How the Bible Came to Be

c. 1446–1406 B.C.Moses Writes the Law

The written Bible begins with Moses. God told him, “Write this for a memorial in a book” (Exodus 17:14), and “Moses wrote all the words of the LORD” (Exodus 24:4). In the wilderness after the exodus, Moses wrote the five books of the Law, Genesis to Deuteronomy. When he finished, he gave the book to the priests to be kept “in the side of the ark of the covenant” (Deuteronomy 31:26) and read to all Israel. From the very beginning, God’s people knew that these words were not Moses’ ideas but the words of the Lord.

c. 1400–430 B.C.Prophets, Kings and Psalmists

Over the next thousand years God raised up more writers. Joshua added to “the book of the law of God” (Joshua 24:26). Samuel, David, Solomon and the prophets wrote history, psalms, wisdom and prophecy. God told Jeremiah, “Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book” (Jeremiah 30:2), and when a king burned the scroll, God had it written again (Jeremiah 36:28). Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with a few chapters of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic, the language of Babylon and Persia.

c. 430 B.C.The Old Testament Is Complete

After the exile, Ezra the scribe gathered the people and read the Law to them, “and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8). Malachi, the last of the prophets, wrote about 430 B.C. and closed with the promise of one who would prepare the way of the Lord. Then the prophetic voice fell silent for about four hundred years. The Jews counted the same 39 books we have, arranged as 24 in three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. To Israel “were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2).

c. 250 B.C.The Scriptures in Greek

After Alexander the Great, Greek became the common language of the world, and many Jews no longer spoke Hebrew. In Alexandria, Egypt, Jewish scholars began translating the Scriptures into Greek, starting with the Law about 250 B.C. This translation is called the Septuagint. It carried God’s Word across the Roman world, and many of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament follow it. God was preparing the way for the gospel to go to every nation.

c. A.D. 30Jesus Confirms the Scriptures

Jesus received the Old Testament as the Word of God. He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets” (Matthew 5:17), and “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). He spoke of the martyrs “from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias” (Matthew 23:35), from Genesis to Chronicles, the first and last books of the Hebrew order. After He rose, He opened the disciples’ minds to all “written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me” (Luke 24:44).

c. A.D. 45–95The New Testament Is Written

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would “bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). His apostles and their close companions wrote the 27 books of the New Testament in Greek, from James about A.D. 45–49 to Revelation about A.D. 95. They wrote Gospels so that “ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31), a history of the early church, letters to churches and believers, and the prophecy of Revelation. Paul told the churches to read his letters aloud and pass them on (Colossians 4:16).

A.D. 95–300The Churches Receive the Books

The churches received the apostles’ writings as Scripture from the start. Peter already placed Paul’s letters beside “the other scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16), and Paul quoted Luke’s Gospel as “scripture” (1 Timothy 5:18; Luke 10:7). The books were copied and shared from church to church. Early leaders such as Clement of Rome, Polycarp and Irenaeus quoted them as God’s Word. When false teachers wrote books of their own or tried to cut the Bible down, the churches were careful to hold to the books handed down from the apostles.

A.D. 367–397Recognized, Not Voted On

In A.D. 367 Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, listed in his Easter letter exactly the 27 books of our New Testament and called them “the springs of salvation.” The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) confirmed the same list. These leaders did not decide which books God had inspired. They wrote down what the churches had long recognized: books from the apostles or their close companions, true to the faith, received everywhere, and carrying God’s own authority. Jerome then translated the whole Bible into Latin, the Vulgate, used in the West for a thousand years.

A.D. 400–1500Copied by Hand

Before printing, every Bible was copied by hand. Jewish scribes called the Masoretes guarded the Hebrew text with great care, counting letters and words to catch any error. Christian scribes copied the Greek New Testament in monasteries and churches across the world. Today there are more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, far more than any other ancient book. In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were found near Qumran, including a scroll of Isaiah about a thousand years older than any copy known before. It matches our Isaiah almost word for word.

1382–1611The Bible in English

John Wycliffe’s followers gave England its first complete English Bible about 1382, copied by hand from the Latin. After Gutenberg’s printing press (c. 1455) and Erasmus’s printed Greek New Testament (1516), William Tyndale translated the New Testament from Greek in 1526. He was put to death for it in 1536, praying, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Within a few years printed English Bibles were placed in every church. In 1611 the King James Version was completed. For the many English translations since, see our Bible Translations page.