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The Bible is an ancient collection of even more ancient texts. Bible translators and publishers provide us many conveniences that make the writing more accessible than it would otherwise be. Here is a rough timeline of how the Bible as we know it today came together.
41st Century BC
God creates Adam and Eve. During the 25 centuries – that is, 2,500 years – between Adam and Moses, the following men, and many more, will come and go: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
15th Century BC
Moses writes the first five books of the Bible. Note that God ordered no writings be kept for him until about 2,500 years after creation – which was when there was a nation to preserve and protect them.
10th Century BC
David writes the Psalms.
4th Century BC
The last of the Old Testament books is written. Thus the 39 texts of the Old Testament were written over a roughly thousand-year period.
1st Century
The 27 texts that comprise the New Testament are written.
2nd Century
Some date the Muratorian Canon in the 2nd century and others in the 4th. In any case, all we have is a fragment.
3rd Century
Scholar Michael J. Kruger argues that Origen of Alexandria (185-254), in essence, declared the 27-book NT canon around 250 – more than a hundred years before Athanasius did it. (Source: Alisa Childers)
4th Century
The near-universal testimony of 4th-5th century churches – which were organizationally-independent and geographically-dispersed – was that the 27 texts collectively called “the New Testament” were written in 1st century by the authors named with each text and handed down from one generation to the next over that intervening period of roughly three hundred years.
Some date the Muratorian Canon in the 2nd century and others in the 4th. In any case, all we have is a fragment.
- 313 – The first edition of Church History by Eusebius is published
- c 324 – The final edition of Church History by Eusebius is published
- 339 – Eusebius dies.
- 367 – 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius of Alexandria. This is the earliest clear declaration of the 27-book NT canon we still have today.
- 382 – The Vulgate is commissioned: Pope Damasus commissions Jerome, the leading biblical scholar of his day, to produce an acceptable Latin version of the Bible from the various translations then being used.
- 393 – The Synod of Hippo
- 397 – Council of Carthage
The Bible (Old and New Testaments) begins to be published as a single volume.
5th Century AD
- 405 – The Vulgate is completed by Jerome.
13th Century
The chapter divisions we see in the Bible today were added. (Verse divisions wouldn’t be added until the 16th century; Chapter and Verse Divisions)
14th Century
John Wycliff translates the Bible from Latin into English.
15th Century
The printing press is invented. Prior to this, all copies of the Bible were handwritten.
16th Century
William Tyndale translates the New Testament into English from the original Greek. He also worked on a translation of the Old Testament but was unable to complete it before he was martyred.
The verse divisions we see in the Bible today were added. (Chapter divisions had been added in the 13th century; Chapter and Verse Divisions)
17th Century
The King James Version of the Bible was first published in 1611, having been commissioned by King James I of England (1566-1625).
19th Century
1844 – Tischendorf discovers Codex Sinaiticus
1881 – Westcott and Hort first publish their critical text
1899 – Red Letter Bibles: Not all Bibles have red letters, but those that do use them for the words of Jesus. More precisely, they are for the words Jesus spoke during his earthly life and afterward when He ascended to heaven. Therefore, there are no red letters in the Old Testament; when a Bible has red letters, they’re all in the New Testament. There are, of course, lots of them in the four gospels, but there are only a few in the books that follow – with most of them found in Acts and Revelation. Paul’s letters (1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy) contain the others.
Even though the New Testament texts have existed for 2,000 years, it’s only in the last hundred years or so that the words of Jesus have been presented in red. In an 1899 Christian Herald magazine editorial, German-American publisher Louis Klopsch (1852-1910) declared and promoted the idea as being inspired by Jesus’ words at the Last Supper:
And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”
Luke 22:20
Thus the red letters are intended to remind us of the blood Jesus shed on the cross for our sins. That is indeed something worth remembering. It cost Jesus something precious to come to earth and tell us the truth. Klopsch was associate of 19th-century Protestant luminaries such as Thomas De Witt Talmage, Dwight L. Moody, and Ira D. Sankey. The first red-letter New Testament was published later in 1899, and the first such full Bible in 1901. See more at BSN: Red-Letter Bibles.
20th Century
The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is published. It is generally considered the English translation that adheres the closest to a literal word-for-word translation from the original language. Other noteworthy literal translations are the King James Version (KJV) and the English Standard Version (ESV).
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