The Making of the Bible:
PART 1:
Complicated but incredible historical origins.
Through these humanly written texts God speaks to His people.
This book did not drop from heaven.
MAKING OF THE BOOKS OF THE OT:
The product of a divine initiative, a collection of stories and poems of an ancient people
but more than that, God is communication through them to His people.
Divine but human as well.
It is like the incarnation of Jesus, he is completely divine but came fully human as well.
When we hold the Bible, we hold a small library in our hands.
Hebrew Bible was 1000 years in the making.
NT was written within 50 years.
2 FACTS that we don’t know about the OT:
1) We don’t know who made the nal edition
2) We don’t know when it was nalized
TORAH - means teaching or instruction, law.
Anonymous works.
Deuteronomy 34:5-7 - someone other than Moses added this information
Jer 36:32 - Jeremiah was written by the scribe Baruch, because the rst scroll was
burned, and many other words were added.
Early 2000’s fossilized form of a seal was found. Ancient Hebrew seal, handwriting dates
to the time that Jeremiah lived, and it was con rmed to be Baruch’s seal.
Proverbs 25
Many of smaller collections within the book of Proverbs.
Copied by the men of Hezekiah
From King Hezikiah to King Solomon were 200 + years in between them.
Proverbs 30
The sayings of ..
Proverbs 31
The sayings of King Lemuel (not a king of Israel)
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We don’t have fresh copies of any of the originals of the OT.
What do we have?
Most recent manuscripts (3 groups of manuscript evidence)
1st Manuscript:
- Collection of Hebrew manuscripts over 500 years, traditional guardians over Hebrew
texts. They were renowned for their meticulous care of the texts. The Leningrad Codex.
- The Leningrad Codex is the oldest manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using
the Masoretic text and Tiberian vocalization. Was completed by the Masoretes (Jewish
scribes). It is dated 1008 CE according to its colophon.
The Leningrad Codex (Latin: Codex Leningradensis, the
"codex of Leningrad") is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew
Bible in Hebrew, using the Masoretic Text and Tiberian vocalization.[1] It is
dated 1008 CE (or possibly 1009) according to its colophon.[2] The Aleppo
Codex, against which the Leningrad Codex was corrected, is several decades
older, but parts of it have been missing since 1947, making the Leningrad
Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived
intact to this day.
2nd Manuscript:
- The Septuagint (from the Latin: septuāgintā literally "seventy", often abbreviated
as LXX and sometimes called the Greek Old Testament) is the earliest
extant Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures from the original Hebrew.[1] It is
estimated that the rst ve books of the Old Testament, known as the Torah or
Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BCE and the remaining texts were
translated in the 2nd century BCE.
- It is a translated predated Hebrew text from the Masoretic texts.
- Found around the vicinity of the dead sea scrolls, near the dead sea. Discovered in the
1800’s.
- Takes us back to the nal stages of the making of the Hebrew bible.
3rd Manuscript:
- Dead Sea Scrolls, or Qumran Cave Scrolls
- Qumran site - Jewish people that went and lived in the wilderness outside of
Jerusalem, took manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible with them. Crawled down into caves
and hid the manuscripts into jars when the Romans were coming to attack them.
- 1946 were discovered.
- First the manuscripts were put on the black market.
- Took decades to sort it all out.
- Everything except the book of Esther was found. All date from the same time as the
Septuagint. Team of Catholic scholars in 1950’s were the ones that put all the pieces
back together of the manuscripts. It took 50 years to publish.
- The manuscripts date from Mid 200 BC - 70AD.
- Some match the Masoretic texts, but some match the underneath underneath form
from the Septuagint.
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PART 2
MANUSCRIPT HISTORY OF OT:
- samaritans … like the Qumran group, went north into the westbank, a community that
still lives today and took a form of the torah with them. The Samaritan Pentitute.
Sometimes it agrees with the masoretic text, and sometimes it agrees with the
septuigint.
Jer. 10
Is the message of the passage changed by the additions in this chapter?
