ORIGINS OF THE BIBLE

The Bible we take in our hands today is a result of research and hard work by dedicated scholars over centuries.

There is no original manuscript written by Moses or the prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul left on earth. Through the ages dedicated rabbis, priests and other Christians manually copied the different books found in the Bible to make it available to more and more people. Leaders in synagogues and churches needed the books of the Bible in order to proclaim its message to thousands, and eventually millions, of Jews and Christians.

God preserved the contents of what the Jews know as the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), the books of the prophets and other Old Testament books in a wonderful way for the believers of the 21st century AD. The same happened to the New Testament Gospels as well as the other New Testament books currently inspiring and teaching Christians in the ways of the Lord.

Old manuscripts, even some written before the Christian Era, were discovered over the last two centuries and used by scholars to compile the Old and New Testament as we know it. The famous library of Alexandria in Egypt, destroyed by Muslim invaders, contained numerous old manuscripts of the Bible. Manuscripts were also found elsewhere like in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai in 1844.

The Qumran rolls were preserved in clay pots like these

Sixty years ago manuscripts of almost all of the Books of the Bible (at least part of them) were found near Qumran at the Dead Sea where dedicated scholars copied and preserved Biblical manuscripts from before the New Testament era.

After the Roman invasion and destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD dedicated Jewish scholars moved to Tiberias where they studied and preserved the Hebrew Bible. From 500-950 AD these scholars, also known as the Masoretes, did a magnificent job to preserve the Old Testament text we have the priviledge to read and study today.

Till this very day scholars are studying the different manuscripts available in an endeavour to come to the most reliable text, in Hebrew (OT) and Greek (NT), translators could use to translate the Bible in the hundreds of languages spoken and read by believers.