How our Bible was compiled

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2011/04/editing-the-torah-345.html

http://home.comcast.net/~jovial/learn/mc/TanakVersions.htm




Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible.  This is called the Law, Torah, Pentateuch (5 books).  Jesus attributes it to him.

John Ogwyn explains some of the details,
The portion of the Bible that we commonly call the Old Testament was completed in the days of Ezra the Priest and Governor Nehemiah, about 420bc. Ezra was sent by King Artaxerxes of Persia to Jerusalem in 457bc with the temple scrolls and other treasures which had been kept in Babylon since the days of Nebuchadnezzar (Ezra 7:14). Ezra came back to teach Scripture to the people (v. 10) and to institute religious reform for people who were on the verge of losing their very identity and absorbing the syncretistic paganism of their neighbors. About thirteen years after Ezra’s return, Nehemiah returned as governor and had the authority to insist that Ezra’s reforms be carried out. The first century Jewish historian and priest, Flavius Josephus, recorded the history of the Hebrew Scriptures and contrasted them to the Greek writings extant in his day. "For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only 22 books… which are justly believed to be divine…" (Against Apion, 1, 8). Josephus went on to state that the Jewish scriptures had been compiled in their final form in the days of King Artaxerxes, who reigned in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. He emphasized that, while many books had been composed among the Jews since that time, they were not considered to have divine authority, because there had not been a succession of prophets since the time of Malachi, a late contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah. In addition to Josephus, the book of 1 Maccabees (second century bc), writings by the first century ad philosopher Philo, and traditions preserved in Seder Olam and the Talmud (ancient commentaries) all testify to a fixed canon since the time of Ezra. The 22 books mentioned by Josephus correspond to the books of our Old Testament—normally counted as 39 books in modern translations. The difference in number is because of a difference in the way the books were counted. The 12 Minor Prophets, for instance, were kept on one scroll in Hebrew, and were counted as simply one book, not as 12 separate ones. There are several other combinations as well" (Ogwyn J. How Did We Get The Bible? TW. January-February 2002).

The Jewish Encyclopedia:

"Books." This word, which in Daniel ix, means all the sacred writings, occurs frequently in the Mishna...the Apocrypha...were not included in the libraries of the Temple or the synagogues. (Bible Canon, Chapter 2. Jewish Encyclopedia. 1906. ©2002-2011, JewishEncyclopedia.com)

...long before the destruction of the Temple, and not long after Sirach was translated, the Holy Writings comprised their present cycle. (Chapter 8)

the Tosefta (considered a supplement to the Mishnah, the oral traditions), that, "Neither the Ben Sira nor any of the books written thereafter" are canonical (Ibid, Chapter 10).

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/64496/biblical-literature/73158/The-history-of-canonization

THE TORAH
The history of the canonization of the Torah as a book must be distinguished from the process by which the heterogeneous components of the literature as such developed and were accepted as sacred.
The Book of the Chronicles, composed c. 400 bce, frequently refers to the “Torah of Moses” and exhibits a familiarity with all the five books of the Pentateuch. The earliest record of the reading of a “Torah book”; is provided by the narrative describing the reformation instituted by King Josiah of Judah in 622 bcefollowing the fortuitous discovery of a “book of the Torah” during the renovation of the Temple. The reading of the book (probably Deuteronomy), followed by a national covenant ceremony, is generally interpreted as having constituted a formal act of canonization.
Between this date and 400 bce the only other ceremony of Torah reading is that described in Nehemiah as having taken place on the autumnal New Year festival. The “book of the Torah of Moses” is mentioned and the emphasis is on its instruction and exposition. The Samaritans, the descendants of Israelites intermarried with foreigners in the old northern kingdom that fell in 722 bce, became hostile to the Judaeans in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (6th–5th centuries bce). They would not likely have accepted the Torah, which they did, along with the tradition of its Mosaic origin, if it had only recently been canonized under the authority of their arch-enemies. The final redaction and canonization of the Torah book, therefore, most likely took place during the Babylonian Exile (6th–5th centuries bce).

The writings that make up the Tanakh were believed to have been initially compiled by the men of the Great Assembly, a gathering of approximately 120 wise scholars who lived around 450 BCE and had a decisive effect upon the canonization of Jewish religious writings. Modern scholars believe that additional records were added to the Tanakh around 200 BCE.


