The Origins of the Holy Bible

The Bible Origins—

You would think if God inspired 40 authors to write His Bible, that he would have insisted they get it right. Or, better still, he could have easily done it himself — in an instant.

Instead, those forty authors labored over it for 1,610 years. When it was done, none of the religions in the world could agree on which books to use and which to throw out. The Bible is not the same for all religions — that would make the Word of God different for some people.

The oldest dated manuscript in any tongue — the Syriac Peshitta (464 C.E.) is minus Leviticus. In 508 C.E., Philoxenus, who was the Bishop of Hierapolis ordered Polycarp, the Christian prelate, to make a revision of the Peshitta Christian Scriptures and Polycarp included Second Peter, Second and Third John, Jude and Revelation.


Jerome's version was received with hostility. In 1592 the Roman Catholic Church accepted the Vulgate (which means that which is popular) as a standard edition for its church.

The Thebaic or Sahidic Versions of Upper Egypt (n the south) and the Bohairic Versions of Lower Egypt (in the north) contained essentially that of the Gothic Versions. This version omitted Samuel and Kings because Bishop Ulfilas, the translator, thought i too dangerous to include because they speak against warfare and idolatry.

In 1546, at the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church included the eleven additional books — those called the Apocryphia.

Arguments for their inclusion date from the early copies of the Greek Septuagint Version of the Hebrew Scriptures which was translated beginning about 280 B.C.E. In 90 C.E. the Jewish council specifically excluded all such writings from the Hebrew canon.

If you are a Christian you would have to argue that the Jewish canon is not complete because it does not contain the New Testament. If you were a Catholic you would argue the Protestant bibles are not complete because they omit the Apocryphia and so on. And if you were a Jew you would argue that the Catholics and Protestants are both wrong because their bibles contain too many books excluded from their canon.

There is no evidence to support the thesis that the holy works are to be included between two covers. It did require 1,610 years to write with 40 authors contributing to it. Chapters and verses were unknown until Robert Estienne's edition of the Latin Vulgate was published in 1555. It had been separate scrolls, scattered and handed down; and never united in book form.

If you are a Jehovah's Witness, you don't use any of these books. You are instructed to use the books published by your society and no others.

What we end up with is a different book for each group — part Jewish, Greek, Latin and English and not one Bible is like the other — either in total content or dialogue. And none were inspired by any god that we know about.

© 2006 Abraham Lincoln - All rights reserved.