How we got our Bible

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Intro to “The Story” Heb. 4:12
Intro..
• If you think Genesis is just a band from the ‘80’s . . .
• If you think it was Dr. Dolittle who took two of each animal into a big boat . .
• If you think an epistle is a woman married to an apostle . . .. . . you may need to know more of The Story.

Big Pic: The Bible may seem to be made up of a lot of different, seemingly unrelated stories. But it really is one big, exciting story of God’s love for mankind and His plan for our salvation.

Text: Hebrews 4:12

The Bible can be intimidating… odd names like Jehoshaphat and Nebuchadnezzar. Places you probably never heard of, like Sinai and Samaria.
• The first words found in Genesis 1:1 read: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
• Then, if you turn all the way to the back of the book, Revelation 21:1, you find, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away . . .”
• In the beginning God is creating the heavens and the earth. At the end he is creating a new heaven and a new earth.
• So the big question is this: “What happened between the beginning and the end of the Bible?”
• Through this series, over the next 31 weeks, we will answer that question and uncover the one seamless story of God.

Good things to know about the Bible:
• The Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years by 40 different people (kings, shepherds, scientists, attorneys, an army general, fishermen, priests, and a physician) inspired by God.
• The 66 books of the Bible were written: On three continents, in three languages, on the most controversial subjects, by people who, in most cases, had never met, by authors whose education and background varied greatly.
• Some people think it was merely created by a select few in order to consolidate, gain or maintain power and prestige.
• However, when you consider the adversity faced by the Hebrew people and, later, the persecution suffered by Christians, that couldn’t be true.
• Rather than gaining power or prestige, the early Christians were severely oppressed, while many others were killed – martyred for believing the message of the gospel.

Three key areas regarding the Bible: inspiration, canonization, transmission.

Inspiration
• Is it possible to have an accurately transmitted record that is still just a human invention?
• That's where inspiration comes in. The word "inspire" comes from the Latin, meaning to breathe on or into. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is God-breathed."
• Inspiration means that human writers were inspired by God and moved by the Holy Spirit to record accurately what God wanted them to preserve.
• It does not mean God took control of people where the writer is in a trance-like state.
• It also doesn't mean the writers of the Bible were simply taking dictation.
• But it does mean that their words were divinely inspired and recorded.
• The Bible was written by real people, living in real places, recording real historical events, and also communicating God's real truths.

Canonization
• How did we get the final 66 books? What was the criteria?
• The word canon originated in reference to a measuring reed or standard by which something is measured. In reference to the Bible a canon has to do with genuinely inspired writings.
• Decisions about which books were "in" and which books were "out" in relation to today's Bible were not made by a single group of people at a single point of history.

• This especially relates to the New Testament, as the Old Testament was already accepted and codified in the books accepted by the Jewish people as divinely inspired. The OT canon was not finalized until a few years before the birth of Christ.
• Following the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ around 33 A.D., the young Christian church found itself struggling for survival and, in the process, writing inspired documents that would later become the New Testament.
• The Church was very methodical in reference to the New Testament canon. Several criteria were necessary in order for a writing to be accepted.
• The document in question had to conform to the rule of faith, "conformity between the document and orthodoxy, that is, Christian truth recognized as normative in the churches."
• The document required some sort of apostilicity, "which as a criterion came to include those who were in immediate contact with the apostles or people with a direct connection to Jesus.
• A document's widespread and continuous acceptance and usage by churches everywhere was taken into consideration.
• In the first and second centuries after Christ, many, many writings and epistles were circulating among the Christians. Some of the churches were using books and letters in their services that were definitely spurious. Gradually the need to have a definite list of the inspired Scriptures became apparent.
• In 367 AD Athanasius first provided the complete listing of the 66 books belonging to the canon.
• He distinguished those from other books that were widely circulated and he noted that those 66 books were the ones, and the only ones, universally accepted.
• The point is that the formation of the canon did not come all at once like a thunderbolt, but was the product of centuries of reflection.
• From God to us, the Bible is true, reliable, and inspired.

Transmission:
• “Transmission” relates to how the contents of the Bible were transmitted through history.
• Obviously, if the record of transmission is poor, then the record we have is highly suspect.
• But if the record of transmission is rich, having a variety of manuscript copies for instance, then we can trust the reliability of the record.
• Transmission of the documents through history is astounding.
• There are over 5,300 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts we can examine today. If you count all the early copies of translations of the New Testament, the number skyrockets to over 24,000. This is about 43 times as much as the second most prevalent writing, The Iliad, with only 643.
• Not only do we have thousands of manuscript copies, as well as thousands more fragments or portions of the New Testament, but in comparing the New Testament copies we have today in various languages with those available centuries ago we can see the message remains intact.
• In ancient times, there were diligent Jewish scribes who spent their entire careers copying material. These individuals were very meticulous in regard to providing an exact duplicate of the original document.
• One group of scribes, known as the Masoretes, set its standards much higher than all the other scribes. The Masoretes counted every single letter, word, and verse of the Old Testament in order to preserve its accuracy.
• In 1948, an Arab boy was looking for a lost goat. As most children would, this young boy entertained himself by throwing rocks as he walked. He threw one of those rocks into a small cave, and heard the sound of pottery breaking. Scampering up the hill and into the cave, the boy found some leather scrolls with ancient writing on them.
• Amazingly, he had stumbled across what is known today as the Dead Sea scrolls. Inside the cave were hundreds of scrolls, most likely written by a group of people known as the Essences.
• Throughout history, errors or changes are slight, known as variants, and do not change any central belief of Christianity. When it comes to transmission and translation, then, we can indeed trust the documents.



Conclusion:
Throughout all this, the 66 books maintain harmony with each other.
• Often new concepts on a subject are expressed, but these concepts do not undermine what other Bible writers say on the same subject.
• Ask people who have viewed an identical event to each give a report of what happened. They will differ widely and will virtually always contradict each other in some way.
• The four Gospels do sometimes differ in the way they report the same event, but they complement each other.
• Yet the Bible, penned by 40 writers over a 1,500-year period, reads as if written by one great mind. And, indeed, it was:
• For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:21
• The Holy Ghost "moved" them all. He is the real Bible Author.

Think about the last time you had a good book and couldn’t wait to read it.
My hope is that we will approach the Bible that way and get a copy of “The Story.”