A lot of the additions are actually quoted from the Psalms. They came from a time period
when someone was reading the book of Jeremiah alongside the book of Psalms as the
word of God.
Ezekiel with Leveticus.
When they were canonized the books were glazed, with other parts of the books of the
Bible.
Tindale
Authorized version (KJV)
First English bibles were based solely on the masoretic text
NT often quotes from the OT, they are quoting the septuigint. If it doesn’t completely
match it is because of the OT is based on the Masoretic text as well.
These are a people who were steeped in their sacred text.
1000 di erent years of Israelite history.
NIV just went through an updated form, they have included more footnotes based on new
scholarship. There are di erently philosophies on which reading to go with (Masor
Isaiah scroll (best observed dead of the sea scrolls)
“Isaiah scroll zoom in” and you can nd images of the whole scroll online.
What the Masorites have preserved is a version of the text we have. They were
meticulously preserving an imperfect text.
Cain and Abel story.
We have the Septuagint that has the correct text.
We have 103% of the Bible, because things have been accumulated. There is no lost
Bible.
God speaks through people, through history, through human processes.
Hebrew Bible - o cial text of the Bible, the main text is the Leningrad codex, then each
book they’ve collected all the manuscript various from the masoretic and Septuagint
within it.
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There are people who have given their lives and careers to this work.
All our English version are made based o of the most modern Hebrew Bibles.
MAKING OF THE NT:
NT is the most well documented text of the ancient world in human history.
Homer, Plato, 30-50 copies of their works. NT 6000 copies.
NT books were written 45-100 AD
Gospel of John or Revelation was the last written book of the NT.
John was the last surviving apostle, in the 90AD
5 large narrative works
Collection of someone else mail
1st century Jewish apocalypse
Narrative Books:
Image of Jesus (put together by Jewish scholars)
- not actually what Jesus looked like, but is what an average Jewish man would have
looked like at that time.
JESUS
4BC - born
Cruci ed around 30 years old
Date how language changes, they date the age of the Greek.
Jesus spoke primarily Aramaic. All his teachings were in Aramaic.
English Bible is translation from the Greek.
30-40 year gap
The last 60 years of bible scholarship have been incredible, and very helpful.
The reading of the gospels is a lot like looking at a nished quilt. Is the age of the quilt the
age of the materials compiled in the quilt? No, the squares came from many di erent
various places.
Luke 1 -
How many accounts of Jesus are there oating around according to Luke?
There would be quilt pieces about Jesus oating around all over the place, because Jesus
impacting so many di erent people from many di erent places. Eye witnesses and
o cially designated story tellers of the things that Jesus did. In this culture, which was an
oral culture, this was very common to have a designated story tellers, preservers.
Luke dedicates the book to Theopholis. He probably got a grant from Theopholis to
complete this work.
Mark is the rst written account.
Matt and Luke used Mark in their writing.
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Richard Balcom - “Jesus and the Eye Witness” - an incredible scholar on this topic.
Apostles, and servants of the Word, those traditions are written down, and then they are
collected and put into the quilt.
John has a unique relationship. His comes from a di erent group of quilt pieces. Because
Josh is drawing on di erent collection because he was a disciple of Jesus himself.
There are some tensions / di erences between the gospels.
ex. The time the last supper takes place.
Is there anything about the essential doctrine of the faith and what Jesus says di erent?
No.
It is a collective witness.
Romans 16:1
I commend Pheobe, a servant of the church.
She would also be the one to read and teach the content of Romans to the Christians in
Rome.
Timothy also sends greetings.
Tirtuius wrote the letter of Romans.
Paul is behind the book of the Romans, but was the scribe Turtilious
1 Peter 5
With the help of Silvanus, a faithful brother.
Peter is behind it, but the scribe is Silvanus.
This letter is written in high quality Greek, which Jewish Peter was not able to do by
himself.
Colossians
After this letter is read to you, see that is also read among the Ladicoans,
These letters are like case studies on how Paul’s theology got works out in speci c places
and times.
These letters went virus, copied and recopied throughout the world.
PART 3:
Collection of the cannon.
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