How We Got the Bible

2 Tim 3:16-17 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
17 so that the man of God may be
adequate, equipped for every good work.

The Bible is a collection of 66 books and letters, written by over 40 Authors. It is divided into two sections: The Old Testament and the New Testament

The Old Testament contains 39 books which were written from approximately 1400-40 BC (Before Christ) It was written in Hebrew, with some Aramaic.

The New Testament contains 27 books, written from approximately 40-100 AD- (Anno Domini "The Year of our Lord" It was written in Greek

The first five books of the Bible (also known as The Law, The Torah, and The Pentateuch) were written by Moses:

Exodus 34:27 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel."

See also Luke 24:13-27

If you read the first chapter of Genesis, you get an account of the six days of Creation. Was Moses there to see it? No. Not even Adam, the first man wasn't there yet. So how did Moses or Adam know what happened?

Before and during the early days of writing, unlike today, more weight was placed on what was said rather than what was written down. History, especially family history, was taught an passed on orally, with a strict emphasis on accuracy, from generation to generation.
Evidently, God, the Creator, shared with Adam what He did on those six days (Like a parent telling a child about the day he/she was born.) Adam taught Seth about it, and on through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's twelve sons to Moses, who began writing it down.
After Moses, Joshua and the Judges and Kings of Israel, and the Prophets of God continued to have the nation's history recorded in writing.

Then the focus turned from the history of the nation to the arrival of Israel's Messiah and Deliverer, Jesus Christ. Everything before this, we refer to as the Old Testament. Everything recorded about Christ's life, teachings, and His sacrificial death, we call the New Testament.

The Gospel (the "Good News" that Jesus died for the sins of the world.) was spread by personal testimony and through letters. Then as the eyewitnesses (the Apostles) became few, the Gospel was written down and shared.

Others would come along and distort or add to the Gospel, or write different accounts, and though they might have developed a following their teachings were never accepted as the inspired Word of God. These books that are not considered to be part of the Bible are called Apocryphal books.

In Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, the claim is made that the Church in Rome picked and chose the books of the New Testament in order to custom make the bible to teach what they wanted it to teach. In reality, by the time any of the church councils met (the earliest being the Council of Laodicea (AD 363)), the list of New Testament books were already widely accepted.

The councils looked at all available accounts, and asked:
"Does it teach what the eyewitnesses, particularly the disciples of Jesus, taught?" and
"Does it encourage and strengthen Christians in their faith?"

Eventually the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. His Council merely verified the list of books, and made it official. Constantine's successor, Theodosius, made Christianity the state religion. The Bible was translated into the Latin Vulgate.
Martin Luther, Wycliffe, and Tyndale were instrumental in translating The Bible into English (and into the hands of the people.)

At some point people divided the Scripture text into chapters and then each chapter was divided into numbered verses to make it easier to find specific portions.

For more information on Bible references, click here.

The Authorized or King James Version was published. Then the English Revised Version, the Revised Standard, the American Standard (ASV), the New American Standard (NASB), and all the other various translations and paraphrases came along.

For more about Bible translations, click here.

People say that all this copying and translating, means that the Bible we have today is nothing like when it was first written. However, the translators always go back to the original Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts for verification. and how accurate are they?

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1946-7 The manuscript copies were 1000 years older than any available at the time- and there were very few differences.

And that's how the Bible came to be what we know it as today.