October: Why I Can Trust The Bible Week 1: History Of The Bible
11:00 Fellowship Time
11:10 Welcome new members
Introductions
Class structure (fellowship, teaching, presentation, prayer)
Overview of the topics of the month
1. History of the Bible and various versions
2. God’s Truth – A matter of fact & faith
3. How should the Bible impact our lives – How the Bible is divided
4. SCC Value: “Trust & Obey” – Why it is hard to be accountable
11:30 History Of The Bible
1,400 BC: The first written Word of God: The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses.
500 BC: Completion of all original Hebrew manuscripts which make up The 39 Books of the Old
Testament.
200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek manuscripts which contain the 39 Old Testament
Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.
100 AD: Completion of all original Greek manuscripts which make up The 27 Books of the New
Testament.
500 AD: Scriptures have been translated into over 500 languages.
600 AD: LATIN was the only language allowed for Scripture under penalty of death.
1384 AD: Wycliffe is the first person to produce a (hand-written) manuscript copy of the
complete Bible; All 80 Books. 1455 AD: Gutenberg invents the printing press; Books may now be mass-produced instead of
individually hand-written. The first book ever printed is Gutenberg's Bible in Latin.
1522 AD: Martin Luther's German New Testament.
1526 AD: William Tyndale's New Testament; The first New Testament printed in the English
language.
1609 AD: The Douay Old Testament is added to the Rheims New Testament (of 1582) making
the first complete English Catholic Bible; Translated from the Latin Vulgate (80 Books).
1611 AD: The King James Bible printed; Originally with All 80 Books. The Apocrypha was
officially removed in 1885 leaving only 66 Books.
1885 AD: The "English Revised Version" Bible; The first major English revision of the KJV.
1901 AD: The "American Standard Version"; The first major American revision of the KJV.
1945 – 1954 AD: Hundreds of scrolls were found in caves. Some of the manuscripts
date to 150 BC establishing the accuracy of the current manuscripts used for Bible
Translation. Some of the scrolls will be on display in Milwaukee January 22, 2010 at
the Milwaukee Public Museum. MPM.edu
1971 AD: The "New American Standard Bible" (NASB) is published as a "Modern and Accurate
Word for Word English Translation" of the Bible.
1973 AD: The "New International Version" (NIV) is published as a "Modern and Accurate
Phrase for Phrase English Translation" of the Bible.
1982 AD: The "New King James Version" (NKJV) is published as a "Modern English Version
Maintaining the Original Style of the King James."
2002 AD: The English Standard Version (ESV) is published as a translation to bridge the gap
between the accuracy of the NASB and the readability of the NIV.
12:00 Prayer Time
Extended text on the history of the Bible and its versions. 1400 BC, is the first recorded history of writing down God’s Word was The Ten Commandments The earliest ‘Scripture” is considered the Pentateuch. The first 5 books in the modern Bible are these: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Old Testament scriptures were written on scrolls made of animal skin. When the entire Pentateuch is present on one scroll (about 150’ long), it is called the Torah – the holiest of scriptures to Jews. The scrolls were reproduced by Jewish Scribes – painstakingly accurate and checked several times. The earliest scrolls we have were made around 300-400 AD. Around 500 BC, the Jews gathered together and decided what the ‘canon’ (a term used for a gathering and application of rules to determine what stays or goes) and the 39 books of the Jewish Scripture (what we know as the Old Testament) was established. During the last few centuries before Christ, another group of 14 Jewish historical books were collected together and called the “Apocrypha” but were not considered “inspired” by the Jewish Leaders and therefore not included in Jewish Scripture. This will become important later. By the end of the 1st century, the 27 books of The New Testament, primarily written on papyrus in Greek, were gathered together. In 382, the NT scriptures were translated from Greek into “Latin Vulgate” (meaning vulgar or common) but the translator put a note that he was unsure the Apocrypha should be included, but he did. In 397, The Council at Carthage declared there are 80 books (53 OT and 27 NT). By 500 AD, the Bible (the word comes from the same root word as papyrus) was found in over 500 languages. Around 600 AD, the Catholic Church of Rome (then the only organized and recognized church) decreed that the Bible must only exist