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The Bible
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TODAY'S BIBLE by CARL F. PHILLIPS editor The Wesleyan Way Almost every Christian home in the world boasts at least one copy of a book we call the Bible. Although there exist minor differences among denominations concerning which writings should or should not be included, we share a general understanding of what we mean when we say, "Bible." In the ancient world, as late as the time of the Apostles, there was no one single word that referred to the Scriptures as one package of Holy Writ. As we use it today, the word "Bible" is a singular noun. There is only one book meant when we use the word. But to the Greeks, ta biblia means "the books" -- plural -- because our Bible is, after all, a wide-ranging set of books. But for many years the new Church had no single Bible with all the books bound together between one set of covers. Only when the Church decided to designate certain books as holy was there anything that we today would call "the Bible." And it was Gutenberg and his printing press that made it possible to bind these designated books into one printed volume so that everyone today can own a Bible. In the beginning ta biblia were nothing more than an assortment of scrolls. Each book was written on a separate scroll. They were arranged in no particular order, except for the Pentateuch -- the historical books -- which were kept together in sequence from beginning to end. These random collections of scrolls meant that each church, in effect, had a different Scripture from the Scriptures used by other churches. It also meant that some churches kept, in the same cabinet with the Holy Scriptures, other religious writings that might or might not be found in other churches -- writings that, at any rate, did not find their way into our Bible today. The physician Luke reported, "The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him (Jesus)." In other words, Jesus was not holding in his hands a complete Hebrew Bible - only the scroll of Isaiah. Luke refers to this scroll again in the Book of Acts. "This man (an Ethiopian official in charge of his queen's treasury) had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet." Again, we can be certain that what the official was reading was a scroll of Isaiah, rather than what we today think of as a book. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, there was a scroll of Isaiah among them. There were also other scrolls that were virtual duplicates of other books in our Bible. The Essenes, in their monastery-like worship center at Qumran, kept what was probably the most complete religious library of its time. The so-called minor prophets -- those preceding the Gospel of Matthew in our Bible -- were all written on a single Dead Sea Scroll. Nowhere in its pages does our Bible today refer to itself as that -- a Bible. Not a single one of its books calls itself -- or, for that matter, any of the other biblical books -- a "bible." There is, however, much that is recorded in more than one book. We often find passages in one book that purport to explain what is written in one of the others. One of the ways we are able to determine the order in which some of the books were written is that a later book will sometimes refer to a passage from an earlier book. For example, Daniel wrote, "I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years." Since he was a young man at the time he wrote these words, it is clear that Daniel never expected to see Jerusalem again. The Apostle Peter writes about Paul's letters: "He (Paul) writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters (false teachers and evildoers who have wormed their way into the churches). His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." Notice that Peter compares Paul's letters to "OTHER Scriptures," so we know some churches are already keeping Paul's writings with the holy religious scrolls. Notice, too, that Paul's contemporaries had almost as much trouble understanding him as we do today. There are not many places in our Bible where one book cross-references another, but we find it useful when they do. As similar as the Gospels are, none of them refers to another by name. Luke opens his Gospel by talking about other writings, but he does not mention any of the other Gospels by name. He says, "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught." We don't know who Theophilus was, but Luke did. And Luke undoubtedly had the Gospel of Mark before him as a part of his research, because Mark probably wrote his Gospel while he was still in Rome, immediately following, or just prior to, the execution of the Apostle Paul. It's interesting that Mark, who got crossways with Paul very early in Paul's ministry, ended up working with the great Apostle to the Gentiles. It is an object lesson for Christians today. We sometimes quarrel with our brothers in the faith. But we should always forgive one another and get on with the work our Lord left for us on the occasion of his ascension: making disciples of all nations. -- 30 -- Carl Phillips -- Port Isabel, Texas Journalist/Columnist -- http://www.crosshome.com/issues.shtml Author, THE WESLEYAN WAY -- a weekly Church Page column Articles Editor, ETERNAL INK -- a monthly Christian E-Zine Contributing Editor, Fulfilling the Great Commission -- a Christian E-Zine |
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