Scribes and Scripture E-Book

John D. Meade

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Answers to Common Questions about the Writing, Copying, Canonizing, and Translating of the Bible There are many common questions and misconceptions surrounding the formation and history of the Bible: Why is the Bible composed of the current 66 books instead of others? Why are there so many translations? How are we to understand both the human and divine elements of the Bible? In Scribes and Scripture, scholars John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry answer these questions and give readers tools to interpret the evidence about God's word. Beginning with the history of the Bible—from the invention of the alphabet to the most recent English translations—the book focuses on three main areas: the writing and copying of the Bible, the canonization of the Bible, and the translation of the Bible. Using Old and New Testament scholarship, Meade and Gurry help God's people better appreciate the story of the Bible as a way to better appreciate the stories in the Bible.  - Engaging Visual Content: Contains maps, charts, sidebars, and pictures - Collaboration of Old Testament and New Testament Scholarship: Written by experts in both Old Testament (Meade) and New Testament (Gurry) textual scholarship  - Answers Common Questions: Specifically regarding textual criticism, the canon, and Bible translations 

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“This is the book I've been waiting for! With skeptical claims against the Bible readily available online, this book will be a resource I will refer to again and again. Looking for an accessible yet thorough explanation of how you got your Bible? Look no further than Scribes and Scripture.”

Alisa Childers, author, Another Gospel? and Live Your TruthandOther Lies; Host, The Alisa Childers Podcast

“Many Christians love the Bible and yet know little of the fascinating story of what happened between its original composition and the book we can hold in our hands today. In Scribes and Scripture, John Meade and Peter Gurry provide a succinct and yet amazingly detailed overview of how the Bible was written and copied, canonized, and translated. This book will enable Christians to understand why Protestants have a different canon than Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. It will teach them how to respond to secular critics who claim the Bible has been hopelessly corrupted over time or that the process of canonization was the arbitrary result of power struggles in the early church. And it will encourage them that we can trust our Bibles without ignoring or downplaying the messy realities of scribal errors, variant manuscripts, or disagreements about canonicity in the church. Properly considered, these ‘human’ elements in the story of the Bible in no way detract from the Bible’s authority as the word of God. I enthusiastically recommend this timely, unique, wise, and God-honoring book to anyone who wonders how we have received the Bible we have today. It will be the first book I recommend on the subject to any curious inquirer.”

Gavin Ortlund, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Ojai; author, Finding the Right Hills to Die On

“Misconceptions and myths about the Bible’s origins lead many to reject it and continue to confuse sincere believers. Now, at last, we have a book that shatters these misconceptions. This impressively informative book is based on solid scholarship, yet it is accessible, easy to read, and profitable for any reader at any level. Not for a generation have we seen such a helpful book on this topic! I heartily recommend it to everyone.”

Peter J. Gentry, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Old Testament and Senior Research Fellow of the Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary

“Questions proliferate today on the Bible as scholars, and even laypeople, debate whether the Scriptures were accurately copied and transmitted, whether the books accepted as canonical are the right ones, and whether our many translations are accurate or needed. Meade and Gurry give us a sane and responsible tour on all these questions. One of the striking features of the book is its fairness and its reasonableness. No book, of course, is written without a perspective, but Meade and Gurry aren’t trying to win a debate or to demonize opponents. They carefully present and analyze the evidence so that readers can make their own judgments. I can’t think of another book that introduces in such a brief and illuminating way matters of text, canon, and translation.”

Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The history of the Bible is complex: it involves multiple languages (ancient and modern), and it divides into two very much distinct (but also overlapping) branches we call the Old and New Testaments. Christians need trusted guides to lead us through that history. This is why I am so grateful for the work of Old Testament specialist John Meade, New Testament specialist Peter Gurry, and their Text & Canon Institute. They represent the newest generation of evangelical historians of the Bible, and they are both able and eager to keep a foot in the academy and a foot in the church. There are many threats to the orthodox viewpoint on text, canon, and translation. Scribes and Scripture is their attempt to serve the church by guiding Christians toward an accurate and faith-filled grasp of the Bible’s history.”

