How We Got OUf Bible Introduction: A In order to know how we are to serve God we depend on a book that is printed in the twentieth century, but alleges to have been written, some of it as long as 3,500 years ago and none of it more recently than 1,900 years ago. 1. How do we know that what we are reading today is what was written that long ago? 2. How do we know that what we read today is an accurate translation in our language of what was actually written many years ago in other languages? 3. How can we be sure that we have all that and nothing more than God intended for us to have? a. Are there missing books? b. Do all of the books we have in the Bible belong there? c. Are there mistakes, corruptions, omissions, or additions found in the text of our Bible? B. Several other questions may come to our minds. 1. How was it determined as to which books belong in the Old and New Testaments? 2. Is any particular church or denomination responsible for giving us the Bible? 3. Can we know the words of our Bible today are the same words as written by the authors? C. Our purpose in this lesson will be to answer these and other questions about "How We Got The Bible?" III. BODY OF LESSON A. We do not have the original documents written by the authors of the Bible; they are not in existence. 1. Even if we had them it would be virtually impossible to know whether they were genuine. 2. It is probably just as well that we do not have them, as they would likely become the objects of veneration as in the case of other "relics." 3. The truth is, we do not need to have them in order to know whether our translations today are true representations of what was written long ago. B. The languages of the Bible. 1. The Old Testament was originally written in the Hebrew language. 2. It was translated into the Greek language, supposedly in 72 days by 72 Palestinian Jews for Ptolemy II of Egypt in the first half of the third century B.C. in Alexandria, Egypt. 3. The Septuagint version is frequently quoted in the New Testament. 4. The New Testament was written in the common Greek language used in the first century, called the KaiNE Greek. C. Writing materials. 1. The original documents (called "manuscripts," Which means "written by hand;" often abbreviated as MS) were written on scrolls. a. Longest known scroll is 144 feet long. b. Average scroll was about 30 to 35 feet long.
2. The scrolls were made of different materials. a. Some were made by pasting together sheets of papyrus. (1) Oldest papyrus fragment dates back to 2400 B.C. (2) Oldest ms. were written on papyrus, and most did not survive long except in the driest of climates, like in Egypt or in the Qumran caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. (3) Papyrus was used until about the third century, A.D. (4) The original manuscripts ("autographs") of the New Testament were probably on papyrus in the form of scrolls. b. Others were made by sewing together pieces of animal skins. (1) Vellum was made from the skin of calves, usually dyed purple and gold or silver ink was used to write on it. (2) Parchment was made from the skin of sheep or goats, which were shaved and scraped to create a smooth and durable writing material. (a) The books of the Old Testament were probably written on parchment during days of Jesus and the apostles (see 2 Tim. 4: 13;John 13). (b) This was a much more expensive (but more permanent) material for writing. 3. Codex or book form (codex is the Latin word for a wooden tablet for writing, and came to be used also for what we call a book when sheets of papyrus, parchment or vellum, in leaf form, written on both sides, were bound together). a. The prolific writings of Christianity gave impetus to this form for preserving manuscripts. b. Most of the ancient ms of the Greek New Testament we have are in this form. 4. Styles of writing a. Uncial -- small capital letters were used. b. Minuscule -- a script or smaller letters in a running hand (connected) began to be used in the ninth century. c. Both the Hebrew and Greek rns. were written without any space between the words, and with no punctuation marks nor capital letters. (1) Hebrew manuscripts were written without the use of vowels until 900 AD.when the Massoretes began to use them in their texts. (2) Those who were employed in copying the scriptures, however, were very careful to insure accuracy. (a) They would be given the number of letters that should be on a page, and if their page had too many letters it was to be discarded and re-written. (b) They would also be given the middle letter on the page and the number of letters before and after it; and, again, if their copy did not match what they were given it was to be discarded and rewritten. (c) In spite of this some copyist errors were made in some ms. that cause them to be different from other rns.
