By Gene S. Foster, M.S.

Do you know the process by which the Bible was written? Twenty years ago I was still a new Christian when I realized that I knew nothing about how this grand Book came into existence. I had never heard any lessons in churches about this so I began to personally research the subject. This short article is to set out the basic manner in which the Bible was written. The subject is a vastly complex one that has kept many brilliant scholars busy for their life times. I will start at the beginning of its writings and touch only on the basics. This article will not explore the issue of the controversy of English translations.

What the Bible Is

The Bible is God’s written Word to human kind. It is the communication that the Supreme, supernatural Being, Whom we call God, has given to us. In it, God reveals Himself, what He has done, and then what He will do. It also reveals the nature and character of mankind. From the very first verse to the last, the Bible has one theme that runs as a river through its course. This theme is Jesus Christ. He is pictured prophetically in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), and then Christ is revealed in His last will and testament which Christians call the New Testament. The Bible is actually a library of 66 books, thirty nine of which are the Old Testament, and the remaining twenty-seven being the New. These books were written at different times by different writers who were following God as they wrote.

Inspiration – God’s Manner of Writing

The method by which the Bible was written is called Inspiration. This word is associated with breathing and, as used in the Bible, it means to be God Breathed.

This process involved human writers working as penmen who were instructed how and what to write by the supernatural God. Since God is all powerful and everywhere present, He can communicate His thoughts and words to people of His choosing. A few verses of Scripture amply demonstrate this process in action.

“And the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book…” Exodus 17:13

“Thus speaketh the Lord God of Israel, saying, write thee all the Words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.” Jeremiah 30:2

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In these verses we see that the Lord instructed His writers to write words of God’s choosingin a book. Two New Testament verses further explain the divine writing process:

“All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable…” II Timothy 3:16.

“For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spakeas they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” II Peter 1:21

The first verse declares that God has inspired (or given) all of the words of Scripture. This means that the words came from God as much as we breathe out our own breath when we speak or sing. In the second verse, the Apostle Peter clearly says that the words did not come from within any man but rather that the men who wrote God’s Word said only what the Holy Spirit directed them to say. And what they said, they wrote. And those writings became our present day Bible!

When the Writing Started

The Bible was not written all at one time. Rather it was written over a time span of many centuries. I agree with those that trace the first writings of the Bible to Adam, the first man. The clue to this is given at Genesis 5:1 which begins with the words: “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” Later at Genesis 6:9 and 10:1, the same is said for Noah and his sons respectively. These are the signatures of early patriarchs signing off on the earliest portions of Scripture that they wrote and preserved under God’s inspiration. These ancient Scriptures would have been written perhaps 6,000 or more years ago and were then preserved through the worldwide flood by Noah.

Roll the Presses

God later used Moses to bring these earlier writings together and then expand God’s written Word with new things given directly to him by God. Moses lived some 3,600 years ago or 1,600 years before Jesus Christ. Bible critics have long contended that Moses couldn’t have written because it was thought by secular scholars that writing was not yet invented in Moses’ time. That idea was the first of many blunders committed by Bible criticizers because it is now broadly understood that writing was commonly used by the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians who are known with certainty to have employed writing at least by 3,000 B.C., and possibly earlier.

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The Old Testament

Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – the first five books of our Bible. Collectively, these five books are called the “Pentateuch” and these are thefoundational writing of Scripture.

When we speak of Moses or other writers writing a book of Scripture, we always mean that the man was the holder of the pen but God was the giver of the words written. We know that God communicated with man: by direct voice, by dreams, by visions and other methods that we don’t understand. The important thing that everyone can understand is thatGod got written what He wanted written! In this process of inspiration, God directed Moses what to write from the records of Adam, Noah and others. Then God also added entirely new things from the body of words that God had spoken to Moses over his long life of service to God. The end result was the Pentateuch in exact words of God’s choosing.