Mark Ward, Editor, Bible Study Magazine; author, Authorized:The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible

Scribes and Scripture

Scribes and Scripture

The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible

John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry

Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible

Copyright © 2022 by John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover and image design: Jordan Singer

First printing, 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are the authors’ own translations.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked NASB 1995 are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked NIV and NIV 2011 are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked NIV 1984 are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7789-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7792-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7790-1 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7791-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Meade, John D., author. | Gurry, Peter J., author.  

Title: Scribes and scripture: the amazing story of how we got the Bible / John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry.  

Description: Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2022005729 (print) | LCCN 2022005730 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433577895 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433577901 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433577918 (mobipocket) | ISBN 9781433577925 (epub)  

Subjects: LCSH: Bible—History. | Bible—Introductions. 

Classification: LCC BS445 .M33 2022 (print) | LCC BS445 (ebook) | DDC 220.95—dc23/eng/20220622 

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005729

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005730

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-10-19 12:50:11 PM

To my parents, John and Phyllis Meade, who bought me my first Bible and taught me to love it.

John D. Meade

To my mother, who, like Lois, taught me from childhood to know the Holy Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:15).

Peter J. Gurry

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: Text

1  Writing the Bible

2  Copying the Old Testament

3  Copying the New Testament

Part 2: Canon

4  Canonizing the Old Testament to the Reformation

5  The Old Testament in the Reformation Period

6  Canonizing the New Testament

Part 3: Translation

7  Early and Medieval Bible Translation

8  English Bible Translation to the King James

9  The English Bible after the King James

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Modern Canons

Appendix 2: Early Christian Canon Lists

Glossary

Illustration Credits

General Index

Scripture Index

Ancient Sources Index

List of Illustrations

Illustrations

Figure 0.1  Mary Jones’s signature in her Bible

Figure 1.1  Important locations in the ancient Near East

Figure 1.2  The silver amulets of Hetef Hinnom

Figure 1.3  An ancient fresco showing various writing tools

Figure 1.4  Eusebius’s Gospel Canons

Figure 2.1  The paleo-Hebrew for the name of God within Aramaic square script

Figure 2.2  The paleo-Hebrew for the name of God within Greek script

Figure 2.3  Important archaeological sites around the Dead Sea

Figure 2.4  The Great Isaiah Scroll corrected after a scribe skipped Isa. 40:7

Figure 2.5  The Tel Dan inscription showing David’s name spelled with three letters, not four

Figure 2.6  The poetic layout of Moses’s Song by the Sea in a proto-MT manuscript

Figure 3.1  Greek New Testament manuscripts charted by date and type

Figure 3.2  One of the oldest complete Bibles, Codex Sinaiticus (4th c.)

Figure 3.3  A scribal complaint visible on the first page of Hebrews in Codex Vaticanus (4th c.)

Figure 4.1  Athanasius of Alexandria

Figure 4.2  Augustine of Hippo

Figure 4.3  Jerome

Figure 5.1  The book of Proverbs in the Complutensian Polyglot

Figure 5.2  The Wisdom of Solomon in the Complutensian Polyglot

Figure 5.3  Martin Luther and Cardinal Cajetan at the Diet of Augsburg

Figure 6.1  The New Testament table of contents in Martin Luther’s 1534 German Bible

Figure 7.1  Moses depicted with horns by Michelangelo

Figure 7.2  The Virgin Mary depicted crushing the head of the serpent

Figure 7.3  Ancient Bible translations from least to most literal

Figure 7.4  The beginning of Mark’s Gospel in the Wycliffite Bible

Figure 8.1  The beginning of Mark’s Gospel in William Tyndale’s English New Testament

Figure 8.2  The death of William Tyndale, as depicted in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

Figure 8.3  The Geneva Bible (1560) was distinguished by its marginal notes

Figure 8.4  A copy of the Bishops’ Bible showing revisions of King James Version translators

Figure 8.5  A first edition of the King James Version showing three lines of Ex. 14:10 printed twice

Figure 9.1  The text of the Revised Version New Testament printed in full in the May 22, 1881, Chicago Tribune

Figure 9.2  Modern English translations from least to most literal

Figure 10.1  The Bible Thomas Jefferson cut apart to produce his customized Jefferson Bible

