The word "Bible" is taken from the Greek term Biblos meaning "book." While the Bible is one book, it is also accurately described as a collection of books and letters gathered together into one volume over a long period of time {see Mark 12:26; Luke 3:4; 20:42; Acts 7:42; Revelation 22:19}. Moses is the earliest known human compiler and author, living sometime prior to 1200 B.C. He is attributed with primary authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament {see Matthew 19:7 w/Deuteronomy 24:1-4; Mark 1:44 w/Leviticus 14}. The last book in our English Bibles, Revelation, was written by John sometime before A.D. 96 {Revelation 1:1-9}. John mentions being in exile on the island of Patmos for the preaching of the Gospel. Historians believe John was sentenced during the persecution by Emperor Domitian who died in A.D. 96.
Very early in His dealings with mankind, God commanded His prophets to write down what He told them: "Then the Lord said to Moses, `Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.' So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments." {Exodus 34:27-28}. The phrase, "It is written," occurs some 70-80 times in our English Bibles depending on the version. The one who used it the most was Jesus Christ. An example of how He used it can be found in Matthew 4:1-11. The phrase was followed by a quotation from Scripture and was used as an appeal to a higher authority than either the speaker or the listener. Judaism and Christianity are belief systems rooted in the written word. This reveals the wisdom and forethought of God because something put down in writing is far more durable and less susceptible to corruption than something passed down orally. Therefore, the story of the Bible must begin with the story of writing.
I. EARLY FORMS OF WRITING: Writing is known to go back to at least c.3100 B.C. It appeared first in the region known as Mesopotamia, in what is today's southern Iraq. It quickly spread to the Nile River valley of Egypt. The earliest form of writing was in pictographs. These pictures became symbols for something other than what they depicted. For example, the head of an ox might represent the concept of strength or power. The most refined and well known system of picture writing is Egyptian hieroglyphic, an example of which (the word for "carpenter") appears below.
Over in Mesopotamia, in the Sumerian civilization, picture writing was replaced with a series of wedges placed together to form words. This system of writing is called cuneiform (see clay tablet on top of page at "About the Bible").
Pictures have their limits. They're cumbersome, especially when trying to convey complex ideas. A standard alphabet with characters that can be strung together to make words instead of pictures has proven to be a far better way to communicate complex ideas. One of the earliest preserved alphabets, the Gezer calendar, was discovered in Palestine. As an aside, in the late 19th Century, a group of scholars began to criticize the Bible. One of their criticisms was that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible since it was supposed that writing was unknown at the time he lived. A century of archaeological discoveries have proved that writing pre-dated Moses. Secondly, Moses was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds." {Acts 7:22}. He was the perfect choice for God to use to write His commandments. Look up "Writing" or "Alphabet" in an encyclopedia for charts showing the development of the alphabet.
II. WRITING MATERIALS:
So we know the ancients could write, but what did they write on? The archaeological and Biblical records attest to a wide variety of writing materials.
Stone. Among the earliest known materials in use was stone. It's easy enough to find and is very durable. Pictographs and inscriptions have been found carved on rock surfaces all over the world. The Ten Commandments were carved on stone tablets {Exodus 34:1} and Job makes reference to inscribing on a rock face {Job 19:24}. Stone is durable, yes, but as a medium for information exchange it is too limited, being bulky and not very portable.
Clay Tablets. Mesopotamia didn't have much rock, but the constant flooding of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers gave the land an abundance of clay. Clay tablets (some even having clay envelopes) became the writing material of choice in this region. While the clay was still soft, the scribe would take his stylus (wedge pen) and press it into the clay to make the cuneiform text. Then the tablet was allowed to harden in the sun or was baked in an oven to make it more durable. Vast libraries totaling many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of tablets have been unearthed in the Near East. In some regions they are so abundant that the locals have used them as building material for hundreds of years. While living in exile in the land of Babylon (Mesopotamia), Ezekiel took such a clay tablet and drew a map of Jerusalem on it {Ezekiel 4:1}.
Wood Tablets. If anyone has seen the movie Ben Hur then they have seen an example of a wood writing tablet. (Remember the Arab sheik writing down the chariot race wager?) A recess was carved out of a flat wood tablet and then filled with wax. Most were hinged so they could be closed. Such a tablet containing 6,000 lines of text and dating from around 705 B.C. was discovered near Nimrud in northern Iraq. The prophets Isaiah and Habakkuk used such tablets for some of their writings {Isaiah 30:8; Habakkuk 2:2}. Zachariah, John the Baptist's father, used one of these tablets to tell everyone the new baby's name {Luke 1:63}. Broken Pottery. Because it was abundant and cheap, ancient correspondence and records were often written in ink on pieces of broken pottery. The technical name for these artifacts is ostraca. There is no Biblical reference to writing on such material, but hundreds of letters, receipts, bills, etc., written on ostraca have been unearthed in Palestine. Most date from the time of the Divided Monarchy (eighth through sixth centuries B.C.). Of particular interest to the Bible student is a collection of ostraca found in the Judahite town of Lachish dating from the time of Jeremiah. They describe the advance of Nebuchadnezzar's armies and his siege of the fortress. One of them also describes the goings on in Jerusalem regarding certain people predicting defeat and discouraging the fighting men {see Jeremiah 38:2-4}.
