origin of the bible it is a compilation of different canonical books and this one goes back long before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this article we will teach you how the Holy Book was compiled.
The Origin of our Holy Book
Origin of the Bible
What we know today as the Holy Book or the Bible is a compilation of canonical texts that express the word of God. These canonical books are so named because each book was approved by a canon or norm of Judaism or Christianity.
Many centuries before Jesus Christ was born, the Holy Book was originally used by Jews living in Greek-speaking cities calling it The Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, being translated from ancient Aramaic and Hebrew into Greek, between 150 and 250 BC; by 70 wise men invited by King Ptolemy II, receiving the name of LXX, Septuagint or Alexandrian Bible and it differs from the previous one by the number of books compiled in them.
The Bible translated into Greek is also known today as The Old Testament, and the New Testament refers to the Gospels of Jesus Christ and the different letters of his Disciples. The name as such Bible, It comes from the Greek βιβλίον (biblíon), which is summarized in "The Books", since it was created by the compilation of several of them.
The Bible
The Holy Book that we know today is possibly one of the books that has most impacted humanity, because Christianity is very intricate in it.
In it, a series of diverse and very extensive experiences embodied in different documents are recounted, recounting the origin of humanity, from those created by God in clay, to the day of the Final Judgment, they also tell the stories of the old prophets and the taught by Jesus of Nazareth.
The old Bible is what we know today as the Old Testament and this tells the experiences of the Hebrews and is accepted by the Jews. Instead, the New Testament is written in the Greek language called Koiné and it describes the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the history of the first Christians.
For believers, this book represents the holy word of God, which tells about the creation of mankind, its fall into sin and its salvation. Therefore, the relationship that exists between God the creator and the human being is fully exposed.
If you want to know What does the Bible teach us to us as human beings, visit the above link and you will delve a little deeper into this wisdom.
Do the original texts still exist?
Well, according to the experts, there is no physical trace of those original texts or papyri of the Alexandrian Bible, nor do the texts of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers exist, due to great thefts and fires that occurred in the library where they had been protected, since the paper where they were writings such as papyrus, leather, etc; they do not remain intact through time.
For this reason, so that the origin of the Bible would endure over time with this knowledge and could be known today, thousands of copies were made, but as a result of this, many of those writings were changed in their essence, thanks to the lack of spelling and true understanding of the one who copied and many times the audacity to "correct" what they believed were wrong phrases.
Because each copy had some of the errors mentioned above, Christian paleography has made its best effort to compare some copies with others, in order to build a text that is as close to the original as possible.
How was the Bible formed?
As we have explained to you before, the Bible comes from a Greek word whose meaning is “books”, that is why it can be considered as a small library where different texts emanating from various writers are found; which were collected over approximately 1100 years, creating a single book as we know it today.
Before these small writings were brought together to form the Holy Book, many stories about God and God's relationship with man were passed down from generation to generation, this is known as "oral tradition", where many families told the stories of their ancestors to their children, these to their children and so on.
For example, in the case of the experiences of the Old Testament, they have been transmitted verbally long before they were definitively recorded.
How were the books of the Bible chosen?
The Bible of Judaism or Tanakh contains almost forty texts from the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, while the Christian Bible adds 27 texts from the New Testament.
These books were included in the Bible when they were allowed by a canon, where they were approved as advice to help humanity and faith, because they were considered to have been created by God and both the temples and the councils were approving these writings, highlighted by believers as fruits of God.
Today, we can tell you that in 367 AD, Athanasius, Bishop of the Church of Alexandria, proved to be the pioneer who provided a complete compilation of the 66 books approved by the canon and distinguished from other books. You can learn more about this in our post on What is the Bible?.
In the Old Testament, the first 5 texts called the Torah had the privilege of becoming the first canonical, but we cannot give you the information about the date this happened; but it is suspected that it was in the fifth century before Christ.
But it was 200 years before Christ, where the writings of the prophets were included in the Old Testament and later included the other books accepted as canonical. That is why we can tell you that the canonical books of the Old Testament were compiled long before the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanks to the canon, the Jews were able to establish which books were accepted as the word of God, turning a people into a Holy Book, keeping them together as a brotherhood.
We cannot tell you an exact date when the New Testament canon was approved. It is believed that some time after the arrival of Christ, various texts were in the hands of Christians but were considered false.
Then the heretical movement appeared where they chose their Scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Apocalypse of Peter, among others. After studying and verifying the Scriptures well, they were able to consider which were authentic and which were not, thus being able to establish the canon of writings that would make up the Holy Book.
But, today you will ask yourself: Why about 66 canonical books and not another number? Well, we can only tell you that perhaps God is the one who decided that amount and no more and no less. The important thing is that you consider that the Bible is a treasure and in it you will find the best gift of God for his believers, his advice.
structure of the bible
After having chosen the canonical books, which is one of the divisions of the Bible, because they constitute an independent volume with a particular meaning each.