Tables

Table 2.1  Significant MT manuscripts before 1100

Table 2.2  Hebrew manuscripts from the third to eighth centuries AD

Table 2.3  Summary of witnesses to the Old Testament text

Table 2.4  Ex. 20:11 inserted between Deut. 5:15–16 in a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript

Table 2.5  LXX additions to Esther

Table 2.6  Sources on Goliath’s height

Table 2.7  Sources on the suffering servant

Table 3.1  The number of variants in Jude in Greek manuscripts, Greek New Testaments, and English Bibles

Table 4.1  Biblical books that are commented on and quoted

Table 4.2  Contents of the Apocrypha

Table 4.3  Old Testament canon lists reflecting the Hebrew canon

Table 4.4  Old Testament canon lists reflecting church use and acceptance

Table 6.1  Early Gospel manuscripts

Table 6.2  Early New Testament canon lists

Table 9.1  Revisions in modern English Bibles

Table 9.2  Inclusive language in the New International Version

Table 9.3  Changes from the Living Bible to the New Living Translation

Preface

We have had a long interest in the history of the Bible, going all the way back to our student days. We have continued to research and teach on this subject as professors and now directors of the Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary. In the last few years, we have been teaching the material in this book to church audiences around the country in our Scribes & Scripture conferences. Doing this has honed the material for church audiences and has confirmed to us that a new book on the history of the Bible is needed. We would like to start by thanking our church audiences for listening to earlier forms of this material and, in several cases, for providing encouraging and constructive feedback on it.

In the course of writing, we also have been helped and encouraged by many. First, we thank the experts who read early sections of the book: Timothy Berg, Anthony Ferguson, Ed Gallagher, Peter Gentry, Peter Head, Elijah Hixson, Drew Longacre, Kaspars Ozoliņš, Maurice Robinson, James Snapp, and Mark Ward. Second, the following pastors and laypeople who read the whole manuscript and offered invaluable feedback deserve thanks: Jenny Clark, Dru-Lynn Gentle, Marty Gurry, Jenny Hillyard, Kit Donald, Rich Richardson, and Cindi Steele. Third, thanks to Todd and Elisa Watson for lending us their cabin in northern Arizona so that we could complete the final stages of writing this book.

Last, but certainly not least, we thank our wives, Annie and Kris, and our children. Their sacrifice made the writing of this book possible.

John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry

Rim Country, AZ

Introduction

Mary Jones was about eight years old when she became a Christian. Having learned to read, she wanted to own a Bible in her native Welsh language. But in 1800, Bibles were expensive and hard to come by in Wales. A Bible owned by a relative of Mary’s, who lived several miles from her home, was her only access. So she saved for six years until she had enough money to buy one of her own. When she sought out a Bible, she was told that a Mr. Charles was her best hope. The only problem was that he lived some twenty-five miles from Mary’s home. Undeterred, she walked the entire way, barefoot, to find Mr. Charles and fulfill her dream of owning her own Bible. Mary’s story lives on today at a visitor’s center in Wales dedicated to her memory.1

Mary’s story reminds us of two realities that lie behind the book you’re reading. The first is why people care about the Bible at all. Today, especially in the West, some care mainly for historical or cultural reasons. The Bible is, as you probably know, the bestselling book of all time, and that proliferation has given it an extraordinary influence on history—on Western history certainly, but increasingly on the history of people across the globe. These reasons alone would be enough to warrant a book on how we got the Bible. But as much as the Bible has influenced art, politics, philosophy, economics, language, and so much else, it is the Bible’s own claim about itself—that it is the word of God—that gives us reason to care about its history. It is the million untold stories like Mary’s—personal stories of treasuring the Bible as divine revelation—that inspired us to write this book.

Fig. 0.1. A note in Mary Jones’s own hand, at the end of the Apocrypha, gives her birthdate and the date she acquired her Bible.

Besides the love that so many have for the Bible, the second reality is that there is a Bible for people to love. That’s why this book is not about the stories in the Bible, but rather the story of the Bible. It’s the story of how we got this book that’s been translated, forbidden, feared, argued over, abused, died for, and, above all, treasured. How did a collection of books written across millennia, gathered over centuries, copied by hand, and then printed become a single book we know as the Bible? Behind the question of how someone like Mary Jones acquires a Bible lies the much larger question of how there is a Bible for someone to acquire. And why do different branches of Christianity have different Bibles? Why were some books included and others left out? Who copied these books, and did they do a decent job?