Over the next twelve hundred years, God worked in similar ways to cause other selected men to write more of His words in other books. The list includes Joshua and Samuel; David and Solomon; Jeremiah and Isaiah; Ezekiel and Daniel; then at least eleven of the so called “minor prophets”. It is true that we don’t know the authors of some books but this does not remove the place of such books from the canon of Divine Scripture.

The Old Testament writings ended about 400 years before Christ with the book of Malachi. Now in this we have a marvel that only God could produce because over twenty men were the penmen of the Old Testament over those 1200 years. The marvel is that though thesewriters were vastly separated by centuries and further separated by the gulf of culture, occupation, education, station in life and circumstances of their lives, these men managed to write 39 Old Testament books that possess one common non- conflicting theme. Imagine a book written today by twenty authors on any given subject. The product would be a book without purpose or plan; a book containing sharp disagreement in purpose, principles, conclusions, and methods. It simply would not have been possible for human beings to write a book with a cohesive, unified theme under the conditions that the Old Testament was known to be written. Those are the circumstances under which the Old Testament was written yet it is a perfectly unified, logical, and consistent picture of Jesus Christ and His works for man.

In this single unity of the Old Testament we find Jesus Christ promised in Genesis 3:15. We find Him pictured as a substitutionary ram in Genesis 22:13. His perfections find form in the Tabernacle. We hear His prophetic voice crying from the cross (1,000 years before He was born) in Psalm 22. As the Old Testament proceeds during the centuries of its unfolding revelation, it becomes increasingly

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vivid in its depictions of Christ. Isaiah 53 describes his manner of physical life and death as the Lamb of God. Daniel 9:24-27 establishes a precise

calendar for His physical death. Other passages carry the reader even further into the future as they describe God’s kingdom of earth.

The New Testament

Jesus Christ was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Technicalities of our calendar place His birth to be about 4 B.C. and His death to be about 30 A.D. His ministry lasted only three and one-half years but these were years that even unbelievers have to admit have set the course for mankind these past two millennia.

As Jesus Christ walked among men, He spake the Word of God. The Bible (John 1:1-14) declares Him to have been the Creator who then came in human flesh among men. The words of Jesus were recorded by His disciples then later the Spirit of God directed chosen men to write the words that were to become New Testament Scripture. The Lord Jesus also said many things that God did not choose to put into Scripture (John 21:25) but every word that He spoke was the Word of God because He was, and still is, the very God. Then God began to direct chosen men to write the New Testament.

The Book of James is thought by many scholars to have been the first New Testament book actually written, being produced about 50 A.D. By 96 A.D. we can say with certainty that its last book, Revelation, was completed. With the completion of Revelation the Lord added a warning against anyone who would be bold to either add or subtract from the words (see Revelation 22:18-19). This is how we know that God’s inspired Word came to a place where God said, in effect, “The End”. Any writings or declarations claiming to be new messages from God after the Revelation of Jesus Christ are not from God and are to therefore be ignored as far as Scripture is concerned.

The New Testament contains the Gospels which are the record of Christ’s ministry; Acts, the early history of His church; Epistles, letters which outline events and doctrinal principles; andRevelation, the prophetic declaration of end time events.

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Preservation of God’s Word

Many people will accept that God got His Word written (inspired)in perfect form, but then they take an absurd turn into illogic by the mistaken notion that those perfect Scriptures became full of errors, or even that whole books were lost and became “the lost books of the Bible”.

Let us stop and think about this for a moment. If God can create all things from nothing and then miraculously transfer His words into the mind of

mortal men who then wrote with perfection as He did – why do some think that He cannot preserve through time what He has written?

In fact the Scriptures say that He has preserved His written Word:

 

“The words of the Lord are pure words…Thou shalt preserve them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” Psalm 12:6-7

God has here promised through David, His inspired penman of the Psalms, that He would preserve the very words that He had caused to be written. The reader will have to ponder why some “scholars” say that He didn’t keep this promise!

