Scribes and Scripture (eBook)

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...