There are different answers to these questions. Sometimes the story told is one of scandal, innuendo, and even conspiracy. The books that make up the Bible, it is said, were chosen at a council by power-hungry male bishops who suppressed the manuscripts that threatened their status. These same books were then copied by scribes eager to edit out the parts they didn’t like, so now we are left with bad translations. The distinct impression is that our Bible is the product of chance, a mere accident of history, something whose current form no one could have predicted. The implication is that it can’t be God’s word. This story often appeals to a secularizing culture that is deeply suspicious of claims to authority and more inclined than ever to reject some of the Bible’s unfashionable morality. But is it true?

Christians sometimes overreact to this first story by downplaying the human element and attributing everything about the Bible to God’s immediate work. The Bible’s history can seem like a two-act play in which God inspires the original authors, who then hand their works over to English translators. When the curtain rises, we have a leather-bound Bible, complete with chapter headings and cross-references. In this story, the line from God to us is very straight and very short. But is this true?

Between these two stories lies a wide spectrum of ideas about the process of how we got the Bible. We have regularly been asked about whether Hebrew scribes destroyed their copies if they made a single mistake, whether the canon was decided at the Council of Nicaea, or whether apocryphal Gospels were suppressed by church leaders. These are the common questions in the popular imagination, ones we answer in what follows.

Why This Book?

We chose to write this book because we see numerous benefits of knowing the history of the Bible.

Antidote

Sincere questions like those listed above are the first reason we have written this book. We want to offer a corrective to some common misconceptions. Few people have the luxury to study the history of the Bible at the depth scholars do. We hope this book is a service to those who want to know more. We also hope it serves as an inoculation against unhealthy skepticism. Those who love the Bible a great deal sometimes know next to nothing about how we got it. When they encounter “problem areas,” especially from skeptical sources, the effects can be jarring. This is especially true for young people raised in the church. Once they enter college, they discover that the secular academy has long treated the Bible like any other ancient book, human from beginning to end. Upon discovering the “human history” of the Bible, Christians can feel betrayed if they’ve never heard that the Bible has a history. A book that once seemed in a category by itself now looks all too human. Can they still trust it?

The wonderful thing about the Bible’s history is that so much of it is concrete—we are dealing with a book, after all. The facts are often what they are. Sometimes they do raise questions, and our goal is not to minimize those. In this history, there is much to agree on by all parties. But the question is how to interpret the evidence. To take one example, not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls align closely with the medieval Hebrew manuscripts on which our modern English Bibles are based. How do we interpret that? Should we take these unaligned texts as the rule or as the exception? In the case of the canon, do debates about certain books in the early church give us less confidence in the result or more? We are convinced that a fair interpretation of the evidence does not challenge the authority of the Bible. In many cases, it supports it. The difference is often not the evidence itself so much as how we explain it. Our goal is to offer a Protestant explanation that is honest with the evidence and shows why we think the Bible’s history supports its authority. Such an explanation can instill a greater appreciation and confidence in the Bible.

Inspiration

Beyond its apologetic value, the story of the Bible is a fascinating one. It’s full of twists and turns, heroes and villains, hard work, and innovation. All of this history provides much inspiration. A Christian can hardly read about Origen’s herculean textual work, the Masoretes’ care in copying, or William Tyndale’s death for his pioneering English translation without being moved to a greater appreciation for the Bible as we have it today. Just as noteworthy—maybe more so—is the army of anonymous scribes, those unsung heroes who copied letter by letter, sometimes in the cold, sometimes for little pay, but often because they valued the text over their own lives. Theirs was a thankless task, and without them we would have no Bible to speak of. All this should fill us with gratitude. We have been handed an incredible legacy—one we should be careful not to take for granted.

Interpretation

A third benefit of knowing the history of the Bible is that it improves our reading of the Bible. This is not the case for most books. If you buy the latest novel, you probably don’t need to know who published it, how it was typeset, or who picked the chapter titles in order to understand it. But the Bible has a history measured in millennia. It has not always looked the way it does now. When reading the Bible today, it helps to know something of the difference between its earliest forms and those in which we now encounter it. It helps to know how the books came to be in their current order. It helps to know what Bible footnotes mean when they say, “Some manuscripts have . . .” It sometimes surprises people to learn that the Bible did not always have verses or chapter headings; footnotes or red letters; cross-references or maps; headings; or even punctuation. All these were added to aid comprehension. But they can also hinder it when misunderstood. Knowing this history can lead to better interpretation.