These books can show you texts of love for God, what we know as Psalms, and experiences like the Epistle of Jude, and they are arranged according to the Old and New Testaments. But all of this depends on which canon has been accepted.
If you want to delve deeper into the structure of the Bible, we invite you to enter the following article on parts of the bible and so you can learn even more about its structure.
Stories of Christ and his first disciples within the Bible
Most of Jesus' followers were Jewish, so their writings were Jewish. In the 30th year after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the stories and teachings were expressed verbally and then, 65 years after Christ, these stories were written in books like Gospels, called the New Testament.
The Gospels were first written in Greek, a language that lasted until the period of the Roman Empire. Then a compilation of 27 books by Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, was accepted, where the large number of churches called it what we know today as the New Testament.
Bible translation
At first the books of the New Testament were written in Greek because it was the language spoken by the population in the Mediterranean. Then, at the end of the second century after Christ, the Bible began to be translated into Latin (Rome) and the languages of Egypt and Syria.
It was then that Pope Damasus in 383 AD, ordered Jerome, a learned priest to do the translation of the Bible in Latin and 27 years later, the Bible was translated into Latin.
Later, when the printing press was created (1456), multiple copies of the Bible were created in local languages, and translators such as Martin Luther, Casiodoro de Reina, etc., entered there, where they translated the Bible into more everyday languages.
It is said that until the 2454th century the Bible has been modified into some XNUMX languages and we can say that it continues to be translated.
In the year 1947 certain very old Jewish scriptures were discovered in the Qumra caves and other Dead Sea sites in Israel, dating from the XNUMXrd century BC and the XNUMXst century AD Thanks to this, it has been possible to give a better and more exact translation to the Holy Book.
Can we speak of exact reconstruction of the Bible?
Upon finding the Qumran manuscripts, they were compared with several more up-to-date versions of the Bible and the paleographers were able to realize that Christian historiography was found with good accuracy, which can be considered that the Holy Writings of the Bible today Today, they reflect what happened.
These writings revealed that the Christian paleographers of the time did an excellent job of translating and understanding the Holy Scriptures and that only Old Testament books were found in the Qumran texts.
Why is the Bible important?
In Western culture, the Bible is as sacred as the Koran of Muslims, because the word of God is in those writings.
Although the Bible has been transcribed in more than 2000 languages and reissued in multiple ways, it has been proven that its essence has not been distorted, but it has brought some discrepancies in the interpretation that many Christians consider correct.
types of bibles
The Bible, just as it has been translated into so many languages and tongues, there are also different versions which we are going to highlight as the most important the following:
- Vulgate Bible: This is known as the Bible written in vulgar Latin, hence its name. The Vulgate Bible was written and transferred to Latin by the priest Jerome at the request of Pope Dámaso I, with the aim of unifying the different versions that were found in a single language like the one that was spoken throughout the Roman Empire.
- Reina Valera: This version was translated by Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera (hence its name) and used by reformist Christians. The aforementioned, performed the interpretation of a text called textus receptus by Erasmus of Rotterdam.
- Greek Bible: This Bible was called LXX, a translation that was made into Koiné Greek from the languages in which it was written. This is the one used by the Orthodox Christian Church, since they claim to be the most accurate and most accurate to the thoughts that God wanted to capture.
Qumran Scrolls
These manuscripts, about 800 texts, found by Essenes in the Qumran caves. Before its discovery, the oldest texts in existence dated from the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries AD, so it was thought that they were modified or even shortened sentences from the original texts.
But thanks to these manuscripts it has been proven that today's texts, having been compared by great experts with them, coincide with the medieval ones despite the fact that they have almost a thousand years of difference between them and that they vary very little with the version. Greek called the Pentateuch.
They indicate that there is no New Testament text or any Christian writing, nor is it estimated that Jewish texts were found. Therefore, experts in this matter say that Qumran did not influence the origin of the Bible or Christianity, because this group was a minority and was far removed from society, while Jesus and the first Christians did live within the Jewish society.
In conclusion, the Qumran texts have made it possible to clarify the ancient phrases that were used at that time, where today they could not be understood due to their great difficulty, in order to understand the environment in which Christianity originated.
the four gospels
At the origin of the Bible, they do not speak of the four evangelists who gave testimony of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but today in the New Testament, they are included and focus on the miracles and experiences of Jesus. These gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The term “Evangelize” means to reveal the gospels, which is the same as revealing the truths and thoughts of God to humanity.
Documents from Christianity are known as extra-canonical or apocryphal gospels. They give life to the representation of Jesus Christ but are not legitimately approved by any of the official Churches, not even by the Jewish tradition.
