A summary of the History of the Bible

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History of the Bible

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

John 6:63;

The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

Hebrews 4:12;

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword,

it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Galatians 1:11-12;

..the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather,

I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

The Bible is the Holy Word Psalm 19:7; Psalm 119:105; 1 Peter 1:16;

The Bible is the Simple Word Psalm 119:130;

The Bible is the Eternal Word Mark 13:31;

The Bible is the Active Word Hebrews 4:12;

The Word is God: Jesus is the word made flesh John 1-15;

“The New is in the Old concealed. The Old is in the New revealed”.

The Old Testament is the gospel in bud, the New Testaments is the gospel in flower.

Read the Bible over a year with the M’Cheyne Bible Calendar and our Vicar’s Commentary.

OLD TESTAMENT

The Old Testament Bible we know today is arranged in terms of history (the five books of Moses plus Joshua to Esther), then 5 books of Poetry & ethics (Job to Song of Solomon), Prophesy (Isaiah to Malachi). The Prophets are further split into Major Prophets and Minor Prophets (Hosea to Malachi) although the descriptions major and minor are given because of the size of the book and nothing else.

The Jewish (Hebrew) Scriptures (Tanakh) however are in three clear divisions. The first five books (Genesis to Deuteronomy), called in Hebrew the Torah and in Greek the Pentateuch, are Law. The book names are the first words on the scroll as it was unrolled. The next section is Prophets, however some of these, the former Prophets, are listed in today’s Bible as History. The last division is Writings, which includes the books of Ruth, Chronicles and Daniel. The work of forming what we know as the Old Testament was begun as early as 450BC and was undertaken by Ezra. This was the scripture with which Jesus was familiar, as he refers to when he appears after his resurrection to the two on the road to Emmaus and later to the disciples. They were written in Hebrew (Masoretic text), however from about 400BC after the exile in Babylon they were translated into Aramaic (known as the Aramaic Targums). Following the conquests of Alexander the Great after 336BC the Greek dialect Koine was widely spoken. About 250 BC the Old Testament was translated into Greek, said to have been done in Alexandria by some 70 translators, hence it is known as the Septuagint (or LXX). This was the version used in the early church and to which the New Testament writers refer.

There were a number of books in the Septuagint (Greek) that were not in the Hebrew Scripture which, since the time of St Jerome, became known collectively as the Apocrypha which are mostly history with some other types of literature. This includes insights into the life of Maccabees in their rebellion against the Greeks. These books are accepted by most Hebrew Scholars as good historical or religious documents, but not on the same level as the original Hebrew Scripture.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

The process of gathering together of writing considered to be inspired by the Holy Spirit started in the first centuries of the church, some of these books were in circulation (Colossians 4:16 and 1 Thessalonians 5:27). The Gospels, Acts, Paul’s epistles and Revelation were written in Greek between 45-95 AD. Paul wrote about 2/3rds of what we call the New Testament; In the last year of his life while in prison, he wrote to his friend Timothy asking him to bring “my scrolls, especially the parchments.” The Greek word for the reed from which parchment was made was “biblion”, from which the name Bible originates. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek words meaning “together seeing”. John’s Gospel is from a different source. As time passed recognition of authoritive books became more specific with the books receiving most controversy being Hebrews James, 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John. The OT was translated into colloquial Aramaic in the second century and also from about the fourth century much of what is now the NT, which was known as the simple or Syriac Bible . Constantine (272-337) became a patron to Christianity and it became part of the Roman State religion. By the end of the fourth century it was illegal to do any form of public worship other than Christianity in the entire Roman Empire. The Council of Nicea 325 was convened to address Gnostic teachings that Jesus was not wholly divine. It was resolved that Jesus is of the same being as the father. There were various subsequent meetings to decide the Canon of Scripture and the Books of the Bible. In AD367 the NT books as we know them today were listed by Bishop Athanasius, and finally the Synod of Hippo in AD393 listed the 27 books of the New Testament.

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

The efforts of translating the Bible from the original languages into over 2000 others have spanned the last two millennia. This summary describes the Translations of the Bible.

In 380 St Jerome (Hieronymus) was dispatched to Jerusalem to translate the Old and New Testaments into Latin, known as the Latin Vulgate. He found that there were additional books in the Hebrew and Greek Old Testament and these were translated as a separate volume, known as the Apocrypha (that which is hidden). The Vulgate remains the official Bible of the RC church.