Curiosity

A final motivation in writing this book is to spark your curiosity. As much as we tried to canvass the full story from ancient scribes to modern translations, we had to be selective. There is far more to discover, more to study, and so much more to learn. We would love for this book to inspire you to dig deeper, to investigate the story further. For some, learning this story may even inspire a lifelong academic study of this subject as it did for us—it certainly deserves it. There is no shortage of scholarly work to be done. For this reason, at the end of each chapter, we have pointed to books that will take you further. So, dig in.

Preview of the Book

The book is divided into three parts: (1) the writing and copying of the Bible, (2) the canonizing of the Bible, and (3) the translating of the Bible. We have illuminated the story by choosing relevant pictures and crafting sidebars to give further detail. They can often be read independently but will make the most sense when read as part of the story’s main thread. To better guide your reading, here is a brief overview of where we’re headed.

Part 1 details how the Bible was first written and then copied and transmitted by scribes. Given that scribes were human and made mistakes, these chapters explain how modern scholarship works to identify the original text of the Bible.

Part 2 describes the history of how we got the books in the Bible, or the question of the biblical canon. Chapters 4 and 5 unpack the Old Testament canon’s history up to the Reformation and beyond. Chapter 6 explains how we got the New Testament canon and also what early Christians thought about other books not finally recognized as canonical.

Part 3 chronicles the history of Bible translation, showing how God’s words were translated from early on by both Jews and Christians up to the time of the Reformation. The final two chapters in this section focus on the history of the English Bible, ending with a look at why we have so many English translations to choose from today.

The book’s conclusion addresses the major theological question raised by the preceding chapters: Does the human history of the Bible negate its divine origin? To the contrary, we argue that God has not left us without a sure word, just as he did not leave Mary Jones without one either.

Mary’s Legacy

The story of Mary Jones’s Bible does not end with her. In 1802, at a meeting with church leaders in London, Mr. Charles recounted her dedication to owning her own Bible. He was there to urge a solution to the lack of affordable Bibles in Wales. A pastor there named Joseph Hughes asked if a new society could be formed. But he went further, asking, “If for Wales, why not for the [united] kingdom? And if for the kingdom, why not for the world?” That question was eventually answered, with the help of William Wilberforce and other members of the famous Clapham Sect, by the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Today, it works with an international network of other Bible societies to produce and distribute millions of Bibles in hundreds of languages around the world. All this stems from one girl’s determination to own her own Bible.

In many ways, this is the story of the Bible. It is the story of those who have longed to have God’s word and the story of those who have labored to supply it. We hope it inspires you to do both.

1  It is known as the Byd Mary Jones World (https://www.bydmaryjonesworld.org.uk/). Mary’s story is told on the Bible Society’s website (https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/about-us/our-history/) and in William Canton, A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1904), 465–70.

Part 1

Text

1

Writing the Bible

We read the Bible today through a number of media, such as physical books, computers, smartphones, and tablet devices. Perhaps we do not think much about the different reading experiences that technology has produced: turning bound pages in a physical book, scrolling through text with a mouse, or sliding a finger on a phone screen to advance a story or news article. These media represent advances in book and information technology. Each of them brings about a new way to experience reading and communication, but our modern terms tablet and scrolling actually come from the world of ancient writing.

Similarly, ancient writers, scribes, and grammarians adopted and adapted the latest and greatest technology for producing, copying, and even interpreting the Bible. Although reading the Bible on a screen represents the latest advance in book technology for us, throughout millennia, Israelites, Jews, and Christians have engaged with scriptural texts by appropriating and advancing media technology. In this chapter, we will answer why the ancients, living in an orally dominant culture, began to write down anything at all, and we will show some of the social mechanisms and advances in material media that were in place when the Bible was written and first copied.

Why Write?

