History%20of%20the%20Bible

1
History of the Bible

• The grass withers, the flower fades, but the
  word of our God stands forever. (Is 408)

2

• The Holy Bible has been transmitted to us
  accurately from the time it was originally
  written so that we have an exact representation
  of what God said and did and who He is.
• The Holy Bible is unique in its continuity.
  Its a book that was written over a 1600-year
  span.
• written over 40 generations and written by more
  than 40 authors, from every walk of life (kings,
  peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets,
  statesmen, physiciansetc).
• its a book whose subject matter includes
  hundreds of topics. Yet the Holy Bible spoke with
  extraordinary harmony and continuity about one
  unfolding story Gods redemption of the human
  race.

3
The Old Testament

• written sometime between 1500-400 BC. Until
  recently (with the discovery of the Dead Sea
  Scrolls), the oldest complete Old Testament
  manuscript was dated about 900 AD.
• This made a time gap of 1300 years between when
  the Old Testament was completed (around 400 BC)
  and the earliest manuscript (around 900 AD). The
  Septuagint (the Greek translation) is actually
  based on an older Hebrew manuscript, where the
  prophecies about Christ are more precise.

4
The Old Testament

• The Massoretes (AD 500-900, from massora,
  Tradition) took upon themselves the tedious and
  time consuming job of editing and standardizing
  the Hebrew text and adding vowel points that
  would insure proper pronunciation.

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The Old Testament

• The text that the Massoretes produced is called
  the Massoretic text. This is the standard
  Hebrew text that is used today. The Hebrew
  scribes had elaborate systems for transcribing
  that gave them enough confidence in the new
  copies that the original copy actually became
  less valuable with age! This is why theres a
  1300 year gap between when the Old Testament was
  completed and the earliest manuscripts found.

6
The Old Testament

• The same extreme care which was devoted to the
  transcription of manuscripts is also at the
  bottom of the disappearance of the earlier
  copies. When a manuscript had been copied with
  the exactitude prescribed by the Talmud, and had
  been duly verified, it was accepted as authentic
  and regarded as being of equal value with any
  other copy.

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The Old Testament

• If all are equally correct, age gave no advantage
  to a manuscript on the contrary, age was a
  positive disadvantage, since a manuscript was
  liable to become defaced or damaged in the lapse
  of time. A damaged or imperfect copy was at once
  condemned as unfit for use. Thus, far from
  regarding an older copy of the Scriptures as more
  valuable, the Jewish habit has been to prefer the
  newer, as being the most perfect and free from
  damage. Frederic Kenyon

8
Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran

• The discovery of these Dead Sea Scrolls at
  Qumran has been hailed as the most important
  archeological discovery of the twentieth century.
• The scrolls have revealed that a commune of
  monastic farmers lived in the valley from about
  150 BC to 70 AD. It is believed that when they
  saw the Romans invade the land they put their
  cherished leather scrolls in the jars and hid
  them in the caves on the cliffs northwest of the
  Dead Sea.

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Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran

• This discovery provided an incredible proof for
  the authenticity and reliability of the Old
  Testament manuscripts. One of the complete books
  found in Qumran cave 1 were two copies of Isaiah.
  These books were thousands of years older than
  the oldest dated manuscripts previously known.
• They proved to be word for word identical to the
  standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 of the
  text. The 5 variation consisted chiefly of
  obvious slips of pen and variations in spelling.
  They do not affect the message of revelation in
  the slightest.

10
The New Testament

• We have more than 24000 manuscript copies of
  portions of the New Testament in existence.
• No other document of antiquity even begins to
  approach such numbers.
• The Iliad by Homer is second with only 643
  manuscripts that still survive.
• Other books such as the writings of Plato, and
  Herodotus have no more than 20 surviving
  manuscripts

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The New Testament

• The reliability of the New Testament manuscripts
  is also supported by the writings of the early
  Church fathers.
• Suppose that the New Testament had been
  destroyed, and every copy of it lost by the end
  of the third century (thats 100 years before the
  Synod of Hippo canonized the New Testament), how
  much of it could be collected from the writings
  of the fathers of the second and third centuries?
  The answer is stunning! All of it except for 11
  verses.

12
The New Testament

• The earliest such texts are the letters
  (or Epistles) written between about 50 and 62 AD
  by St. Paul to various early Christian
  communities. 
• Next in chronological sequence comes the Acts of
  the Apostles, a description of the missionary
  efforts of St. Peter and others in Jerusalem and
  of St. Paul and his journeys. 
• The Gospels in written form are slightly later
  than the Epistles and Acts.

