How the Bible Was Written
Randal K. Young

	God inspired human writers to write Scripture. (2 Tim. 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20-21) Most evangelical, Reformed, and Protestant Christians believe in Organic Inspiration. This is the view that God, through His Holy Spirit, authored the Scriptures using the human writer's vocabulary, style, and thoughts. This view accounts for the divine authorship of the Scriptures, as well as the presence of human elements in the Scriptures (e.g. Luke 1:4, Galatians 6:11). The human writers were not simply robotic secretaries (mechanical dictation theory), nor were they simply literary artists "inspired" by, say, a beautiful sunset (dynamic inspiration theory).
	New Testament writers would commonly use paper made of papyrus, while Old Testament writers commonly wrote on animal skins and leather. The photo to the left is of a papyrus reed. The brush part of the reed sticks up out of the water. Papyrus makers would gather such reeds around river banks such as the Nile River.
	Papyrus parchment is made from the stem of the reed, which is stringy and fibrous. The parchment maker would break apart the stem and separate the fibers. Once separated, the fibers are laid side by side to form one layer. Then, more fibers are laid to form a second layer, but oriented at right angles to the first layer. After a few layers are laid, the parchment looks like a stiff cloth, except that the fibers are not weaved together like cloth. Throughout the layering, the parchment maker applies a watery glue and pressure to hold the fibers together.
	The Biblical writer would then take a pen, similar to the one shown to the left. Such a pen is simply a reed that has been cut at the tip to form a point. The writer would cut a slit along the length of the reed so that it would hold ink. The photo to the left shows a writer using such a pen to write on leather.
	This is an actual papyrus fragment dated around 200 A.D. It contains the text of John 6:8-12 on the front side (recto), and John 6:17-22 on the back side (verso). The photo shows the back side. This fragment was discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in the early part of the 20th century. Ancient fragments like this are valuable to Biblical scholars even though they contain only a small portion of Scripture. Because of its early dating, this copy of Scripture, and other early fragments like it, are usually considered more reliable and truer to the original autographs (i.e. the actual writings by the Biblical writers themselves) than, say, a manuscript dated 1000 A.D. Biblical scholars, then, use these fragments to check the reliability of later but more complete manuscripts. This is just one of the methods that scholars use to ensure that our Bible today is as faithful to the original autographs as possible. Because the world has in its possession nearly 25,000 ancient manuscripts or fragments of the New Testament, one dating as early at 120 A.D., scholars are quite certain that our modern Bible is true to the original. Minor textual variants, or disagreements, between manuscripts (copies of the original) are often noted as footnotes in such Bibles as the New International Version.
	This is an ancient fragment of the book Ecclesiasticus, not to be confused with the canonical (i.e. standard Bible) book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiasticus is an apocryphal book, written between the time of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Although it existed in Jewish literature at the time of Jesus, Jesus never quoted from it, never mentioned it, and none of the Biblical writers such as Paul ever mentioned it as   Scripture. Neither was it ever mentioned in any writings by the early church as having the authority of divine Scripture. Therefore, Protestants have excluded this book from the Bible.
	Over the first 1,000 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, scribes and monks continued to make copies of the Bible. Because the printing press had not yet been invented, human scribes painstakingly and carefully made copies by hand. Shown to the left is a leather scroll dated around 800 A.D. containing one of the books of the Old Testament. Scholars note: it lacks the vowel pointing of the Masoretes.
	This Old Testament scroll and the one in the next frame are dated sometime after 1200 A.D. They are both written by hand. In the scroll to the left, the letters are only 1/8" high. Because of the long, intense labor involved, and special measures taken to ensure accuracy, these scrolls are extremely valuable.
	The Protestant Reformers considered it important that people had Bibles to read in their own common language. Martin Luther therefore translated the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek languages into German and employed the newly invented printing press to make the Bible available to the common man. Shown to the left is a copy of a Martin Luther Bible, dated around the 1500's. It was interesting to me that this Bible was full of artistic illustrations.
	This is a photo of an original printing of the famous King James Version. There were other translations of the Bible in English in existence in the 1600's. But this version was officially authorized by King James II of England, and represented the highest in translation standards at the time, and thus it was widely distributed throughout the world even through the 20th century. It lacked, however, the benefit of the ancient manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd century, most of which were not discovered until the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.