How We Got the Bible
The Bible is the oldest book I read. And yet, I read it as if it is as relevant as the morning news.
We're coming up on the 2,000th birthday of the New Testament, and some Old Testament books were written at least a millennium before that. Around 40 authors wrote parts of the Bible, and we don't have any original texts; their writing material disintegrated over time. We have hand copies, and many of those are in pieces. Yet, Christians base their beliefs and behaviors on the Scriptures, thinking they hold God's useful and authoritative word (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
So, two questions are critical:
How do we know the Bible is true?
How do we know our Bible is the original Bible?
Let's talk about that last question here by looking at the process.
How We Got the Bible
God's thoughts became our written Bibles in four steps.
1. Revelation
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. (Hebrews 1:1-2)
Step one? God spoke!
God decided to speak to us. If he hadn’t, we would've never known him. God took the initiative to reveal himself and his ways. He unveiled our minds to the fact that he's God, and he progressively let us know what that meant. No one invented the one true God. He always was, and he stepped from behind the curtain.
God has spoken through two types of revelation. The first is mentioned here :
Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:19-20).
We call that general revelation or natural revelation. God revealed himself in nature.
But to know specifics, we needed more. We need to know him personally. For us to know his mind, will, and ways, God has to communicate more precisely. And he did.
He spoke to prophets in the Old Testament in many mysterious ways and to apostles in the New Testament through Jesus. Ultimately, he revealed his complete revelation in Jesus Christ, who taught and modeled God’s ways.
We call Jesus coming to earth special revelation.
Paul talked about that here:
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:6-10)
God the Father spoke directly to the prophets. Jesus and the Holy Spirit talked with the apostles and others—special revelation. God spoke.
God revealed himself through creation, in historical encounters, and through Jesus.
And then God told the apostles and prophets to write his thoughts and actions, which is the second step in how we got the Bible.
2. Inspiration
God’s communication was captured in the writings of the Bible by means of inspiration. Don't think of J. K. Rowling being inspired to write about Harry Potter or Beethoven’s inspiration leading him to compose a symphony.
2 Timothy 3:16 in the KJV states, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God," and the NIV gets to the meaning,
“All Scripture is God-breathed." (2 Timothy 3:16)
Over 40 authors wrote the Bible, and we can see how each writer had his own personality and writing style. God didn’t overshadow that, but God made sure each one wrote exactly what he wanted them to say.
He inspired them.
His very words became theirs.
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. (2 Peter 1:20-21)
The prophets and apostles knew when God was speaking. In the Old Testament, “the word of the LORD” or “God said” occurs nearly 400 times.
The New Testament writers acknowledged the same thing. The Holy Spirit ensured the Scripture writers recorded exactly what he wanted.
Because God inspired them, there are no errors, contradictions, or mistakes.
RESOURCE: If you'd like to do a deeper dive exploring the complexities of inspiration in an easy-to-understand format, check out the free class, "Introduction to the Hebrew Bible," at The Bible Project Classroom.
After inspiration came step three.
3. Canonization
The Bible was written over 1,500 years by over 40 authors. It begins with the creation story and lands in the new heaven and earth's eternity. Genesis 1 was compiled around 1,400 B.C., and John penned Revelation around A.D. 95.
During that period, God progressively revealed himself and his ways to his people. And as he did, he inspired his writers to write. The books he inspired were automatically God's word and the ones he wanted in the Bible. So, the Bible was set as soon as it was written. However, people had to be convinced.
How do we know the 66 books in the Bible are the only books he inspired? The answer is the process of canonization.
Canonicity is the study of why we have these books in our Bible.
The biblical CANON is "the collection of books deemed authoritative by the church" (Millard J. Erickson, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology). Canon is a word for a reed or a standard. We call the books in our Bible the Canon—the books that measure up and meet the qualifications of God’s word.
Here are a few more definitions.
An AUTOGRAPH is the original writing.
For example, Paul would write a letter (or dictate it), and that original hand-written letter was the autograph. The original was then copied to preserve and share. Over time, more copies were made.
COPIES or MANUSCRIPTS were the reproduced texts. Modern authors often abbreviate with MS or plural: MSS.
Other books that claim to be written by prophets and apostles or to be inspired are called APOCRYPHA, which means "hidden."
The Roman Catholic version of the Bible contains 14 Apocrypha, but those aren't in the Protestant Bible. Those writings chronologically fall between the Old Testament and New Testament times. Several provided helpful histories.
Many New Testament Apocrypha books were written later (such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, Didache, and Shepherd of Hermes). How do we know those and other books shouldn't be in the Bible? How do we know the ones we have should? The process of canonization determined that.
Three reasons why canonization was formalized
The apostles and leaders were dying toward the end of the first century. They held the authority and could explain what was inspired and what wasn’t, but they were dying.
Persecution was coming. If you were going to die for believing the Bible, you wanted to know that it was the right Bible.
False teaching and writings were beginning to circulate. Paul was dealing with this in his own ministry:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! (Galatians 1:6-9)
God only inspired the books he wanted. When God inspired the writers to write them, at that point, they became Scripture, his Word. Contemporary believers immediately understood the writings were true and from God.
The church, however, had a process (Canonization) by which they affirmed which books they believed were written by God.
By the time of Jesus, the Old Testament was set to be the same 39 books we have today. The earliest Christians accepted those as they had received them, and then their authority was ratified by the teaching and example of Jesus. The Old Testament we have is the same as the one Jesus and all the ancient Jews used.
