The Bible has been the single, most important, most influential book written since the creation of human kind. Two major world religions consider it their primary souce of God’s revelation, and countless other religions either include it or give it great significance. What is this Bible? Where did it come from? Who wrote it and why is it reliable?

1)      What does the word Bible mean? It’s an interesting fact to notice that the word ‘Bible’ is never actually mentioned in the Bible. It is a name given to it by early Christians in the 2nd century A.D. – it comes from the ancient Greek word biblos which means books. There was an ancient Syrian port named Byblos that was the cheif manufacturer or papyrus in those times. Papyrus is a reed that grows in Egypt and Syria and it was the most common writing material at the time.

2)      What language was the Bible written in? The Bible was written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek[1] (Koine was the dialect of Greek born out of the conquests of Alexander the Great – it was the dialect of Greek spoken through the Middle Eastern world from about 330BC to 330AD. Demotic Greek, which is spoken today, is a direct descendant of Koine Greek[2]). The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic (some of Daniel and Ezra). The New Testament is written almost entirely in Greek, with occasional statements in Aramaic (such as Jesus’ cry from the cross).

3)      Who wrote it?

a.       The Old Testament

The Old Testament is historically split into 4 categories

I.                    The Pentateuch – which means roughly ‘the 5 books’, is the first 5 books of the Old Testament. It contains God’s Holy Law and is referred to as the Torah in Jewish circles.

II.                 The Prophets – The book of Joshua, judges, the earlier prophets, the latter prophets, and the 12 minor prophets.

III.               The Writings – the books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job

IV.              The 5 Scrolls – Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and 1-2 Chronicles.

This division was made by ancient Jewish scholars though we are not sure of who did it and when it was done. You’ll find the books grouped like this if you ever look at a Hebrew Bible. 

The Torah, the first 5 books were written by Moses. We know King David wrote a large portion of the Psalms, and King Solomon wrote Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. The rest of the Bible was written by either the prophet whose book it was named after (i.e. Isaiah was written by Isaiah) or other unnamed prohpets[3]. The whole Old Testament was written during the time period of roughly 1400 BC to 400 BC.

b.      The New Testament[4]

I.                    The Gospel’s were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Acts was also written by Luke.

II.                 The 13 Epistles were written by Paul.

III.               I and II Peter were written by Peter and I,II,and III John were written by John, the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). Revelation was most likely written by him also.

IV.              James was most likely written by James, brother of Jesus, and Jude by Jude the brother of James.

V.                 Hebrews was written anonymously.

Let’s take a look at the origin of the Bible and its accuracy!

Let’s look at the Old Testament first. The New Testament we have today is based on an ancient document known as the Septuagint. This is from a Greek word which means 70 (the manuscript is known in Roman as the LXX, which is Roman for 70). It was composed about 200 BC in Alexandria Egypt. This document was the Greek translation of the entire Old Testament – it was supposedly made for the huge library at Alexandria. It was probably one of the most important documents known to early christians and to modern christians alike. It was a Biblical standard for the entire church for the first 4 centuries of early christianity. It was most probably the Bible that Jesus and the Disciples knew. Needless to say, this is a very important document. Today we have fragments of the original document – our oldest fragment dates to about 200 B.C.

This Greek version of the Old Testament is a wonderful thing to have. However, we realize that the Old Testament is originally from the Hebrew people. We’d most logically be interested in what our oldest Hebrew copy of the Old Testament was. Though the Septuagint was translated from Hebrew, we did not have those original Hebrew texts. The oldest Hebrew texts we have, in contrast from the Greek, date around the 9th century A.D. – about 1100 years after the writing of the Septuagint. These early texts are referred to as a codex, which means book. The earliest Hebrew documents are known as the Cairo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. The oldest document to contain the Old Testament in it’s entirety is the Codex Babylonicus, dated to about 1008 A.D. These collections of early Hebrew Bible manuscripts are called the Masoretic texts. This is because there was a scribal sect of ancient Jews whose took it upon themselves to keep amazingly accurate copies of the Old Testament. There were scribal traditions dating back to at least 400 B.C. that were charged with keeping an accurate transmission and preservation of the biblical texts, with the Masoretes being the most recent and well known. The Hebrew Bible of today is based on these Masoretic texts.  