Now we must question the scholars who “know” that the Bible today has errors in it. This question is based upon another declaration of the inspired psalmist:

“Thy Word is True from the beginning: and every one of Thy righteous judgmentsendureth forever.” Ps. 119:160

How can God’s Word be true from the beginning if it is not all preserved? How can its righteous judgments be preserved forever if some of it is in error from lack of preservation? And if it is in error, how can it be profitable as stated in II Timothy 3:16:

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness…” II Timothy 3:16

How can a non-preserved Bible be profitable if we don’t know what part is accurate and what part is preserved? Some “scholars” say that the Bible has errors and that we should all just trust their judgment. In so saying, they imagine themselves to be gods who can supposedly decide what is truth and what is not!

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Copying

God’s Word, Old and New Testaments, was preserved by ancient copyists. For the Old Testament, the Jewish scribes were the copyists and we owe these ancients a deep debt of gratitude. Then the loyal people of the churches of the Christian era became the copyists of New Testament scripture.

These copyists were not infallible in their copying so we don’t claim that they couldn’t produce errors. But preservation of both Old and New testaments was achieved because of the uncompromising checking process and unrelenting devotion to word perfect preservation of the inspired originals to which the biblical copyists subjected their work. We must first understand that these people knew that they were not copying the writings of man. Instead, they were keenly aware

that they were copying the very words of God and that they were held responsible by God for the quality of their work. These men were exceedingly careful in the copying and checking process and so they developed a procedure to catch errors as small as a single Hebrew letter. For example, the Old Testament Jewish scribes would count letters and words on each original page and then they would count the letters and words on the copy. If the numbers on the copy did not tally with the original, the entire page was discarded. They had many other editing techniques that produced perfect copies for generation after generation and century and century. The New Testament copyists were no less careful and no doubt employed similar techniques.

Some have questioned whether the copyists were honest. How do we know that they didn’t fudge things, leaving some embarrassing things out and/or adding things that they thought would embellish the writings? We know that they were honest because of the content and consequences of their writings. Concerning content, it is clear that they were honest since both Old and New Testament copyists faithfully recorded things that were shameful to the major figures of the testaments. Old Testament scribes, for example, recorded the idolatries of Israel and God’s bitter denunciations against them. They also recorded the moral and spiritual failures of their great heroes such as Abraham, Moses and David. Yet for century after century those copyists never failed to preserve that which God had originally given in Scripture, however embarrassing it was to these copyists. The New Testament copyists also had cause for embarrassment as they recorded the childish arguments of the disciples of Christ and such blights as Peter’s denial of Christ. And yet, there they are still – the embarrassments, humiliations and shame -still preserved after centuries of copying and recopying.

There is also the matter of the consequences that those copyists and their loved ones paid for what they wrote. Would you write lies if you knew that it would cost either yourself or your closest loved ones their lives or bring suffering upon you or your family?

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Very often, these copyists did experience persecution and martyrdom for what they wrote. Therefore we know that they had every motive for honesty. People demonstrate rank ignorance when they accuse the preservers of God’s Word of dishonesty and carelessness. Dear reader, would you die for a book which you had carelessly copied or even purposely counterfeited? And if you say yes to that, would you be willing for your family to die for your conspiracy or carelessness? Why would you expect these people to be different in their feelings and fears than you?

We have many other reasons to believe that our Bible was inspired by God and providentially preserved by Him as He enabled the copyists to preserve His Word.

Finally, we must remember that these copyists did not work without aid from heaven. Though they were not infallible, the Spirit of God placed a inexhaustible fervency in their hearts and minds that refused to accept anything

short of perfection in their work. These copyists were not inspired as had been the original writers but they were illuminated by the Spirit of God. This means that the Spirit gave them fervency, wisdom and skill as they worked, and from that illumination they produced perfect generations of copies to preserve God’s original Words.

Who Decided What Books Would Be In The Bible?

Many today speak confidently about the “The Lost Books of the Bible”. And many others wonder how, and by whom, the books presently found in the Bible were selected. The Roman Catholic Church claims that it determined which books were Scripture some 400-500 years after Christ. Is this so?