A. Babylon destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in 586 B.C., we know from Daniel, scriptures were carried into Babylon (Daniel 9:2), and Daniel reads from the book of Jeremiah in 539 B.C.

B. Antiochus Epiphanies (165-163 B.C.), the king of Seleucid, Greek Kingdom, sought out and destroyed biblical manuscripts in an attempt to turn the Jews away from the God of Israel. This lead attack on Judaism, leading to the Maccabean revolt and a hundred-year Jewish kingdom in 163 B.C. after the Jews defeated the Greeks.

C. Roman destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70, 132). The Romans, like the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70, led by the future emperor Titus. According to Josephus, over 1 million Jews died in the war. In 132 A.D., the Roman Emperor Hadrian put down a Jewish rebellion, slaughtering 580,000 Jews, destroying Jerusalem again.
When the English translation of the bible, the King James Version, was translated, the Hebrew Bible used as the source, was based on the Masoretic Text[2]. The Masoretic Text was the work of Talmudic scholars in Tiberius and Babylon who began their work in the 7th century A.D. Their work is main source of Hebrew Bible translations today. 
            Sixty years ago, the oldest dated, complete Hebrew manuscript was the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Manuscript dated to A.D.1008, based on the Masoretic Text. This all changed with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which  provided biblical manuscripts dated from 250 B.C. to A.D. 50, over 1100-years older then the Leningrad Manuscript.

Dead Sea scrolls matched Masoretic Text (Leningrad) 95% and the 5% was attributed to slips of the pen and spelling.
           
The Soferim (scribes ) (500 B.C- A.D. 100)  (Ezra 7:10-11)
 in the New Testament, they are the experts in the law and scriptures in the time of Christ.

 When we read the Bible, in particular its important to understand, the source document is in Hebrew and Aramaic. Additionally, the source document has been transmitted over time by human hands.  In the process of transmission, human errors have crept into the biblical text.  Finding and correcting these errors in the transmission process is the science known as Biblical Criticism.  The goal being, to come as close as possible to the original autograph.
            By comparing the various available manuscripts, the Septuagint (LXX) (250 B.C.), The Dead Sea scrolls (250 B.C.-100 A.D.) the Samaritan Pentateuch (100 B.C.), and the Masoretic Text, (A.D. 1000), we can see there is some variety to the Hebrew text.
            These manuscripts along with other manuscripts, allows us to go back into time an view the options regarding any scriptures in question.

http://www.tomorrowsworld.org/magazines/2002/jan-feb/how-did-we-get-the-bible


The portion of the Bible that we commonly call the Old Testament was completed in the days of Ezra the Priest and Governor Nehemiah, about 420bc. Ezra was sent by King Artaxerxes of Persia to Jerusalem in 457bc with the temple scrolls and other treasures which had been kept in Babylon since the days of Nebuchadnezzar (Ezra 7:14). Ezra came back to teach Scripture to the people (v. 10) and to institute religious reform for people who were on the verge of losing their very identity and absorbing the syncretistic paganism of their neighbors. About thirteen years after Ezra's return, Nehemiah returned as governor and had the authority to insist that Ezra's reforms be carried out.

Flavius Josephus (Against Apion, 1, 8), the book of 1 Maccabees (second century bc), writings by the first century ad philosopher Philo, and traditions preserved in  Seder Olam and the Talmud (ancient commentaries) all testify to a fixed canon since the time of Ezra.

The Jewish community has officially preserved the Old Testament in what is called the Masoretic Text.

Septuagint

  1. in 268 New Testament citations both the Septuagint and Masoretic Text are in complete harmony;
  2. in 50 citations the New Testament agrees with the Septuagint, even though it differs slightly from the Masoretic Text (although not seriously enough to distort the meaning)
  3. in 33 citations the New Testament adheres more closely to the Masoretic Text than to the Septuagint
  4. in 22 citations the New Testament adheres closely to the Septuagint even when it deviates somewhat from the Masoretic Text


New Testament texts:

  • Textus Receptus - Majority Text - King James translation came from - Most of the Greek manuscripts that have come down to us are of what scholars call the Byzantine (or Antiochan) family of texts.
  • Codex Vaticanus (also known as 'B')- "discovered" in the Vatican in 1481 and was released as the Jesuit-Rheims Bible in 1582.
    • It differs from the Textus Receptus in nearly 8,000 places.
    • The use of recent technology such as the vidicon camera, which creates a digital form of faint writing, reveals that Vaticanus has been altered by at least two hands, one as late as the twelfth century
    • Noted scholar Dr. Bruce Metzger states: "A few passages therefore remain to show the original appearance of the first hand." The corrector "omitted [things] he believed to be incorrect" ( Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, Oxford University Press, p. 74).
  • Codex Sinaiticus (also known as Aleph) - discovered by Constantine von Tischendorf in a monastery in the Sinai desert in the 1850s.
    • They differ in about 9,000 places from the traditional Byzantine Text (Textus Receptus).
    • Dr. Bruce Metzger describes the carelessness of transmission that marks the Sinaiticus manuscripts. 
    • He declared that at least nine "correctors" had worked on the manuscripts over the centuries. "Tichendorf's edition of the manuscript enumerates some 14,800 places where some alteration has been made to the text" (p. 77). 
    • Later use of ultra-violet lamps showed multiple additional places where the original reading had been erased.


The Jewish use the following Writings:  Tanahk, Talmud (Mishna), Midrashim, Kabbalah

jewfaq.org - Torah
Sacred-Texts.com - Judaism
MyJewishLearning - Bible
chabad.org The Bible with Rash

he Mishnah, Tosefta, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and midrashim.[ i
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3259-bible-canon
http://www.bibliahebraica.com/the_texts/tanakh.htm
http://realtruth.org/articles/248-wahdwgtb.html
http://www.truthnet.org/Bible-Origins/8_Transmission-of-the-Old-Testament/index.htm


Tanahk (Hebrew bible) 

http://www.torah.org/learning/basics/primer/torah/bible.html
  1. Torah (Chumash) (Pentateuch - Greek) 
  2. Navi (Prophets)
  3. Ketuvim (Writings - Psalms)
The Torah is either written on parchment scrolls, or bound in weekly readings called Chumash.
  • The majority of Biblical scholars believe that the written books were a product of the Babylonian exilic period (c. 600 BCE) and that it was completed by the Persian period (c. 400 BCE).[4]
  • written on a scroll by a sofer on parchment in Hebrew
  • The earliest name for the first part of the Bible seems to have been "The Torah of Moses". This title, however, is found neither in the Torah itself, nor in the works of the pre-Exilic literary prophets. It appears in Joshua (8:31–32; 23:6) and Kings (I Kings 2:3; II Kings 14:6; 23:25), but it cannot be said to refer there to the entire corpus. 
  • In contrast, there is every likelihood that its use in the post-Exilic works (Mal. 3:22; Dan. 9:11, 13; Ezra 3:2; 7:6; Neh. 8:1; II Chron. 23:18; 30:16) was intended to be comprehensive. Other early titles were "The Book of Moses" (Ezra 6:18; Neh. 13:1; II Chron. 35:12; 25:4; cf. II Kings 14:6) and "The Book of the Torah" (Neh. 8:3), which seems to be a contraction of a fuller name, "The Book of the Torah of God" (Neh. 8:8, 18; 10:29–30; cf. 9:3).[10]
  • Christian scholars usually refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as the Pentateuch, a term first used in the Hellenistic Judaism of Alexandria,[11] meaning five books, or as the Law, or Law of Moses. 
  • Muslims refer to the Torah as Tawrat(توراة, "Law"), an Arabic word for the revelations given to the Islamic prophet Musa (موسى, Moses in Arabic).
  • The revelation to Moses at Mount Sinai is considered by most to be the revelatory event. According to dating of the text by Orthodox rabbis, this occurred in 1312 BCE;[12]another date given for this event is 1280 BCE.[13]

Talmud - Oral Law written down

Mishna, the name for the sixty-three tractates in which Rabbi Judah set down the Oral Law, Jewish law is systematically codified, unlike in the 


Midrashim - Stories related to the Tanahk

stories expanding on incidents in the Bible to derive principles or Jewish law or to teach moral lessons.

Kabbalah - mystical tradition

The primary written work in the Kabbalistic tradition is the Zohar. Traditionally, rabbis discouraged teaching this material to anyone under the age of 40, because it is too likely to be misinterpreted by anyone without sufficient grounding in the basics.




http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/jpstoc.html

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/

http://www.intouch.org/you/about-the-bible/content/topic/how_did_we_get_the_old_testament_bible

the Hebrew Bible (also called the Jewish Tanahk).    1200 BC or earlier 

 In the ancient world, most information was transmitted orally—they told stories. But the biblical writers wrote what we know as Scripture in order to send it to other places and preserve it.
The Hebrew canon was assembled in three parts. 

