The Bible is not just one book, but an entire library, with
stories, songs, poetry, letters and history, as well as literature that might
more obviously qualify as 'religious'.
The Bible was not written in one specific year or in a
single location. The Bible is a collection of writings, and the earliest ones
were set down more than 3,500 years ago (from the current year 2020) .
The Christian Bible has two sections, the Old Testament and
the New Testament. The Old Testament is the original Hebrew Bible, the sacred
scriptures of the Jewish faith, written at different times between about 1200
and 165 BC. The New Testament books were written by Christians in the first
century AD.
The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses
and are commonly called the Pentateuch (literally “five scrolls”).
According to the experts who counted back to the time of
Moses, it is said that Moses was born 1525 before Christ and lived for 120
years or died around 1405 before Christ.
To be closer to the estimates let’s allow the range as Moses
lived between 1500 and 1300 BC, though he recounts events in the first eleven
chapters of the Bible that occurred long before his time (such as the creation
and the flood).
These earliest accounts were handed on from generation to
generation in songs, narratives, and poetry.
In those early societies there was no writing as yet and
people passed on these oral accounts with great detail and accuracy.
The earliest writing began when symbols were scratched or
pressed on clay tablets. The Egyptians refined this technique and developed an
early form of writing known as hieroglyphics. The Bible tells us that Moses was
“educated in all the learning of the Egyptians”, so he would have been familiar
with the major writing systems of his time. We also read that God gave Moses
“two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of
God”(Exodus 31:18). All this leads to the conclusion that the earliest writings
in the Bible were set down around 1400 BC.
The Old Testament
(The Law )
The Hebrew Bible has 39 books, written over a long period of
time, and is the literary archive of the ancient nation of Israel. It was
traditionally arranged in three sections.
The first five books, Genesis to Deuteronomy. They are not
'law' in a modern Western sense: Genesis is a book of stories, with nothing
remotely like rules and regulations, and though the other four do contain
community laws they also have many narratives. The Hebrew word for Law
('Torah') means 'guidance' or 'instruction', and that could include stories
offering everyday examples of how people were meant to live as well as legal
requirements.
These books were later called the 'Pentateuch', and
tradition attributed them to Moses. Some parts undoubtedly date from that
period, but as things changed old laws were updated and new ones produced, and
this was the work of later editors over several centuries.
The writings of the thirty or so other contributors to the
Old Testament span a thousand years! They recount the times and messages from
Moses’ successor, Joshua, to the last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi,
who wrote his little tract around 450 BC.
Then there is a 500-year period when no writings were
contributed to the Bible. This is the period between the testaments, when
Alexander the Great conquered much of the world and when the Greek language was
introduced to the Hebrews. Indeed, they began to use Greek so much that the
Hebrew language was replaced by Greek and by another language, Aramaic, which
was spoken all over that area of the world at that time.
The Prophets
The Prophets is the largest section of the Hebrew Bible, and
has two parts ('former prophets' and 'latter prophets').
The books of 'latter prophets' preserve sayings and stories
of religious and political activists ('prophets') who served as the spiritual
conscience of the nation throughout its history, reminding people of the social
values that would reflect the character of God. Some books are substantial
(Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), others are much shorter (Hosea, Joel, Amos,
Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi).
Sometimes, the prophets could be mime artists and dramatists, accompanying
their actions by short spoken messages, often delivered in poetic form. These
were the sound bites of their day, which made it easy for others to remember
them and then write them down.
The 'former prophets' consist of Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel,
1-2 Kings. They are history books, but what makes them also 'prophets' is that
they not only record information, they interpret it, explaining its
significance in relation to other events in the history of Israel, and of the
wider world of their day.
The Writings
These include Psalms (songs, prayers and liturgies for
worship), Proverbs (sayings of homespun wisdom), Job (a drama that explores the
nature of suffering), plus the 'five scrolls' ('Megiloth') which were grouped
together because each had associations with a particular religious festival:
Ruth (the Jewish Feast of Weeks, also called Shavuot), Song of Solomon (Passover),
Ecclesiastes (Tabernacles), Lamentations (Destruction of Jerusalem), and Esther
(Purim). This section also includes the last books of the Hebrew Bible to be
written: Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1-2 Chronicles (all history books), and Daniel
(visions of a better world).
The New Testament
The New Testament has 27 books, written between about 50 and
100 AD, and falling naturally into two sections: the Gospels, which tell the
story of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John); and the Letters (or epistles) -
written by various Christian leaders to provide guidance for the earliest
church communities.
The Letters
Letters were the natural way for itinerant church leaders to
communicate with their converts, and the earliest ones were written before the
Gospels. With some exceptions (Romans, Hebrews), they were not meant to be
formal presentations of Christian belief, but offered advice to people who were
working out how to express their commitment to Jesus in ways that would be
relevant to the many different cultural contexts in which they found themselves
throughout the Roman empire.
Reading them can be like listening to one half of a
conversation, as the writers give answers to questions sent to them either
verbally or in writing. Paul was the most prolific writer of such letters,
though he was not the only one.
The Gospels
The Gospels were written to present the life and teachings
of Jesus in ways that would be appropriate to different readerships, and for
that reason are not all the same. They were not intended to be biographies of
Jesus, but selective accounts that would demonstrate his significance for
different cultures.
The first three are effectively different editions of the
same materials, and for that reason are known as the 'synoptic gospels'. The
writer of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, which tells the story of
how Christianity spread from being a small group of Jewish believers in the
time of Jesus to becoming a worldwide faith in less than a generation.
The New Testament concludes with the book of Revelation,
which begins with a series of letters to seven churches in the area of Asia
Minor (modern Turkey), but then offers a visionary presentation of the meaning
of all things, from creation to the end of the world.
The New Testament was written during a much shorter period,
i.e. during the last half of the first century AD.
It was the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, which ignited the flame that produced the New Testament, as the new faith swept across the Near East and then westward to Greece and on to Rome.
Half of the New Testament books were contributed by one man, the Apostle Paul, in the epistles he sent to groups of new Christians and to his assistants Timothy and Titus.
The Bible closes with a majestic book of visions and dramatic views of the future. It was penned by the aged Apostle John around 95 AD and describes the new heaven and the new earth when God’s kingdom will embrace the universe and all rebellion and death will be a thing of the past.
In looking at all these dates, the important thing to
remember is that when the Bible was written is not as important as what was
written. However, the when is important also as we sense how God’s presence
persisted through the centuries and gave us “in the fullness of time” the
full-orbed revelation of salvation and hope through his son Jesus Christ.
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