When was The Bible written?

Answer 1

Answer #1

The Bible was passed down verbally, for centuries, before any of the writing was even begun, and those earliest writings had to be copied, from verbal accounts, as the originals are not to be found.

The first Bible was compiled in the 4th century, under Constantine 1, the very first Christian emperor, by his council of Carthage. Interestingly, several books of the Bible were left out forever after.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, was verbally completed about 1271 B.C.E, and the last book, Revelation was completed about the year 96 C.E.

Some people also suggest that Moses collected earlier records and thus was not the actual author of Genesis but merely its final editor. In this case Genesis would have been written hundreds of years earlier, making some verbally passed down stories of the Bible nearly 4000 years old. (can't be the "whole" Bible since parts of it were written after Jesus died)

The Bible was passed down verbally, as there was no writing back then, over a period of about 1300 years, beginning with Moses' writing Genesis in the wilderness around 1271 BCE, to John's writings in about 98 CE, and the gospel according to Matthew in the 1st century (which some scholars say probably was not written by Matthew).

Some scholars also feel the Gospel authors copied each other's work to a large extent. Some feel, since Moses displays such horrific morality, that his writings may not have been divinely inspired. One example is Numbers 31:13-18, in which he orders murdering children, and nonvirginal women, but advises his soldiers to keep virgin women and female children for themselves.

Past Moses being mentioned in other religious texts of other religions, centuries after his death, no other surviving written records from Egypt, Assyria, etc., indisputably referring to the stories of the Bible or its main characters before ca. 850s BCE have been found.

Interestingly, Revelation was not the last book written. Revelation was written in the year 96, and the books of 1st,2nd,and 3rd John were written in the year 98, just before John died.

There were about 40 different writers, from all different backgrounds including kings, shepherds, prophets, a doctor, a tax collector, fishermen, and even a former Pharisee.

Its purpose is to teach and to encourage the weak and non-weak. To allow people to see the glory of God. To try to explain to them how wonderful he is.

Answer #2

The Bible (39 books of Jewish Scripture and 27 books of Christian Scripture) was given in a span of 1500 years through more than 40 different writers (Prophets and Apostles). All these books were written down originally by the Prophets, Apostles and their personal secretaries, but the originals are no longer available now. However, they have been passed down to us through copies made from previous copies which were made from the originals. In the second century itself all the books of the Bible were available in the written form and were being circulated among the believers although they were not put together into one book.

Jewish Scripture or the Old Testament was completed and was available in written form 400 years before Jesus Christ was born. The Christian Scripture or the New Testament was both written and completed after Jesus' death and resurrection towards the end of the first century.

The unity among sixty-six books of the Bible and various strands of thematic flow from its beginning to the end give us the unmistakable sense that it came from a single author! Thus the uniqueness of the Bible implies supernatural origin.

For the believers in God the Bible is God's inerrant word, albeit in its original form, not because it was written down or dictated by God. Rather because it was written by the people who were 'moved' or 'guided' by God's Spirit (inspiration) in recording it for the mankind. Skeptics approach the Bible striping it off its divine dimension completely. They see the apparent contradictions, which would disappear upon close scrutiny, or ancient practices in the content of the Bible without giving any consideration to its original languages' nuances, techniques or cultures or contexts.

As far as the believer is concerned God does exist and He is the one who gave the Bible as His revealed word. Therefore, it stands to reason that the same God who is sovereign Lord of all is capable of keeping His word intact in the midst of human imperfections and errors. The original message or word of God in all likelihood still exists in the form of some of the manuscript copies extant today.
The Bible was completed prior to A.D. 100. And a couple of books - Revelation being one - were not included in the official canon of scripture until 390 A.D. The early church relied on Jesus' teaching about God and heaven and His instructions on how his Church should be set up being handed down from the apostles to their hand-picked bishops and down throughout this apostolic lineage.

This huge body of knowledge, too huge for the Bible, was kept and still is kept by the original apostolic Church. The knowledge itself is called Tradition. Used in this way tradition means Truths Taught by Jesus.

Over 50 testimonies collected about the life of Christ were considered for inclusion in the Bible and only 4 were chosen. As John says at the end of his version, there were so many signs and wonders that to write them all down would require volumes and volumes.

So the Bible is just a sampling - but a very good one, carefully chosen - of the words of Jesus and of his most faithful, like Paul and James. And the rest of the knowledge of His life and the things He taught the apostles about heaven and God that DIDN'T make it into the Bible is still in the hands of His apostolic lineage which teaches it to priests in schools who in turn teach it to their congregations, as much as they can.

The limits of the human mouth and vocabulary - not to mention the limits of time - preclude even the combination of the Bible and Tradition telling the whole story of Jesus, God and Heaven. We will never know the whole story unless we are very good and go to heaven, which isn't guaranteed, says the Bible. If we make it then we will know everything.

ANSWERThe actual writing of the Bible took place over a period of about 1600 years, beginning in about 1513 BCE with Moses writing in the wilderness to it's completion in the 98 CE with the Apostle John's writing of the books of 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. Revelation was not actually the last book written, as it was written in the year 96 CE. Over that 1600 year span, there were about 40 different men who were used to record the Bible. Among the writers were prophets, shepards, kings, fishermen, a tax collector, a physician, married and unmarried, rich and poor, people from all walks of life.

Answer 2

The Bible took nearly a thousand years to be written. Parts of the Pentateuch were written in the early centuries of the first millennium BCE, although they were later credited to Moses, who is said to have lived centuries earlier. Then, the last book of the New Testament is probably the pseudepigraphical Epistle of Peter, which most New Testament scholars date to shortly before 150 CE.

At that stage, there were only separate books, without the identity of a Bible as a common book or library of canonical books. It took a long time for the semblance of a canon to develop, and it was not really unto the Reformation that the Catholic Church finally defined what books were in its Bible, and the Protestants defined their Bible.