  1. Pentateuch (or the Law). Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy - Written by Moses, helped by someone (maybe Joshua) since his own death is recorded in it.   So when you read about the Book of the Law in the Old Testament (like what King Josiah and Ezra read from), it is most likely that they are referring to the Pentateuch.
  2. the Prophets (or Nevi’im)  -  
    • historical books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings)
    •  (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the 12 Minor Prophets).
    • • The Former Prophets: Joshua-Judges (combined into one) and Samuel-Kings (combined into one).
      • The Latter Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and “The Twelve” prophets (one book)—Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
  3. the Sacred Writings (also known as the Hagiographa or Ketuvim). - 
    • wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Lamentations) 
    • other historical books (Ruth, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles).
    • • The Former Poetic Books: Psalms, Proverbs and Job.
      • The Megilloth or Festival Books: Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther.
      • The Latter Restoration Books:Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah (combined into one) and Chronicles (combined into one).
      This original order is completely chronological. This will be more thoroughly appreciated once we study the canonization and other historical aspects.

Septuagint - LXX












 A close examination of the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text (the early Hebrew text of the Old Testament) show slight variations. 


The books were organized into these two sections sometime around 165 BC, during the Maccabaean war of liberation.
Antiochus Epiphanus, a cruel and despicable Syrian ruler, wanted to completely destroy all worship of Yahweh, including all religious documents. Thankfully, Judas Maccabaeus took steps to make sure all of the holy documents would be preserved. At this point, these manuscripts were not bound in a book—they were simply holy scrolls (in fact, the Bible was still in scrolls in Jesus’ time). However, when Maccabaeus listed them and gathered them into collections, he set the foundation for the traditional Hebrew canon.

These scrolls were made of papyrus, animal skins (leather), and metal. 
Until the 1940s, the earliest manuscripts were from medieval times (around 800-900 AD). However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s and 1950s provided a wealth of manuscripts from before Christ. There they found 600 manuscripts (200 of which are biblical) and between 50,000 to 60,000 fragments. All of the books of the Old Testament (except Esther) were represented. The oldest fragment is from the book of Exodus, and it was dated to approximately 250 BC.


The most interesting thing they discovered was that the documents they had from medieval times were (for the most part) identical to the older ones. The documents had been faithfully copied and transmitted! That is how we got our Old Testament.



http://realtruth.org/articles/248-wahdwgtb.html

 “And He said unto them, These are the words which I spoke unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45).

Notice that Christ himself identified the Hebrew Scriptures by the following terms: (1) The Law of Moses, (2) the Prophets, and (3) the Psalms.

Note what Flavius Josephus states in regard to the number of books in the Hebrew Scriptures: “For we [the Jews] have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing and contradicting one another, but only 22 books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine” (Against Apion, Book I, Section VIII).
The following scholars associated with the Catholic movement also publicly acknowledged that there were 22 books to the Hebrew Scriptures: Origen (A.D. 210), Athanasius (365), Cyril of Jerusalem (386), and Jerome (410).
We first list the books of the Law, also known as the Torah or Pentateuch:
There is another aspect of the significance of the number 22. Sextus Senensis, a Jewish scholar, A.D. 1520, is credited with the following statement: “As with the Hebrews there are 22 letters, in which ALL that can be said and written are comprehended, so there are 22 books in which are contained ALL there can be known and uttered of divine things” (Introduction to the Old Testament, Green, p. 87).
With the significance of the 22 books or scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a type of an alphabetical “acrostic” most likely paralleled those 22 books. An acrostic exists when 22 verses each begin with a word spelled with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each letter (beginning with the first) continues in order all through the alphabet in sequence. In other words, the first letter of the alphabet corresponds with the first letter of the first verse. Then the second letter of the alphabet corresponds with the first letter of the second verse, and so on. The parts of an acrostic can be single verses each, or sets of verses, or possibly chapters or even books.
An example of a complete acrostic is Psalm 119. Here, eight verses are grouped together into 22 sets of verses. The first letter of all eight verses of each set is the same letter of the alphabet. Thus the first eight verses begin with the first letter, the next eight verses all begin with the second letter of the alphabet, and so on. Not only is this poetic chapter a perfect and complete acrostic, the syllables of each verse have to perfectly match each other, because it was set to music.
Psalm 119 covers the subject of the Law of God being perfect and complete. Thus, a perfect and complete acrostic is used to emphasize that completeness. Every single verse of this chapter in the original Hebrew mentions the Law of God, using terms such as law, precepts, judgments, statutes, commandments, etc. The eight verses per meter, times the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, equals 176. There are precisely 176 verses in Psalms 119.
Together, Psalms 111 and 112 form a complete acrostic showing that God will completely redeem His people. Both chapters contain 10 verses each, but the 10th verse of both chapters contains two sections.
Proverbs 31:10-31 contains 22 verses forming another complete and perfect acrostic
These verses describe a complete and perfect woman. Another complete acrostic is found in the book of Lamentations, which emphasizes the complete destruction upon all Israel.