Christianity arrived in Britain very early, and it was reported by St Gildas that “ parts of the Scriptures were burnt in the streets of British towns” at the time of the Diocletian onslaught in the third century. Three British representatives attended the Council of Arles in 314. Great Christian traditions built up, principally St Columba’s Celtic church based on Iona and the Saxon church base on Lindisfarne; St Augustine landed at Kent and set up his base in Canterbury in 596, thus founding the Church of England. The earliest attempt to paraphrase the Latin bible into the English vernacular was by Caedmon, a monk at Whitby circa 670; his manuscript can be found in the Bodlean Library at Oxford. The Venerable Bede, at Wearmouth, translated the Creed & Lords Prayer and started on John’s Gospel. He also wrote the “History of the English Church”. Aldheim, Bishop of Sherborn was the first translator of a part of the bible. King Alfred translated parts of the bible in the 9^th century, including the ten commandments, into Old English. It is also worth noting that he also translated Pope Gregory’s Regula Pastoralis, distributing it to every bishop in his kingdom. The Norman Conquest effectively halted the literary development of the English people for three centuries.

The History of the English Bible, perhaps, starts with the first English translation of Jerome’s 1000 year old Latin bible, undertaken by John of Wyclif circa 1380. Many bibles were produced by hand, without ornamentation, for private use. They were used by Poor Preachers (or Lollards) and the church establishment made every attempt to seize and destroy copies of Lollard Bibles; some 150 survive. In 1456 the first printed bible (Vulgate) was produced in Mainz. Italian, Dutch and French bibles were printed, but Caxtons “Golden Legend” printed in English in 1483 was a fanciful collection of stories about saints and only contained part of the Bible narrative; it did not eclipse the work of Wyclif. Willian Tyndale’s translation completed in 1525 was from Greek text. In predictable style the church establishment called him a traitor and his bibles were burned. In 1534 Myles Coverdale was commissioned by Thomas Cranmer to translate the bible into the vulgar English tongue which was published in 1539 as The Great Bible. Other translations came into use including “Matthews Bible” 1537, The Geneva Bible (entirely translated from Hebrew) 1557, and the Bishop’s Bible 1568. In 1563 the Anglican church deemed the Apocrypha to be non-canonical but may be “read as example of life and instruction of manners”. In 1611 the King James or Authorised Version was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. it also included the Apocrypha. Between 1582-1610 as part of the Counter Reformation, a Bible in English had been produced for Roman Catholic readers generally referred to as the Douai Bible.

Until the invention of the printing press, all manuscripts were copied by hand. Much time has been spent by academics and theologians looking at original early script, dating back to the second century, however it appears remarkable that great care was taken in transcription and only a few words or word order has emerged as being changed. There are no discrepancies that cause doctrinal differences.

As the art of printing advanced it became the practice not to print the second volume of the Apocrypha, and hence by the 19^th C it had fallen out of use in many Protestant churches.

There are many versions in modern English. J B Phillips translated the New Testament in a form which he tried out on his youth group, publishing “Letters to Young Churches” in 1947 with a preface by CS Lewis

The Bible used at Wonersh, the New International Version (NIV) , was translated in the USA from original Hebrew & Greek text, some not available previously and was first published in the UK around 1981. Footnotes to the NIV text point out alternative translations, meanings of Hebrew & Greek words, OT quotations and alternative ancient manuscripts; references include the Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac Bibles. The Bible used in Blackheath, the New Revised Standard Bible (NRSV), also translated in the USA, first appeared in 1989.

In 1945 documents were discovered in Egypt known as the Gnostic Gospels. These indicate divergent teaching in the early days (referred to by St Paul to the Galatians, Corinthians and 1 Timothy) and have never been part of Orthodox Church Canon. They inspire talk of conspiracy theory and are a part of the book Da Vinci Code. Between 1947 and 1956 documents called the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered near the shores of the Dead Sea containing many documents of a Jewish Sect. This is of interest because they include some of the earliest original manuscripts of Scripture, and other controversial material.

Interesting external websites :- Bible Gateway- Versions & Translations

International Bible Society

National Council of Churches USA

Wycliffe Bible Translators

The Battle for the Book by D.N. Marshall

Bible History

History of the Bible: How the Bible Came To Us

Prayer Book of 1552; (The First English Prayer Book published in 1549, and Cranmer’s revision 1552)

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