1. Introduction
In 2 Timothy 3:16, we are told that all Scripture is inspired by God. In Hebrews 4:12, we are told that the word of God is like a sharp sword, that it is active and alive.
What do we mean when we say that the Scriptures are inspired by God?
At the very least it must mean that God has led the people to write what they wrote. They may or may not have been aware that the Holy Spirit was directing their thoughts, but in some way this was what happened.
Some of the Bible was contextual, such as the letters. There was a problem at some church, so Paul sent a letter to correct the community and direct them in a more helpful path.
2. Old Testament
The Old Testament consists of 39 books and is divided into 3 parts- Torah or Law, Writings and Prophets. There are about 29 authors in total, although the authorship of some books or parts of books is uncertain.
Moses lived around 1500 BC, while Micah, the last of the prophets, lived around 450 BC, and 1 & 2 Chronicles were written around 400 BC.
There were many other religious writings that were honoured by different Jewish communities. These communities were scattered all around Middle East, Europe, North Africa, even into Asia.
Eventually rules were established: the original had to be in Hebrew,it had to claim to be inspired by God, the author had to be a recognised prophet or leader, and the writing had to be consistent with the rest of Scripture.
By Jesus’ time the Old Testament as we have it was pretty much accepted.
In the days before the printing press was invented, all books had to be copied by hand. A group of educated religious leaders called “Scribes” carefully copied every word on a scroll. There were tables that listed how many times each word appeared on each scroll. On completing a scroll, the scribe had to count how many times each word occurred in his cope and compare it with the table. If he made even just one mistake he tore it up and burned it, and then started again.
3. New Testament
There are 27 books in the New Testament , written by 8 or so authors, depending on whether you think Hebrews was written by Paul, and how many people named John wrote the books of Gospel, 1,2,3, John, and Revelation
The New Testament was written in Greek, the language of commerce. Most people knew some Greek as well as their own local language, so writing the texts ni Greek assured that many people would understand it.
The New Testament consists of three parts: Gospels + Acts, Letters, Revelation.
There is a little dispute about the exact dates of composition of some of the books, but it can be argued that they were all completed by 70 AD, that is within 40 years of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.
The rules for canonicity in the New Testament were similar to that of the old: books had to be of apostolic origin, that is written by an apostle or someone close to an apostle, they had to have orthodox teaching, and be recognised by the church as divine Scripture.
Various collections started circulating around the church very early The Canon (the recognised list of books) started developing by the end of first century and was completed by 200 AD.
4. Preservation of Text
Ancient documents were not easily copied or preserved. Every document had to be copied by hand. We can imagine that over the course of hundreds of years, documents could be lost, destroyed by flood or fire, or just fall apart from age.
For example: Plato lived about 400 B.C. We have just 7 copies of his work dating to AD 900, a twelve hundred year gap from the tome of writing to the earliest existing manuscript.
Aristotle lived about 300 B.C. We have 49 copies of which the earliest dates to 1100, that’s a gap of 1400 years.
Contrast this with the abundance of biblical source documents.
Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise over 900 manuscripts including nearly all of the Old Testament. In Cairo a warehouse was found containing 250,000 Hebrew pieces of manuscripts dating from about 800 A.D.
New Testament. We have 9600 copies, some dating back to about 130 A.D., that is within 60-70 years. We also have 19000 copies in other languages like Latin, Aramaic
There is nothing like it in ancient literature for either the quantity of sources or for the closeness of the documents to the time the original was first written.
It is all very well having lots of copies, but are they accurate? Well from all of these sources, they are 99.5% accurate, that is they agree with each other that much. This is for both the New and the Old Testament. Not only that but no variations affect our understanding of God, salvation, heaven, hell.
From all of this we can be very confident that the versions of the Greek and Hebrew texts are very similar to the originals.
5. What does it mean?
God has spoken in many ways, through many people.
Prophets heard God’s voice, spoke it out, wrote it down.
Apostles wrote letters, accounts of life and ministry of Jesus etc. Their authority was such that their words are the Word of God.
God worked hard to make sure that this book is trustworthy as His living word to us.
The Bible is a very special book. It is God’s letter to us, carefully copied and preserved, then translated so that we can read it in our own native language.
