired writings. This leads us to an important truth, that the Bible is essentially a spiritual production rather than an exercise of the letter. Yes, the words are important but only insofar as they convey divine truth; that is the meaning of verbal inspiration and the sense in which the Bible is the Word of God.
In the various translations, we have the preservation of Holy Scripture as a complete body of revelation for divine instruction and the outworking of eternal purpose as God always intended. Diligent study confirms the divine structure, strategy, veracity and completeness of this most remarkable of books.
Works of reference for this article include:
- Who Wrote the Bible? by Washington Gladden
- The Story of the Bible by Sir Frederic Kenyon
- God’s Witness to His Word by Hugh D. Brown
- The Inspiration and Authority Canon and Transmission of Holy Scripture by Dr David Gooding
October 2011 (coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version).