The Bible has had a long journey from its earliest written forms thousands of years ago to the Bible we know today. It was written by over 40 authors over nearly a thousand years, yet has a divine unity as the inspired word of God. The Hebrew scriptures were carefully preserved for centuries by Jewish scribes despite attempts to destroy them. The texts were further preserved through meticulous copying and transcription by early Christians and monks, leading to the widespread availability of the Bible today in many languages.

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2. “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for
ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so… He sent his word, and healed
them, and delivered them from their destructions.” Psalm 107:1-2, 20
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.” John 1:1
God’s word is everything
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3. • Writing empowers thought, accomplishing purpose
• God’s thoughts are beyond our comprehension, except they are revealed
– Isaiah 55:8-11
• Thoughts and writing are indivisible, like the two sides of a sheet of
paper
• If our thoughts are unexpressed, then they have no power in them
• Writing has been key to the development of the Kingdom of Men
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• According to man’s calculation writing first started around 3300BC
• Earliest forms of writing were pictographic – Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Abstract writing emerged around 2500BC – cuneiform writing

5. • The flood was circa 2433BC (over 3,500 years ago)
• Moses was born circa 1706BC, long after writing had started
• Hebrew is thought to have first evolved from Phoenician script around
the 9th century BC
• ‘Square’ Hebrew then evolved from Aramaic from the late 3rd century BC
• Aramaic was the official script of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian
empires
• ‘Square’ Hebrew is the script of the OT we are familiar with and formed
the basis of modern Hebrew
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6. • The Hebrew Bible (OT) is in three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the
Writings (witness the Ecclesiasticus (130BC), Dead Sea scrolls, the words
of Jesus (Luke 24:44) and the writings of Josephus (late 1st century AD))
• The New Testament scriptures were probably first collected together
during the second century but were first definitively confirmed by
Athanasius around AD367
• There is one author, God, but over 40 writers between approximately
1650BC and AD96
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8. “…unto them [the Jews] were committed the oracles of God.” Romans 3:2
• Painstaking preservation by the Jewish scribes
• Emperor Diocletian’s edict to destroy all Christian churches and books
AD303
• Voltaire, the famous French philosopher, wrote a number of tracts
deriding the Bible. He made a very bold statement: “One hundred years
from today the Bible will be a forgotten book.”
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9. “…and how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own
salvation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have
already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them
or take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it
becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their birth, to esteem
those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if
occasion be, willingly to die for them.”
Source: Section 8 of Book one – ‘Against Apion’
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NB: Wycliffe 1320 – 1384)

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William Tyndale
1494-1536

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15. • The Cairo Codex of the Prophets – AD895
• The Leningrad Manuscript Hebrew B3 – AD916
• The Aleppo Manuscript – circa AD930
• Septuagint Greek manuscripts – circa AD350 eg Codex Sinaiticus &
Vaticanus
• Dead Sea Scrolls – circa 200-100BC down to AD60
• 731+ Hebrew MSS; over 5,500 Greek and 200+ Bible Dead Sea Scrolls
Cf 3 MSS of Annals of Tacitus; 10 MSS of Julius Caesar’s Gallic War & 15 MSS of Herodotus’ Histories
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Also known as Masoretic text
Amazing level of agreement

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17. “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of
my mouth.
My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the
small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:
Because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our
God.” Deuteronomy 32:1-3
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