FLOWER MOUND, Tx, November 22, 2011—Irrespective of the well worn retort, “If it is good enough for King James it is good enough for me,” the Bible did not originate with the King James Bible in 1611.
The Bible was scribed beginning 3500 years ago.
The original Scriptures of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew between 1500 and 430 BC (from Moses to Malachi). The New Testament was written in Greek between AD 45 and 95 (from the Gospels and Paul to the Apostle John). The years from 430 to the birth of Christ are called the “silent years” because God didn’t communicate in writing.
The books known as “Apocrypha” were written during this four hundred year period. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches support their inclusion in the Bible as inspired while the Protestants and Judaism considered them informative, but not on the same level as the Scriptures.
The books of the New Testament were written in Greek and circulated as individual books throughout the Roman Empire as soon as they were written. The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven individual books gathered into one unit we call the New Testament.
Christianity quickly spread across the Roman Empire to Alexandria, Egypt in North Africa where Coptic replaced Greek, to Rome where Latin replaced Greek, and to Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and Greece where Greek continued to dominate as the local language. Modern textual criticism places manuscripts from these regional, historic, and language influences into three text-types: Alexandrian (Egypt), Western (Roman Empire), and Byzantine (Asia Minor and Greece).
The accompanying chart shows the early distribution of the Greek New Testament manuscripts. Jewish scholars translated the Old Testament into Greek (known as the Septuagint) prior to the revelation given in the New Testament. The pattern of the Old Testament distribution will generally follow the New Testament, but is not addressed in this article.
By AD 180 the greatest number of Christian churches existed in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and along the Aegean coast in Greece. History records that all of the early church counsels were held in Asia Minor, which is further evidence of a large concentration of Christian churches in that region. The city of Antioch, Asia Minor was home base for Paul, Mark, Barnabas, Silas, Peter, Matthew, and Luke. These leaders were likely all present in this area at the same time.
For the first three hundred years of church growth, congregations in Asia Minor and Greece exerted the greatest force in Christianity. By 325 the church was centered in Asia Minor and it was there that the majority of New Testament documents circulated.
Due to the Antioch church’s leadership role for the Gentile church, it may be that the first copies of Scripture were produced there, and perhaps, served as the center for scripture distribution.
It was very common to use papyrus (made from strips of a reed growing in abundance along the Nile River) for writing material during the first 3-5 centuries of the Christian era. Leather in the form of parchment and vellum became more popular because of its durability.
As the church grew along the western coast of Asia Minor and Greece, the need for copies of the Scripture increased, and the supply of copies multiplied, crisscrossed the region, and were compared and edited.
The spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire into North Africa, Egypt, and Rome, New Testament documents were translated into Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages. By the time the printing press replaced handwritten copies, thousands of copies of Scripture were circulating throughout the western world.
Today there are more than 5,600 Greek manuscripts written prior to the printing press. In addition, thousands more are in Latin and Coptic. These date from the second to the fifteenth century. Many of these copies have been collated and compared for variant readings. They all support the same basic readings. The differences are minor, although they are constantly the subject of scholarly inquiry.
It is quite certain that the text originally recorded by the biblical writers is essentially the same as translators use in modern English translations. Scholars are constantly applying textual critical methods to determine the exact text as it was given so many years ago.
Donald L. Brake is the author of several books:
A Visual History of the English Bible: The Tumultuous Tale of The World’s Bestselling Book Baker Books, 2008 (a 2009 ECPA Christian Book Award finalist)
A Royal Monument of English Literature: The King James Bible 1611, Credo House Publishers, 2011 (http://www.credocommunications.net/KJV)
Read more by Donald Brake at http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/worlds-best-selling-book
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