The Bible is a collection of writings that took almost 2,000 years to write, collect, and finalize. The process that produced the Bible was begun by ancient Jews and completed by ancient Christians – but, in retrospect, it’s obvious that all the people involved were only participating in a project that was being guided by an invisible hand.
What the Ancient Jews Gave Us: The Old Testament (The Prophets)
The first three-fourths of the Bible’s contents were collected and maintained by ancient Israel in the way that a nation normally collects and maintains its most important documents. For example, as the United States has the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and other important documents stored in its National Archives so the priests and Levites of the ancient Jews collected and maintained the writings of Moses and of all the the prophets that followed in the nation’s temple for God.
Like any nation, Israel had its ups and downs; the most devastating downs were being conquered and dispersed by the Assyrians (northern Israel in 722 BC) and the Babylonians (southern Israel in 586 BC). Throughout Israel’s history, including those conquests, the same priests and Levites who kept its tabernacle and then its temple also kept its holy writings. These are the Scriptures that Jesus was taught as a child, and the same Scriptures He Himself taught as an adult. What the ancient Jews called “the Law and the Prophets” or “Moses and the Prophets” or even just “the Prophets,” we call the Old Testament.
What the Ancient Christians Gave Us: The New Testament (The Apostles)
The last fourth of the Bible – what we call the New Testament – was collected and maintained in an entirely different way from the Old Testament…even though both sets of writings are thoroughly Jewish in nature.
In the time of Jesus, Jews were not only living in the land of Israel, they were also scattered all around the world. This was because of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests they had experienced. For this reason, there were not only synagogues in the cities of Israel, there were synagogues in the cities of the world. Jesus sent His apostles to preach His message not just throughout Israel, but throughout the whole world. That message was sent first to Jews, but, within a decade of His resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, Jesus opened His movement to Gentiles as well. Whenever the apostles entered a new locale, they typically started with the local synagogue, adding Gentiles along the way.
A local synagogue was a place for Jews to gather, especially on the Sabbath to hear readings from their Scriptures. Literacy rates in antiquity were far lower than in our day, but this didn’t mean ancient people were ignorant of written material – just that their familiarity with it came mostly from hearing it read publicly. After the Scripture reading, it was common to let some of those present stand and speak. The apostles would use this time to proclaim their message – in effect, stating something like “The Messiah we’ve all heard promised through Moses and the Prophets has come; we have seen Him crucified and resurrected from the dead…”
Just as it does today, the message of Jesus polarized people in those days. If the synagogue’s leadership believed, the unbelieving left and the synagogue became, in effect, a church. Otherwise, it was the believers who left and started a new believing synagogue (church). Either way, the apostles would eventually move on because their goal was to get a congregation focused on the message and move on to the next town. They would often return to check on congregations they had launched, and, when they wanted to make a trip but didn’t have the time, they would send a letter – often called an Epistle – to instruct, encourage, or even correct the congregation. Some of the apostles and their helpers committed their testimony about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to writing. These are the four writings we call the Gospels. The Gospels and Epistles would be read in the gatherings after the reading of Moses and the Prophets.
The polarizing message of Jesus led to great tribulation for those who preached it. The apostles were almost all martyred, usually by some form of crucifixion or something just as gruesome. By the dawn of the 2nd century, they were all dead, but the churches kept growing and multiplying. The apostles and their helpers had written some 27 texts in all. There was no central controlling authority for the churches; a church who had a text from an apostle would let the church down the road make a copy of it. Through such a one-by-one process, all the churches eventually ended up with copies of all 27 of these texts – a process that went on for about 300 years. It became standard that every church gathering included a reading of “the Prophets and the Apostles” – which was, of course, “the Old Testament and the New Testament.” Unbelieving synagogues continued reading just the Prophets as if the Messiah had never come.
Christianity was legalized by the Roman Empire in the early part of the 4th century, and adopted as its official religion in the latter part. This gave all churches freedom to interact with each other, compare notes, and settle on a final list of authentic 1st-century writings from that first generation of Jesus followers. A consensus was achieved because the matter was not one of theology or opinion. Rather it was simply a matter of tracing the chain of custody for each text.
Thus was the New Testament conceived in the 1st century and birthed in the 4th – though only God recognized the conception at the time!
The Bible Is the Handiwork of God
Truly, God was the editor of the Bible. Not even the writers of the 27 texts seemed to understand that they were providing the raw material for a New Testament to be laid alongside the Scriptures they knew (eventually re-labeled as “the Old Testament”). Therefore, the Bible is the work of men but it is also the handiwork of God, for no human being saw what was coming.
Jesus is the glue that holds the Bible together. The Old Testament consists of the Scriptures handed down to him by his fellow Jews. The New Testament consists of the writings of servants He personally sent. Therefore, Jesus brings these two bodies of literature together into one. And “what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
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