13
The New Testament

• The first Christians, gathering for worship,
  repeat together their beliefs about the life,
  death and promises of Jesus Christ. These truths
  are what they have been told and taught they are
  what they teach to new converts and to their own
  children. They are the joyful tidings of a better
  world which only Christians share. That is the
  Good News.
• Good news is what the word gospel means. 
•   It is not until well into the 2nd century that
  the four Gospels are given their names

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The New Testament Establishing the canon 2nd -
4th century AD

• By the middle of the 2nd century it becomes
  evident that a great many different and often
  contradictory passages of holy scripture are
  circulating among the various Christian churches,
  each claiming to offer the truth. (There is even
  a Gospel according to Judas Iscariot.) Which of
  these shall be accepted as the official canon?
  This becomes a subject of urgent debate among
  church leaders. 
• By the end of the century it is widely agreed
  that four Gospels, the Epistles of Paul and
  the Acts of the Apostles are authentic.
• not until 367 AD that a list is circulated by St.
  Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, which finally
  establishes the content of the New Testament. 

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The New Testament

• Meanwhile the texts are being ceaselessly copied
  and recopied on papyrus and later on parchment.
• A few fragments survive from the 2nd century, but
  the earliest complete New Testament (the Codex
  Sinaiticus, in Greek, written probably in Egypt,
  now in the British Library) dates from the late
  4th century. 
• By this time Jerome is working in Bethlehem on
  his Latin version of the Bible. The story of the
  New Testament evolves into the story of
  its translations.

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The New TestamentTranslations

• There is no need for any part of the Bible to be
  translated until a community of Jews, in
  the Diaspora, forget their Hebrew.
• For the Jews of Alexandria, in the 3rd century
  BC, Greek is the first language. They undertake
  the translation of the Old Testament now known as
  the Septuagint-Greek word for seventy,
  commissioned by Alexander the Great.
• The Bible in Latin 2nd - 4th century AD
• During the 1st century Greek remains the language
  of the small Christian community, but with the
  spread of the faith through the Roman empire a
  Latin version of the Bible texts is needed in
  western regions.
• By the second century there is one such version
  in use in north Africa and another in
  Italy. These versions become corrupted and others
  are added, until by the 4th century - in the
  words of St Jerome, the leading biblical scholar
  of the time - there are 'almost as many texts as
  manuscripts'. 
• In 382 the pope, Damasus, commissions Jerome to
  provide a definitive Latin version. In his
  monastery at Bethlehem, tended by aristocratic
  virgins, the saint produces the Vulgate. This
  eventually becomes established as the Bible of
  the whole western church until the Reformation. 
• By the time the Vulgate is complete (in about
  405), the barbarian Goths also have their own
  version of parts of the Bible - thanks to the
  astonishing missionary effort of Ulfilas.

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The New TestamentTranslations Ulfilas and his
alphabet AD c.360

• The Visigoths, or West Goths, a warlike people,
  lived along the Roman frontier west of the Black
  Sea. After they had been Christianized, Ulfilas
  (311-382), their bishop, saw they needed the
  Bible in their own tongue, "to speak to their
  hearts.
• First, Ulfilas had to make an alphabet. He knew
  that neither the Greek nor the Roman alphabet
  would fit a Germanic language. He chose from
  these alphabets only the letters that
  corresponded to the speech sounds of Visigoth.
  For sounds for which there were no letters, he
  used runes, an early Germanic alphabet of limited
  use. With this, he translated the Bible.

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The New TestamentTranslations Jeromes
Intentions didnt pan out

• The intention of St Jerome, translating into
  Latin the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the
  Greek of the New Testament, was that ordinary
  Christians of the Roman empire should be able to
  read the word of God. 'Ignorance of the
  scriptures', he wrote, 'is ignorance of Christ'. 
• After the collapse of the western empire, the
  people of Christian Europe speak varieties of
  German, French, Anglo-Saxon, Italian or Spanish.
  The text of Jerome's Vulgate is understood only
  by the learned, most of whom are priests.
• Unfortunately they preferred to corner the source
  of Christian truth, keeping for themselves the
  privilege of interpreting it for the people.
  Translation into vulgar tongues is
  discouraged. 

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The New TestamentTranslations In the late 8th
century

• Charlemagne commissions translation of parts of
  the Bible for the use of his missionaries in the
  drive to convert pagan Germans.
• In the 9th century the Greek brothers Cyril and
  Methodius, sent from Constantinople to Moravia at
  royal request, translate the Gospels and parts of
  the Old Testament into Slavonic. 

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The New TestamentTranslations 14th century.

• John Wycliffe and his followers produce full
  English versions of the Old and New Testament in
  the late 14th century.
• At the same period the Czechs have their own
  vernacular Bible, subsequently much improved by
  John Huss. 
• The issue of vernacular Bibles becomes one of the
  contentious themes of the Reformation.

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The New TestamentTranslations Erasmus, Luther
and Tyndale AD 1516-1536

• Erasmus, though he himself translates the New
  Testament only from Greek into Latin, expresses
  in his preface of 1516 the wish that the holy
  text should be in every language - so that
  even Scotts and Irishman might read it. 
• Luther's interest in translating the New
  Testament from the original Greek into German has
  been stimulated, in 1518. His New Testament is
  ready for publication in September 1522 (it
  becomes known as the September Bible).
• Luther's complete Bible, with the Old Testament
  translated from the Hebrew, is published in 1534. 

