History and Makeup of the Bible

What today we call books in the Bible are documents created by writers and sometimes several of them. They were written during at least a thousand years and comprise different kinds of literature, from histories to symbolic descriptions of the end of the world. Different branches of Christianity include different Old Testament books in their Bibles, but most include the entire New Testament. The Old Testament has about half a millions words and the New Testament about a quarter of a million. The Bible, therefore, is a large collection of books that would take at least a few weeks to read from cover to cover.

The books in both testaments were likely all written on papyrus, a dried plant material from the pith of a reed grown in marshy areas along the Nile and in other regions around the Mediterranean. It was made by hand into a thick paper-like substance, from which we get the word paper.

Sections of papyrus were often assembled into long scrolls, which had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive. Many other objects were also made from it, including mats, rope, sandals, baskets, and boats. The disadvantages of papyrus were that it was brittle and could not be folded without the risk of cracking. It was also vulnerable to moisture and aridity. Papyrus continued to be used through most of the Middle Ages and was often cut into sheets and bound in a codex, the precursor to the modern book. Codices had the advantage of being more compact and portable than scrolls.

In the first century AD, documents began to be written on animal skin, a smoother and more durable writing surface. Two kinds of skin were used, although it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. Parchment came from sheep, young cows, and goats, and a higher grade of parchment, called vellum, came from calfskin. Like papyrus, parchment and vellum were assembled into codices. Parchment was far more durable than papyrus and had superior ability to stand up to both extremes of humidity,

By the twelfth century, paper was introduced by Muslims, who had learned how to make it from the Chinese. Soon, both parchment and paper were in wise use, although papyrus remained an option. Once the production of paper became an established industry, it supplanted papyrus and parchment because, if it were of good quality, it combined the advantage of durability with affordability.

Before the invention of the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century, Bibles were painstakingly copied by hand. The production of a Bible, therefore, could take months. It wasn’t actually the invention of the printing press that changed the world but Gutenberg’s invention of individual letters that could be quickly arranged in different sequences to make words and sentences and reused to make others. He had other challenges, including the invention of a suitable ink, but moveable type was his crowning achievement.

Four centuries before Gutenberg, the Chinese had invented moveable type. But because of the intricacy of the Chinese language, which had thousands of characters, printing in China never achieved the efficiency of Gutenberg’s press. The first book he produced was a Latin Bible.

The Bible contains many different kinds of documents, beginning with God’s establishment of a unique relationship with the Israelite, who would be the ancestors of Jesus. In the Old or First Testament of Christian Bibles, first there are histories such as Genesis, a prayer book (Psalms), wisdom literature (Proverbs), and many books either written by or containing the thought-forms of prophets (Isaiah). In the New Testament, there are books about the life and teaching of Jesus (Matthew), a history of the early church (Acts), many letters, essays, and sermons (Romans), and finally a book filled with colorful images of what will happen at the end of human history (Apocalypse).

From start to finish, the Bible tells the story of God’s dealings with humanity. These dealings may be difficult for a modern person to comprehend or imagine, but they exist. In the person of Jesus the Christ, and through the Holy Spirit, God summons us to find and connect with our Creator-Provider-Sustainer.

When Jesus lived, in the first third of the first century, only Jews regarded the Old Testament as scripture (sacred writings), which meant that the earliest Christians, who were nearly all Jewish, viewed it, as they do today, in the same manner. All of the letters (epistles) Paul wrote were finished before any of the four Gospels was composed. Letters by Paul, his close associates, or others soon began to be circulated among Christian communities, which because of censorship or persecution by the Jewish authorities often met secretly in homes. By the end of the first century, Christians had come to revere most of the books in the New Testament, which they now placed on a par with the Old Testament.

The term canon means a rule, principle, or criterion according to which something is judged. It is used by theologians to designate which the collection of sacred books are accepted as genuine and therefore properly included in the Bible. Different branches of Christianity have different canons, but nearly all accept as canonical thirty-nine books in the Old Testament (some include more) and the twenty-seven in the New Testament. The history behind these differences is complex. Christians appear to have “closed” the canon in the second century, so no other books were added, a decision later formalized (382 AD).

Countless Christians have claimed God first spoke to them when they read sections of the New Testament. If you find yourself on the fence about placing faith in God through Christ, try reading two or three of its books. Perhaps begin with the Gospel of John, which presents a well-developed understanding of who Jesus was and what he represented, and from there move on to one of Paul’s short epistles, such as Ephesians or Colossians. After that, make your way through Romans, which Paul wrote to Christians living in administrative center of the Roman Empire.