I hate to spoil the romance, but the Bible didn’t just flutter down from heaven, bound in embossed leather.
Its development took thousands of years. The process was very deliberate; its production very tedious. Some of the process was decidedly supernatural and some was seemingly natural.
But all was part of a divine plan.
Who wrote the Bible?
This question can give rise to the ire of atheists and the argumentative. But since I’m likely speaking to Bible-believers here, let’s look at what the Scriptures have to say:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ 2 Timothy 3:16, NIV
So there you go. Question answered. All Scripture is God-breathed. It originated with Him; it carries His very life.
Yet He used humans to speak it.
For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. ~ 2 Peter 1:21, NIVFor no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. ~ 2 Peter 1:21, NASB 1995For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. ~ 2 Peter 1:21, NKJV
And He used humans to write it.
“What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches…” ~ Revelation 1:11, NKJV
Now, can we all agree that the men who wrote the Scriptures were not under some spell or fallen into a trance?
Granted, people could fall into trances as Peter did in Acts 10:10, and God did direct them to do things as He did Paul in Acts 9:6, but He never took command of them with a divine remote control.
Neither were the men who penned the Scriptures mindlessly taking dictation. In their writings, they made it clear that they were testifying to things God had said or done and carefully passing on things He had told them to speak.
Human involvement in expressing the thoughts and words of God explains why there are so many different styles of writing displayed in the Scriptures. The intellect, experiences, and personalities of the authors shine through, and God obviously doesn’t mind. He’s the one who chose them for the task.
Psalm 45:1 is an especially beautiful piece of prose describing the moving of the Spirit in the heart of the author:
My heart is overflowing with a good theme;I recite my composition concerning the King;My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. ~ Psalm 45:1, NKJV
It is the Spirit of God who moves, but man picks up the pen.
What is a Bible?
The Christian Bible is a collection of sacred writings prepared and preserved for us.
This is as good a time as any to introduce a matter of semantics, or perhaps just a pet peeve of mine: using the term “the Bible” to refer to the Scriptures, and vice versa.
Everything in your Bible is not God-breathed nor inerrant, and thus, not authoritative.
What???
Bibles — those bound-up collections you buy at a bookstore — contain man’s opinions, assumptions, and mistakes. Translating from language to language and from age to age led to contradiction and confusion while God neither contradicts Himself nor is confused.
Translators’ footnotes attempt to explain the differences and are useful for study, but the very presence of footnotes is evidence enough that not every word of every translation is inerrant.
No shame on the translators. They are diligent to share with us what they learn.
But shame on us — the readers — when we insist on “choosing sides” between translations rather than trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth.
And troublesome is our allegiance to our Bibles when they lead beyond scholarly commentary into the promotion of sectarian or personal doctrine.
The supernatural can survive the natural. Live a little! Trust God! Explore more than one translation.
Only the Scriptures — the God-breathed words spoken into the ears and the hearts of the apostles and prophets — are inerrant and authoritative.
Well then, what is the Bible?
The word “Bible” translates to the Greek word biblia, which means “books.”
Included in your Bible are 66 books penned by at least 40 authors, recorded over at least 4,000 years, weaving narrative, poetry, song, and correspondence together into one grand story about one great God, revealing Him as the life-giving Spirit, a loving Father, and His Son, the sacrificial Lamb and our glorious King.
The Bible is not sacred, but the God-breathed words it carries are.
We divide the Christian Bible into two parts we call “the Old Testament” and “the New Testament,” or “the Old Covenant” and “the New Covenant.” This division is understandable but maybe unfortunate.
It is understandable because the Old Testament ends at that point in history when God stopped speaking through the prophets — beginning years of 400 years of silence — and the New Testament picks up where God again begins to speak.
The distinction between the two is unfortunate, though, because it can lead to the idea that the plan of God, or even His very nature, changed, that some people are now forever “out” while others are forever “in,” or that because there is a New Testament, the Old Testament no longer has value.
According to Jesus, none of that is true.
The Old Testament
What we call “the Old Testament” is the Hebrew Tanakh, often referred to as “the Scriptures.”
The Scriptures were recorded on sixteen parchment scrolls and gathered into three collections: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
“The Law” (the Hebrew Torah) refers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — those books attributed to Moses by Jewish tradition and by Jesus Himself. The English word “law” is a bad translation of the Hebrew word torah. Torah means “teaching,” “doctrine,” and “instruction,” as well as “law.”
Since much of the history recorded in the Torah was not the eyewitness testimony of Moses, the stories he recorded must have been passed down through the generations, either orally, through ancient documents, or by direct revelation from God.
Moses’ absence from many of the events in no way negates the validity of the Scripture but rather required the inspiration of the Spirit upon a supporting cast to record all that God wanted the world to know.
“The Prophets” refers to the scrolls of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, along with the works of twelve other prophets. Often, the prophets delivered their messages orally while scribes and editors worked together to preserve them (see Jeremiah 36:32) on parchment.
“The Prophets” also includes the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings — the narrative of Israel’s history in the Promised Land.
The remaining scrolls were called “The Writings,” and included poetry (Psalms and Lamentations), wisdom literature (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), and histories (Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles).
The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings were Jesus’ and His disciples’ Scriptures. Even after He was raised from the dead, when Jesus encountered some of His disciples, here’s what He had to say:
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. ~ Luke 24:25–26, NIV
To begin to understand the Messiah, His disciples needed to know the Scriptures — the Tanakh.
The New Testament
After Jesus’ ascension, His disciples began compiling accounts of His life. The narrative accounts — the Gospels and Acts — contain the eyewitness accounts of apostles Matthew and John, a record of interviews conducted by Mark — a companion of the apostle Peter, and the results of extensive research by Luke — a companion of the apostle Paul.
The words and deeds of the Son of God, experienced by his followers, became Scripture.
When Jesus commanded His apostles to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation, He was commissioning them to go out and speak God-breathed words. The stories of their adventures in obedience became Scripture.
As the church grew, apostles and church leaders began writing letters of encouragement and instruction to churches and fellow laborers. Because of the authority these men carried, their writings were recognized as inspired by God and were circulated among the churches as Scripture.
The apostles recognized each other’s writings as Scripture. When writing to Timothy, Paul quoted Luke alongside Deuteronomy (1 Timothy 5:18, Luke 10:7, Deuteronomy 25:4), putting Luke’s writing on par with the Tanakh. When teaching his disciples, Peter referred to Paul’s writings as inspired by God, and related them to “other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15–16).
The Revelation of John was his account of a vision he had while “in the Spirit.” His recounting of his experience — the fantastical visions and messages from heaven — was Scripture: the human pen capturing the Lord’s revealing, not just for himself, but for the whole Church.
The Bible and the Scriptures. Natural from supernatural.Heaven to earth; ink to paper. Man’s capture of the God-breathed Word.
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. ~ Luke 1:4, NIVIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ~ John 1:1, NIV