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How Did We Get Scripture?

Let’s begin our journey by observing how Scripture came to us. What was the process that occurred that allows us to read Scripture in our own language?

The Process of Scripture
As a physical record, Scripture came to us over a period of time. Tradition reveals that the Old Testament documents were started by Moses in about 1400 B.C. (others give the date of 1280 B.C.). At the beginning of the Intertestamental Period (approximately 400 B.C.) the writing was finished. The actual Pentateuch text was assembled somewhere around 950 B.C. (others say 550 B.C.) during the rule of Solomon. The final books of the Old Testament were finished around 150 B.C.

We can see that this process took about a thousand years. The time was much shorter for the writing of the New Testament. Galatians was written around A.D. 49 and Revelation was written around A.D. 96.

Who Wrote Scripture?
Scripture is a collection of books, written by many authors. All of the writers were Jewish, except Luke, who was a Greek. The authors wrote from diverse places like Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. The reasons that caused these writers to produce their books was as diverse as the authors themselves.

How many books are there in Scripture? Your answer will depend on the tradition in which you grew up. It is often the case that when people become new believers, they are often disturbed when they hear there are books which the early Christians read that are not found in their Bible. They want to know who decided which books were in or out. They want to know how this was decided. When did the canon come into existence? The word canon was used by the early church in the following way. Canon was a list of books which were considered to be authoritative. These books were used by the church to measure beliefs. The early church had two canons: the Old Testament which was inherited from the Jews and the New Testament canon which emerged over a three hundred year period of time.