The
word ‘bible’ comes from the Greek word τὰ βιβλία (tà biblía) meaning ‘the
books’. The Christian Bible, as we know it, is a collection of religious texts
that were written over a period of some 1600 years, by more than forty authors
in three different languages and across several continents. Because of such
diversity, the context and purpose of each one of the individual books in the
Bible varies. In the Christian tradition, we believe that the Bible has special
value in our lives because it tells a story of God’s interaction with the world
and of the people who follow God.
A
list of books chosen to be part of the Bible is called a ‘biblical canon’, with
the word ‘canon’ derived from the Greek word κανών (kanón), meaning
‘rule’, as in ‘an instrument by which to measure’, like a ruler. Different
Christian traditions make use of different biblical canons, such as
the Catholic Church (whose Bible includes 73 books) and
the Greek Orthodox Church (whose Bible includes 76 books). The Church
of England in Article VI of the Thirty-nine Articles: “Of the sufficiency of
the holy scriptures for salvation” states that “… the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church
doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth not
apply them to establish any doctrine…’ thereby authorizing the use of the
Apocryphal books. In the Protestant biblical canon, the Bible consists of 66
books, divided into the Old and New Testaments.
The Jewish (Hebrew)
Scriptures
Many
religions have a book or books which are considered holy or authoritative. They
are often called 'Scripture', which simply means something that is written, but
is usually used of sacred writings. Jews often divide their Scriptures into
three parts: the Torah (the first five books (the ‘Pentateuch’ in Greek:
Genesis to Deuteronomy, also known as the Teaching), the Prophets (Isaiah,
Jeremiah etc…and the Writings (including the Psalms, Proverbs etc…). These Scriptures
describe God's involvement in the lives of individuals as well as in world
history. They relate how mankind's relationship with God has been broken and
how God has started to restore this through a 'covenant' (which means a binding
agreement) with Israel, which would one day extend to the whole world. The
Hebrew Scriptures also contain prophecies of a coming Anointed One ('Messiah'
in Hebrew and 'Christ' in Greek).
The Christian
Scriptures
Christians
believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew
Scriptures. Hence he is often described by his name and title: Jesus (var. Joshua) Christ (Messiah/Anointed One). Christians
believe that Jesus came to fulfil the Hebrew Scriptures and to introduce a 'new
covenant' which would include all people in a new relationship with God.
Various accounts of the life of Jesus, and the activities of the early church
were first spread by word of mouth (‘Oral Period’) and only later written by
some of the very first Christians. Some
quickly came to be seen as holy Scripture by Christians, ranking alongside the
Hebrew Scriptures.
An
archaic word for covenant is 'Testament', which led to the Hebrew Scriptures
being called the 'Old Testament' in contrast to the 'New Testament' of the
Christian Scriptures, with both together forming the Christian Bible. Most
Christians see the Bible as being authoritative for what they are to believe
and how they are to live.
What's in the
Bible?
The
word 'Bible' comes from the Greek and Latin words for book or books. But within
the set of covers that we call our Bible, there are collected together 66
individual books: 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the New Testament
plus 14 in the Apocrypha. The Old Testament is written mostly in Hebrew, the
language of the Jewish people (with a few parts in Aramaic). The New Testament
is written entirely in Greek, the common language of the time. The Books called
the Apocrypha were originally attached to the Greek Old Testament that were not
in the Hebrew-written Bible. That is because they were
"first-written" in the Greek language. They were considered scripture
and used as such by the Jews of the Dispersion (Jews living in foreign
countries) at the time of Christ.
About
60 years after the crucifixion of Christ, a group of Rabbi's (survivors of the
Roman annihilation of Jerusalem) met at Jamnia and canonized some Hebrew scriptures
that were specifically devoid of Greek writings. Any work of scripture not
originally written in Hebrew was discarded as unclean.
This
codification of the Hebrew Bible by the Jewish Rabbi's cancelled for the Jews
the authority, not only of the contested books we now call apocryphal, but also
the popular Greek Old Testament itself that foreign Jews had been using for the
previous 300 years. That work had earlier been authorized for publication by
the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem for use by the Jews of the Dispersion whose
language was primarily Greek. Jamnia was a seminal decision because it isolated
Christians from Jews on the basis, not just of scripture, but of language as
well. The early Christians stuck to the Greek Old Testament and the Jews
concreted themselves on the Hebrew Old Testament decided on by the Rabbi's at
Jamnia.
The Old
Testament
The
39 Old Testament books were written over a long period of time, perhaps as much
as 1000 years, from about 1500 BC to the middle of the fifth century BC. The books
include historical accounts, lists of laws, poetry, songs, prophecy and other
types of writing. These accounts were not collected together merely because
they were thought to be of historical interest, but because they were believed
to show how God was at work in and through his people Israel.