The Masoretic texts were invaluable, and they agreed mostly with the text of the Septuagint. However, though they were written in the original Hebrew and supposedly copied with almost perfect accuracy from the originals, the oldest copy we had was still 1100 years after the writing of the Septuagint. How did we know if it was an accurate transmission of the more ancient original texts? The most important thing we note however, is that the Septuagint is very close to the Masoretic texts we have today as far as similarity. This means that the transmission of the Bible over that roughly 1300 year period was highly reliable.

If that in itself were not amazing, you may have heard of something called the Dead Sea Scrolls. Their technical name is the Qum’ran scrolls (the name of where they were found). The Dead Sea Scrolls were a major find. They had the ability to either uphold our current views about scripture, or dash them all to pieces. Why is that? Because it is a compilation of Hebrew texts written more than a century before Christ. This is roughly only 100 years after the Septuagint! If these texts, much older than any Masoretic texts we had did not match up with the Masoretic texts, we would have to rethink all our theories about the Bible and maybe even doubt the validity of the Bible we know today.

What was the finding? We can see it in the book of Isaiah. A scroll of the whole book of Isaiah was found in Qum’ran (dating to about 125 B.C.). Our oldest copy of the book of Isaiah beforehand was in the Leningrad Codex from 916 A.D. Roughly a millenia of difference. Of the 166 words in Isaiah chapter 53, there are only 17 letters in question. 10 of those are only a matter of spelling. 4 of them are minor stylistic chages (similar to shoppe and shop). The 3 last letters form the word “light”, which is added in verse 11 and does not affect the meaning of the sentence. Furthermore, though it may not be supported by the Leningrad Codex, it is supported by the Septuagint. That means, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word in question over a thousand years of transmission – and the word doesn’t even change the meaning of the passage! The Dead Sea Scrolls were a dramatic confirmation of the accuracy of the transmission of what the original Bible authors wrote to the text we have today.

The Dead Sea Scrolls did not contain fragments from the entire Bible. But from the parts it did, it produced dramatic confirmation with the Masoretic texts. This means that our current Masoretic texts must be highly reliable; the scribes used the same method for copying all the books of the Bible each time, so we have no reason to doubt any of the Masoretic texts. This means, we can look at any Biblical book in the Masoretic texts and be confident of it’s accuracy. It case you seem skeptical, let me describe to you some of the amazing and almsot superstitious rules the Masoretic scribes had in perserved the Biblical texts:

1)      A synagogue scroll must be written on the skin of a clean animal

2)      It must be prepared by a Jew

3)      It must be fastened together with the string of a clean animal

4)      Every scroll must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex

5)      The length of each column must not exceed 60 lines or be less than 48 lines; the breadth must consist of 30 letters.

6)      The copier must not deviant from the original copy

7)      No word or letter can be written from memory with the scribe not having looked at the codex in front of him

8)      Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene

9)      Between every book there must be 3 lines

12) Scribe must not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink

13) If a king should address the scribe while writing, he must take no notice of him

If any of these rules are broken, the scroll must immediately be buried or burned.

We can surely see that the accuracy of the Old Testament is highly reliable! When we read the words of the first half of our Bible, we can be sure it is what the original authors wrote down.

What about the New Testament? Unlike the Old Testament where you have a limited amount of copies and high quality, with the New, you have less reliable quality but an over-abundance of copies. There are more than 5,686 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. There are over 10,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate (which is a latin translation of the original Greek). There more than 20,000 copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today. The importance of the sheer numbers of copies can’t be overstated – the abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original within virtually complete accuracy[5].

Not only do we have the truckload of copies, but not much time passed between the writing of the manuscripts and the actual events. Let us first look at some other historical documents to compare it to. The History of Thucydides has 8 copies of it which were written 1300 years after the originals. Aristotle wrote his poetics around 343 B.C. and the earliest copy of his works are from 1100 A.D. – a 1400 year gap and we only have 5 copies. No scholar would dare doubt it’s authenticity. Caesar wrote his history of the Gallic wars between 58 and 50 B.C. and we only 9 to 10 copies of it written 1000 years afterward. The Iliad written by Homer is the only manuscript that comes close to the Bible – it has 643 copies. Compare this to the New Testament – it was written only 50 to 100 years after the events and we have over 20,000 copies of it. The comparison is almost an embarrassment. The accuracy of the New Testament speaks for itself.

The Bible is more accurate than any historical document that currently exists. We have no reason whatsoever to doubt that the Bible we have inhereted today is not the text that was first written by any given individual who was moved to write under God’s divine inspiration. It is amazing and it speaks volumes about God’s power and character.