Be Still, and Know

We've seen that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) - but God worked through human means to bring it to us: We've seen who the authors of the Bible are, and how sometimes they use assistants called amanuenses who wrote as the author dictated. So then who are scribes, and why did they matter? The printing press wasn't invented until the 15th century. Before that, if a text needed to survive, someone had to copy it by hand. Scribes were those people - they were skilled copyists who reproduced documents by hand. It wasn't just a hobby, these people were trained professionals. Alphabetic writing may have started as early as 2000BC. In a typical Mesopotamian scribal school, an apprentice would start with the alphabet, progress through vocabulary lists, legal formulas, and eventually in the advanced levels, they would memorize and recite proverbial sayings and canonical compositions. By the end, they were skilled not just at copying, but at understanding and contex...

Read this: "THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD; I SHALL NOT WANT." Now try this: "THELORDISMYSHEPHERDISHALLNOTWANT." Is it still readable? This is closer to how ancient readers encountered Scripture. Early biblical manuscripts were written in a style called scriptio continua  - continuous writing with no spaces between words. This was simply how writing worked in the ancient world. The oldest copies of the New Testament, the Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts, the Greek Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures), and even the codices that we saw in the last episode - all follow this pattern. Word spacing only became common several centuries later, with Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes in the 7th and 8th centuries often credited with popularizing it in the West. The Old Testament manuscripts added another layer of complexity entirely. Now take that spaceless text and remove the vowels: "THLRDSMYSHPHRDSHLLNTWNT." Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic were writ...

Before the Bible was a single bound book, it existed as individual physical manuscripts.  The earliest biblical texts were written on two main writing surfaces: papyrus and parchment . Papyrus was made from the stem of the papyrus plant, mostly produced in Egypt. The plant was cut into thin strips, layered, pressed, and dried to create writing sheets. It was widely used across the ancient Mediterranean world. Parchment was made from animal skin, usually sheep or goat, processed and stretched to create a durable writing surface. A higher quality form of parchment, made from calfskin, is called vellum . Both materials were used for biblical manuscripts. The Dead Sea Scrolls give us a clear example. Roughly 80% of those manuscripts were written on parchment and about 20% on papyrus, showing that animal skin was already a common medium for Jewish Scripture before the New Testament period.  The original manuscripts themselves no longer exist, but the surviving copies show us wh...

To understand the original languages the Bible was written in, you have to take into account what time period each book was written in, and the language of the land from where it came.  The Old Testament was written starting from around 1400 BC to about 400 BC. The majority of the books were written in the ancient Semitic language Hebrew because that was the language of the Israelites at that time, and the historical root of Hebrew still used today. Adding to that, there are thousands of Hebrew manuscripts and fragments that show consistent script, grammar, and vocabulary, with one of the most significant discoveries being the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's really marvelous that we have this consistency for texts written over a thousand year period. In a couple of books namely Daniel and Ezra, some portions are written in Aramaic (also a Semitic language), and you can actually see the language shift on the page. This is where you need to take into account the audience.  During ...

Before the Bible became a book, it was written by people - not angels, not scribes in heaven, but real men, living real lives. Over forty authors contributed to Scripture across centuries.  Now here’s an important fact that often gets missed. Out of the sixty-six books of the Bible, roughly 80% to 90% have authorship that is either explicitly stated in the text or consistently preserved through ancient Jewish and Christian tradition. Books like Genesis through Deuteronomy are traditionally attributed to Moses. The prophets are named. The Gospels identify their authors. Paul’s letters openly bear his name. In other words, most of the Bible does not come to us anonymously. There are a smaller number of books where authorship is not directly stated or is debated. Books like Job and Esther do not name an author. The book of Hebrews is anonymous, even in the earliest Christian sources. In these cases, attribution comes from early tradition, historical context, and internal evidence — no...

Before there was a Bible, there was a voice. God did not begin His revelation with pen and paper, ink and parchment. He began by speaking. He spoke to Adam. He spoke to Noah. He spoke to Abraham. For generations, God’s words were heard before they were ever written. Think about the world at that time - I am talking about 1500 to 2000 years before Christ - although writing existed, this was an oral world. Stories, laws, promises, covenants — all of it was spoken aloud, remembered carefully, and passed from one generation to the next. When God made covenants, He spoke them. When He called prophets, He spoke to them — sometimes directly, sometimes through angels. Revelation came as voice long before it became manuscript. Only later do we hear something new. God says, “ Write this down. ” In Exodus 17:14, after the victory over the Amalekites, God tells Moses, “Write this for a memorial in a book, and recount it in the hearing of Joshua.” Write it so it will be remembered. Write it so it ...

Have you ever thought that humans were originally intended to be plant-eaters? Now, this is just an observation. When you read Genesis carefully, we see three phases of the initial world: the world post-creation, the world post the fall of man, and then the world post-flood. And what humans are allowed to eat changes across these phases. Right after the finished work of creation, in Genesis 1:29, we read: And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Not just humans. In the next verse, He goes on to give plants as food for animals and birds as well. Now right before the fall, as God is forbidding the tree of knowledge in Genesis 2:16,17, we read: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall s...