The New Testament was written after Jesus. The test they used to finalize the New Testament canon was in three parts:
Three tests for New Testament canon authority:
Apostolic authority: Was it written by an apostle or an associate of an apostle?
Church acceptance: Was the book widely recognized by the church
Harmony of doctrine and tone: Did the content conform with what was recognized as sound doctrine taught in the churches? Was the tone similar to other Christian Scripture?
Even within the New Testament, there's evidence that the writers saw the other writings that became the New Testament as Scripture and divinely inspired. Here are a few examples. Paul refers to the Old Testament in 1 Timothy 3:16-17 as "Scripture" and as "God-breathed." He also connects Luke's Gospel as "Scripture," equating it with the Old Testament (1 Timothy 5:18). Peter (2 Peter 3:15-16) recognized Paul's writings as "Scripture." These were bold statements but common beliefs.
Many other books and writings circulated, even while the apostles were writing. But the canonization process happened immediately, though not formally until later (for details, see F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 1988, especially 255-69)
Some people try to say that a few cranky men formed a council after A.D. 300 and determined which books should be in and which should be out (and some claim they had quite a self-serving agenda for doing so). That isn’t true.
Certainly, leaders questioned and debated various lists of books created during the first and second centuries because the Christian movement was adding new and distant followers who didn't personally know the original message or the messengers. But the authoritative writings, however, were known and used while the apostles were alive. After the apostles were gone, the church didn’t keep adding books. There was no need to
The canon of the entire Bible was universally accepted by A.D. 400. But it was already in place. Again, we can lean on F. F. Bruce:
One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa--at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397--but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities. (The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable, 1995, 27)
4. Preservation
The last leg of God’s four-step process has spanned over three millennia. Once God revealed his word and inspired his people to write it and his church to recognize it, then he needed to preserve it. He had to pass it down through the centuries to the church without any material being altered, added, or lost. Somehow, they had to go from papyrus to iPhone
When the autographs were written, they were on perishable material like a plant (papyrus) or animal skin (parchment). It was the best they had, but none of those lasted. We have no autographs today. All we have are copies, or manuscripts, just copies of copies of copies.
God knew Satan knew the power of his word, and so the enemy would fight with all his might to destroy it. But God has preserved it.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8)
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:18)
It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law. (Luke 16:17)
That's the Bible’s testimony about preservation, but we have more evidence.
Since the original books were written, they have been copied, translated, and spread worldwide. How do we know what God said he would do he has done? How do we know that the Bible we have in our hands is the same as the one that was originally written?
It wasn’t until A.D. 1450 that the printing press was invented (and digital cameras weren't conceivable). Until that time, every copy was done by hand, which meant errors were possible; in fact, errors were made in the copying process.
The scribes copied in one of two ways. Some did it individually. They looked at a piece of text and copied it. Others did it as a group. A leader read, and they copied what they heard. Of course, both methods led to mistakes; some were even intentional
I don’t need to go into the details, but a complicated and important practice for verifying the accuracy of our Bible is called Textual Criticism. It's a science and an art. Brilliant people do it.
Practitioners use a precise set of rules and skills to compare the thousands of MSS and fragments to determine what was originally written (using rules like: the oldest is better than the newer, the harder reading is likely more correct than the easier, and the shorter reading is more likely than the longer).
Textual criticism is important and useful work. Some popular and persuasive writers (Bart Ehrman being at the top of my list) are discrediting the Bible. But the scholarly work of textual critics debunks most of his conclusions, so don't be confused. Don't read Ehrman without hearing those who debate him. He's eloquent but not accurate.
There are indeed copy errors in our translations of the Bible, and there are a couple of passages that seem not to be original (only two that contain more than two verses: Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11, both are tagged as such in modern translations).
Why God didn't perfectly preserve the copying of the manuscripts is uncertain. Surely it had something to do with his desire to allow human free will and his plan for us not to idolize a book but to worship the King of the book.
Whatever his motive, the evidence reveals his providence in preserving what we have. And we have a precise and accurate transmission of God's original word. An excellent and readable chapter on textual criticism and a systematic critique of Erhman is found in Craig Blomberg's book, Can We Still Believe the Bible?
When one hears numbers like 400,000 variants (if that number is even accurate), one must remember that they are spread across 25,000 manuscripts. A large percentage of these variants cluster around the same verses or passages. Less than 3 percent of them are significant enough to be presented in one of the two standard critical editions of the Greek New Testament. Only about a tenth of 1 percent are interesting enough to make their way into footnotes in most English translations. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that no orthodox doctrine or ethical practice of Christianity depends solely on any disputed wording. There are always undisputed passages one can consult that teach the same truths. Tellingly, in the appendix to the paperback edition of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman himself concedes that “essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.” It is too bad that this admission appears in an appendix and comes only after repeated criticism! (Blomberg, Craig (2014-04-01). Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions (Kindle Locations 737-746). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The evidence is overwhelming that our Bibles are precisely what God originally told his prophets and apostles to write.
There was a tremendous test that revealed God's care in the preservation. Before 1947, the earliest copies of the Old Testament were from the 9th and 10th centuries A.D. Then they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were dated to the 2nd century B.C., for the most part. What they found was nothing new. In other words, the copies made over the thousand years were accurate.
God has miraculously protected his Bible to get his word to us. From Revelation to Inspiration, Canonization to Preservation, God moved. God spoke and brought his word to us.
Our Bible is very close to the Bible he originally had written, and it only differs in insignificant ways.
The evidence is overwhelming.