It's hard to find a living human today who hasn't heard of the Bible in some way or form. With the possible exception of some of the world's most isolated communities.
But even then, missionaries from all walks of life have taken the Gospel to even the most secluded societies all around the world.
The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia, meaning books.
The Bible contains 66 books, traditionally understood to have been written over roughly 1,500 years by about 40 human authors from different backgrounds.
Some kings, others prophets, scribes, priests, physicians, army commanders like Joshua etc...
It was written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Its story unfolds across three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe.
In the early church though, believers didn't have access to all these books in one place as we do today.
In fact, the New Testament canon had not yet been fully recognized, so Christians did not initially possess one universally agreed collection of New Testament books.
But the need on agreeing on a set of books that made up scripture arose as the early church was plagued by false teachers.
It therefore became increasingly important to clearly identify which writings were to be received as Scripture.
The Bible is divided into the Old and New testaments and the term testament means covenant.
The Making of the Old Testament
The Old Testament was written within ancient Israel and records God's dealings with Israel across many centuries from the calling of Abraham, the journey from Egypt to the promised land, all through to the Kings and Prophets.
It contains the Law of Moses, books of History, books of Poetry, books of Wisdom, and books of Prophecy.
The Hebrew bible (Old Testament) contained a set of 24 books unlike the 39 books we have today.
This is because the Jews enumerated the Old Testament books differently. The twelve minor prophets were considered one book. 1 and 2 Samuel were considered one book. The same holds true for 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah.
Later on the books were broken down to 39 books during the translation of the Bible from Hebrew to Greek at Alexandria, Egypt around 250 BC - 150 BC. This was because several books that the Hebrew Bible counts together were divided into smaller books.
The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures became known as the Septuagint, commonly abbreviated LXX.
The name LXX ("seventy") comes from an ancient tradition that roughly seventy-two Jewish scholars translated the Torah into Greek.
Combined with the 27 books of the New testament, we get the Bible as we know it today. But before we had the 27 books of the New testaments, the early church had to agree on what counted as scripture through a series of councils.
The Canonization of Scripture
Canonization was the gradual process through which God's people recognized certain writings as authoritative Scripture. Church councils later affirmed a consensus that had already been developing.
It's important to note that even the Jewish people also recognized an authoritative body of sacred writings long before the Christian New Testament was formed.
The Church did not sit down one afternoon and create the Bible. Canonization was a centuries-long process through which God's people recognized which writings were to be received as Scripture.
Marcion of Sinope brought urgency to the issue in the second century when he rejected the Old Testament and promoted his own collection consisting of an edited Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’s letters.
The Church did not accept every Christian writing as Scripture. Books were recognized based on factors such as their connection to the apostles, consistency with apostolic teaching, and widespread acceptance among the churches.
This recognition happened gradually. By the second century, much of the New Testament was already widely accepted.
In AD 367, Athanasius gave the earliest surviving list containing exactly the same 27 New Testament books recognized today
Councils such as Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) later affirmed this collection. They did not create the Bible but formally recognized a consensus that had been developing within the Church for centuries.
Apocrypha Books
Between the last book written in the Old testament and the New testament was a period of 400 years also known as 400 silent years because God didn't send any prophets or add new scripture to the Hebrew bible.
During this period, however, Jewish history and religious writing did not stop. A number of books were written, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees, among others. These writings are commonly referred to by Protestants as the Apocrypha.
Christians eventually disagreed over the status of these books. Catholic and Orthodox traditions receive several of them as Scripture, while Protestants distinguish them from the Hebrew Old Testament canon and do not consider them inspired Scripture.
Interestingly, early Protestant Bibles did not necessarily remove them altogether. The 1611 King James Bible, for example, printed the Apocrypha in a separate section between the Testaments.
New Testament
The 27 books of the New Testament are commonly grouped into the Gospels, History, Epistles and Prophetic literature.
The Gospels contain four books: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The first three are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they present much of Jesus' life and ministry from overlapping perspectives, while John is structured quite differently
The Gospels contain Jesus' earthly ministry, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection.
Right after the Gospels we have the only History book in the New Testament: Acts.
Acts covers the activities of the early church and the spreading of the gospel right after Jesus' ascension.
The largest section of the New Testament is the Epistles, or letters. They were written by apostles and early Christian leaders such as Paul, Peter, John, James and Jude to instruct, encourage and correct churches and individual believers.
Paul wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books, making him its most prolific author by number of books traditionally attributed to him. His letters address subjects ranging from salvation and Christian living to church leadership, relationships and the return of Christ.
Finally, the New Testament ends with Revelation, its primary book of prophecy and apocalyptic literature.
Traditionally attributed to John, it uses visions and symbolic imagery to reveal Christ's ultimate victory, God's final judgment and the promised restoration of all things.
The First English Bible Translation
In the late fourth century, Jerome was commissioned to produce a Latin translation of the Bible. Completed around AD 405, his translation became known as the Latin Vulgate, and over the centuries it became the dominant Bible of Western Christianity.
For roughly a thousand years, the Vulgate remained the standard Bible of the Western Church. Scripture was read from it in churches, copied by monks, studied by theologians and used throughout medieval Christian Europe.
There was, however, an obvious problem: most ordinary English people could not read Latin.
If you wanted to read and understand the Bible for yourself, knowing Latin was practically a prerequisite, and that knowledge belonged primarily to educated clergy, scholars and sections of the upper classes.
Then came John Wycliffe, an English theologian at Oxford who believed Scripture should be accessible to ordinary Christians. In the late 1300s, Wycliffe and those associated with him produced the first complete translation of the Bible into English, translating from the Latin Vulgate rather than the original Hebrew and Greek.
This was before the printing press reached Europe, so Wycliffe's Bibles had to be copied entirely by hand. Yet copies circulated, and ordinary English-speaking Christians gained unprecedented access to the complete Bible in their own language.
The effort came with serious consequences. Church authorities condemned Wycliffe's teachings, and English authorities later restricted unauthorized Bible translations.
Decades after his death, Wycliffe was posthumously condemned, and in 1428 his remains were exhumed and burned.
Wycliffe's work helped establish the conviction that ordinary people should be able to encounter Scripture in a language they understood.
Conclusion
As you can see, the Bible as we have it today has been preserved for centuries and handed down to us.
Men have been killed translating scripture into the common man's language like William Tyndale, who was executed for heresy in 1536 after years spent translating and distributing Scripture in English.
The Middle Ages are sometimes called the “Dark Ages” because later writers viewed the period after the fall of Rome as one of intellectual and cultural decline. But I believe there was another kind of darkness too: the common man had very limited access to the Word of God.
That ignorance sometimes produced extraordinary religious practices. Some Christians went on difficult pilgrimages, sought indulgences, and some even whipped themselves as an act of penance, while Christ had already offered Himself as the sacrifice for sin once for all (Hebrews 10:10).
Today, Scripture is available in our language, on our shelves and even freely on our phones. People suffered and some even died so that ordinary men and women could read it for themselves. The Bible was handed down to us at tremendous cost.
The least we can do is read it.
