After Moses, his successor Joshua also wrote "in the book of the law of the Lord" (Joshua 24:26). Through the succeeding generations, other of God’s servants wrote history, prophecy, poetry, and songs (I Samuel 10:25, Jeremiah 36:2). We can read that some who are recorded in the Old Testament read inspired writings penned earlier (Dan 9:2, Nehemiah 8:1). Over a period of hundreds of years, the Old Testament writings were assembled and an accepted collection existed about the time of Ezra (about 400 B.C.) Josephus, writing in the first century, said that no book was added to the Hebrew scriptures after the time of Malachi.

    The New Testament came into being gradually also. The books themselves were written in a fairly short period of time, from about 50 A.D. to about 100 A.D. These books were simply letters which were written to individuals and separate churches. They were looked at, even in that time, as authoritative books, and were received with great reverence, respect, and care. These letters were passed among the churches of the time, and copies were made from the originals as rapidly as possible, consistent with the codes required to ensure that the copies were accurate. (We will discuss later the codes that existed to ensure accurate copies.)

    The life of Jesus was at first described to churches and Christians by word of mouth, but as witnesses died and accounts began to vary, it became apparent that Christ’s life needed to be recorded. Mark, Luke, and John wrote their separate accounts (Luke 1:1-4, John 20:30-31). The logical outgrowth of the four gospels was the book of Acts which described the beginnings of the early church. The book of Revelation fits at the end of the Bible as Christians awaited the return of the triumphal Christ.

    Forms of the Bible.  Jesus said in the New Testament that the teachers of the law would be responsible for prophets whose blood had been shed from the "blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah" (Luke 11:51), which would be from the book of Genesis to the book of II Chronicles.

    Josephus, in his Antiquities, states that the Jews of Palestine accepted 22 books, equaling the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. But those 22 books equal the 39 books we consider inspired today because Ruth was considered to be a part of Judges, Nehemiah was a part of Ezra, Lamentations was a part of Jeremiah, and Samuels, Kings, and Chronicles were each looked on as one book apiece. Also, the twelve minor prophets were considered to be one book. So their Bible contained all that later Judaism counted as 24 (we’ll define the 24 in a minute) and all that we now count as 39.

    We all know the Bible is divided into two major divisions, the Old and New Testaments. The word "testament" is an unfortunate choice coming from the Greek diatheke. A more correct translation would be contract or covenant because the basic structure of the Bible hinges on the fact that God has made two significant covenants with his people, and that the new covenant has replaced the old. The Old Covenant appears in our Bibles with the following arrangement: five books of Law, or the Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy); twelve books of history (Joshua to Esther); five books of poetry (Job to Song of Solomon); and seventeen books of prophecy (Isaiah to Malachi). The latter section is sometimes divided into the five major prophets and twelve minor prophets. This arrangement of books is derived from the Latin Vulgate translation, which was in turn derived from the Septuagint, or the Greek version of the Old Covenant.

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   The books of the Hebrew Bible are grouped differently. If you pick up a Greek Bible, you will see the following order of 24 books:

1. Law – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
2. Prophets – (Former); Joshua, Judges, I / II Samuel, I / II Kings; (Latter); Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Book of the Twelve
3. Writings – Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentation, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, I / II Chronicles

    Josephus divided the Bible into 3 major groups: the five books of Moses, the 13 books of the prophets, and the four books of hymns and precepts but the Hebrew Bible of today has the noted three divisions. But no matter how different the arrangement is and the perceived number of books, it is important to note that the Hebrew Bible and our Old Testament are precisely the same in terms of content.

    The New Covenant is grouped into three parts: five books of history (Matthew to Acts); twenty-one books of doctrine (Romans to Jude); and one book of prophecy (Revelation).

    The books of history may be further subdivided into the four books on the life of Christ and one book on the history of the church. The Gospels are so-called because they present the Good News revealed in and by Jesus Christ. And, in a very real sense, these four books are not "lives of Christ" because they simply recall some of the scenes from his life. None of them record exactly the same as any other, and none of them recall all that could have been written.

    The book of Acts is sort of a continuation of the book of Luke. Both were written by the same man and the flow from the life of Christ to the history of the church is almost unbroken.

    The twenty-one books of doctrine are letters written by various inspired men. The first thirteen were written by the apostle Paul in two groups; those written before his two year’s imprisonment in Rome (see Acts 28:30) and those written later (I and II Timothy and Titus, sometimes called the Pastoral Epistles). The book of Hebrews is sometimes numbered in the Pauline group, although its authorship is in question.

    The general epistles are comprised of James, the letters of Peter and John, and Jude. In early Greek manuscripts these books are found immediately following Acts and before those books attributed to Paul.

    The one book of prophecy, Revelation, may not have been the last book to be written but it suitably appears at the end of the Bible because it summarizes in symbolic language the principles revealed in preceding books and gives a prophetic foretaste of things to come.

    Languages of the Bible.  The Bible was principally written in three languages; Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Generally, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and the sayings of Jesus recorded in his native language of Aramaic.

