Bible 101Session 1: September 20, 2018

How the Bible Was Written

• What questions would like to have answered during this course?

• What are you hoping to get out of this course?

A Journey Back in Time

“If the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”

--Anonymous

Why is it called the Bible or the Scriptures?

• The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book.”

• By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups began calling the books of the Bible the "scriptures" and they referred to them as "holy", or in Hebrew יֵבְתִּכ

Kitvei) ׁשֶדֹּקַה hakkodesh),

Earliest Manuscripts

• Earliest Bible manuscripts not written in English

• Paleo-Hebrew, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, Latin

• Earliest manuscripts were not even in book form, but papyrus and later parchment scrolls

• Paper (a Chinese technology) was not widely used until the 12th century CE

• First Printed Bible in 1455 by Gutenberg

Sources of the Bible

• There is no perfect original version of the Bible!

• We know the history of the written texts of the Bible

• The original sources are harder to pin down

• Oral tradition and storytelling – took more than 1000 years before it was written down

• Earliest written texts of the Old Testament were probably written in the court of King David around 1000 BCE

• Earliest written texts of the New Testament are the letters of St. Paul dating from around 50 CE

When the Parts of the Bible were written• c. 1000–400 BCE Books of the Hebrew Old Testament written• c. 250–200 BCE The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament, produced• c. 300 BCE—100 CE The Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books are written• c. 45–120 CE Books of the Greek New Testament written• 90 and 118 Councils of Jamnia give final affirmation to the Old Testament canon (39 books)• 140-150 Marcion’s heretical “New Testament” incites orthodox Christians to establish a NT canon• 303-306 Diocletian’s persecution includes confiscating and destroying New Testament Scriptures• c. 305-310 Lucian of Antioch’s Greek New Testament text; becomes a foundation for later Bibles• 367 Athanasius’s Festal Letter lists complete New Testament canon (27 books) for the first time• 397 Council of Carthage establishes orthodox New Testament canon (27 books)• c. 400 Jerome translates the Bible into Latin

The Canon of Scripture

• The biblical canon or canon of scripture is a set of texts (or "books") which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture. The English word "canon" comes from the Greek κανών, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick".

• Over the centuries there were many variations on the canon of scripture and to this day different Christian communities disagree about the books that should be included or excluded.

What about the books that didn’t make it into the Bible?

• The Apocrypha or Deutero-canonical (“Second Canon”) books were those like Tobit that appeared in the Septuagint and Jerome, but not in the Masoretic Hebrew texts. Many Protestant churches do not accept them as part of the Biblical canon.

• Gnostics and other heretical sects flourished in the early centuries of the church and produced alternative Gospels (like the Gospel of Thomas) and other writings.

• The early Church banned these books, but we know about them because of the Nag Hammadi library (also known as the "Gnostic Gospels"), a collection of them discovered in Egypt in 1945.

Dead Sea Scrolls—Another Amazing Find

Versions of the TanakhVersion Examples Language Date of Composition Oldest CopySilver Scrolls Paleo-Hebrew 587-586 BCE[2] (Amulets)

Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek

c. 150 BCE – 70 CE c. 150 BCE – 70 CE (fragments)

Septuagint Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus & earlier papyri

Greek 300–100 BCE 2nd c. BCE (fragments); 4th c. CE (complete)

Peshitta Syriac early 5th century CEVulgate Codex Amiatinus Latin early 5th century CE

early 8th c. CE (complete)

Masoretic Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex and other, incomplete MSS

Hebrew c. 100 CE 10th century CE (complete)

Samaritan Pentateuch Samaritan Hebrew 200–100 BCE Oldest extant MSS, c. 11th century CE; oldest MSS available to scholars, 16th century CE

Targum Aramaic 500–1000 CE 5th century CECoptic Crosby-Schøyen

Codex, British Library MS. Oriental 7594

Coptic 3rd or 4th century CE

Masoretes

St. Jerome and the Vulgate

• Late 4th Century Latin translation of the Bible

• “Vulgate” = Common• By 13th Century it was the commonly used

version• The Catholic Church affirmed the Vulgate

as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent (1545–63)

Earliest English Bibles

The beginning of the Gospel of John from a copy of the 1526 edition of William Tyndale's New Testament at the British Library

The Great Bible of 1539

The English Bible andPolitical and Religious Upheaval

• Wycliffe – first partial translation 14th century – suppressed for Lollardy

• Tyndale 1525 – first completed English Bible – suppressed by Henry VIII for its “pestilent glosses”

• Coverdale “Great Bible” 1539 – suppressed by Queen Mary in 1553• (Basis for the Psalter in the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549)

• Geneva Bible 1560 – a Protestant version for the Puritans

• Bishop’s Bible 1568 – a more Anglican version under Queen Elizabeth

• Douay-Rheims Bible 1582 – a clandestine Roman Catholic version

The Authorized Version

King James Version (KJV) 1611

New King James Version (NKJV) 1982

Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1952

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) 1989

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

1960

New International Version (NIV) 1978

New American Bible (NAB)1970 Catholic Bible

New English Bible (NEB)1970

Jerusalem Bible (JB)(derived from French

translation of the Vulgate) 1966 Catholic Bible

New Jerusalem Bible (NJB)1985 Catholic Bible

Revised English Bible (REB) 1989

American Standard Version (ASV) 1901

New Century Version (NCV)1991

Revised Version (RV)1881

English Standard Version (ESV) 2001

Phillips NT 1972

Living Bible (LB)1971

The Message1993New Living Translation

(NLT) 1996

Today's English Version (TEV) (aka Good News Bible) 1966

Contemporary English Version (CEV) 1995

Bishop's Bible1568

Today's New International Version (TNIV) 2002

Wycliffe Bible (from Vulgate)1384

Tyndale Bible(translated from Erasmus'

Greek text) 1526

Coverdale Bible(translated from Latin & German Bibles) 1535

Matthew's Bible1538

Taverner Bible1539

Geneva Bible(translated from Latin) 1557

Great Bible(translated from

Latin) 1539

Rheims-Douai Bible(translated from Latin) 1582

Catholic Bible

Challoner's Bible1749 Catholic Bible

Knox Bible1944 Catholic Bible

Confraternity NT1941 Catholic Bible

Moffat Bible1924

Smith/Goodspeed Bible1927

Berkley Bible1959

Barclay NT1969

Bede's John735

Alfred the Great's Bible(not complete) 901

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

2000

International Children's Bible (ICV)

1986

Reader's Digest Condensed Bible (RDB)

1982

Scofield Bible1909

Amplified Bible (AB)1965

The English Bible Family Tree

(Independant Translations)

Essentially Literal Translation

Dynamic Equivalence Translation

Paraphrase

Modern King James Version1962

Literal Translation (LITV)(Green) 1976