D. The formation of the canon. 1. Meaning of the word "canon." a. Comes from the Greek word KANON, which means "reed," and from which we get our word "cane." b. The cane of the reed plant was used as a linear measuring device, much like we would use a "yardstick." c. The word came to be used to mean "that which has been measured," and was used to indicate an official list on index. d. It is used in this way referring to the scriptures to mean "an officially accepted list of books." 2. There was no official nor formal process by any church or council to determine which books belong in the Bible. a. Instead, it was an informal process over a considerable length of time that resulted in certain books being accepted as inspired, while others were rejected. b. The process began almost immediately after the original documents were written. c. Wescott claims the process was pretty well completed by th~ end of the second century. " d. "It is a remarkable fact that no early Church Council selected the books that should constitute the New Testament Canon. The books that we now have crushed out all rivals, not by any adventitious authority, but by their own weight and worth. This is in itself a strong proof of the genuiness and authenticity of the books that have survived. It is not until the close of the fourth century that any Council even discussed the subject" (Thiessen, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 25). 3. Factors leading to the determination of the canon of the New Testament. a. Marcion, a Gnostic heretic, created his own canon, eliminating several inspired books, and this made it necessary to determine which books were really canonical. b. In the eastern churches there were church leaders who were accepting uninspired books as a part of the canon; this, too, had to be countered. c. In 303 A.D. Diocletian ordered the destruction of all sacred books, which gave stimulus to the sorting and sifting of the books that were to be guarded against destruction. (1) Only the inspired books would be guarded. (2) Uninspired books were not thought to be worth the risk of losing one's life for preserving them. 4. Four criteria contributed to the determination of which books should be accepted as canonical. a. Was the book written by an apostle or the Lord, or by someone closely associated with an apostle (like Mark)? b. Were the contents of a given book of such a spiritual character as to make it worthy of such consideration? c. Was the book accepted universally among all the churches as inspired? d. Did the book give sufficient evidence of being inspired?
5, At the beginning of this process there was considerable disagreement with regard to the answers to these questions, with some books of our present canon being rejected by some and others wanting to include some books now excluded, but there was general agreement by the end of the second century that the twenty-seven books we now have in our New Testament are the ones that should be there. 6. By New Testament times the Old Testament canon had already been determined by the Jews,using essentially the same process as used for the New Testament canon. E. How can we be sure that the words in our English versions of the Bible are essentially the same words Written by the original authors. 1. We do not have the original documents, nor are many of us capable of translating the KOINE Greek into English. 2. Two fields 'of science have helped us to answer this question, so that we can be sure we have accurate translation in English of the original documents. a. Higher Criticism studies all of the ms. we have and other sources to determine such things as the author of the books (whether it was written by who it claims to have been written by), purpose for the writing of the books, to whom the books were written, the date of their writing, etc. This is sometimes called "Special ". Introduction," and we rely on it for information we use generally whed we begin the study of a book. A warning is in order, however, as there are many very liberal and modernistic scholars in this field. b. Lower Criticism undertakes to examine all the material that have any bearing on the nature of the original text; to apply sound principles of criticism to the various readings, and to reproduce the original text. This study is now usually called.."textual Criticism.",~ - -- ~-. (1) Their aim is to use all of the resources available to restore the original text of the scriptures. (2) They make use of all of the Greek manuscripts available to them, the early versions and the writings of early men in the churches, comparing one against another to determine whether any given word was in the autographs. (a) Is the word in the older ms. we have? (b) Is the word in majority of the ms. we have? 3. The materials of textual criticism. a. The Greek manuscripts -- the most valuable. (1) The Papyri -- the oldest Greek ms. we have are on papyrus (a) The John Rylands Papyrus, a very small fragment (about an inch-anda-half square) containing a portion of the gospel of John, is thought to have been written prior to 150 B.C. (b) The Chester Beatty papyri, originally containing a large part of the New Testament, part of which was produced as early as250 A.D., and otherparts as late as the fourth century. (2) The uncials are so named from the type of writing used on these vellum manuscripts -- large (uncial means "inch long") letters were used in this writing, and the letters were a form of small capitals (SOMETHING LIKE THIS) without any connection between the letters, and, of course, with no punctuation, no capital letters and no spaces between the words.