Papyrus. Along the banks of the Nile river, and at a couple sites in Palestine (Lake Huleh and the Jordan river), grows a tall reed known as the papyrus plant. From its name we derive the English word "paper." The papyrus plant has been used to make a form of paper since at least the 11th century B.C. The pith of the stem was cut into strips that were laid crossways over one another. The strips would be covered with a cloth and pounded into a sheet and the sheet would be pressed under a large stone. The pressed sheet would be polished with a small smooth stone and then the ends pasted to other sheets to make a scroll. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, copies of the Old Testament and other Jewish texts dating from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 100, are papyrus. It is virtually certain that portions of the New Testament were originally written on this paper {see 2John 12}. Many of the ancient copies and fragments of the New Testament found to date are papyrus. Below is a photo of a papyrus manuscript fragment from the Qumran Caves (Dead Sea Scrolls). The fragment is a portion of the Bible book Habakkuk.
Leather/Parchment. For those who were locked out of the papyrus monopoly, another material had to be found. At least as far back as the Persian period (late fifth century B.C. forward), prepared animal skins were in use. Primarily made from the skins of sheep and goats and polished with a pumice stone, this material is known as parchment. It slowly edged papyrus out as the medium of choice because it proved more durable and available than the former. By Roman times it was in widespread use. Some of Paul's personal library, and possibly his writings, was on parchment {2Timothy 4:13}. A very fine quality of this parchment was later developed and called vellum. The earliest copies of the whole Bible (over 1500 years old) are preserved on vellum. Metal. In this century, archaeologists have unearthed two metal scrolls. One is called the Copper Scroll for obvious reasons. It is one of the Dead Sea scrolls and contains reference to a treasure-trove. The other is called the Silver Scroll. It is more than 2700 years old and contains a single passage from the books of Moses.
III. THE FORM OF THE BIBLE: We've already seen that one of the earliest forms the Bible took was that of stone or wood tablets (the Ten Commandments, Isaiah's oracle). The form that became most widespread was the scroll--sheets of papyrus or parchment glued or stitched together to form a roll. A long book, such as Luke, would have taken the form of a scroll. Below is the famous Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea Caves.
A short letter like 3 John probably took only a single sheet. Scrolls have several drawbacks. The maximum length of a manageable scroll is about 40 feet. Luke would require a scroll nearly 35 feet long. So one could not conveniently carry around the entire Bible in one's hands as long as it was in scroll form. Secondly, looking up a passage on a scroll is rather cumbersome. You have to roll up one end while unrolling the other if you don't want it to totally unwind. In the days of the scroll, people kept them in clay jars or urns {see Jeremiah 32:13-14}. For the Bible to become more "user friendly" it would have to take a different form. Sometime between A.D. 100-200, sheets of vellum were being sown together as pages rather than rolls. This new form is called the codex and is what we think of when we think of a book. Some historians believe that it was Christians who invented the book form in order to have a handier Bible.
IV. FOR YOUR INFORMATION: Did you know that writers of the Bible did not include chapter divisions and verse divisions in their documents? Chapter divisions were first added to the Bible around A.D. 1244 by Cardinal Hugh of St. Cher. Verse divisions are somewhat older. The Jewish scholars who preserved the Hebrew Old Testament introduced standardized verse divisions around A.D. 900. In A.D. 1551, while riding horseback across the French countryside, Robert Estienne divided the Greek New Testament into our present verse divisions. The first complete English Bible to have verse divisions was the Geneva Bible published in 1560. Likewise, the original writings and early copies of them did not have paragraph divisions or punctuation. Paragraphs and punctuation marks are editorial decisions added by modern publishers, as are chapter headings, page headings, and sub-headings. Finally, printing the words of Jesus in another color than the rest of the text (usually red) is a very recent and misguided phenomenon, introduced sometime in the last century. There should be no distinction between the words of Christ and the words of other inspired writers for the source is the same--the Holy Spirit {see John 12:49; 16:12-13; 13:20; Ephesians 3:1-5; 2Peter 1:20-21}.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPEDIA. James Orr, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1959.
Lightfoot, Neil R. HOW WE GOT THE BIBLE. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1963.
Metzger, Bruce M. THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 2ND EDITION. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
NEW BIBLE DICTIONARY, 2ND EDITION. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1982.
Pfeiffer, Charles F., ed. BAKER'S BIBLE ATLAS. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979.
Pritchard, James B., ed. THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TEXTS AND PICTURES. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. |
