History of The Bible

• The Bible of Judaism
• The Christian Bible:
  • Evolution of the New Testament
  • Translations
• Christian rituals & festivities
• see also:
  • History of religion
  • A History of the Roman Catholic Church
  • History of Orthodox Catholic Church
  • History of the Protestant Churches
  • ancient history

History of the Bible:

The Bible of Judaism (the Christian "Old Testament"):

• the Hebrew Bible s essentially a chronicle of the history of the Jews and their interpretation of the origin of man & his relationship with God which mandated both a world view and a way of life based mainly on the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God & consists of 3 parts:
  • the Torah  (Hebrew for "the law") is the Pentateuch - 5 books of associated with Moses 
  • the Nebiim - the prophetic literature
  • the Ketubim - the other writings
• it is thought that Josiah, the king of Judah c620BC, in a need to unify the peoples of Judah and the lands to the north, created a religious reform based on the rise of public literacy and his "discovery" of the book of Deuteronomy, which for the first time meant that a written book had authoritative importance to people. It was designed to remove worship of gods other than Yahweh, but to ensure the peoples of the north would accept it, it incorporated some of their beliefs. In doing so, it made Jerusalem the centre of worship. 
• when Jerusalem was destroyed in 597BC by Nebuchadnezzar and the priests exiled to the rivers of Babylon, the priests, including Ezra, added to the texts so that the books would continue to unify the peoples even though their centre of worship, Jerusalem, and their king no longer existed.  
• The Samaritan Pentateuch is the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch as preserved by the Samaritans in 4thC BC.
• It forms the "Old Testament" of the Christian bible, although additional books have sometimes been included and these have been called the Apocrypha.
• contemporary Judaism is ultimately derived from the rabbinic movement of the 1st centuries of the Christian era in Palestine & Babylonia & is therefore called rabbinic Judaism:
  • Rabbi's in Palestine finalise the 3rd stage of the Hebrew bible late in 1st century AD
  • oral scripture faithfully transmitted orally from master to disciple and encapsulated in the Mishnah ("that which is learned or memorised"), the earliest document of rabbinic literature, edited in Palestine in 3rdC AD.
  • subsequent study of the Mishnah led to two Talmuds or Gemera ("that which is studied"):
    • Palestinian Talmud
    • Babylonian Talmud - edited ~ 6thC AD, became the foundation document of rabbinic Judaism
  • early rabbinical writings also form the Midrashim & the Targums
  • medieval rabbinic writings include codifications of talmudic law, the most authoritative is the 16thC Shulhan Arukh (Set Table) by Joseph ben Ephraim Caro.
  • thus the "study of Torah" now includes all these writings, not just the Pentateuch.

Christian Bible:

• Evolution of the New Testament:
  • Jesus did not leave any written documentation of his own, thus the New Testament is made up of writings of his disciples which have been modified throughout time to suit the needs of the Christian leaders
  • consists of 27 documents written between AD 50 and 150 concerning matters of belief and practice in Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean world. Although some have argued that Aramaic originals lie behind some of these documents (especially the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle to the Hebrews), all have been handed down in Greek, very likely the language in which they were composed.
  • these 27 are only a fraction of the literary production of the Christian communities in their first three centuries. The principal types of New Testament documents (gospel, epistle, apocalypse) were widely imitated, and the names of apostles or other leading figures were attached to writings designed to fill in the silence of the New Testament (for example, on the childhood and youth of Jesus), to satisfy the appetite for more miracles, and to argue for new and fuller revelations. As many as 50 Gospels were in circulation during this time. Many of these non-canonical Christian writings have been collected and published as New Testament Apocrypha
  • the Epistles of Paul written 50-60AD
  • the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles written 70-90AD
  • Revelation was written during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Domitian, who reigned from 81 to 96.
  • the remaining books, which can be dated between 90 and 150, reflect church conditions of the postapostolic period.
  • by AD 200, 20 of the 27 books of the New Testament seem to have been generally regarded as authoritative. The books that were disputed for some time but were finally included were James, Hebrews, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation. Other books, widely favored but finally rejected, were Barnabas, 1 Clement, Hermas, and the Didache; the authors of these books are generally referred to as the apostolic fathers.
  • the 39th festal letter of St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, sent to the churches under his jurisdiction in 367AD, ended all uncertainty about the limits of the New Testament canon finalising it as the current 27 books.
• Christian translations of the Bible:
  • By the end of the 1st century AD, when the earliest Christian writings were being collected and disseminated, two versions of Scripture from Judaism were already in existence: 
    • the Hebrew Bible, and,
    • the Greek Old Testament (known as the Septuagint; q.v.).
      • The major Greek version is called the Septuagint ("seventy") because of the legend that the Torah was translated in the 3rd century BC by 72 scholars.
  • the Hebrew Bible, however, was the official standard of belief and practice; no evidence indicates that an official list of Greek Scriptures ever existed in Judaism. The additional books of the Septuagint were only given official recognition in Christianity. The writings of the early Fathers of the Church contain numerous different lists, but it is clear that the longer Greek Old Testament prevailed.
  • the last major step in the history of the Christian canon took place during the Protestant Reformation. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he rediscovered what others-notably St. Jerome, the 4th-century biblical scholar-had known: that the Old Testament had originated in Hebrew. He removed from his Old Testament the books that were not in the Bible of Judaism and established them as the Apocrypha. This step was an effort to return to the presumed earliest-and therefore best-text and canon, and to establish in opposition to the authority of the church the authority of that older version of the Bible.
  • the standard printed Hebrew Bible in use today is a reproduction of a Masoretic text written in AD 1088.
  • many of the Greek manuscripts are much older than the manuscripts of the full Hebrew Bible; they were included in copies of the entire Christian Bible that date from the 4th and 5th centuries.
  • Pope Damasus I in 382 commissioned St. Jerome to produce a Latin Bible; known as the Vulgate, it replaces various Old Latin texts. The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew.
  • even though Christianity reached England in the 3rd century, the Bible remained in Latin and almost exclusively in the hands of the clergy for a thousand years.
  • between the 7th and 14th centuries, portions of the Bible were translated into English
  • 1382: Interest in translation from Latin to English grew rapidly in the 14th century, and in 1382 the first complete English Bible appeared in manuscript. It was the work of the English reformer John Wycliffe, whose goal was to give the Bible to the people.
  • late 15thC, the Lollards in England produced English translations of the New Testament in hand-written manuscript.
  • 1525: the English reformer William Tyndale translated the New Testament from the Greek text, copies of which were printed in Germany and smuggled into England. Tyndale's translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew text was only partly completed. His simple prose and popular idiom established a style in English translation that was continued in the Authorized Version of 1611 (the King James Version) and eventually in the Revised Standard Version of 1946-52.
  • 1609: The Douay or Douay-Rheims (spelled also Douai-Reims) Bible, completed between 1582 and 1609, was commonly used by Roman Catholics in English-speaking countries until the 1900s, when it was considerably revised by the English bishop Richard Challoner. The Douay Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, primarily by two English exiles in France, William Allen (1532-94) and Gregory Martin (1540?-82). During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Douay and Challoner Bibles were replaced with other translations by Roman Catholics. 
  • 1611: Authorized Version of King James 1 produced
  • 1666: 1st Armenian Bible published
  • 1670: 1st Arabic Bible
  • 1952: Revised Version of the King James Bible
  • 1970: in the U.S., one of the most widely used is the New American Bible of 1970, the first complete Bible to be translated from Hebrew and Greek by American Roman Catholics.
• other ancient documents relating to early Christianity:
  • 1945: Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945 containing the Gnostic Gospels dating from 2nd to 4th century AD giving an alternative view of many New Testament stories and include the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. These Gospels were published in the 1970's and resulted in intense study especially by feminist theologians and contributed to theories that Mary may have mothered a blood line from Jesus with some suggesting this resulted in a line of French royalty with living descendants.
  • 1947: numerous manuscripts and fragments, many from the pre-Christian era, have been recovered from the Dead Sea region since 1947 - the Dead Sea Scrolls, but these have not altered the Bible.

Christian rituals & festivities:

• Christmas:
  • derived from the Old English Cristes maesse, meaning Christ's mass, which appears to have come into the English language around the 11thC
  • currently is the celebration of the birth of Christ, but the rituals & festivities have many origins, few being Christian:
    • Nativity festival:
      • in ~325AD, the decision that Christ was divine from the moment of conception rather than to receive divine powers only after baptism resulted in the establishment of Nativity as a major feast but as this was almost certainly autumn, they tried to overlay this with the occurrence of pagan festivals (eg. Saturnalia and natalis invicti soli) so the date was switched to Jan 6 then in 354AD it was proclaimed as being Dec 25 (the date of the principle Mithraic festival)
      • by 380AD, Constantinople also observed this holy day, but was not celebrated by Christians in Jerusalem until early 5thC
      • Saturnalia:
        • the Roman pagan festival of sowing - celebrated initially on Dec 19, but extended to cover Dec 17-23, the period of the Winter solstice
        • it was a time of freedom from restraint, merrymaking, & often riot and debauchery
        • during its continuance, public business was suspended, the law courts & schools were closed & no criminals were punished.
      • natalis invicti soli:
        • a Roman festival introduced by emperor Aurelian on 25 Dec 274AD to celebrate the renewed power of the sun & was a time of great joyousness & the giving of parties & presents
      • pagan origins:
        • angels
        • a boar's head with an apple in its mouth - the pagan julgalti (replaced by turkey in the 16thC)
        • bells & candles
        • Christmas rose & tree, and the colours green, red & white
        • frost; goose; heralds;  infant in the manger; mistletoe;
        • holly - pagan belief that in its greenness lies a promise that the sun will return
        • the traditional male yule figure:
          • European tradition has always included a man, usually a hoary old man, his head wreathed with mistletoe or holly, his gown varying in colour who is possibly a later conception of Saturn, or a relic of the druidic priest-kings
    • Christmas tree:
      • after his successful Christianisation of Germany in the 8thC, St Boniface dedicated a fir tree to the infant Christ to replace the oak which was sacred to the pagan god Odin
      • some attribute it to Martin Luther who used to put a candle-laden tree in his own home each Christmas
    • The banning of Christmas celebrations:
      • realising the Pagan origins, the Puritans in 1642 under Cromwell banned Christmas in England, this carried over into New England in the US where the bans were not lifted until 1856
    • Santa Claus:
      • Santa Claus is the contraction of Santa Nikolaus (St Nicholas), the 4thC patron saint of sailors, maidens, pawnbrokers, bankers and then German children, whose feast day is 6 December & the vigil is still held in some places, but for most part, his name is now associated with Christmas-tide.
      • in Holland, Sante Klaas, or Sinter Claes, traditionally arrives in Amsterdam by sea from Spain, a reminder of the days when Spain occupied the Netherlands. Dressed regally in his bishop's mitre & robes he is accompanied by his helper, Black Peter, and receives a formal welcome from the Dutch  monarch at the palace. It was the Dutch who established Santa Claus outside of Europe, for he arrived with them in New Amsterdam as the benevolent old bishop Sante Klaas.
      • the custom used to be for someone, on Dec 5, to assume the costume of a bishop, and distribute small gifts to "good children".
      • Dr Clement Clark Moore, an American professor of divinity, wrote a poem 'The visit of St Nicholas' which was published anonymously in 1823, led to the popularisation of Santa Claus in America & then England
      • the present custom, introduced into England from Germany in ~1840, is to put toys into a stocking late on Xmas eve, when the children are asleep.
      • the image of a jovial, tubby, white-bearded figure in red & white costume is the work of American cartoonist, Thomas Nast in 1863
      • the idea of him arriving by chimney stems from relic of early ideas about the hearth gods & gods of yule log, and from witches, devotees of the old & earliest religion of the horned god, who were believed to fly on broomsticks over the rooftops
      • thus the modern Santa Claus is a fusion of St Nicholas and an ancient yule god
    • Christmas carol:
      • accredited to St Francis of Assisi who also introduced the cradle scene of nativity
    • Christmas card:
      • attributed to Sir Henry Cole who in 1846 asked J.C.Horsley to design some Christmas cards for him, although W.C.T.Dobson claims to have designed a card in 1844
• Boxing Day:
  • feast of St Stephen:
    • St Stephen was a Hellenist, a Greek-speaking Jew, who lived in Palestine around the time of Christ & mentioned in book of Acts, he was to become the 1st Christian martyr and thus the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed him a saint to be revered, and thus made his feast day to be the day after Christmas
    • because of some confusion between the original St stephen and a Swedish saint of the same name who loved horses, a custom developed in many northern European countries of holding a horse race on Dec 26.
  • Boxing day:
    • the origin of the name Boxing day is not clear, though may have come from medieval times, when priests emptied the alms boxes that were kept in the churches. They gave the contents to the poor of the parish on the day after Christmas.
    • it is also a custom where serving people and apprentices had personal boxes in which they put their tips which were maximal on Christmas day, they thus delayed opening them until the next day. It became customary to tip postman, paper boys, etc on Boxing Day in particular.
    •  
• Easter:
  • the celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ
  • it is a symbolism of rebirth, fertility & new beginnings
  • it thus occurs in the Northern Hemisphere Spring and occurs on the 1st Sunday after the full moon which occurs after the vernal equinox of March 21
  • Easter Bunny:
    • the rabbit is a symbol of fertility being one of the most fecund of all animals
  • Easter Egg:
    • it is an almost perfect symbol of life renewing itself after death
    • the egg was a Pagan symbol of fertility & immortality
    • eggs were buried with the dead by the Greeks & the Romans
    • Jews eat a meal of eggs after returning from a funeral
    • the Christians borrowed the egg as a symbol from the Pagans
    • an egg merchant, Simon of Cyrene, carried Christ's cross on the road to Calvary. A legend claims that after the crucifixion, Simon returned & found all his eggs brightly coloured, hence the tradition of painting Easter Eggs
    • the egg was also frequently used as the first meal to break the long Lenten fast
  • Hot Cross Bun:
    • a symbol of the crucifixion
• Mother's day:
  • the modern observance, begun in late 19thC in USA, is said to derive from Mothering Sunday, an old English custom of much  earlier date observed on 4th Sunday of Lent by placing gifts on the altar of the church where they had been baptised and on the same day made gifts to their mothers as an expression of affection & gratitude for maternal care. This also had counterparts in Europe.
  • in USA, mother's day began to be promoted from 1872 onwards as part of social reforms, it was observed on the 2nd Sunday in May by the wearing of a carnation (pink if she were living, white if not), and in 1914 it was proclaimed a national day of observance by US President Woodrow Wilson. Thereafter, the American concept was adopted by the Commonwealth countries and then spread to other countries.
• Father's day:
  • at a Mother's Day church service in Washington in 1909, Mrs John Bruce Dodd suggested a similar day for fathers.
  • Father's Day thus became to be observed in Church services on the 3rd Sunday of June (or the 1st Sunday of September in Australia)
  • it has little endorsement in Europe or in non-Protestant countries
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