The Blessed Mother did not give birth to a book but the Incarnate Word, the eternal Son of God who was to rule as king of the universe. She was the funnel through which the divine essence was to dwell among us and redeem our fallen nature. In the sheer benevolence of God’s will, an outpouring of love spirated from the Father and the Son to guide the Church in truth after the Ascension of the Son. This is the Holy Spirit, guiding the believers who have been taken up into Jesus Christ’s body by dying to Him in baptism — the Church.
The Holy Spirit inspired some of Christ’s earliest disciples to transcribe this New Testament (NT) in Greek between 50 and 100 AD. The NT was a fulfillment of the covenants God made with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, which were also transcribed under divine inspiration. What are these ancient documents? They are τὰ βιβλία, or “the books”. Indeed, "the Bible" is more of a library than a book.
Depending on who is asked and in what period of history, the Bible might be a canon of 5, 24, 39, 46, 66, 73, or more inspired books. The Sadducees and Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch as the Hebrew Bible. The Pharisees accepted a canon closer to modern Jews and Protestants. The Essenes had some books rarely accepted today, such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees (the Essenes were the scribes responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947). Thus, no single collection of the Hebrew Scriptures was used uniformly around the time of Jesus. So, how did you get the Bible that you did?
Whence the Bible Cometh (It’s All Greek to Me)
The prophet Moses wrote the Pentateuch – the first five books of the “Old Testament” (OT) – some 1200-1400 years before Mary gave birth to Jesus. Then, many prophets were inspired to write the rest of what became the Hebrew Bible over the next 1100-1300 years (a couple of small sections were in Aramaic). However, Alexander the Great’s conquests made Greek the common tongue by the third century BC. The Pentateuch was thus translated into Greek, and the rest of the Hebrew Bible followed in the second century BC. This Greek translation contains the most ancient renderings of Scripture known then and today.
This Bible was called the Septuagint (or “seventy” for the seventy compilers and translators). It was diligently copied, spread throughout the Greek-speaking world, and remained the most common collection of the ancient Hebrew Bible texts well into the Christian period. Indeed, Christian scholars recognize that nearly all NT quotations of the Hebrew Bible reference the Greek text. It was so prestigious that some Church Fathers, Philo of Alexandria, and Josephus considered it virtually inspired.
Around 100 AD, some Jewish scribes attempted to create the most precise Hebrew Bible with the most ancient renderings, given the Hebrew and Septuagint manuscripts of the time. In the eighth century, the Jewish Masoretes added a written vocalization to these consonantal Hebrew Scriptures. This tradition beginning around 100 AD is broadly referred to as the “Masoretic Text” (MT) and has been the commonest Hebrew Bible since.
The oldest living manuscripts of the MT tradition date to approximately 1000 AD. The oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint date to the late fourth century, sometime in the late 300s AD. Then, there are the Dead Sea Scrolls (See here for more on OT manuscripts).
What Is “the Bible” and What Is Not?
By 200 AD, the Septuagint (LXX) was nearly 450 years old and acted as the Mediterranean Bible. For the Church, the Bible was the LXX with the four Greek Gospels, Acts, and Epistles. However, at this time, it was extremely rare that all 73 books would have been bound together as a single codex (book). Indeed, it was not until the ninth century that codices became common.
Since Latin was widely spoken throughout the Roman Empire, many Latin translations of the LXX and NT were made. These were mainly used for readings during Mass (liturgy) and the studies of Latin bishops, priests, and monks (theology). In 382 AD, Pope Damasus requested that a definitive translation be made of at least the Gospels for liturgical and theological use.
This eventually led to the creation of the Latin Vulgata. This word is a translation of the Greek word koine, meaning “common” because the LXX was in the common tongue. Thus, the Latin Vulgate was written in the new common tongue some 700 years after the LXX.
Saint Jerome of Stridon (d. 420 AD) was the main theologian to execute the Pope’s task. Jerome privileged the MT of his time over the LXX because it was Hebrew rather than Greek. Since the covenants Jesus fulfilled were with the Hebrews, Jerome assumed the MT must be superior to the LXX. However, the LXX was more ancient and diligently copied, and the OT basis for the NT. Consequently, Jerome wanted to exclude
Tobit
Judith
Baruch
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
Wisdom of Solomon
First and Second Maccabees
Small parts of Daniel and Ester
These seven books are the “Deuterocanon”, meaning “second canon”, and were maintained only in the Greek tradition of the LXX. There was debate over whether they were inspired as the Church of the first few centuries compiled the texts that were to be accepted as directly inspired by the Holy Spirit. These and only these were to be read at Mass. However, dozens of books of the period claimed divine inspiration but were falsely attributed to important Christians (e.g., the Gospel of Peter). Moreover, this debate was not the most important question of the era, as many Christians hardly had time to think about it during intense persecution, much less debate it regularly.
After Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD, it became safer for Christians to discuss these questions openly. Ultimately, Jerome was overruled by the Councils of Rome (382), Hippo (383), and Carthage (397; 419). Thus, the teaching office of the Church (Magisterium) definitively declared that the LXX tradition with the NT constituted the proper canon, not the MT with the NT.
The Latin West
This marked the period of the Latinization of Scripture and the Western Church. This was not straying from the roots of Christianity since Latin was a sacred language used on the Cross. Latin was also practical since it became the language of the educated for more than 1000 years.
It was not until the 800s AD that the Bible was commonly bound into a single collection, called “pandects” (although, the technology was created in the fourth century). Interestingly, the scholarly priest Alcuin of York gave Charlemagne a pandect for Christmas in 801 AD. However, these pandects were expensive and difficult to produce (nearly one million words hand-copied and bound by monks). The Paris Bible of the thirteenth century was the next step forward in Biblical technology. It contained the whole canon and was easily transportable in a bag, saddle, or large pocket.
Between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, many Latin-based romance languages and Germanic tongues coalesced into forms closer to what we know today. Some scholars produced translations into these “vernacular” or non-sacred languages, but they were not widespread. Indeed, less than 10 percent of the population would have been able to read, much less read in vernacular languages with no literature from which to learn. (For more on this, see Gow below or my post here).
Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg changed the world with his movable printing press. Between 1450 and 1519, there were about 65 Latin and 22 Germanic editions of the Bible printed. In Italy alone, there were 41 Latin and 14 Italian editions. In France, 45 Latin and 1 French. In all, there were about 20,000 Germanic Bibles in the Empire; 13,450 Italian Bibles in Italy; 12,000 French Bibles in France, and 23,700 abridged Bibles throughout Christendom. By 1600, a single press could produce between 3200 and 3600 pages per workday.
The Sixteenth Century
In his 1534 translation, Martin Luther placed the Deuterocanon between the OT and NT and did not list them in the table of contents. He considered them good to read but not to be used for doctrine, “Apocrypha”. Luther’s NT (finished in 1522) contained only 23 books. Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation were appended at the end because he questioned whether they were inspired. He said about Revelation that he could “in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.”
All non-Catholics accept these four books unquestioningly today. However, Martin Luther set Christianity on an abruptly different path in the sixteenth century, rejecting the unanimously accepted canon of the previous 1,100 years.
The first English Bible to print was by Myles Coverdale in 1535, based largely on the work of William Tyndale. Some of Coverdale’s OT books used Luther’s German Bible as the base text, not the MT or LXX. Catholic scholars at the English College of Douay printed an English NT with commentary and notes in 1582. This translation was based largely on the Vulgate but also used the best Greek and Hebrew manuscripts for some guidance. The full Douay-Rheims Bible came to print in 1609 and was revised extensively in the eighteenth century. The 1611 “Authorized” or “King James” English Bible kept Luther’s smaller canon and followed in the Tyndale/Coverdale tradition.
Thus, the Bible is a collection of 73 inspired texts compiled over 15 centuries beginning nearly 3400 years ago. The Word of God has survived the decline and fall of empires, civilizational collapse, ruination attempts, and incessant ideological attacks. Indeed, Heaven and earth will pass away before the Word of God. Their wisdom is not outdated but eternal. For that reason, their contents are worth more than gold.
Cherish the Scriptures with all your heart, for they are of the pen of God and his chosen disciples and prophets. Treat them as if men died to bring them to you, because many did.
Bibliography
Crossway Bibles. 2008. "Articles and Resources." In The ESV Study Bible, by Crossway Bibles, 2750. Wheaton: Good News Publishers.
Gow, Andrew. 2005. "Challenging the Protestant Paradigm: Bible Reading in Lay and Urban Contexts of the Later Middle Ages." Edited by Thomas E. Burman and Thomas J. Haffernan. Scripture and Pluralism: Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Leiden: Brill) 161–91.
Graham, Henry G. 1911. Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church. St. Louis: Herder Book Company.
Marlowe, Michael D. 2012. Luther's Treatment of the 'Disputed Books' of the New Testament. http://www.bible-researcher.com/antilegomena.html.
St. Paul Center. 2012. Old Testament Manuscripts. May 1. https://stpaulcenter.com/old-testament-manuscripts/.
—. 2012. Thoughts on the Church’s Old Testament Canon. February 15. https://stpaulcenter.com/thoughts-on-the-churchs-old-testament-canon/.
—. 2012. The Dead Sea Scrolls. May 14. https://stpaulcenter.com/the-dead-sea-scrolls/.
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. 2009. Questions & Answers: Martin Luther. April 15. https://web.archive.org/web/20090415024016/http://www.wels.net/sab/qa/luther-03.html.
Zilverberg, Kevin J. 2016. "The Neo-Vulgate as Official Liturgical Translation." Verbum Domini: Liturgy and Scripture - Liturgy and Scripture: Proceedings of the Ninth Fota International Liturgical Conference 93-125.