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The New TestamentTranslations Erasmus, Luther
and Tyndale AD 1516-1536

•  Soon after the publication of Luther's New
  Testament an English scholar, William Tyndale, is
  studying in Wittenberg.
• Tyndale begins a translation of the New Testament
  from Greek into English. His version is printed
  at Worms in 1526 in 3000 copies. When they reach
  England, the bishop of London seizes every copy
  that his agents can lay their hands on. 
• The offending texts are burnt at St Paul's Cross,
  a gathering place in the precincts of the
  cathedral. So effective are the bishop's methods
  that today only two copies of the original 3000
  survive. 
• Tyndale continues with his dangerous work. By
  1535 he has translated the first half of the Old
  Testament. In that year, living inconspicuously
  among English merchants in Antwerp, his identity
  is betrayed to the authorities. Tyndale is
  considered a heretic. He is executed at the stake
  in 1536.
•  In spite of the destruction of printed copies,
  Tyndale's words survive in a living form. His
  texts become the source to which subsequent
  translators regularly return once it has been
  decided - by Henry VIII in 1534 - that there
  shall be an official English Bible. 

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The New TestamentTranslations King James
Version and 20c.

• The translation which becomes central to English
  culture, as Luther's is to German, is the King
  James Bible (also called the Authorized Version).
  
• Edited by forty-seven scholars between 1604 and
  1611, it aims to take the best from all earlier
  translations. By far its major source is
  Tyndale. 
• Of course now, it is translated in many
  languages.
• In Papua New Guinea more than 800 languages are
  spoken. The first translation of the New
  Testament into one of these languages is not
  published until 1956. Yet by the 1990s the New
  Testament is available in more than 100 languages
  of the region, with almost 200 other versions in
  preparation.   

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Translation vs. Paraphrase

• When it comes to authenticity and to stay safe
  from misinterpretation, it is recommended to use
  the NKJV, The New Revised Standard, NRSV, the New
  American Standard Version (NAS) and the New
  International Version (NIV).

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What about those Deuterocanonical Books?

• The word deuterocanonical comes from the Greek
  meaning 'belonging to the second canon'
• After the Protestant and Catholic canons were
  defined by Luther (c. 1534) and Trent(1546)
  respectively, early Protestant editions of the
  Bible (notably the Luther Bible in German and
  1611 King James Version in English) did not omit
  these books, but placed them in a
  separate Apocrypha section apart from
  the Old and New Testaments to indicate their
  status.
• The Jewish historian Josephus speaks of the books
  as being 22 in number, a Jewish tradition
  reported also by bishop Athanasius.

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The Deuterocanonical Books.

• In Orthodoxy, the term is understood to mean that
  they were compiled separately from the primary
  canon, as explained in 2 Esdras, where Esdras is
  instructed to keep certain books separate and
  hidden, deutero (second) applies to authority or
  witnessing power.
• In Roman Catholicism, deutero applies to
  chronology (the fact that these books were
  confirmed later), not to authority. In
  the Catholic Church, the formal recognition of
  the Canon of the Bible, which included also
  the deuterocanonical books, occurred in the Synod
  of Hippo (393), and again in the Councils of
  Carthage of 397. Much later (15th century), it
  was considered in the Council of Florence,whose
  decision was later confirmed by the
  (154563) Council of Trent and then later
  rejected by the reform movement.

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The Deuterocanonical Books.

• Since the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage
  in the late 4th century AD, the Christian
  faithful were taught that the deuterocanonical
  books are Scripture, and they were used as such.
  It was not, however, till 1546 that the
  inspiration of those books was called into
  question.
• Surprisingly Saint Jerome, whose Latin vulgate
  translation became the official translation of
  the Catholic Church, did not want to include the
  Deuterocanonical books in the translation. Jerome
  lived in Palestine and was aware of the Hebrew
  canon that had developed. His contemporary Saint
  Augustine arguing from tradition, wanted them
  included in new vulgate translation. After
  conferring with Pope Damasus and realizing most
  people sided with Augustine, Jerome included the
  Deuterocanonical books in his translation.

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The Deuterocanonical Books.

• The Protestants attempt to defend their rejection
  of the deuterocanonicals on the ground that the
  early Jews rejected them. However, the Jewish
  councils that rejected them (e.g., council of
  Jamnia in 90 - 100 A.D.) were the same councils
  that rejected the entire New Testatment canon.
  Thus, Protestants who reject the Orthodox and
  Catholic Bible are following a Jewish council who
  rejected Christ and the Revelation of the New
  Testament!
• There is a sleuth of cross references of between
  the Deuterocanonical books and the NT books.

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References

• Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient
  Manuscripts Harper Brothers, 1941.P.43).
• Bruce, F.F. The Books and the Parchments, Rev.
  Ed. Westwood Fleming H. Revell Co., 1963)
• (Leah, C. Our Bible How we got it, Chicago
  Moody Press, 1998)
• The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures by Fr.
  Shenouda Maher
• Our Christian faith certain and truthful by
  Dr. Sameh Helmy, and The
• book we call the Bible from CoptNet.
• http//www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHisto
  ries.asp?historyidac66ixzz1ESZfClb5
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_book
  s