Languages, Writing, and Alphabets
The 66 books of the Bible didn't just happen. The processes of writing, editing, placement, copying, canonization, translation, and distribution involve thousands of people over millennia.
The word "Bible" comes from Greek to biblia, which means "the books" and pointed to Scripture as a collection of books of great importance. The singular word biblion may come from the name of the Syrian port city Byblos, which was known to be an exporter of papyrus. In ancient Greek, biblos originally meant the inner bark of a papyrus plant. The title "Bible" began to catch on in the 5th century A.D.
The Jewish Bible (TaNaK) is composed of 24 books, the same as the 39 books of the Protestant canon of the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible is made up of the Torah (Pentateuch), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Kethubim (Writings). The Jewish canon combines EzraNehemiah, has one book of Chronicles and one book of Kings, and groups the 12 Minor Prophets together. The Christian canon divides the Old Testament into four sections: Pentateuch, History, Poetry and Wisdom, and Prophets.
The Beginnings
In common with other literature of the ancient Near East, the Bible does not give much information about the authors of its individual books. Instead, it concentrates on the messages of the books. Scholars have become detectives in piecing together biographical portraits of authors (and/or editors). Clues can come from the words they employ, their ideas, their styles of writing, the themes of their books, the times in which they lived, and what they wanted to say or emphasize about God. Luke is believed to be the only NT author born a Gentile; it is thought that all the writers of the Old Testament were born into the covenant or became converts. The most productive writer of the New Testament was Paul, with 13 books attributed to him or his "school," disciples, or others under his influ ence. Tradition associates Moses with the five books of the Pentateuch, and Jeremiah with the book bearing his name and Lamentations.
The people who wrote the books that comprise the Bible were not professional writers in the modern sense; they were instead committed individuals who wrote to specific people with a particular purpose in mind. For example, Obadiah wrote of a vision, what the Sovereign Lord was saying to Edom. Luke wrote for Theophilus an orderly account of events about Jesus that were taken from the testimony of eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4).
There is general agreement that most of the events recorded in the Bible span from ca. 1900 B.C. to A.D. 65. Jewish tradition credits Moses with writing the first five books of the Bible, but modern scholarship suggests that the final version of these books and perhaps even their initial writing took place hundreds of years later. Scholars also argue that some of the writing of the New Testament took place after A.D. 90.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Aramaic sections are in Daniel (2:4b-7:28) and Ezra (4:8-6:18). The New Testament was written in Koine (everyday) Greek, the common, earthy language of the Roman Empire in force when Christianity began.
A Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), dates to the 3rd century B.C. It was used by Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire and was a source consulted by writers of the New Testament. According to legend, six translators from each of the 12 Israelite tribes (72 in all) worked independently of each other for 72 days, and when they were finished discovered that their translations were identical. The Septuagint was used extensively by Jews outside Palestine, but when Christians started using it as their Old Testament it fell into disfavor with the Jews.
Preserving the Word
The books of the Old Testament were written originally on papyrus and animal skin. Writing implements were reed pens, and ink was made from soot combined with gum. Clay or stone tablets and wooden writing boards were used for manuscripts of short length. The Jews favored animal skins, a longer-lasting material than papyrus, for synagogue copies of the Torah.
The books of the New Testament were written on scrolls and codices; a codex, a single book, was made by folding sheets of papyrus down the middle and stitching them together. Codexes gradually became more popular than scrolls, largely because they were easier to carry. Furthermore, scribes could write on both sides of the papyrus sheet. The oldest surviving New Testament texts are called uncials, because they were written in the Greek form of capital letters and without punctuation. These earliest manuscripts have no title pages and no paragraph or sectional divisions.
The Jews had strict rules about copying. The Torah had to be copied one manuscript at a time from another scroll. Until A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed the temple, all copies were made from a master copy. By ca. 250, Caesarea and Alexandria (Egypt) became major centers for teaching and study. At Caesarea shorthand was used for some texts and women were employed as scribes. Scrolls that became worn with age were put in a genizah, a hiding place, and not thrown away. One genizah discovered in Cairo in 1890 contained texts dating back iooo years, a major find.
Remains of the Qumran scriptorium, a large hall where the Dead Sea Scrolls are believed to have been copied. In addition to copies of biblical books themselves, the Scrolls include commentaries interpreting Scripture in view of the Qumran community's own situation. (Phoenix Data Systems, Neal and Joel Bierling)
The Dead Sea Scrolls, containing nearly ioo complete or partial biblical books, were first discovered at Qumran in 1947, providing the earliest available Hebrew texts. For example, copies of the book of Isaiah dating from the 1st century A.D. can now be compared with the previously oldest surviving version, a codex copied ca. 895.
Scribes known as Masoretes (from Hebrew masorah, "tradition") carefully copied and controlled the transmission of the Hebrew text in the period ca. A.D. 600-900. Their methods were so thorough that little alteration can be found in the texts over the centuries. By iooo, the Masoretes had standardized the Hebrew text; their edition contained notes at the beginning and end of the books and in the margins. Hebrew was written only with consonants, and the Masoretes added vowel signs and other textual markings, thereby preserving the pronunciation and giving sense to the sentence structure. Corrections and variant readings were documented in the notes.