    Hebrew is one of a large group of languages known as Semitic languages, and include Aramaic, Syriac, Akkadian, and Arabic. This is a strange language to us, being written from right to left and having many sounds that do not appear in western languages. The Hebrew alphabet does not have vowels, but later writings have been enhanced by a series of "vowel points" that serve to aid in the study of the language by a "foreigner". But to someone well- trained in the original language the vowel points serve as much as a hindrance as a help. Modern Hebrew books are normally printed without vowel points just as the original Hebrew was printed.

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    Greek was the language of Alexander’s empire, the modern world in the time of Christ, the "universal" language.  Although Rome was the ruler of most of the modern world, Greek influence still predominated in the arts and in language. New Testament Greek has several peculiarities that did not appear in the normal Greek language of the day. New Testament Greek is now known as Hellenistic or Koine Greek. There are over 4,000 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament that date to early times.  The above are the opening words of Amos in uncials (capitals only) and miniscules.

    Aramaic is similar to Hebrew and after the time of the Exile, it became the spoken language of the common man in Palestine. Some portions of the Old Testament are recorded in Aramaic because it was spoken by the Jews several centuries before the time of Christ (Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4b-7:28; Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26). If we were to look at a Hebrew Bible with these portions recorded in Aramaic, we would see no difference because Hebrew letters were actually patterned after Aramaic letters. So there is no difference in appearance even though they are separate languages.

    Aramaic continued for centuries as the common language of Palestine. Some of Christ’s Aramaic expressions have been preserved in the Bible, such as talitha cumi (little girl, get up) in Mark 5:41; ephphatha (be opened) in Mark 7:34; eli, eli, lama sabachthani (my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?) in Matthew 27:46). Jesus commonly referred to God as Abba (Father). Another common expression of the early church was marana tha (Our Lord, come) as in I Corinthians 16:22.  Golgotha (place of the skull) is Aramaic.

    Old Testament Text.  One would think that there would be ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament that are considerably older than manuscripts of the New Testament. This is not the case. There are neither many manuscripts older than those of the New Testament nor as many manuscripts. In fact, the oldest manuscript of the Old Testament is the Leningrad Codex of the Prophets. There is reason behind this lack of manuscripts.  Jewish scribes looked upon their copies of the scripture with the utmost reverence and awe. They therefore gave a ceremonial burial to any ancient copy of the scripture which had become "overworn". Their motive was to prevent any improper use of the scripture, but their practice has deprived us of any early Hebrew manuscripts.

    The Leningrad Codex, or Leningradensis, is the oldest complete Hebrew bible still preserved. While there are older parts of Bibles, or biblical books, still in existence, there is no older manuscript which contains the whole Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament in Hebrew). The Leningrad Codex is considered one of the best examples of the Masoretic text.

    The manuscript was written around the year 1010 C. E. It was probably written in Cairo, and later sold to someone living in Damascus.

    Today it is in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the Russian National Library (Saltykov-Shchedrin), where it has been since the mid-1800’s. When the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center and West Semitic Research photographed the Bible in 1990, the city was still called Leningrad. The name of the manuscript continues to be called the Leningrad Codex in order to avoid confusion.

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    This manuscript belongs to a group of Hebrew texts called the Masoretic texts.  The Hebrew alphabet itself, which developed from the Phoenician alphabet, has no true vowels, so the oldest Hebrew biblical fragments have only consonants, some of which are used as halfvowels, like our y, w, and h.

    Sometime in the Middle Ages a group of scholars called Masoretes became interested in deve loping a system for marking the vowels.  They were concerned that the pronunciation of the words might be lost, since Hebrew was no longer a spoken language. Besides vowels, they also wanted a way of marking punctuation, accents, and the musical notes used when the biblical text was chanted in the synagogue.

    The most popular system of signs was developed by the Ben Asher family, and it is their system that is preserved in the Leningrad Codex. (Moses Ben Asher was a leader of the Masaretes in Tiberias, Palestine.)  If you look carefully at a page you can see that the consonants, or letters, have little marks above and below them. Some of the marks are called "vowel points," and some are called "accents".  The accents both act as punctuation and as musical notation.

    The Masoretes were also interested in copying the biblical text very carefully so that it would be preserved from generation to generation. The way they tried to ensure this was the use of notes in the margins. In the margins beside the biblical verses they put little letters as symbols.

    These symbols told the scribe copying the text information about unusual forms or words that should not be changed.  For instance, they might put a circle over a word that occurred nowhere else in the Bible. In the margin they would then put the letter "l" which told the scribe, "yes, this is a unique word, but it is not an error, so just copy it the way it is". The notes at the top or bottom of a page would usually give more information about the symbols in the side margins.

    The Leningrad Codex is used today as the basis for most modern printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, together with a few other incomplete Hebrew Bibles.  This is because it is the oldest complete manuscript copied with the Masoretic system developed by the Ben Asher family.

    The Old Testament is based on the Leningrad Codex of the Prophets, which not on this manuscript alone. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most ancient manuscripts was the Cairo Codex, containing the former and latter prophets, copied in 895 A.D. by Moses Ben Asher. Two others are the Aleppo Codex (copied by Aaron Ben Asher in 930 A.D.) and the British Museum Codex (copied in 950 A.D.). The Aleppo Codex was complete until it had to be rescued from a burning synagogue in Aleppo, Syria in 1948 and smuggled into Israel. The British Museum Codex is an incomplete manuscript of the Pentateuch, containing Genesis 39:20 through Deuteronomy 1:33.

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