in the Latin version and all other languages be destroyed under the penalty of death. Only priests could read the Bible and teach it for a long time. Around 560 AD, a man named Columbo started a non-Catholic Bible College that was the only non-Catholic, secret society called Culdee, which was a source of Biblical instruction for over 700 years. From the Culdees, a man called John Wycliffe was chosen to lead the charge to get the Bible back into the hands of the masses and in their own language. The first hand- written English language Bibles were translated from Latin and written by Wycliffe. He later expressed that religion should not be organized as the Catholic Church was at that time. In 1450, the first book printed by machine was the Bible by Gutenberg. In the 1490’s, the Bible was again being translated into English again but from the original Greek language. The people were so hungry to hear God’s Word in their own language that in one service in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, 20,000 people squeezed inside and almost as many more outside who could not get in, came to hear the Word read. Now, only 200 people come with most of those being tourists. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 “Theses of Contention” – some of which he felt was heresy based on what the Bible had to say on certain subjects. The fact that many Bibles could be produced through the printing process was essential to the Reformation. In 1539, the Anglican Bishops of Henry ratified Luther’s 66 books. In 1546 at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church re-affirmed the 73 books and declared them infallible. In 1525-1526, William Tyndale became the first printed edition of the English Bible. The persecution of non-Latin Bibles was still strong and in 1534, Tyndale was imprisoned for 500 days, ultimately strangled and burned at the stake. King Henry VIII, while starting the Anglican or Church of England in defiance to the Pope’s refusal to let Henry divorce and remarry, began the subsidizing of printing the Bible in English. In 1611, with the effort of over fifty scholars and using all the available various translations into English, created the Anglican’s church’s King James Bible. The most commonly used version was actually a revision of 1769 version. Many revisions of the KJV have occurred with the final revision by Thomas Publishers in 1982 to the New KJV replacing some of the antiquated English words (i.e. thee and thou). The 1825 decision of the British and Foreign Bible Society was not universally accepted. For more than sixty years after this vote there was still a lot of confusion in the numbers of books in the canon of the KJV. It was not until 1880 that the American Bible Society voted remove the "Apocrypha" Books from the King James Version. The "Apocrypha" was officially removed by the Anglican Church by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885. In 1901, The American Standard was published and was widely used across America and was revised in 1971 as the NASB or NAS. It was acclaimed for it’s word for word translation which made it also ‘flow’ awkwardly in the English language. During the years 1945 – 1954, hundreds of scrolls were found in caves. Some of the manuscripts date to 150 BC establishing the accuracy of the current manuscripts used for Bible Translation. Some of the scrolls will be on display in Milwaukee January 22, 2010 at the Milwaukee Public Museum. MPM.edu In 1973, the New International Version, NIV, which was translated by a group of scholars but focused on phrase by phrase translation making this the easiest to understand Bible to that time. The English Standard Version, ESV, first published in 2002 was an attempt to combine the accuracy of the NASB and NIV
These are the Bible Translations that can be found on Bible Gateway (biblegateway.com), a resource site recommended by SCC.
21st Century King James Version Amplified Bible New International Version American Standard Version Contemporary English Version New International Version - UK Amplified Bible Darby Translation New King James Version Contemporary English Version Douay-Rheims 1899 American New Living Translation Edition Darby Translation English Standard Version The Message Douay-Rheims 1899 American Good News Translation Today's New International Edition Version English Standard Version Holman Christian Standard Bible Worldwide English (New Testament) Good News Translation King James Version Wycliffe New Testament Holman Christian Standard Bible New American Standard Bible Young's Literal Translation 21st Century King James Version New Century Version American Standard Version New International Reader's Version