In answer, we can positively say that since God promised that He would preserve His Word we know that there are not any lost books of the Bible. The same God Who created all things decided which books would be His Holy Scripture and He has preserved every one of them in our present Bible! Yes there are indeed many ancient writings which have a spiritual theme – but age alone of a writing does not make it Holy Scripture! Neither did a writing become Scripture just because of apostolic or prophetic authorship. This should be clear since, as already noted, not even all the Words of Jesus Christ that He spoke during His earthly ministry were intended by God to be part of written Scripture even though all of His Words were certainly the Word of God. Since this is true, then certainly we should be able to understand that not everything that Peter, Paul or other notables wrote was intended by God to be Scripture.

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As far as the individual books chosen for the Old and New Testaments, we should remember that God is supernatural. He is able to communicate His will in writing by impressions that He has made upon the minds of those who knew Him. Can we imagine that He could not, or would not, clearly impress upon the minds of His people the particular books that He wanted man to recognize as Holy Scripture? Of course He can – and He did!

“The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever He will.” Proverbs 21:1

The manner by which God did this has been called, “The Witness of the Spirit”. This means that the Spirit of God impressed upon the collective minds of His people through the centuries the particular books that were to be Scripture. The Old Testament Jews and New Testament Christians knew instinctively what books were Scripture and they ignored all other writings that falsely claimed the status of Scripture because the Spirit of God witnessed to their minds and hearts.

By the time of Christ, the Jews (who were the divine guardians of the Old Testament) had long been satisfied as to which books belonged in the Old Testament. The Spirit of God had quietly settled the issue in their hearts hundreds of years before Christ and more than 1,000 years before there was any such thing as the Roman Catholic Church which later claimed certain other old writings to be Old Testament. Today, they still make such an absurd claim.

Now, to the New Testament. It is has be shown that Christians already recognized our current twenty-seven books as the New Testament canon by 200 A.D., some 250 years before the Catholic Church was fully formed. Any quick review of early Christian history will confirm this. The early Christians did not get their recognition of the New Testament books from the Roman Catholic Church because that organization did not exist until approximately 450 A.D. even in its earliest forms. If the reader still doubts this then let him read the New Testament. You will search in vain for any figure like the Catholic Pope; Christians praying to or through Mary; Christians using beads as a prayer aid; or Christians baptizing infants!

In this silent but profound witness, the Holy Spirit impressed upon the collective hearts of believers those books that God intended as Scripture. These impressions by the early Christian scholars were buttressed by certain objective criteria that they used to help determine which books to consider as Scripture. One such objective criterion was whether the writing was by an apostle. Yet not all of the apostolic writings passed the test of canonicity. For example, even certain writings of Peter and Paul were considered but rejected by the collective voices of Christian scholars in hundreds of churches. In the final analysis, only those books

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that received the approval of God’s Spirit became accepted as Scripture in the hearts of early believers. We know these things because we possess the early writings of Christian scholars. These wrote many doctrinal treatises with Scripture references. And these references tell us which books were, and were not, considered by them to be Scripture by 200 A.D.

The New Testament canon was not settled by late church counsels. The books of the New Testament were settled by the witness of the Spirit of God into the hearts and minds of His people by approximately 200 A.D.

Languages and Translations of the Bible

The Old Testament was written and preserved in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. TheNew Testament was originally written in a common Greek form.

It was only a matter of time before people of other languages would want to read Holy Scripture in their own language. And so today, God’s Word has been written in many languages. The conversion of Scripture from its original languages to other languages is called a translation.

Many people have the strong unfounded opinion that translation necessarily corrupts the original Scriptures. It is true that translators are often faced with enormous problems because a receiving language, such as English or Spanish, may not have a word that directly corresponds with a word in the original languages of Scripture (Hebrew or Greek). The translator must possess the linguistic skills and be illuminated by the Holy Spirit to know how to make the translation while still preserving God’s full original message.

