- The 66 texts that comprise the Bible were written, roughly speaking, between 1500 BC and 100 AD. The printing press would not be invented until the 15th century AD. Therefore, the ancient biblical texts took the form of manuscripts – that is, they were handwritten.
- These manuscripts usually took the form of scrolls – some people say rolls, but either term will do for our purposes. This allowed a maximum number of words on the material – which was usually made from papyrus. Scrolls also allowed proper storage, because the words were written on the “inner” side of the scroll, and thus, since they were stored in rolled-up form, were more protected than if they had been written on the side that was exposed. It was only in the 1st-century AD that the codex – being the predecessor to the book form with which we are familiar – came into use.
- For obvious reasons, the scrolls were not well suited to carrying around from place to place. Plus, writing materials and writing instruments were relatively expensive. On top of all this, literacy rates were low in ancient times compared to those in modern times. As a result, access to biblical texts by the general population back then was nothing like what we have today. Bibles are literally everywhere these days – even on the phones we hold in our hands or put in our pockets. Comparatively speaking, access to the Bible was far more limited in ancient times.
- Because of the factors mentioned above, the way most people consumed the Bible’s content in ancient times was to assemble with others and hear it read. This was an essential function of an ancient synagogue or church.
- There was no meaningful difference between a synagogue and church in ancient times except that the former term came to be applied to Jews and the latter to Christians. That’s it. Both terms applied to the people who gathered, and later came also to be applied to the buildings in which they gathered. But the purpose of the gathering included the reading of Scripture so that everyone could know what they said (Acts 13:15, 27; 15:21).
- Because of synagogues and churches, many more ancient people had access to the content of the Bible than had access to the ancient scrolls upon which it was written. Thus ancient Jews were far more biblically literate than they were nominally literate.
Related:
The Duty of a Man 