(a) Codex Vaticanus is probably our most valuable manuscript of the Greek New Testament; it was produced in the fourth century and it contains 759 leaves of which 142 are of the New Testament. It is generally thought to have originated in Egypt, and is owned by the Vatican and is kept in Rome today. (b) Codex Sinaiticus is probably our second most important uncial ms. Forty-three leaves of it were discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai in a waste basket. When he returned to the same monastery in 1859 he discovered the remaining portions of the codex, which includes most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament. It was probably produced in Egypt in the last part of the fourth century, and is owned by and kept in the British Museum (except for the first 43 leaves). (c) Codex Alexandrinus is from the first half of the fifth century and has a total of 773 leaves of an original 822, with the New Testament occupying 143 of these. It is thought to have been produqed in Alexandria, Egypt, and is owned by and kept in the Britisb"" Museum today. Portions of Matthew, John and 2 Corinthians are missing. (d) Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus is a palimpsest vellum, and is owned by and kept in the National Library of Paris. It contains 145 leaves of the original 238 of the New Testament, and only 64 leaves of the Old Testament. It was produced in the fifth century. (e) Codex Bezae may have been produced in Western Europe in the fifth or early sixth centuries, and it is in two languages, with the Greek text on the left-hand pages and the Latin text on the right hand pages. It contains the four gospels, Acts and a small portion of 3 John. Owned by Cambridge University. (f) Codex Washingtonianus I was produced in the late fourth or early fifth centuries, and contains only the four gospels. It is in the Freer Collection of the Library at Washington, D.C. (3) The minuscules or cursives are so named from the fact that the letters were smaller, in a script style and connected together. The public demand for more books created this new style of writing, which was a much faster way of writing than the uncials. (a) There are at least 3,000 of these kind of manuscripts. (b) They range in date from the ninth to the sixteenth century, which make them much less valuable than the uncials. (4) The [ectionaries are copies of the scriptures in the Greek language which' were read in the public services of the churches. (a) They are just varied selections of text, and do not have a continuous text. (b) They were somewhat adapted for public reading, and have omissions and alterations. (c) In the past they have been regarded as of little value by textual critics.
b. The versions or translations from Greek into other languages are of value because of their early date, with some having been written as early as 200 AD, (1) The Syriac versions (translated into the Syrian language from the Greek). (a) Tatian's Diatessaron, which is a harmonization of the four gospels was produced in about 170 AD. Our earliest fragment dates back to the first half of the third century. (b) The Old Syriac Version, discovered in 1842 in Egypt and originating in about 170 AD., it contains about 80 leaves containing the four gospels. We have two manuscripts of this version which are dated in the fifth century, (c) The Peshitta Syriac, a revision of the Old Syriac, was produced at about 425 AD. originally. There are about 243 manuscripts that preserve more or less of the Peshitta Syriac version, two of which are dated in the fifth century and about a dozen others in the sixth century. Generally speaking, the Peshitta Syriac version is what is called the Textus Receptus ("the received text") on which the King James Version is based.. (2) The Egyptian or Coptic versions (translations of the Greek text into the Egyptian language). (a) There are manuscripts of the New Testament in three different Egyptian dialects.. (b) Some of these manuscripts date back as early as the third century. (3) The Latin versions (translated into Latin from the Greek) (a) The Old Latin versions -- African and European, from the third and fourth centuries. (b) The Latin Vulgate was translated from the Greek by Jerome (the gospels in 384 AD. and the rest of the New Testament later) to resolve the problem of the many conflicting Latin versions, It was an attempt to standardize the Latin language translation of the Bible in the same way the King James Version did for the English language. In 1546 at the Council of Trent it became the standard version for the Roman Catholic church. Over the years, however, it became corrupted itself until 1455 when it was the first book to be printed on the newly invented printing press by Gutenberg and Fust.There are thousands of copies of the Latin Vulgate in existence today. c. The Patristic writings are a third source for the reconstruction of the text of the Greek New Testament (1) These are quotations from the New Testament found in the writings of early Christian authors. (a) So much of the New Testament is quoted in these writings that if all existing copies of the New Testament were to be lost today, we could restore the text from these quotations. (b) There are some weaknesses in these quotations, however. Many of them are very loose quotations. The same verse is sometimes quoted in different ways.
We do not have any originals of thesewritings; only copies. (2). In order of importance, the patristic writings are in Greek, Latin and Syriac. III. CONCLUSION A. The science of textual criticism, using the many ancient manuscripts, etc., is able to provide us with a very accurate rendition of the Greek New Testament, as it was originally written. 1. Only a very small percentage of the words of the New Testament are in any doubt, and these have no affect on any doctrinal matter. a. "If comparative trivialities, such as changes of order, the insertion or omission of the article with proper names, and the life, are set aside, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt can hardly amount to more than a thousandth part of the whole New Testament" (Introduction to the New Testament, Henry Thiessen, p. 77). b. This would be a total of a little more than a half page of the Greek Testament from which the above statement was taken. 2. We can have absolute confidence that we have access to a Greek New Testament today that is essential the same as the Greek New Testament of the first century.,.. B. That is not to say that all English translations have necessarily used an accurate Greek text in their work nor that all English so-called translations are accurate. 1. There are different Greek texts in existence today. 2. Some translators adopt a different philosophy of translating than others, which results in a very loose translation or even just a paraphrase, but more about this later. C. In our next lesson we will study the history of the English Bible.