A broken acrostic runs through Psalms 9 and 10. Here, seven letters seem to be purposely left out. This is said to represent the broken condition that will occur on earth during the time frame that Psalms 9 and 10 portray in the prophetic sense.

During Christ’s time (as documented by Josephus and various others), the Hebrew Scriptures consisted of 22 books. As a point of interest, when one adds the 22 books of these Scriptures to the 27 books of the New Testament, a total of 49 books results. To the Jews, the number of 49 (seven times seven) represents absolute completion.

(Also, if every one of the Old Testament books are counted individually—and the Psalms are counted as five because of their natural division—the Old Testament total is 43 books. Adding this to the New Testament total of 27 yields the number 70, which is ten times God’s number of completion or perfection.)
By the second century, many Jews became somewhat envious of the significance of “their” Scriptures being combined with the New Testament to give a total of 49 books. At that time, the Jews adjusted the order of the Hebrew Scriptures to increase the number to 24. This was done by dividing Joshua-Judges into two books and by dividing Samuel-Kings into two books, giving a new total of 24 books (see The Design and Development of the Holy Scriptures [Outline], E.L. Martin, pp. 9, 12).

Before and during this time, the Jews had complete disgust for the Egyptian Septuagint Version, which totally reshuffled the books of the second and third divisions (the Prophets and the Writings).

As mentioned before, this is where the Catholics inherited their erroneous order of the Old Testament and passed it on to us today in the same distorted order, through the King James Version and most all other versions available today.
Some have observed that many Hebrew Bibles bear the label TANAK (or often TANAKH) on the front cover and have asked what this means. This name is actually derived from the three parts of the Hebrew Scriptures:
TORAH is the name given to the division on the Law of God—first 5 books.
NEBEE-EEM is the name for the Prophets division.
KETHUVEEN is the Writings division.

By taking the initial letters of the three titles (T,N,K) they form the word TANAK. The Bible of the Jews was named for these three major divisions. This shows their acceptance of the true divisions, as opposed to various corrupted versions like the Septuagint.

History of Old Testament Canonization


the Massoretic Text.  - the official text cannonized by Ezra.



  • 400 AD translation  - Latin Vulgate
  • John Wycliffe translated to English - accused of being a heretic, wrote it so it could be used by common people.  Priests could only understand it and they abused
  • Tyndale translated from greek to hebrew, he was executed and burned b/c of this
  • John Rogers finished but was killed also

There are 6912 languages
2286 no bible translations

1/3 of the world has no bible

Type 
don't pick your translation blindly
one that is closest to the original
literal translation versus paraphrases (amplified bible, message bible)
translated b a team versus just a few
translated recently versus centuries ago

KJV - translated from Latin - so it is a translation of a translation 
NKJV - still fromlatin

NIV
ESV

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/bible-translations-guide

There are two general philosophies translators use when they do their work: formal or complete equivalence and dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence translations try to give as literal a translation of the original text as possible. Translators using this philosophy try to stick close to the originals, even preserving much of the original word order. 

English bible translations

http://www.tyndalearchive.com/Scriptures/index.htm
http://www.mardel.com/bible-translation-guide.aspx



History of our english bible
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/#timeline


http://www.biblewheel.com//Canon/ChristianOT_vs_Tanakh.php
Comparison of the Christian OT and the Jewish Tanakh.

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