the bible’s journey through world history

The Bible's journey 1

The Bible’s journey through world history

Laindon Bible Class20th January 2016


God’s word revealed to us

“O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so… He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.” Psalm 107:1-2, 20

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

God’s word is everything


• Writing empowers thought, accomplishing purpose• God’s thoughts are beyond our comprehension, except they are revealed

– Isaiah 55:8-11• Thoughts and writing are indivisible, like the two sides of a sheet of

paper• If our thoughts are unexpressed, then they have no power in them• Writing has been key to the development of the Kingdom of Men

The nature of writing


Earliest writing

• According to man’s calculation writing first started around 3300BC• Earliest forms of writing were pictographic – Egyptian hieroglyphics

• Abstract writing emerged around 2500BC – cuneiform writing

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi95_yA56HKAhWMExoKHXwjBrEQjRwIBw&url=http://blog.tavultesoft.com/2012/04/hieroglyphs.html&psig=AFQjCNG07Tz5rndsWuHywNSCayl6NUqY_g&ust=1452603144120282


• The flood was circa 2433BC (over 3,500 years ago)• Moses was born circa 1706BC, long after writing had started• Hebrew is thought to have first evolved from Phoenician script around

the 9th century BC• ‘Square’ Hebrew then evolved from Aramaic from the late 3rd century BC• Aramaic was the official script of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian

empires• ‘Square’ Hebrew is the script of the OT we are familiar with and formed

the basis of modern Hebrew

Biblical writers


• The Hebrew Bible (OT) is in three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings (witness the Ecclesiasticus (130BC), Dead Sea scrolls, the words of Jesus (Luke 24:44) and the writings of Josephus (late 1st century AD))• The New Testament scriptures were probably first collected together

during the second century but were first definitively confirmed by Athanasius around AD367• There is one author, God, but over 40 writers between approximately

1650BC and AD96

Structure & authors of the Bible


How our Bible came to us


“…unto them [the Jews] were committed the oracles of God.” Romans 3:2

• Painstaking preservation by the Jewish scribes• Emperor Diocletian’s edict to destroy all Christian churches and books

AD303• Voltaire, the famous French philosopher, wrote a number of tracts

deriding the Bible. He made a very bold statement: “One hundred years from today the Bible will be a forgotten book.”

The survival of the Bible over 3,500 years


“…and how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own salvation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them or take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them.”

Source: Section 8 of Book one – ‘Against Apion’

The words of Josephus


Original manuscripts…?


Wycliffe exhumed and burned 1428

NB: Wycliffe 1320 – 1384)


Tyndale’s English Bibles burned

William Tyndale 1494-1536


The Authorised Version


Translations into English


• The Cairo Codex of the Prophets – AD895• The Leningrad Manuscript Hebrew B3 – AD916• The Aleppo Manuscript – circa AD930• Septuagint Greek manuscripts – circa AD350 eg Codex Sinaiticus &

Vaticanus • Dead Sea Scrolls – circa 200-100BC down to AD60• 731+ Hebrew MSS; over 5,500 Greek and 200+ Bible Dead Sea Scrolls Cf

3 MSS of Annals of Tacitus; 10 MSS of Julius Caesar’s Gallic War & 15 MSS of Herodotus’ Histories

How accurate is the Bible in our hands?

Also known as Masoretic text

Amazing level of agreement


The value of God’s word


“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:Because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.” Deuteronomy 32:1-3

The words of Moses concerning God’s word

the bible’s journey through world history

Spiritual