The New
Testament
The
27 New Testament books were written over a period of about 50 years. The exact
dates for all of them are not known, but the earliest probably dates from some
time in the AD40’s. Before that came the ‘oral’ period when people simply
passed on stories, accounts and the words of Jesus until the time came when
these needed to be written down. But
‘telling the story’ remained necessary for centuries as most people were unable
to read. Four books are effectively
biographies of Jesus – called Gospels. Three
are similar (synoptic) whilst John’s is somewhat distinct. The author of Luke also wrote an account of
the early church and its preaching called the Acts of the Apostles. One book,
called Revelation, is a highly symbolic account of the end of the world. The
rest of the books are letters written to various Christian churches with
encouragement, criticism and advice, many being written by Paul, who was one of
the most important early Christian missionaries.
The Apocrypha
‘Apocrypha’
comes from a Greek word meaning ‘things that are hidden, secret.’ It
refers to two collections of ancient Jewish and Christian writings that have
certain affinities with the various books of the Old Testament and New
Testament but were not canonized by Christians as a whole: the Old Testament Apocrypha
(e.g. Tobit, Judith, the Additions to Esther, the Additions to Daniel (the
Prayer of Azariah and the Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon),
the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach), Baruch etc…), which
are viewed as canonical by most Christians, and the New Testament Apocrypha
(eg. Shepherd of Hermas, Third Epistle to the Corinthians, Epistles of Clement,
etc…) which are not held as such by most – but not all – churches. These, and
many more documents, witness to the way that Christianity spread throughout
both east and west and began to assimilate with the other religions it
encountered. There are, probably, many documents now lost that helped shape the
church in lands now regarded as Islamic (eg. Persia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia) but
which had churches under local bishops – including in China – but have lost
their Christian heritage.
Who wrote the
Bible?
Many
different authors wrote or contributed to the books in the Bible. Many of the
books do not explicitly name their author, although in some cases it is clear.
In many other cases, the author is unknown or is known only from sources
outside the Bible. Some of the books are edited works, collecting together or
ordering older material, such as the Psalms which are attributed to a number of
different authors, including King David. Whilst Muslims claim that the Koran is
the ‘word of God’, for Christians that ‘Word’ is, obviously, revealed in
Christ. Although the bible has an important place in the life of the Church it
cannot have the same place for Christians as the Koran has for Muslims.
However,
most Christians would agree that the Bible itself assumes that God chooses to
reveal himself to us and to involve himself in our individual lives and wider
histories. But as it was never ‘given’ to the Church in the same way that the
Koran was given to Mohammed it cannot ‘teach’ although it does bear witness to
certain teachings and is regarded as being inspired by God and, in places,
containing the words of God. It needs to be remembered that the early Church
decided which of the many writings could be accepted as ‘canonical’ at the
Council of Rome (392). Most Orthodox Christians accept the canon agreed by the Second
Council of Trullo of 692. There was no
one Bible before these Councils.
With
the Old Testament Jews began to realise that certain books were authoritative,
seeing these as inspired by God. In the
same way, Christians came to recognise the books that now form the New
Testament as equally authoritative. This was more a realisation that these
books were, in some way, special and different, rather than a specific decision
as to which books to adopt as Scripture. Hence most Christians recognise the Bible as
actually written down by human beings, using their own knowledge, language and
individual style, but equally inspired by God.
Where are the
Original Documents?
We
don’t have them! But they were copied – and copies made of those copies and so
on until we have the documents that do still exist. The originals wore out or were lost, but the
various copies persisted. Whenever a document
is copied by hand (and that was the only way at the time) there is the
possibility of errors creeping into the resulting text. Most of these are
irrelevant to the meaning, but the issue needs to be considered. A whole area
of study called 'Textual Criticism' attempts to study the different texts that
remain and compare and contrast the differences to work out the most likely
original. But in the vast majority of cases, we are not talking about huge
differences that dramatically affect the overall meaning.
In
the New Testament, about 80% of the differences between different manuscripts
are found to be in spelling (remember that even during William Shakespeare's
lifetime, his name was spelt in many different ways – even sometimes in the
same document), while others use synonyms or give changes in word order (which
in Greek makes less difference to meaning than in English). Most of these, in
fact, make no difference to the resulting translation into English or other
languages. Very few variations between documents affect the actual meaning or
make any significant difference to what Christians believe.
As
one example of the ability of those copying the Old Testament documents, we can
look at the book of the prophet Isaiah. An almost complete copy was found in
1947 in the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating back to the first century BC. When
compared to the earliest copy that was previously available, dating from a
thousand years or so later, the translators of the Revised Standard Version of
the Bible found it necessary to make only three changes to their updated
translation. These changes were equivalent to the difference between
spelling Saviour as Saviour (British and American
spellings).
The
original New Testament documents are also lost, but the copies we do have are
very close to the date of writing – perhaps 50 to 100 years difference.
Compared to most other works of ancient history, the validity of which are
rarely questioned, this gap is minute. The works of Julius Caesar, for example,
written in the first century BC, only survive in less than a dozen copies
dating from about AD 800 – a gap of some 850 years. By contrast, there are many
thousands of New Testament documents in the original Greek (not all of these
give the whole of the New Testament, of course), as well as many more in translations
into various languages, as well as quotations in other early writers.
(From
various sources inc. Queens Park Govanhill Parish Church, Glasgow)
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