Contents:
Introduction 
This is one of a series of pages on the Bible
and explains in general terms what the Bible is and how it came to be.
We
hope that as you read you will come to see that any intelligent person
has good cause to trust and believe the Bible as we have it today.
In
the first part of this page we will repeat, for the sake of clarity,
what you will find on the "What is the Bible?" page
in this series
What
is the Bible?
The Bible
comprises 66 books written over a 1600 year span by over 40 authors
from every walk of life. Originally it was written in Hebrew, Aramaic
and Greek.
It
comprises historical narrative, teaching, poetry and prophecy. It is
divided into two main sections, the Old and the New Testaments.
The
Old Testament covers the
period from the beginning of the world up to several hundred years before
Christ, and recounts the origin and history of the nation of Israel
during that time period.
The New Testament was
written probably between AD50 and AD100 and comprises
the four Gospels (accounts
of the life of Christ), the Acts of the
Apostles (account of the early years of the Christian
church), the letters
(written by early leaders to various churches and individuals),
and the Revelation (a
prophecy about the last times).
How
did it come to be written? 
The earliest parts of the
Old Testament appear to have been written by Moses (one
of Israel's earliest and greatest leaders), often at the instigation
of God as an account of God's dealings with Israel.
Subsequently
scribes obviously wrote down things that were happening and these were
formed into the historical books.
Other
key writers were king David and king Solomon, and then a variety of
prophets.
In the New Testament,
the Gospel writers collected together all the information they could
about the life of Christ and thus we have four books recounting the
same history from differing viewpoints.
The
letters came to be written as the travelling church leaders communicated
with friends and with churches they had been to.
The
Revelation was written by the apostle John recording a vision he had
received.
Aren't
they full of mistakes?
This is a question many ask when first being introduced
to the Bible.
The
questioner usually goes on to say, "Surely
when the writings were passed on down through history, weren't mistakes
made so that we have a very different version from the original?"
Fortunately we are able to give a clear answer to these two questions.
Let's
start with the first and more general question. The answer to that is,
"No, there are questionable words and if you look in a Bible, at
the bottom of any page, you will find what those words are - and there
are not many!"
So
why is that? To answer that we have to consider the Old and New Testaments
separately.
Why
a reliable Old Testament? 
The strange thing (at first sight) is that we don't
have tremendous numbers of old parchment finds by archaeologists and
the reason for this is twofold.
First,
all ancient writings were written on parchment which can eventually,
with use, become marked, disfigured and even destroyed.
Second,
the Jews had such a high view of these ancient writings that copying
and using the scrolls was subject to the most stringent of rules.
When
copying, only the experts could copy and the utmost care had to be taken
and if there was the slightest mistake the manuscript had to be destroyed
completely.
Similarly
when being used, if the manuscript became disfigured it had to be destroyed
so there was absolutely no possibility of a false record being conveyed.
The integrity of the Old Testament documents was the highest possible.
Why
a reliable New Testament?
In the case of the New Testament we have confidence
for almost the exact opposite reason - there are so many.
It
is estimated that we have over 24,000 (!) manuscript copies of portions
of the New Testament that date from before AD350.
When
you compare this with other ancient writings which scholars accept,
it is staggering because for the best of ancient classical writings
there are rarely more than 20 copies, more often only 7 or 8.
When
we compare all these New Testament manuscripts we find an amazing uniformity.
Apart
from the actual New Testament writings, there are also many other
fragments of documents by early Christian writers, so many that one
scholar wrote that the quotations of the New Testament scriptures quoted
in the works of early Christian writers "are so extensive that
the New Testament could virtually be reconstructed from them without
the use of the actual New Testament manuscripts".
Why
were these particular writings included?
Why include what's been included, and exclude other
writings?
This
is where we come to what is called the
Canon of Scripture. Canon comes from the Greek
word Kanon meaning reed or measuring stick or standard. The
word 'canon' applying to Scripture means "an officially accepted
list of books"
The Hebrew canon of the Old Testament
first came into being after the sacking of Jerusalem and the dispersing
of the Jews in AD70.
Up
until then they had been happy to use the collection of what we now
call the Old Testament writings, having been passed down for many, many
centuries. With the break up of the nation in AD70 it was felt a formalised
list of the books be decided upon.
The
leaders and scholars only included a book in the canon if:
- it
appeared to come from the inspiration of God,
- had
no question mark over it,
- had
life transforming power and,
- was
accepted by the whole community.
Similarly
the New Testament canon was
acknowledged in the fourth century AD, in order to counter heresies
and spurious writings.
For
the early church the above rules applied, as well as requiring that
the key leaders (the apostles) in the first century had agreed and approved
the documents.
Thus
any writing (and there were many) that did not seem to be touched by
the inspiration of God, or was in any way questionable, was excluded
from the canon.
Summary
so far
Contrary to much casual comment, the writing and compiling
of the Biblical documents underwent amazing scrutiny.
What
we have today is therefore, a remarkably accurate representation of
the original writings of the Scriptures and where there is doubt over
words, that is made obvious.
If
we have questions about the Scriptures, they need not be over the reliability
of the documentation!
Why
so many Bibles?
So why do we have so many version of the Bible today?
We
now turn to the question of translation.
We've
said that the Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek and therefore,
for our use today, it has to be translated into English.
Translating
an ancient language two thousand years old is not always easy, and so
different translators may use different English words to try to convey
the same meaning.
Scholars
of the Bible may learn the original languages and read it in the original.
For most of us however, we don't need to go to those lengths.
Although
there are a number of different translations that came out last century
the meaning is basically the same.
Some
may be in older English, some with formal language, some with informal
as the translators have sought to provide easy reading for different
levels of literacy.
Some
versions are paraphrases which are free renderings that don't seek to
convey the exact words, but merely the sense of the sentence to give
a feel of the overall meaning.
The
New International Version
is one of the most commonly used modern versions today and one of the
newest paraphrase versions is the called "The
Message" .
Rather than see the variety of different versions (translations) as
a problem, we should see the variety as something that adds richness
to our understanding.
So
what have we covered? 
We have considered:
- How
the Bible came to be written
- Why
the Old Testament is reliable
- Why
the New Testament is reliable
- How
the particular books of the Bible were chosen
- How
different translations cater for different people
In other words, what we have in the Bible is almost exactly as it was
originally written, and we can trust it!
What we have to do next is see what it says and consider can we trust
what it is saying to us as we live at the beginning of the twenty first
century.
Can
we help?
This page is one in a series and we therefore encourage
you to read the others, which we hope you may find helpful.
Perhaps you would like to talk further about these things or even have
someone pray with you. If that is so then the leaders of Rochford Community
Church are available to help you.
Remember,
if you want to e-mail Tony with any questions, it's tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk
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