It’s miraculous like its content was breathed out to be breathed in. It claims divinity but was written by people who are very much like us. The authors aren’t sinless but far from it. Some authors are murderers or people with a painful past. Quite frankly, you may not want to be friends with these people. Sometimes, their sins are far greater than ours.
Still, we cling to those words as life and hope in our darkest hours. There’s nothing like it in the world. It’s shaped every side of the human experience: the arts, education, law, science, human relations and politics. It’s ancient and ever-new, but what is it? It’s the Holy Bible, a collection of 66 books written and compiled over 2,000 years by 40 authors on three continents. Despite the impressive diversity of authors, the Bible shows an undisputable unity of purpose, harmony of thought, and an unfolding narrative that’s both progressive and unified.
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible projects universal truth that remains applicable to people worldwide. The Holy Bible is an unparalleled powerhouse that has instituted orphanages and hospitals and ultimately positively shaped the spheres of human governance in the home, the church and the state. This collection of ancient writings was created from oral tradition, self-attesting that God Himself inspired the Bible as He spoke through priests, prophets, kings, and ordinary women and men and was recorded and compiled for hundreds of years.
The Bible remains as modern-day as it was when God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets and gave them to Moses. The 39 books of the Imperial Aramaic and Hebrew writings revealed that there’s one God who has covenanted to bring knowledge of Himself and salvation by sin by His Son to the ends of the earth. So, how long after Jesus died was the Bible written?
How long after Jesus died was the Bible written?
The Bible tells us about the earth, starting from the earth’s creation to the spread of Christianity. The Old and the New Testaments went through several changes throughout the years. The publication of the King James edition was also included back in 1611, along with the addition of several books that were discovered over the years. The Old Testament is considered the first section of the Bible.
The content covers how the earth was created through Noah, finishing with the Jews who left or were asked to go to Babylon. On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible is the Bible that’s comparable to the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible is known to have the beginnings of the Jewish religion. However, the genuine beginning of the formation or the creation of Jews is still unknown. The New Testament tells the tale of Jesus and includes the early days of Christianity. The scriptures include primarily the efforts made by Paul so he could spread Jesus’ teachings. The New Testament was written about 40 years after the death of Jesus.
Who wrote the Bible?
It’d be proper to say that God wrote the Bible. Second Timothy 3:16 reminds us that God breathes out the Scripture. It’s apparent that God is being quoted throughout the Bible because over 400 times in the Bible, we read the words “thus says the Lord.” The Bible also refers to itself as God’s Word multiple times. However, saying God wrote the Bible doesn’t mean He took a pen and paper and physically wrote the Bible.
His writing wasn’t a physical act. Instead, His authorship was accomplished through inspiration, as human writers transcribed God’s message. It’s true to say that inspired men of God wrote the Bible. This doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible teaches that God supervised the human authors of the Bible, so their styles were preserved, and the result was what God wanted. For example, when Matthew wrote the account of Jesus’ ministry with the help of the Holy Spirit, he kept his intended readership in mind.
The result was the Gospel of Matthew, a story filled with Matthew’s grammar, vocabulary, style and syntax, but it was still God’s Word. The Spirit guided Matthew’s writing so that everything God wanted to say was said, and nothing was included that God didn’t want to say. Peter described the process of inspiration as human prophets speaking from God as the Holy Spirit carried them along, as detailed in 2 Peter 1:21. Jeremiah described the inspiration as a compulsion to write God’s message, saying that God’s words were in his heart like a fire shut up in his bones and he was tired of holding it in and he couldn’t. There was no escaping it. God wanted to communicate, so Jeremiah had to write.
Not every book of the Bible says who wrote it. For example, we don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews. There’s no way to say who the human author is in many biblical books, but that doesn’t change who the Divine Author is. Throughout history, famous writers have used secretaries to write their literature. For example, John Milton was blind by the time he was 44. His entire “Paradise Lost” was dictated to relatives and friends or anyone who would write for him, and that’s how the epic was recorded, a total of over 10,000 lines of poetry. Milton may not have put pen to paper, but no one questions that “Paradise Lost” is his work.
While God didn’t dictate His Word to the human authors, the principle is similar. God used human agents as His secretaries, and the result was the Word of God. In the end, Jesus’ teachings were the goal to be spread worldwide. The Bible’s story continues through every generation through the printing presses, Facebook, the internet, and other means. His Word is written on the hearts of His people through the power of His Spirit and the agency of willing believers. We should be with those of whom it will be said they cared enough to share the Bible with others.