Let’s begin with a question you’ve probably never asked: Why was anything written down for someone else to read in the first place? Reading and writing seem natural to us today, but these arts had to be invented, passed down, and adapted for new circumstances. In cultures where stories were recited and transmitted orally among scribes and where not many people could read and write, what would have been the use of writing? Many biblical books were written and transmitted during the period when writing or scribal culture was being passed from eastern Mesopotamian kingdoms to western Semitic peoples, who in turn made major adaptions to the tradition they received. Even at the roots of Christianity, Papias (ca. AD 130) esteems oral sayings of the apostles above what he reads in books, “for I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and abiding voice.”1 And yet, authors and scribes did eventually commit their accounts and views to writing because that ensured that what was worth knowing would be preserved for perpetuity (see Luke 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:15).

Fig. 1.1. The ancient Near East and some of the locations mentioned in this chapter

Although we cannot know definitively why people began to write down speech, writing appears to have been invented alongside the human desire to communicate accurately. Kings and diplomats would communicate with each other by sending couriers with their written messages. The ancient Sumerian epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (ca. 2000–1700 BC) imagines King Enmerkar as the inventor of writing on clay tablets in the messenger context:

His [Enmerkar’s] speech was very grand, its meaning very deep; the messenger’s mouth was too heavy; he could not repeat it. Because the messenger’s mouth was too heavy, and he could not repeat it, the lord of Kulab [i.e., Enmerkar] patted some clay and put the words on it as on a tablet. Before that day, there had been no putting words on clay; but now, when the sun rose on that day—so it was: the lord of Kulab had put words as on a tablet—so it was! (lines 500–506)2

Enmerkar’s message was too difficult for the messenger to remember and recite to the lord of Aratta, and thus the king wrote the message on a tablet and sent it with the messenger so that he would convey the message accurately. The desire and need for accurate human communication inspired the invention of writing, and human beings have diligently innovated and advanced writing and reading technology ever since. As then, so now, the desire to communicate in writing accompanies advances in technology.

Writing Materials

If the Bible wasn’t written on a laptop or on golden plates from heaven, how was it written? Archaeologists have discovered that ancient scribes wrote on a number of surfaces with various instruments. Generally, scribes used a chisel and other cutting tools on stone, wet clay, and pottery, while they used ink and pen on papyrus (from the plant) and parchment (from sheep or goat skins; vellum, a parchment of a finer quality, was made from calf or kid skins). But they also used ink and a reed pen on pottery and plaster. Rarely, they inscribed texts on metals such as copper and silver.

Fig. 1.2. The silver amulets of Hetef Hinnom contain the first resemblance to a text from the Bible (the Aaronic blessing in Num. 6:24–26).

The Bible refers to these media. For example, Job wishes that his words are written down (Job 19:23–24). He first wishes that they are inscribed on a scroll made of papyrus or parchment (v. 23). Then he wishes his words to be etched or engraved in stone with the use of an iron stylus and lead (v. 24). The stylus (also said to be made of iron and having a diamond point in Jer. 17:1) was the well-known tool of the scribe (see Ps. 45:1; Jer. 8:8). “Lead” refers either to tablets or more probably to the material that filled the grooves of the etched stone. The Lord instructs Isaiah to write on a large tablet (stone, clay, or possibly wood) “with a man’s chisel” (Isa. 8:1). The same word translated here as “chisel” can be found in Exodus 32:4 as the instrument Aaron uses to fashion gold into the golden calf. Thus, the scribe would inscribe or engrave a message with this tool.

God writes the Ten Words (known as the Ten Commandments) “with his finger” on two stone planks or tablets (Ex. 31:18). The writing was on both sides of each tablet—that is, there were two copies of the Ten Words (32:15), since when kings made a covenant in those days, a copy of the covenant was placed in the shrine of each king (see below). But in Israel’s case, there was only one God; therefore, both copies were placed in the ark of the covenant (Deut. 10:2). Since the word tablet refers to a “surface” (see the bronze surfaces of the ten stands in 1 Kings 7:36), an author had to specify the material. The term refers to the wood planks on the altar or on a ship, or to a door (Ex. 27:8; 38:7; Ezek. 27:5; Song 8:9). Isaiah writes down a judgment oracle on a tablet and inscribes it in a scroll (Isa. 30:8). It’s not clear on what material Isaiah records the message, but either wood or stone would be natural. These various materials, especially stone, show permanence.

