Many have questions about the background of the Bible, its divisions and the material used for its production. This section will familiarize you with its construction, and, I feel, will give the reader a greater appreciation of GOD's Word.
Materials Used in Its preparation
WRITING MATERIAL
Papyrus. Not being able to recover many of the ancient manuscripts (a MS is a handwritten copy of the Scriptures) is basically due to the perishable materials used for writing.
"All...autographs," writes F. F. Bruce, "have been long lost since. It could not be otherwise, if they were written on papyrus, since (as we have seen) it is only in exceptional conditions that papyrus survives for any length of time."
Kirsopp Lake points out that "it is hard to resist the conclusion that the scribes usually destroyed their exemplars when they copied the Sacred Books".
The most common ancient writing material was papyrus, made from the papyrus plant. This reed grew in the shallow lakes and rivers of Egypt and Syria. Large shipments of papyrus were sent through the Syrian port of Byblos. It is surmised that the Greek word for books (Biblos) is found in the name of this port. The English word "paper" comes from the Greek word for papyrus.
The Cambridge History of the Bible gives an account of how papyrus was prepared for writing:
"The reeds were stripped and cut lengthwise into thin narrow slices before being beaten and pressed together into two layers set at right angles to each other. When dried the whitish surface was polished smooth with a stone or other implement. Pliny refers to several qualities of papyri, and varying thicknesses and surfaces are found before the New Kingdom period when sheets were often very thin and translucent."
The oldest papyrus fragment known dates back to 2400 B.C. The earliest MSS were on papyrus, and it was difficult for any to survive except in dry areas such as the sands of Egypt or in caves similar to those like the Qumran caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
Papyrus was enjoying popular use until about the third century AD.
Parchment. The name given to "prepared skins of sheep, goats, antelope and other animals". These skins were "shaved and scraped" in order to produce a more durable writing material.
F. F. Bruce writes that 'the word 'parchment' comes from the name of the city of Pergamum, in Asia Minor, for the production of this writing material was at one time specially associated with this place".
Vellum. this was the name given to calf skin. Often the vellum was dyed purple. Some of the MSS we have today are purple vellum. The writing on dyed vellum was usually gold or silver.
J. Harold Greenlee says the oldest leather scrolls date from around 1500 BC.
Other writing materials
Ostraca. This was unglazed pottery popular with the common people. The technical name is "potsherd" and has been found in abundance in Egypt and Palestine (Job 2:8).
Stones were inscribed on with an "iron pen".
Clay tablets were engraved with a sharp instrument and then dried in order to make a permanent record (Jeremiah 17:13; Ezekiel 4:1). This was the cheapest and one of the most durable of the writing materials.
Wax tablets. A metal stylus was used on a piece of flat wood covered with a wax.
WRITING INSTRUMENTS
Chisel. An iron instrument to engrave stones.
Metal Stylus. "A three-sided instrument with a leveled head, the stylus was used to make incursions into clay and wax tablets."
Pen. A pointed reed "was fashioned from rushes (Juncus maritimis) about 6-16 in. long, the end being cut to a flat chisel-shape to enable thick and thin strokes to be made with the broad or narrow sides. The reed-pen was in use from the early first millennium in Mesopotamia from which it may well have been adopted, while the idea of a quill pen seems to have come from the Greeks in the third century B.C." (Jeremiah 8:8).
The pen was used on vellum, parchment and papyrus.
Ink was usually a compound of "charcoal, gum and water."
Forms of Ancient Books ROLLS OR SCROLLS. These were made by gluing sheets of papyrus together and then winding these long strips around a stick. The size of the scroll was limited by the difficulty in using the roll. Writing was usually on only one side. A two-sided scroll is called an "Opisthograph" (Revelation 5:1). Some rolls have been known to be 144 feet long. The average scroll was about 20 to 35 feet.
It is no wonder that Callimachus, a professional cataloguer of books from Alexandria's library, said "a big book is a big nuisance."
CODEX OR BOOK FORM. In order to make reading easier and less bulky, the papyrus sheets were assembled in leaf form and written on both sides. Greenlee says that Christianity was the prime reason for the development of the codex-book form.
The classical authors wrote on papyrus scrolls until about the third century AD.
Types of Writing
UNCIAL WRITING used upper case letters which were deliberately and carefully executed. This was known as the "bookhand". Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are uncial MSS.
MINISCULE WRITING was "a script of smaller letters in a running hand [connected]...was created for the production of books." This change was initiated in the ninth century.
The Greek manuscripts were written without any breaks between words. (Hebrew was written without vowels until 900 AD with the coming of the Massoretes.)
Bruce Metzger answers those who speak of the difficulty of a continuous text:
"It must not be thought, however, that such ambiguities occur very often in Greek. In that language it is the rule, with very few exceptions, that native Greek words can end only in a vowel (or a diphthong) or in one of three consonants, v, p, and s, (Nu, Rho and Sigma). Furthermore, it should not be supposed that scriptio continua presented exceptional difficulties in reading, for apparently it was despite the absence of spaces between words, by pronouncing to oneself what was read, syllable by syllable, one soon became used to reading scriptio continua."
Divisions
BOOKS (See chapter 3).
CHAPTERS. The first divisions were made in 586 BC when the Pentateuch was divided into 154 groupings (sedarim).
Fifty years later it was further sectioned into 54 divisions (parashiyyoth) and into 669 smaller segments to assist in locating references. These were used in a one-year reading cycle.
The Greeks made divisions around 250 AD in the margins of Codex Vaticanus. Geisler and Nix write that "it was not until the 13th century that these sections were changed...Stephen Langton, a professor at the University of Paris, and afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, divided the Bible into the modern chapter divisions (ca. 1227).
VERSES. The first verse indicators varied from spaces between words to letters or numbers. They were not systematically used universally. The first standard verse divisions were around 900 AD.
The Latin Vulgate was the first Bible to incorporate both verse and chapter divisions in both Old and New Testaments.
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