Ancient Texts
A section of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1Qlsaa). The only one of the Dead Sea Scrolls to survive virtually complete, the scroll contains many variant readings that provide greater understanding of the biblical text. (Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)
Some 13,000 manuscripts of the New Testament or sections of it have been discovered. Some early nonstandard texts made by nonprofessional scribes contain numerous minor variations. New Testament scholars compare the oldest and best versions of the books with nonstandard texts to arrive at the closest reading possible to what the New Testament writers indeed wrote. Probably 99 percent of the original text can be accurately reconstructed.
Surviving New Testament texts include 85 papyri (codices or books, not scrolls); 268 uncials (capital letter texts with no punctuation); 2792 cursives (texts with smaller, joined writing); 2193 lectionaries (texts divided into sections for reading in worship). By the second half of the 2nd century, the Gospel of John was known in Egypt. A fragment of a copy from that period is stored at the Rylands Library in Manchester, England.
Five main codices are used in reconstructing the New Testament text: Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae, and Codex Ephraemi Syri.
Codex Sinaiticus (symbolized as Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) dates from the 4th century A.D. Constantin Tischendorf discovered this Greek manuscript in 1844 at the remote monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai and saved some 43 sheets of vellum from fire; these he gave to the king of Saxony. Tischendorf returned to the monastery in 1853 and was shown another 199 leaves that contained parts of the Old Testament, a complete New Testament, the Letter of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas.
Codex Vaticanus (B), containing the Greek text of both Old and New Testaments, has been in the Vatican Library in Rome since 1481. The combination of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus provides the best translation of the Greek New Testament.
Codex Alexandrinus (A) is an early 5th-century Greek text of both Testaments, copied and corrected by four scribes. It was acquired in 1757 by the British Museum. Alexandrines contains chapter divisions and headings called titloi in Greek.
Codex Bezae (D), an important representative of the Western Text of the New Testament, dates from the end of the 3rd century and contains both the Greek text and the Old Latin version. Presented in 1581 to Cambridge University, the codex contains thousands of unique readings in the Gospels, yet includes many additions to Acts. Many scholars think this puzzling text may be based on a and-century Syriac manuscript.
Codex Ephraemi Syri (C) is a recycled codex, a palimpsest, meaning that part of the original text has been scraped and then written over. In the 12th century, the sermons of St. Ephraim were written down, replacing the New Testament portion of the codex.
The complete Hebrew Bible was first printed in Italy in 1488, and a Greek New Testament was printed in 1514 in Spain.
Translations
The major Latin translation of the Bible was made by Jerome while living in Bethlehem from 390 to 405. His sources were the Hebrew and Greek rather than the existing Old Latin Text. Known as the Vulgate ("in common use"), this translation became widely accepted in the Catholic Church and by the Council of Trent in 1545 was termed the only suitable version. Stephen Langton introduced chapter divisions into the Vulgate in the 13th century. Robert Estienne, a Paris printer, introduced the verse divisions now commonplace in 1551.
Largely, translations were for use in the monasteries. Lay people did not have the Bible in their own languages until after the Middle Ages. Strange as it may seem today, ecclesiastical resistance to translations in the vernacular was strong. Those in state and ecclesiastical power thought that if common folk read the Bible, they would get ideas about changing the social structure. The powers felt that the Bible in the wrong hands could produce dangerous results, and so many of the courageous translators were seen as controversial and rebellious.
Around 700 the Psalms were translated into Anglo-Saxon by Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne. A monk known as the Venerable Bede also translated part of the New Testament. In the 9th century the West Saxon king Alfred translated some of the Psalms and parts of Exodus.
John Wycliffe (1330-1384), master of Balliol College, Oxford, believed the Bible should be made accessible for the English people. At Wycliffe's inspiration, his friends and supporters translated and hand-copied the Scriptures. Known as Lollards, many were burned at the stake.
In 1408 it was forbidden to make English translations of the Bible. But English versions persisted. William Tyndale (ca. 1494-1536) produced a New Testament translation in 1525, the first to be printed in English. For his efforts, he was sentenced to be strangled and then burned at the stake.
Miles Coverdale (1488-1569) produced an English edition of the Bible in 1537. Soon a copy of the Bible was placed by law in each parish church.
In 1604 King James commissioned a new version of the Bible. Six panels of 47 men translated both testaments into English. This Bible, known as the Authorized Version of 1611, was the work of panels meeting at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster and was influenced greatly by Tyndale's work. (See "The Bible in English" [39-421)
Of the more than 6ooo languages in the world today, more than 300 have a complete Bible, about 700 have the entire New Testament, and around looo have at least one book of the New Testament. Modern translations take into account local customs and conditions. For example, in cultures where a lamb or a chariot is nonexistent, other images are found to convey the meanings. Bible translation involves people trained not only in the three biblical languages but also in the customs and languages of the indigenous peoples. (See "The Bible in English")
FOR FURTHER READING
ROBIN GALLAHER BRANCH