The Origin of the Bible
By L. L. CAVINESS
IN these days no one need be without a Bible. The almost universal distribution of the Book, makes it really difficult to conceive of a time when there was no Bible. As one author expresses it:— “A world without a Bible! How strangely the words sound in our ears! And yet, though few probably realize it, that was the actual condition of this world on which we are living, so far as is known, throughout more than one third of its entire existence as the dwelling place of man. In other words, during the first 2,500 years, that is, until about 3,500 years ago, there appears to have been no written revelation from God.”—Sidney Collett, “All About the Bible,” Fleming H. Revell Co., N. Y., page 1. God’s plan during the first ages of the world seems to have been an oral communication of his will to the saints of those early times; yet in due time God prepared the way for a written revelation of his will. “About the close of the first two thousand years, God called Abram out from the idolatrous surroundings of his native home, changed his name to Abraham, and constituted him the head of a people, known as the Hebrews, or Jews, whom he pleased to call his own peculiar possession, and whom he specially fitted and prepared during many generations, that they might in due time become the depositaries of a revelation committed to writing, which would at once be more permanent in its nature and less liable to be either forgotten or corrupted; and that they as a nation, separated from all other peoples on the earth, might themselves first learn to ‘do all the words of this law’ (Deut. 29:29), and in the fullness of time might spread the blessings of this precious heritage among all nations. “Accordingly, about five hundred years after the call of Abram,—that is, about B. C. 1500,—the time came to have this written revelation accomplished, which was to embody a history of the preceding 2,500 years, including an account of the creation, together with God’s laws, precepts, promises, prophecies, etc.”—Id., page 6. Yet the Bible was not written as are ordinary books, by one person and within a comparatively short time. “Altogether, about forty persons, in all stations of life, were engaged in the writing of these oracles, the work of which was spread over a period of about sixteen hundred years—namely, from about 1500 B. C., when Moses commenced to write the Pentateuch amid the thunders of Sinai, to about A. D. 97, when the apostle John, himself a son of thunder, wrote his Gospel in Asia Minor.”—Id., pages 11, 12. “The authorship of this book is wonderful. Here are words written by kings, by emperors, by princes, by poets, by sages, by philosophers, by fishermen, by statesmen; by men learned in the wisdom of Egypt, educated in the schools of Babylon, trained up at the feet of rabbis in Jerusalem. It was written by men in exile, in the desert, in shepherds’ tents, in ‘green pastures’ and beside ‘still waters.’ Among its authors we find the taxgatherer, the herdsman, the gatherer of sycamore fruit; we find poor men, rich men, statesmen, preachers, exiles, captains, legislators, judges; men of every grade and class are represented in this wonderful volume, which is in reality a library, filled with history, genealogy, ethnology, law, ethics, prophecy, poetry, eloquence, medicine, sanitary science, political economy, and perfect rules for the conduct of personal and social life. It contains all kinds of writing; but what a jumble it would be if sixty-six books were written in this way by ordinary men.”—H. L. Hastings, “Will the Old Book Stand?” pages 19, 20. Not only does this Book represent the work of so many different persons writing under such a variety of circumstances, but it was written in different languages. All the New Testament was written in Greek, while “the Old Testament—at least, almost the whole of it—was written in Hebrew. The following three small sections, however, were written in Chaldean: Jer. 10:11; Dan. 2:4 to 7:28; Ezra 4:8 to 6:18. “We are not told, and therefore it is impossible to say with absolute certainty, why these three parts should have been written in a different language from the rest of the Old Testament; but there was, no doubt, a special purpose in it.”—“All About the Bible,” page 22. It is well to remember also that not alone the language, but even the style of writing differed from our modern form. “The Hebrew language was originally written, not only entirely in consonants without any vowels at all (thus Jehovah was simply written JHVH), but there was no spacing to divide one word from another, as if we should write the Lord’s Prayer thus:— “RFTHRWHCHRTNHVNHLLWD-BTHNM, etc. “It was not until after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity that words were divided from one another, and the Hebrew Old Testament generally was arranged into verses and paragraphs, and the present square Hebrew characters were substituted for the ancient Phœnician or archaic Hebrew alphabet. These changes, which were only gradually introduced, were commenced, Dr. Ginsburg tells us, in the days of Ezra, by certain men known as the Sopherim scribes. The vowel points were introduced much later, about 500 or 600 A. D., by the Masoretes, who put in writing many oral traditions as to the correct method of reading the sacred text.”—Id., pages 16, 17. The Greek New Testament also was at first written unpunctuated, a point which is at times of much importance in the interpretation of the text. As one considers the origin of our Bible, he cannot but be impressed with the wonderfulness of the revelation which God has vouchsafed to us, and there springs up a renewed determination to give it more time and study.