Hunting Down the History of God's Word

My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, . . . if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:1,4–5

If you’ve ever been to church, you’ve probably seen a Bible. Sunday school teachers give lessons from Bibles. Pastors preach sermons from Bibles. Every week, countless people carry a Bible to church so they can read along. You might even have your own Bible. But have you ever considered how important the Bible is? God’s Word—the Bible—is so vital that true Christianity would not exist without it.

The Bible is every Christian’s source of information on the creation of the universe, the first humans, how sin got started, what happens when we die, how God sent Jesus to save us from sin, and much more. God didn’t leave us to guess about these key topics. He gave us the answers in his Word!

If the Bible is God’s Word, where did it come from? Can you trust it? How did you get a copy in your language so you can study it for yourself? Come on—we’re going on an adventure to discover the history of the Bible.

A Long Time in the Writing

For more than 1,500 years, God directed an amazing variety of people—about 40 of them—to write the inspired books of the Bible. The list includes kings, shepherds, fishermen, teachers, a doctor, and even a tax collector. Many of these writers were personally involved in the events they wrote about.

Some of these authors knew each other, especially the ones who lived at the same time Jesus walked the earth. But most of them never met. Yet the books they wrote under God’s direction during those 1,500 years all fit together without any disagreement!

His Word is for all people—including you!

Here’s another awesome truth: God’s Word isn’t just for rich people or super smart people or any special group. His Word is for all people—including you! By guiding all these writers to record what he wanted us to know, God ensured that generation after generation could learn about him and that you could have a personal relationship with your Creator!

From God’s Mind to Our Hands

What does it mean that the writings we have from God are “inspired?” Did someone one day suddenly feel creative and grab a quill to make up stuff? No way! Although God moved humans to perform the writing, the Apostle Paul explains that God is the source of each book of the Bible: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). In other words, when God inspired the writings, he was literally “breathing out” from his mind to theirs what he wanted written, while still allowing their personality and style to be part of it. Peter makes a similar point when he says that “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man [no human made it up], but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). God’s Holy Spirit guided their thoughts.

God’s Holy Spirit guided their thoughts.

Of course, thousands of years ago, nobody had a printing press. The kind of books you might picture today did not exist back then. In olden days, the books of the Bible were carefully written by hand, letter by letter on scrolls, which were carefully rolled up and stored away when nobody was reading them.

After many years, an unknown person in China invented the first basic printing press. For the first time, blocks of wood with Chinese characters carved into them could print page after page over and over without needing someone to copy them by hand. Years later, in Europe, a better printing machine was invented—the Gutenberg Press. This one used metal letters, which could be moved around to spell different words instead of carving whole pages from blocks of wood. In 1452, the Gutenberg Press printed a whole Bible.

Was the Bible Written in English?

None of the people God used to pen the Bible spoke English.

None of the people God used to pen the Bible spoke English. They wrote in their own languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. But about 200 years before the birth of Christ, the king of Egypt hired 72 men from Israel to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Now even people who could not read Hebrew could read books like Genesis and learn how God created our world and so much more.

In time, though, especially after the resurrection of Jesus, Christians wanted to carry God’s Word farther and farther. Jesus had said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). To obey these instructions, believers began translating the Scriptures into the languages of different lands. After many years, the Bible was also translated into English.

Preserving God’s Word

Before printing presses, Jewish scribes had to create new copies of Old Testament Scriptures by hand. Such work required great patience as the scribe carefully formed one letter at a time, line after line. To make sure scribes didn’t “mess up,” Jews developed strict rules for this job.

1. A scribe could not write even a single letter from memory. He had to have a scroll open beside him and had to say aloud each word before he copied it.
2. Before he wrote the name of God, each scribe had to respectfully clean his quill and say, “I am writing the name of God for the holiness of his name.”
3. Letters were not allowed to touch each other. The scribe had to form each one distinctly and separately.
4. After a manuscript was completed, an editor would check it by counting every letter and every word to make sure the copy perfectly matched the original.
5. If the editor found even one mistake on a page, the mistake had to be fixed within 30 days, or the whole manuscript had to be buried!

Punishment for Translators

Not everyone was happy with Christians who translated God’s Word into other languages. For instance, 500 years ago, only Latin-language Bibles were allowed in England. Having a Bible in English was illegal! Most church authorities didn’t want the Bible to be available to just anyone because they wanted to control what people believed. When a man named William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English, he was hunted down and burned at the stake in 1536 for wanting English-speaking people to read God’s Word for themselves. You have the Bible in your language thanks to William Tyndale and other brave people like him who made great sacrifices to translate the Bible.

The unfolding of your words gives light. Psalm 119:130

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Psalm 119:105

Did You Know?

The biggest Bible in the world weighs 1,094 pounds! The “Waynai Bible” is named after the man who created it. From 1928 to 1930, Louis Waynai of Los Angeles, California, spent more than 8,700 hours creating a gigantic copy of a Bible one letter at a time on a home-made printing device. When closed, the book is 34 inches thick—about the length of a baseball bat!

The Dead Sea Scrolls

From what we’ve been told, in 1947, a young shepherd left his flock to hunt for a missing sheep. In a mountainous region around the Dead Sea, the shepherd discovered a cave in a rocky hillside. He was curious. Was anything inside that darkness? Rather than venture inside, he picked up a rock and threw it in. The sound of breaking pottery startled him. Someone had hidden something in there! Inside, he discovered a collection of large clay jars. None of the jars contained gold or jewels—just very old scrolls blackened from age. The boy told his friends about the scrolls. Together they took them to a dealer in Bethlehem to try to sell them.

It turned out that these scrolls were copies of Scriptures from ancient times! Later, more scrolls were found in similar caves. These ancient manuscripts, called the Dead Sea Scrolls, showed that the Old Testament in our Bible today says the same as the Old Testament in Jesus’ day.

A Matter of Life and Death

The Gospels definitely give us good news!

The word gospel comes from the Greek word euangelion, which referred to a messenger bringing good news. The four books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Each one tells how he died on the cross for sinners, rose from the grave, and conquered death for us. That’s why we call those books the four Gospels. They definitely give us good news!

You might wonder, “Why was it such a big deal for Jesus to die and then rise from the grave?” Genesis chapters 2 and 3 give the answer. They tell how God created the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, and how he gave them one rule: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).

Well, they did disobey and ate its fruit. Their bodies didn’t immediately fall to the ground, but their souls experienced what we call “the fall,” a spiritual death that also had physical consequences.

God preserved all this good news for us in the Bible!

Instead of living in joyful fellowship with God, they became sinners—humans with a sinful nature, which created a barrier between them and God. All their kids and grandkids down through the years were born sinners. People had no way to remove the sin barrier.

Yet, in his great love, God sent Jesus into the world to be born, to live a sinless life, and then to voluntarily die on the cross as a sacrifice for sinners. If you admit that you have sinned against God and turn to Jesus, trusting that he died on the cross to forgive your sins, then God adopts you into his own family (1 John 5:12-13; Galatians 4:4–5). You will receive the gift of eternal life and get to live in heaven with Jesus when you die. God preserved all this good news for us in the Bible!

Making It Personal

God’s Word is for everybody.

God’s Word is for everybody. Some Bible accounts are easy for all ages to understand and enjoy. Other parts of the Bible are harder to grasp. But those difficult verses will bless you as you study God’s Word and understand truths you never realized before.

Now that you know more about how God planned for us to have written copies of his Word, wouldn’t it be a shame if your Bible just gathers dust? Owning a Bible is such a privilege! We should respect and treasure it.

Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:17