Who wrote the Bible?
Despite the fact that the 66 books of the Bible; 39 in the Old and 27 in the New Testament, were written by 33 different people over 1500 years, there remains a power accord between them.
Those authors were scattered throughout various countries of the world and from widely different backgrounds, many with little or no schooling..
The Bible was written over a period of 1500 years with a 400 year silence apart from the Apocrypha and yet the threads linking history, and the prophets, kings and priests of old continue to reveal mysteries, lessons, poetry, parables, songs and revelation with life-changing impact in the 21st century.
The Bible remains the best selling books of all time for good reason; it contains the most ancient wisdom and knowledge and formative stories of humanity, often shared through through the lives, stories and examples of people who suffered much to ensure that we would share their legacy and inheritance as sons and daughters of the most high. It's as if those 33 different authors through the stories they told, were were trying to awaken us to lost knowledge that is key to the kind of life we were created for.
The Bible itself states clearly that it is the literal God-breathed'' living word of the Creator. The words "Thus saith the Lord"' and "God said"' occur more than 2500 times throughout scripture.
No private interpretation
In 2 Timothy 3:16 it states "All scripture is given by inspiration of God". Then in 2 Peter 9:20-21 it plainly states: "No prophecy of the scriptures is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost".
The Scriptures were originally written on rolls of parchment. Many versions of these manuscripts were copied with extreme care from the original Hebrew and Greek into other tongues and have come down virtually intact to the present day with most scholars agreeing on their accuracy.
It was in 380 AD that translations of The Bible, the main written work available at the time (minus Kings 1 & 2) were made available in Gothic, opening the way for Christianity to move into Europe.
Manuscripts were handwritten in monasteries in Germany, France, England and Ireland; these spread widely before the Middle Ages and were highly prized.
The availability of these works became the driving force for literacy in the Middle Ages or so-called Dark Ages in Europe.
Many of the manuscripts were great works of art in themselves with intricate designs. There are around three million letters in the Bible and the work was painstaking and took many years. It took 200 lambskins to create a Bible. Source: 6000 Years of the Bible, Wegener, pp173-174 and p185.
Authenticity intact
Christian author and former sceptic Josh McDowell Josh McDowell says to determine the accuracy of any book you need to you have to look the number of manuscripts existing today and the time period between the original document and the earliest manuscripts still in existence. The more manuscripts and the closer they are to the original determines the accuracy.
For example, the book Natural History, written by Pliny Secundus, has seven manuscript copies with a 750-year gap between the earliest copy and the original text. The number two book in all of history in manuscript authority is The Iliad, written by Homer, which has 643 copies with a 400-year gap.
When you compare this with the New Testament the conditions for accuracy are extraordinary. There are currently 24,970 manuscript copies and one fragment of the with only a 50-year gap from the original, there are whole books with only a 100-year gap, and the whole New Testament with only a 225-250-year gap. “I don't think there is any question from all of these early copies what the original documents said,” says McDowell.
As far as the dating of the original writers goes there’s also a compelling argument that the books weren't written as some claim hundreds of years after the events.
Although conservative and liberal scholars disagree this is over decades not hundreds of years. For example says McDowell, the conservative dating for the Gospel of Mark is between A.D. 50-60, with more liberal scholars placing it around A.D. 70.
“This is remarkable, when you consider that Jesus died somewhere around the year A.D. 30; these are authentic eyewitness accounts. Generally speaking, Paul's letters were written between A.D. 50-66, the Gospels between A.D. 50-70, with John's Gospel being written sometime around a.d. 80-90. If you can believe it, we actually have a fragment of John's Gospel dated about A.D. 125.”
And the real Bible-code?
One controversial but challenging researchers suggests the Bible is threaded together with an amazing numeric code that not only heped scribes of the day ensure they got 'every jot and tittle' right but also revealed important deeper meanings in the scriptures.
Check out my article on the works of Dr Ivan Panin
Follow Bible & Treaty on Facebook
Those authors were scattered throughout various countries of the world and from widely different backgrounds, many with little or no schooling..
The Bible was written over a period of 1500 years with a 400 year silence apart from the Apocrypha and yet the threads linking history, and the prophets, kings and priests of old continue to reveal mysteries, lessons, poetry, parables, songs and revelation with life-changing impact in the 21st century.
The Bible remains the best selling books of all time for good reason; it contains the most ancient wisdom and knowledge and formative stories of humanity, often shared through through the lives, stories and examples of people who suffered much to ensure that we would share their legacy and inheritance as sons and daughters of the most high. It's as if those 33 different authors through the stories they told, were were trying to awaken us to lost knowledge that is key to the kind of life we were created for.
The Bible itself states clearly that it is the literal God-breathed'' living word of the Creator. The words "Thus saith the Lord"' and "God said"' occur more than 2500 times throughout scripture.
No private interpretation
In 2 Timothy 3:16 it states "All scripture is given by inspiration of God". Then in 2 Peter 9:20-21 it plainly states: "No prophecy of the scriptures is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost".
The Scriptures were originally written on rolls of parchment. Many versions of these manuscripts were copied with extreme care from the original Hebrew and Greek into other tongues and have come down virtually intact to the present day with most scholars agreeing on their accuracy.
It was in 380 AD that translations of The Bible, the main written work available at the time (minus Kings 1 & 2) were made available in Gothic, opening the way for Christianity to move into Europe.
Manuscripts were handwritten in monasteries in Germany, France, England and Ireland; these spread widely before the Middle Ages and were highly prized.
The availability of these works became the driving force for literacy in the Middle Ages or so-called Dark Ages in Europe.
Many of the manuscripts were great works of art in themselves with intricate designs. There are around three million letters in the Bible and the work was painstaking and took many years. It took 200 lambskins to create a Bible. Source: 6000 Years of the Bible, Wegener, pp173-174 and p185.
Authenticity intact
Christian author and former sceptic Josh McDowell Josh McDowell says to determine the accuracy of any book you need to you have to look the number of manuscripts existing today and the time period between the original document and the earliest manuscripts still in existence. The more manuscripts and the closer they are to the original determines the accuracy.
For example, the book Natural History, written by Pliny Secundus, has seven manuscript copies with a 750-year gap between the earliest copy and the original text. The number two book in all of history in manuscript authority is The Iliad, written by Homer, which has 643 copies with a 400-year gap.
When you compare this with the New Testament the conditions for accuracy are extraordinary. There are currently 24,970 manuscript copies and one fragment of the with only a 50-year gap from the original, there are whole books with only a 100-year gap, and the whole New Testament with only a 225-250-year gap. “I don't think there is any question from all of these early copies what the original documents said,” says McDowell.
As far as the dating of the original writers goes there’s also a compelling argument that the books weren't written as some claim hundreds of years after the events.
Although conservative and liberal scholars disagree this is over decades not hundreds of years. For example says McDowell, the conservative dating for the Gospel of Mark is between A.D. 50-60, with more liberal scholars placing it around A.D. 70.
“This is remarkable, when you consider that Jesus died somewhere around the year A.D. 30; these are authentic eyewitness accounts. Generally speaking, Paul's letters were written between A.D. 50-66, the Gospels between A.D. 50-70, with John's Gospel being written sometime around a.d. 80-90. If you can believe it, we actually have a fragment of John's Gospel dated about A.D. 125.”
And the real Bible-code?
One controversial but challenging researchers suggests the Bible is threaded together with an amazing numeric code that not only heped scribes of the day ensure they got 'every jot and tittle' right but also revealed important deeper meanings in the scriptures.
Check out my article on the works of Dr Ivan Panin
Follow Bible & Treaty on Facebook