In the New Testament, Jesus writes in the dirt in the famous story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8). Many readers have been so curious about what Jesus writes—about which the text is silent—that they have missed a far more important feature about which the text is explicit. He writes “with his finger” (v. 6), just as God wrote the Ten Words (Ex. 31:18). The point is that Jesus, unlike the woman’s accusers, has the same divine authority as God, and this makes his mercy all the more remarkable. (For the textual problem with this passage, see chap. 4.)

Not only does Jesus write, but he also reads. In Luke 4:16–20, Jesus reads from the “book” (biblion) of Isaiah. While we don’t know the book’s physical material, we do know its format. This “book” must be a scroll, not a codex like a modern book, since Luke is careful to say that Jesus unrolls it and rolls it back up.3 Jews did not adopt the codex form until much later. Elsewhere, we learn of Paul’s eagerness to have Timothy bring him “the books [biblia], particularly the parchments” (2 Tim. 4:13). What these contain we can’t be sure, but copies of Old Testament books are very possible. Some have even suggested that “the parchments” may refer to codices, but this is uncertain. The scroll format is certainly still in view in Revelation, where we meet a “book” with seven seals that contains God’s eternal decrees (Rev. 5:1). What’s quite unusual is that it is written “inside and behind.” Only reused scrolls, called opisthographs, were written on both sides, and this is not what’s in view here. More than likely, the imagery is meant to point us to the similarly written scroll in Ezekiel 2:10 and is one more way John alludes to the Old Testament without citing it.

Fig. 1.3. A fresco from Pompeii showing various writing tools on the second row, including wax tablets, the precursor to the codex

One of the great advances in writing technology was a book format that allowed writing on both sides of the page, with leaves bound together along one edge to form a spine. This codex format—what we know as the book—was developed from wax tablets. By tying several tablets together, one could write much more. Replacing the tablets with papyrus or parchment sheets gave birth to the codex. While Jews continued to prefer the scroll format, Christians were early and eager codex adopters. All but a few of our copies of the New Testament are in codex format. Many theories have been offered to explain this distinctly Christian enthusiasm.4 It’s been suggested that the codex was a way for Christians to distinguish their sacred texts from profane ones; that it better accommodated collections such as the four Gospels or Paul’s letters; that it was more portable for Christian missionaries; or that it was simply more economical and convenient. There was probably no single cause, and we may never know all the reasons.

What we can say for sure is that the codex format encouraged further innovations. Two of the most important were Origen’s six-column Bible and Eusebius of Caesarea’s cross-referencing system in the Gospels.

Christian Innovation of the Codex Technology

Origen’s Hexapla

Having moved to Caesarea, Origen (ca. AD 184–253), a Christian scholar, began work on his Hexapla or “six-columned” Old Testament around 235. No complete copies of the Hexapla exist today, but early Christian sources describe its form as follows:

Column 1

Column 2

Column 3

Column 4

Column 5

Column 6

Hebrew

Hebrew in Greek letters

Aquila

Symmachus

Septuagint

Theodotion

The Hebrew column contained the text of the Old Testament of Origen’s time without vowels. The second column (called Secunda) contained the Hebrew text written in Greek letters—what we call a transcription. Since the Hebrew text didn’t include vowels at this time but the Greek did, this column would have allowed Origen and other Christian scholars to read the Hebrew text according to the traditional Jewish interpretation. In fact, the ability to read the text aloud was the first, crucial step to correcting and interpreting ancient copies of texts. In columns 3–6, Origen arranged the four prominent but different Greek translations of the Hebrew: Aquila (ca. AD 130), Symmachus (ca. AD 200), the Septuagint (ca. 280–100 BC), and Theodotion (40 BC–AD 40?). For some books, such as Psalms, Origen found two more anonymous Greek translations that he called “the Fifth” and “the Sixth” translations. Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion were sometimes grouped together and called “the Three.” This shows a remarkable flowering of translation activity in a single language that would really be matched again only in the modern period. It shows how important it was for early Christian readers to have the Bible in a language they could read.