I am not a linguist and so I cannot describe how God’s Word may be precisely preserved in a translation. But I do believe that God is the Master of languages. And I take note that when Jesus Christ gave His Great Commission (Mark 16:15) to His churches that He said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. In saying this, He surely understood that sending His Word into all the world meant translating His Word into the various languages of the world. If God’s Word could not be preserved in a faithful translation, then the Lord gave His people an impossible task. But since He did give this command we know that the original languages of the Word of God can be accurately translated into many other languages.

Summarizing, we do have God’s Word faithfully and accurately translated into many languages today. The King James Version (1611), is that translation for English speaking people and we recommend it above all other English versions.

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The reasons for this are well documented in many books, a few of which are listed in the suggested reading list below. A future article will explore this issue.

One Example of Preservation

The process of preservation that I have described is not only logical and factual as presented but it is shown to be true by at least one book of the Bible.

As described, during the Old Testament era the books were continuously copied and recopied by Jewish scribes. About 200 years before Christ a copy of the book of Isaiah was placed in a cave with some other documents near the Dead Sea. In 1946 A.D., this cave was discovered and the ancient documents that had been in it undisturbed for 2,200 years were discovered.

When the Isaiah scroll was carefully unrolled it measured 23 feet in length. With great excitement, the scholars read the scroll and compared its words to other copies of Isaiah that had been produced hundreds of years after it. They anticipated that there would be many differences between this copy and later copies because they assumed that errors would have accumulated in the copies that were made after this scroll.

To their astonishment, the copy of Isaiah from the cave was identical to the later copies! In other words, the process of copying through the centuries did not produce errors in the vast majority of later copies!

In passing it should be said that there are a few ancient copies that are different from the vast majority of copies. These copies were made by men with less than perfect motives or at least less care than the high amount of diligence that has been described. This produced a few flawed copies that have survived today. Unfortunately, the producers of translations after the King James Version of 1611 have decided to use these flawed manuscripts rather than those historically reliable ones. The result of this today is about one-hundred modern translations that distort or omit cardinal truths of the Word of God. In these translations, the deity of Christ is often undermined by the omission of such titles as “Lord” before the name Jesus; the virgin birth is denied when His mother is called “young woman” rather than “virgin”; and when the atoning basis of the blood is denied by omission of the word “blood” in references to God’s plan of human salvation.

You can be confident that God has preserved His word in a translation available to you today – the King James Version (1611). As a final note, I do not recommend the New King James Version which claims to be the same as the old King James Version with only minor changes of words. Careful examination of the New King James Version reveals that it has many of the same flaws already mentioned for all other versions produced after the King James 1611. A future lesson will present further details about the English Bible translation issue.

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Conclusion

We hope this brief article helps you if you are just beginning your search into the eternally vital matter of how the Bible was written. There are many good books written on varying levels of technicality that students of God’s Word can obtain to learn more. If you would like to learn more about this subject you will find books available in Christian bookstores or in various mail order or internet sources. I have included a list of some books that have been very helpful to me though some of these may be out of print.

Questions to Build Your Knowledge

Answers to Questions

Suggested Reading

  1. How the Bible Became a Book, by Terry Hall, Victor Books (1825 College Avenue,Wheaton, Illinois, 60187), 1990.
  2. The Identity of the New Testament Text, by Wilbur Pickering, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980.
  3. The Battle for the Bible, by Harold Lindsell, Zondervan, 1972.
  4. The Answer Book, by Dr. Samuel C. Gipp, Bible and Literature Missionary Foundation (713 Cannon Blvd., Shelbyville, Tn., 37160), 1989.
  5. Believing Bible Study, Edward F. Hills, The Christian Research Press (P.O. Box 2013,Des Moines, Iowa, 50310), 1977.
  6. The Future of the Bible, Jakob Van Bruggen, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1978.
  7. The Inspiration of the Bible, B.H. Carroll, Christ for the World Publishers (P.O. Box 3428, Orlando, Fl., 32802),

Questions to Build Your Knowledge

Answers to Questions

The Study Questions are in PDF format. You will need free Acrobat Reader to view this file. If you do not have Reader, click here to download from Adobe’s site.