The Doctor Is In

the Bible: God's message to us part 1

Here's a fast quiz for you: which book contains all of the following items...

A 969 year old man
A talking donkey
A country filled with frogs
A floating axe head
An army with 700 left-handed men
A 450 foot (137m) long boat
Acts of valiant heroism and villainous treachery
Acts of kindness and compassion and acts of brutal savagery
Courage and bravery, cowardice and fear
All topped off by a man who came back from the dead

Of course, the only book that contains all these things (and more) is the Bible. We're going to take some time now to check out the Bible and see how it was written and put together into the form that we have today.

To get us started on this look at the Bible, here are some noteworthy facts behind it's development...

How Many Human Authors Were Involved In Producing The Bible?

Would you believe the correct answer is over 40? Now it might be easy to think that all the Biblical writers came off some identical, cookie-cutter assembly line but that isn't the case. In reality, the Biblical authors came from all sorts of different backgrounds and occupations.

For example, one was a king (Solomon) while others were shepherds (David, Hosea and Amos), military leaders (Joshua) or fishermen (Peter and John). One Biblical writer was a tax collector (Matthew), another was a doctor (Luke), some were young (Jeremiah), others were old (Paul). So it seems that God wanted to use a wide variety of people from all walks of life to communicate His Word in written form.

How Long Did It Take To Write The Bible?

The total time it took to complete all the books of the Bible is believed to be about 1500 years. For example, the books of Moses (which make up the first five books of the Bible) are thought to have been written around 1400 BC. The last books of the Bible (1st, 2nd, and 3rd John and Revelation) are thought to have been written around 90 AD.

To get an idea of how much time this represents, try to imagine reading a book that had the first chapter written in 500 AD and the last chapter completed yesterday. That's about the same time span that occurred between Genesis and Revelation. Yet the Bible is incredibly seamless despite being written by so many different people over such an extremely long period. The reason for this is that God was behind the writing of Scripture as it's ultimate author.

How Many Individual Books Make Up The Bible?

The Bible is one book that is actually comprised of 66 individual books- 39 in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament. Not only that, did you know that a Bible contains...

773,000 words
929 Old Testament chapters and 260 New Testament chapters, which add up to 1189 total chapters.
23,214 Old Testament verses and 7959 New Testament verses which make up a grand total of 31,173 verses in the Bible

Where Was The Bible Written?

Did you know that portions of The Bible were written on 3 continents: Europe, Africa, and Asia? In addition, parts of the Bible were also written in three different languages. Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew although some was written in Aramaic, a common language until around the time of Alexander the Great (6-4th century BC). The New Testament was written in common (or Koine) Greek, a widely used language during the time of Jesus.

How Did The Bible Get Written?

Unfortunately, the Biblical writers like Moses, Isaiah and Paul didn't enjoy the luxury of communicating through texting, fax machines and e-mail as we do today. Instead, a variety of materials were used to enable the Biblical writers to get the Word out in written form. These materials included stone (Habakkuk 2:2, Isaiah 30:8), gold (Exodus 39:30), clay tablets, papyrus (a kind of paper made from a plant that grew in the marshy areas of Egypt) and animal skins, also known as Vellum or parchment (see 2 Timothy 4:13).

One thing to remember is that the individual "books" of the Old and New Testaments were a lot different than the books that we recognize today. For example, a "book" in Biblical times was often more accurately called a "scroll" which was a common form of written communication in those days.

Scrolls were made by sewing or gluing sheets of parchment together and then winding those sheets around a wooden stick. To read the scroll, the reader would simply unroll one end and roll up the other as he or she went along. A really long book (like the 66 chapter book of Isaiah) would produce a scroll with a length of 20 feet (6.33 meters). The individually paged form of book that we are familiar with today did not come into general use until the second century AD.

Now writing on stone, clay and animal skins may sound really primitive to those of us who are used to more modern forms of communication but the important thing to keep in mind is that this actually worked very well- God's Word was accurately preserved for future generations to read and follow. In fact, it worked so well that archaeologists have found that the Biblical writings located among the Dead Sea Scrolls (a group of Old Testament and other writings dating back to around 100 BC), read basically the same as those written over a thousand years later.

Where Does The Word "Bible" Appear In The Bible?

Actually, this is a trick question. Believe it or not, the word "bible" does not appear anywhere in The Bible. The name "Bible" is taken from the Greek word biblos which means "book." Because the Scriptures were altogether known as "The Book" it was natural to begin to speak of God's Word as "The Bible." It's believed that Christians began using the word "Bible" to refer to the Word of God sometime during the 2nd century AD.

So there's a quick introduction to the book that we call "The Bible." In upcoming studies, we'll look at how we got the Bible, the reliability of the Scriptures and why the Bible can be trusted as God's Word.

Next: A Look At The Old Testament

The Doctor is not a real doctor but he plays one on the Internet. E-Mail prescriptions are also available on an individual basis.

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