Probably a single line in the Hexapla contained just one Hebrew word and the corresponding Greek equivalents in each line at about forty lines per page. As a result, the Hexapla would have filled almost forty codices of eight hundred pages per codex.5 That is massive by any standard, especially an ancient one! Thus, the entire Hexapla was probably never copied, and perhaps only individual books, such as Psalms, were ever reproduced. It was thus lost. Today, therefore, we have access only to the remains of the Hexapla and “the Three” through fragments preserved in the margins of manuscripts, patristic commentaries, and ancient translations.

Unfortunately, Origen did not explain exactly why he compiled his Hexapla. But we know he wasn’t the first to invent the literary form of the multicolumned, bilingual text. The Romans had already invented Latin-Greek columnar synopses (including a transcription column) for the purpose of teaching Latin language (alphabet, letter sounds, and pronunciation of words) and literature to Greek speakers. Information technology, such as a Latin-Greek synopsis, may have inspired Origen to extend and innovate this method for the purpose of studying the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old Testament. Thus, Origen probably constructed the Hexapla with several intentions: learning Hebrew, reading the Hebrew text aloud, textual criticism, apologetics (i.e., in controversies with the local Jewish community), and exegesis of the Scriptures. In short, he was a Christian scholar in the service of the church as he made scholarly editions of the Bible based on copies that contained many differences. Origen’s work anticipated—by over one thousand years—the printed polyglot editions of the Bible that would flourish during and after the Reformation. Today, his novel approach can still be seen in Bibles that print two languages (such as English with Spanish) and in parallel Bibles that print several different English translations side by side for comparison. The remains of the Hexapla are still important for English Bibles today, as we will examine in the next chapter.

Eusebius’s Gospel Canons

Origen was not the only innovator at work in Caesarea. In the fourth century, the church leader Eusebius (AD 260–340) developed a unique system of cross-references known as the Eusebian canons or tables. Using an earlier harmony, he numbered the four Gospels into sections. These were like our modern chapters but shorter (there were 355 in Matthew, for example). Having identified the parallels, he grouped the sections by those passages found in all four Gospels, in three, in two, and in just one. This gave him a total of ten tables (he excluded some possible combinations). By placing the section number and its table numbers in the text itself, Eusebius gave the reader an immediate indication of whether a given passage had a parallel or not. If it did, the reader could look it up using the tables. This elaborate cross-referencing system started in Greek but quickly spread to other languages. In some cases, the system was simplified so that the data in the tables was placed at the foot of the page, eliminating the middle step entirely.

What made Eusebius’s system so helpful was that it allowed the Gospels to be read together while preserving the literary integrity of each—a feat that earlier approaches to the Gospels failed to achieve. His numbering system is still used in printed Greek New Testaments today and still provides a valuable lesson in how to read the four Gospels.

Fig. 1.4. The elaborate Eusebian canon tables in the Book of Kells (9th c.)

These are just two notable examples of how writing materials and information technology advanced before the invention of the printing press. Scribes would continue to make technological advances for the purpose of copying and interpreting the Bible. But how were they able to write in the first place?

Writing the Alphabet and Education

All learning begins with the alphabet, or the ABCs. From the end of the fourth millennium BC, Mesopotamians and Egyptians used written signs to represent spoken language. The Mesopotamians wrote in cuneiform, or wedges, while the Egyptians used pictorial hieroglyphs (hiero, “sacred”; glyphē, “carving”). These systems represented language at the word or syllable level, while the alphabet attempts to capture language at the level of sounds. For our purposes, we’re concerned with the development of this last system of writing.

Earliest Traceable History of the Alphabet

The search for the early history of the alphabet continues. The earliest agreed-upon evidence for an alphabetic writing system comes from two Egyptian locations: (1) Serābiṭ el-Khâdem, a mining settlement in the Sinai Desert (usually dated to around 1700 BC), and (2) Wadi el-Ḥol, a valley along an Egyptian trade route in the desert of Middle Egypt, where two alphabetic graffiti have been discovered (usually dated to around 1800 BC). Archaeologists working in Thebes more recently (2015) discovered a pottery shard (known as an ostracon) containing an Egyptian hieroglyphic-Semitic practice alphabet known as an abecedary (see sidebar below).6 All alphabetic writing (e.g., Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, etc.) comes from this singular early alphabetic. The early alphabetic signs were originally